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Archived Press Releases 2007 10th January 2007

Parole system in shambles

(10th January 2007)

The Graeme Burton case has reignited the debate on the parole system, any defense of which is now looking increasingly anorexic. One man killed and four innocent people injured because the parole board couldn't get it right. The real surprise is why anyone thinks it could be otherwise. The system is, after all, predicated on the future predictability of criminals and its decisions are carried more often by the triumph of hope over reality. Why do we never learn? Some apologists have suggested that the parole board couldn't have known better. Rubbish. You don't need hindsight to figure out that anyone who had amassed convictions for murder, burglary and escaping is likely to be beyond rehabilitation. Besides, why should anyone with such a track record be given a second chance they chose to deny their victims?

There's never any shortage of anecdotes from those whose purpose seems to be to humanize these criminals. Burton apparently drew charcoal drawings of birds. So what? Hitler drew pictures too. The real tragedy is that we argue away the failure of the parole system by suggesting it’s either one of only a few mistakes learnt in hindsight or that the alternatives are far worse. I take issue with both.

Have we forgotten that rehabilitation is a rarity? William Bell had 102 previous convictions yet was granted parole before bludgeoning three people to death and left a fourth battling for life. Taffy Hotene grew up strangling kittens, beating up classmates, and then joined the Black Power gang at 14 years of age. In and out of prison for a range of offences including rape, he was then improbably teamed up with child murderer Paul Dally, (who raped and killed Karla Cardno), to teach anti-violence. Within eight weeks of parole he murdered Kylie Jones. What about multiple rapist Nicholas Reekie, Shane Hoko (who strangled a woman), or rapist Nigel Robert Gately? All committed violent offences while on parole. It is sobering to note that nearly 80 percent of violent offenders re-offend while on parole. Given the facts it's surprising that anyone doesn't commit an offence by being given parole!

Rehabilitation in prison has been a joke for a long time with a massive eighty-six per cent of inmates re-offending within five years of release, 70 per cent of whom have more than ten convictions. How can anyone really believe that putting some of these criminals back into the community is going to improve the success rate? Where's the evidence?

Part of the problem is that we've lost sight of the positive role punishment can provide. We also need to start looking at how sentencing affects behavior and ask what incentives do they give? For a start why do we give sentencing discounts for the more offences criminals are incarcerated for? And why parole in lieu of part of a sentence because of good behavior? A sentence is supposed to reflect the gravity of the crime not any self-serving contrition after the fact.

Punishment and rehabilitation are not mutually exclusive concepts. The apologists may not like the idea of punishment but a severe and proportionate penalty does deter. So too does shame for doing the wrong thing. We used to call that the exercise of conscience. The hand-wringers not un-naturally have a problem with that so they strive to do the exact opposite by blaming nefarious and ill-defined concepts like parenting, education, poverty or society. All they have achieved is replacing personal responsibility with the wooly notion of personal entitlement. Unfortunately it doesn't work. Giving a discounted sentence via parole hasn't reduced re-offending, it's increased them. Ironically, these same social designers who expect us to believe that micro-chipping dogs to prevent dog attacks shy away from the same strategies applied to violent criminals preferring instead to give them endless counseling sessions and the benefit of the doubt. But who's benefit? Certainly not the criminal's next round of victims.

The criminal advocate fraternity is dead wrong about the efficacy of prison. The facts may be inconvenient but higher rates of imprisonment does halt a rising crime rate as the US experience has shown (with a consequent drop in the crime rate of 50% in some cities). In New Zealand the reverse has occurred with predictable result: the number of reported crimes per 1000 in the population rose between1950 and 1995, while the number of incarcerations per 1000 crimes declined over that same period. We cannot discourage violent offenders by giving them more chances to commit crimes through parole, early release or un-enforced supervision orders. We need to wake up to the fact that some people are beyond hope and should be locked up for life.

This charade of dealing with crime by providing less than justice to victims will be as useful as a colander is in bailing water from a sinking dinghy. If we allow the present parole lottery to continue inflicting more crime onto the innocent law-abiding public under the guise of a progressive and humane notion of rehabilitation, then the real winners will be its promoters along with the human rights advocates for criminals, and the offenders themselves.

And to be fair, it's getting harder to tell them apart.

Regards,

Marc Alexander
Crime Prevention Spokesperson,
Sensible Sentencing Trust.
Mobile 021 390058