An Adelaide judge has suppressed details of a self-confessed drug mule's sentence, along with his reasons for doing so.

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The female offender collected a bag containing $500,000 worth of cocaine and the drug ice from an airport carousel. Her two co-accused have pleaded not guilty.

It is impossible to see how such iron-curtain secrecy can ultimately benefit the public.

Judges have made clear their belief that lighter sentences combined with rehabilitation programs work better in avoiding recidivism. They have stated that protecting some individuals from public scrutiny and resultant destructive backlash from a community that lacks empathy and understanding is essential in assisting their return to the straight path.

That is all very well, but when the cat's away the mice can play.

How can the public monitor the performance of judges and the court system if an increasing proportion of their operations are veiled in high secrecy? Are we to trust that the esteemed lords of the bench are capable only of delivering ultimate results? According to whose values will these outcomes be measured as nearing perfection? We are reassured only with statistics, but statistics lie!

No-one but themselves and other like-minded professions can gain access to most of the source information that those statistics are based upon. This particular suppression and similar examples further extend the blindfold.

It may well be that this offender is a victim of circumstance. We have no way of knowing if her sentence was light as it's a secret, but it is hard to imagine a need for suppression if His Honour had come down hard upon her offending.

We have strong reasons for rejecting this judge's behaviour. Simply put, it can have an impact far beyond the scope of just this one trial.

It's clear that each time a judge finds favourably for an offender involved in such serious criminal activity as trafficking hard drugs he or she sends a message to the community that is open to misinterpretation by irresponsible characters who may read it as a green light to continue their crimes.

Furthermore, 'precedant' is a byword of legality. Judges themselves well know that precedents in judgments must be set with extreme care as they can translate into unintended outcomes when applied to similar cases.

Surely, the same principle applies to suppressions. They could lead to an invisible creeping rot.

The community is ultimately concerned about safety, particularly of it's younger members who are the ones most vulnerable to drug activity. Precedents of suppression that progressively shut down public awareness of criminal trial outcomes set alarm bells ringing loudly regardless of what highly educated judges may think.

Our society is democratic. Democracies have disadvantages. Operations in secrecy can certainly overcome some of them by eliminating vexatious and unenlightened meddling. However, the cost is usually found to be horrendous once it becomes known. That's never until the public's ability to regain control has been decimated. That cost is nearly always a self-serving dictatorship.