Example of how a person convicted for drug offences can turn their life around.

Tanya Plibersek's husband

Michael Coutts-Trotter  served almost three years of a nine-year prison sentence on a drugs charge. He'd done time in maximum-security jails like Long Bay, Bathurst and Parra­matta ("A genuinely bleak place," he calls it) before ending up in Silverwater and work release. After being paroled in 1988, he spent a year at a Salvation Army rehab facility.

"I was in jail, 6 1/2 stone [41.2 kilograms], psychotic from lack of drugs and lack of sleep, charged with conspiracy to import half a kilo of heroin, and humiliated by the things I'd done, and the things I'd failed to do, in using and selling drugs." And very lucky to be alive: "I hadn't overdosed or been shot either of the times I'd been robbed at gunpoint.

But for all his determination to remake his life, Coutts-Trotter would forever have a criminal record.

Michael Coutts-Trotter, an Australian public servant, is the Secretary of the New South Wales Department of Family and Community Services, since July 2013.

Coutts-Trotter was appointed Director-General of the New South Wales Department of Education and Training in April 2007. He was director-general of the NSW Department of Commerce from 2004 to 2007, and chief of staff to the New South Wales Treasurer from 1998 to 2004.

Do you not see how wrong that is? To make celebrities out of convicted criminals? 

SA made a President of one convicted criminal.  

These people have not been convicted of child abuse or murder. 

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@icyfroth wrote:

 

Bali Nine: Joko Widodo rules out 'relief' for death row inmates Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

 

Indonesian lawyers were hoping for a judicial review but Mr Widodo has told CNN nothing would change his hardline stance against drug dealers.

 

"Imagine every day we have 50 people die because of narcotics, in one year it's 18,000 people because of narcotics," he said.

"We are not going to compromise for drug dealers. No compromise, no compromise.

"The decision of death penalty is on the court. But they can ask for amnesty to the president but I tell you there will be no amnesty for drug dealers."

 

Entire Article Here

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from the above article

Indonesia expert Greg Barton from Monash University said there was a small chance that Mr Widodo could bow to pressure to spare the men.

"I think as long as there's life, there's hope," he told ABC News 24.

"If there is time I do believe this president, like his predecessor, may walk back from this because the Indonesian diplomatic community, the larger government, recognise its best interests are served by at least not enforcing if not renouncing capital punishment.

"The ball is in the president's court. He could say 'I think in this particular case there's grounds for mercy because of the changed behaviour and changed outlook and time served'."

Professor Barton said commuting the death sentences to life in prison "would be the sensible thing to ask for".

This is worth listning to.  There is provision in the law for the President to spare their lives because they have been reformed and are a valuable asset within the prison and other prisons to aid other inmates towards rehabilitation.

I think that she said that Andrew Chan has had a stroke and has been taken to hospital.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/new-setback-for-bali-nine-mercy-campaign/6050...

I wonder what some posters will say when another drug mule, already a "celebrity", lands back on Australian soil in a couple of years.  I was not here when that person was convicted, but were they baying for the death penalty then?

Drug addicts can also be drug dealers? isn't that how they fund their habit?

The dealers at the top are not addicts, but the dealers at the bottom probably are addicted to something.  Is that what you mean?

Yes.

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@polksaladallie wrote:

I wonder what some posters will say when another drug mule, already a "celebrity", lands back on Australian soil in a couple of years.  I was not here when that person was convicted, but were they baying for the death penalty then?

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some posters may say that another drug mule, who has maintained her innocence all along, was never in line for execution. So no need to bay for the death penalty.

Some posters were of the same opinion then: "do the crime, do the time". "Another drug mule" certainly did her time.

That person was indeed in line for execution.