A judge has urged an unemployed 20-year-old to strive to be a decent person after he forced his way into a woman's house and threatened to kill her in the presence of her baby.
Jack Elson was released from Canberra's jail on Friday, having already served more than six months behind bars on remand.
ACT Supreme Court justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson said she took this into account when she sentenced him to an intensive correction order for a period of two years and two months.
The order is a prison term to be served in the community.
Justice Loukas-Karlsson said Elson pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary and contravening a court order after he went around to a woman's house on February 4 and was almost immediately "demanding, abusive and violent".
She said the then-19-year-old lifted a back screen door off its bearings trying to get into the house, and also tried a side and laundry door before he ultimately entered through a kitchen window.
Justice Loukas-Karlsson said Elson grabbed a knife from the kitchen and approached the woman and her baby. She said he told the woman, "I'm going to kill you and I'm going to kill myself", before he stabbed a pillow where she had been sitting.
During the incident, the woman FaceTimed her sister, who saw Elson stab the pillow.
On Thursday, prosecutor Christina Muthurajah said the victim would have undoubtedly been very scared, particularly given she was with her baby at the time.
She said Elson had shown little insight into his offending, but lawyer Darryl Perkins put that down to Elson not being "a particularly sophisticated gentleman".
The 20-year-old told the author of a court report the woman had invited him around to the house; a proposition prosecutors deemed unlikely.
Mr Perkins said Elson conceded he had "some things to clean up in his life", but wanted to get a labourer's apprenticeship and knew he shouldn't drink alcohol or take illicit substances in the future.
On Friday, Justice Loukas-Karlsson said Elson resorted to alcohol when he felt angry or upset and had started using marijuana at the age of 13.
The judge told Elson "women and children are not property", and said generational violence in his family had to end with him.
"Your goal every day is to be a decent person," Justice Loukas-Karlsson said.
"You have to be a better man than the man you were that night."
Elson's intensive correction order expires in December 2022.
