Parole Changes

I suppose it is little surprise that the NZ Herald reports that families of crime victims support a toughening up of parole laws while defence lawyers do not, labelling them as akin to Guantanamo Bay.

The defence lawyers miss, or do not agree with me, on a key point. Parole is a privilege, not a right you get at one third or even two thirds of your sentence.

The onus of proof should be overwhelmingly against early release, unless the Parole Board is convinced they will not reoffend.

And as we saw with Burton taking a narrow legalistic approach to what evidence may be considered by the Parole Board has tragic consequences. Every prison officer who knew Burton thought he would reoffend. But they were unable to say so. Very little of a prisoner’s behaviour in prison goes to the Board.

Now if this was the primary judicial forum for sentencing, then I would say yes you must meet court rules of evidence. But it is not. They have been found guilty and sentenced to a full term in jail. Parole is a privilege, and to prevent dangerous criminals getting out early, a lesser standard of proof regarding their behaviour is fine. This is not about proving whether they committed a crime – it is about making a best risk assessment of their propensity to reoffend.

And yes there are some risks that a malicious guard could lie to keep someone in prison longer, but at the end of the day the only “harm” done by that is a prisoner serves their full term (for which they were found guilty beyond reasonable doubt), and that is a much lesser harm than a dangerous prisoner is released early to kill, rape, beat or steal from law abiding members of the community.

I do agree though with the criticism of having any money paid to prisoners for mistreatment, handed over to their victims. Two wrongs do not make a right. One does not want a perverse incentive for prison guards to beat up prisoners so then compensation will flow to the original victims of the prisoner.