DUBBO Mayor Mathew Dickerson says he will push for greater accountability from magistrates in response to a growing belief sentencing of the city's criminals is too lenient.

Cr Dickerson wrote to the NSW Attorney-General to raise his concerns and would send him another letter.

"We need cold, hard data on the sentencing regime of our particular magistrate in Dubbo," he said.

"Let's have a sensible debate about this with real data, because we've not been able to get data that demonstrates the differences between magistrates' sentencing compared with the past or other places.

“What I hear anecdotally is that the leniency shown by this magistrate means you are getting people who have an incredible confidence that they can commit crimes without the consequences.

“I have spoken to people in the court process and they talk about people on bail committing crimes and continually getting bail again.

“At some point you have to say the message isn’t getting through to those people that there are consequences for their actions, and there seems to be no accountability for a magistrate to answer for the way they go about their sentencing regime.”

In an interview on Dubbo radio earlier this month, Cr Dickerson raised concerns about the ease with which juvenile criminals were being repeatedly granted bail.

“In talking to the police, they said without a doubt when the magistrate changed from the last magistrate, who was very tough on crims, to the current magistrate who wants to save the world by rehabilitating everyone, they actually made the prediction at the time that the crime stats would go up... the current magistrate thinks that everyone can be saved... and kids are walking out of the courtroom being bailed for the eighteenth time, giving high fives to each other,” he said at the time.

Cr Dickerson recounted one instance he had been told of where bail conditions for a juvenile ordered he must be at a particular residence in the company of an adult outside of daylight hours.

“He was caught by police after he went out and was put back before the court but instead of being punished the magistrate said the conditions had been too harsh and he relaxed them.”

Cr Dickerson said elected representatives were often criticised for “having their say” on sentencing, but that argument was valid only to a point.

“Of course you don’t want an elected representative talking to a magistrate about the specific case of one of his or her friends, for instance, but we need to look at the statistics and the big picture,” he said.

“My job is to represent the people of Dubbo and they are telling me the sentencing is too lenient.”

“There’s no doubt it would be nice to have lower crime rates, and while it’s frustrating, our crimes are mainly property-related rather than assault, for instance,” he said.

Cr Dickerson used the opportunity to urge Dubbo residents to remain vigilant.