"Offender Management in the Community" - what a load of shit!
The following rant is based on this story which talks about violent predators re-offending whilst being managed in the community by the Probation service.
And I quote:
A total of 1,414 registered sex and violent offenders were also returned to prison for breaching the terms of their release licences. A further 68 were sent back to prison for breaching the terms of their sex offences prevention order.WTF????
So my thought on the matter is this.. You are a probation officer, a parole board officer, a politician, doesn't matter which, you are part of the system which is allowing these quite often violent and definitely predatory offenders out of the prison system to walk the streets amongst the good, law abiding, tax paying, hard working and honest citizens of this country..
Here goes:
If you are going to allow a violent or predatory offender out of prison EARLY and on LICENCE then the following CAVEAT should apply to all those who make the decision to allow them out of prison.
IF the offender RE-OFFENDS whilst on licence, on a SOPO, on the SOR, or while they should otherwise STILL be locked up in HM Prisons then the people RESPONSIBLE for letting them out to walk the streets should ALSO serve the sentence that is handed down to the offender when they are brought back in to custody.
So as a scenario (please remember this is purely fictional):
John Rapist is a violent predatory sex offender who raped a 17 year old girl after tying her to the childrens swings in the local park late at night on a Saturday in July 2006.
** John is 38 years old and has served a prison sentence earlier in his life for a similar offence, but it was only just short of being rape, he also has a criminal history going back to his teens. He has a nasty violent streak towards his victims and often beats them leaving the victims with permanent scarring. John was on the equivalent of the Sex Offenders Register when he was 27 for a period of 4 years. He has a history of re-offending and offending on bail. **
John gets convicted of the rape and is sentenced to 5 years in prison, he spends 18 months in prison and is released on a SOPO (Sexual Offences Prevention Order) and is forever more a RSO (Registered Sex Offender). He is also supposed to report weekly to the police station and to attend prevent classes which are a form of counselling in order to stop him re-offending. He is on Licence for a further 18 months, the other 2 years of his sentence seem to have vanished for some reason that no one can explain.
John is released from prison in December.
4 weeks after being released from prison he rapes another girl and her boyfriend, they were both 18 years old...
John is sent back to prison to serve the rest of his previous sentence and he is further sentenced to another 7 years.
Now here is the good part:
The people who allowed John Rapist to walk the free streets of middle England also get brought before the courts for releasing him on licence. At that time they are sentenced to serve 7 years inside for allowing a violent and predatory offender to be released early from prison while knowing that he was likely to re-offend.
Oh yeah, this sounds very 1984 or perhaps V, or may be a few other things.. It is however guaranteed to do one thing............... It WILL STOP people being released early from prison - a prison sentence should be carried out in full.
--- After all, will you still bend over backwards and let John Rapist or Billy Burglar or even Alex Arsonist walk free if you KNOW in your heart of hearts that he will re-offend and you will spend time in prison when he does?? Of course not!
Now they'll say we don't have enough prison spaces for them - SO??? BUILD ANOTHER BLOODY PRISON!
It is something to think about.
I'd vote for you for Prime Minister, please stand in the election!!
ReplyDeleteTo be left with a group of future commenters you richly deserve, is just enough.
ReplyDeleteDr M T Gray
Dr Gray,
ReplyDeleteSorry, I wasn't too sure what you meant. Can you explain please?
Anonymous,
I'd love to go for PM but I'm afraid that the load of bollocks you have to go through to do the job wouldn't be worth it. But you can have some nice clocks while you do the job and some funky old furniture in Number 10.
Paul,
Yes, it's a shame. I think it would cut out a lot of the problems though. :-)
PC A Lotte, far too sensible and simple!
ReplyDeleteCan we not all agree that current experiments in offending are a complete waste of time.
ReplyDeleteLet us revert to a time when John, Billy et al, would be furnished with a cell, slop-bucket, and incarcerated. At least then, we knew they could not offend again, and there was a respite for the general population when the served their time.
Given our current leadership, could we really rely on people taking responsibility for their mistakes? I think not. We have vast swathes of the population devolving responsibily of parenting, let alone providing for the family.
I suspect more prisons might well be the answer. After all everything else has failed!!
The "simple" solution, imho, would be not to let out John Rapist in the first place. Not the history set up in your hypothetical.
ReplyDeleteRealistically, someone like that *will* reoffend. The chance that he does not is so low it's barely worth considering. (Even if it's half, let's say, that's quite dangerous.) The probation officer is in a hopeless situation. Unless John Rapist is personally monitored 24-7, his reoffending cannot be prevented. In prison, his pool of potential victims is much smaller, and includes no members of the general public. While him raping other prisoners is hardly a good thing, it's better than him finding yet another innocent teenager to violate.
except that breaching the terms of a license or a sex offender prevention order does not mean that he has re-offended, simply that he has not met a condition (for instance to reside at a certain address)which means that probation supervisors can assess his risk as increasing and then take him off the streets before he re-offends.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately this makes far too much sense to have a rant at so we are stuck with the ill informed misconceptions detailed above.
Sorry Dave,
ReplyDeleteYou weren't overly clear. Who are you referring to with regards to ill informed misconceptions?
On the first part of that SOPO's are designed to protect the community at large. Many of the conditions are yes in relation to places of abode, registration with the local police, travelling overseas or being away for more than a set amount of time (say a week) however many more of the conditions are things such as stopping predatory offenders loitering around primary schools or in parks or even talking to children under the age of 16... These are the ones that are taken very seriously...
However, as posted by someone on another blog entry, speeding just a little is the same as stealing a small sweet, it's still breaking the law.. the SOPO is designed to protect people and the agreement is that the offender will abide by it, 100% not 95% or any other amount but to follow it or go back to prison.
The conditions such as residing at a certain address are also for the safety of the offender..
Easiest way is if someone doesn't want these restrictions on their life they should not commit crimes.. So much nicer for the entire society if we could live in a world without crime.