I'm having trouble understanding if he received an 18 month sentence or an indefinite one: "was jailed for 18 months but is still trapped in prison 18 years later under a cruel indefinite jail term".
That's in the first paragraph.
That's in the first paragraph.
> [IPP] was intended to protect the public against criminals whose crimes were not serious enough to merit a normal life sentence but who were regarded as too dangerous to be released when the term of their original sentence had expired. It is composed of a punitive "tariff" intended to be proportionate to the gravity of the crime committed, and an indeterminate period which commences after the expiry of the tariff and lasts until the Parole Board judges the prisoner no longer poses a risk to the public and is fit to be released. [1]
That last bit is even worse than it sounds: the burden of proof is on the prisoner to prove that they're no longer a danger to society, instead of requiring the Parole Board to prove that they're still a danger. Between that burden and the rest of the Parole Board's workload, it's taking forever to get anyone released.
IPP was eliminated in 2012 because it was unjust and overused, but politicians made the conscious decision to not retroactively undo it because of the bad PR it'd cause if some violent offender was released and killed someone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_protec...
So it's ok if a violent offender jailed after 2012 gets released and kills someone. Typical politican logic.
It is. My comment was a (failed) attempt at sarcasm. If the new ruling is thought to be more just, it should be retroactively applied.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_prot...
Basically, the “18 month sentence” is a minimum sentence for the crime(s). But after that period, a parole board is supposed to rule on whether this person is fit to rejoin society.
What I don’t understand:
- are parole boards just denying for any reason? Why are people serving such long sentences?
- is it a backlog of cases to review to blame?
- or is this similar to “cash for kids” scandal in the US? Basically, teenagers were sentenced harshly under the pretense of “zero tolerance” and sent to prison. But, in reality it was motivated primarily by the need for private prison systems to fill the cells and many judges getting kickbacks.
Yes. There's guidelines for parole but they're just guides. Personal bias, as well as potential monetary values, keep prisoners in prison. For example, Georgia, based on statistics, should have a parole rate of 80% for non-violent offenders. The parole rate is 8%. This is for non-violent offenders. That's an order of magnitude of difference.
The culture around parole and personal biases fuel this. Ultimately, the community and parole judge can only LOSE by allowing parole. In the best-case scenario, they break even - nothing bad happens if you let someone loose. In the worst case, they commit a crime. They're heavily biased to preserve the interests of themselves, the prisons, and their community. The well-being of the prisoner is least important because they are a criminal.
> motivated primarily by the need for private prison systems to fill the cells and many judges getting kickbacks
There's some of this as well. Some of these prisoners in (again, Georgia) are being coerced to work. Parole is a carrot above their head. They're paid less than minimum wage to literally flip burgers at McDonald's. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved. The prison makes money (garnishes half the wages), local shops get cheap labor, and "dangerous" people are kept locked up. Only the prisoners lose.
But the gov't has been slow to review people's cases and so folks are stuck.