Despite an ongoing crimewave, Melbourne was recently named the world’s best city by Time Out magazine, to a mix of celebratory headlines, crowing by the Victorian state government, and general bemusement among everyone else. Sure enough, just two days later, the city reminded the world of its recent sad decline.  

On 13 March, Vietnamese international student Bao Phuc Cao pleaded guilty to secretly filming a woman under the cubicle walls in the toilets of a shopping centre in the city’s Docklands area. His camera was found to have similarly intrusive images and videos of more than 100 women on it. Their identities are unknown. And he was already on a community correction order (a form of community-based punishment involving monitoring and other conditions) from two previous prosecutions for similar offences. The victim in this case has been left anxious and traumatised. While Cao pleaded guilty and has reportedly abided by his order, at the time of his arrest he also apparently offered the baffling excuse that he was in the women’s toilets because he was “unsure” about his gender. Despite all this, Cao was not sentenced to prison, much less deported from Australia (though his visa is reportedly being reviewed); in fact, no conviction was recorded, and Cao was released into the community with no further punishment at all, beyond an undertaking of good behaviour and continued compliance with his existing order. The seemingly bizarre leniency of the judgement raises larger questions about the administration of criminal justice in Victoria, the alignment of the judiciary with public standards and expectations and the function of criminal law.