This is how the rule of law is gradually eroded. Take one highly charged case, reignite the public fury around it, and use that to drive through legislative change that undermines all our rights. Classic populist play book.
At first I was outraged she could be released so quickly, but honestly it felt way more recent than 15 years ago which factored into my initial outrage.
>needs a fundamental overhaul
Ahaaa.. we all know what that means.
Maybe look at mental health and social services first or or no?
Why parole at all? When the death penalty was abolished we were told it would be replaced with life sentences. Nowadays we find that “life” is frequently under 10 years, and in many cases people are killed or raped by people who have already received a ‘life’ sentence and yet were released to kill or rape again.
The reality is that parole is a cost saving measure – it’s too expensive to hold people in prison, and in any case they will in 99% of cases only go on to kill poor people, usually women, so it doesn’t matter.
(and yes, I know in this particular case neither were convicted of murder – I’m making a general point – that life should mean at least imprisonment until the prisoner is physically incapable of harming others)
One possible remedy for future cases would be to more heavily weight the aggravation factor of an offence of violence having a child as the victim, but this would require more than a letter or a tweet to accomplish. I can’t imagine there would be much opposition to such a move though.
6 comments
This is how the rule of law is gradually eroded. Take one highly charged case, reignite the public fury around it, and use that to drive through legislative change that undermines all our rights. Classic populist play book.
At first I was outraged she could be released so quickly, but honestly it felt way more recent than 15 years ago which factored into my initial outrage.
>needs a fundamental overhaul
Ahaaa.. we all know what that means.
Maybe look at mental health and social services first or or no?
Why parole at all? When the death penalty was abolished we were told it would be replaced with life sentences. Nowadays we find that “life” is frequently under 10 years, and in many cases people are killed or raped by people who have already received a ‘life’ sentence and yet were released to kill or rape again.
The reality is that parole is a cost saving measure – it’s too expensive to hold people in prison, and in any case they will in 99% of cases only go on to kill poor people, usually women, so it doesn’t matter.
(and yes, I know in this particular case neither were convicted of murder – I’m making a general point – that life should mean at least imprisonment until the prisoner is physically incapable of harming others)
One possible remedy for future cases would be to more heavily weight the aggravation factor of an offence of violence having a child as the victim, but this would require more than a letter or a tweet to accomplish. I can’t imagine there would be much opposition to such a move though.