A league table for Judges?

Andrea Vance reports at Stuff:

Judges should face performance reviews and be held accountable for their decisions, victims say.

Judges are appointed for life, and can only be removed for misconduct. This allows them to be independent of the Government of the day, which is critically important. So I do not support anything which would allow the Government to sideline a Judge.

However this story did get me thinking that what could be useful is collation of data on Judge’s decisions, and compile this into a league table.

One could record each Judge’s sentencing decisions for various crimes, and over time see which Judges tend to give heavier and lighter sentences for different types of crimes.

I suspect many lawyers know this anyway through observation.

One could also record how often a Judge gives bail, when opposed by the Police, and even what further crimes are committed on bail, when granted despite opposition.

This is all public data. We have an open justice system. I’m not suggesting the Government compile this data. It could be a crowd sourced project.