Crime and punishment
It is little wonder that the present system of monitoring prisoners on parole isn't working. When the previous government introduced the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act in 2002, to replace the Criminal Justice Act of 1985 offenders sentenced to two or more years imprisonment immediately became eligible for parole after serving only one-third of their sentence.
The minimum sentences were marginally increased, but this was purely a nonsense. Where a prisoner sentenced to say, 12 years behind bars was eligible for parole after six years, this immediately reduced to four years, leaving the Corrections Department eight years in which to monitor and control the offender instead of six. This immediately placed tremendous strain on the department, requiring a huge increase in resources.
The Principles of Sentencing of the Sentencing Act require the Courts to impose the maximum penalty available for the offence if the offending is within the most serious cases or which that penalty is available (unless circumstances relating to the offender make that inappropriate). A number of mitigating factors are required to be taken into account, which include age, whether offender pleaded guilty, remorse shown etc. The Courts have discretion to impose minimum non-parole sentences, which include only 10 years for some murders, or 17 for those more serious, but this discretion seem to be widely interpreted. Only rarely if at all do we see maximum sentences without parole imposed.
The point is however, that more and more prisoners are being released on parole for longer terms, placing all sorts of pressure on the Corrections Department. The Parole Board itself is exacerbating the problem by releasing many criminals into the community such as Graeme Burton, Willam Bell, Taffy Hotene and many others. who go on to commit more violent offences. For the Corrections Department to monitor low-lifes such as these requires armed surveillance, 24/7.
Take the case of Timothy Taylor, who on 2 February, 2000 picked up hitchhiker Lisa Blaikie and her dog Kaos on the West Coast Road, just out of Christchurch. After dumping the dog Taylor drove Lisa to the Porter River, where he stabbed her 80 times, strangled her to death, then put her body in the river weighed down with an 80kg rock. As her father said, one could only imagine the horror the poor 20 year old went through during the last few minutes of her life.
After a year long investigation Taylor was arrested and subsequently sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.He showed no remorse, and at the Court his body language indicated contempt for Lisa's family.
It transpired however that prior to the trial Taylor had been convicted of 2 counts of armed robbery, a kidnapping, several drugs charges including methamphetamine, firearms charges, assaults and fraud charges. For this little list he was sentenced to only 10 years in the pokie, making him eligible for parole in five. Effectively therefore, he received only five years or Lisa's murder, and is likely to be back in society four years hence.
At the very least Taylor should have been given cumulative terms of imprisonment, not concurrent.
To add insult to injury, when Lisa's father phoned the Crown Solicitor's office he was told by some numbskull: "Lisa's murder was at the lower end of the scale and that a shooting, for instance, was a more violent death." I wonder where this bureaucrat was living at the time, in a cave? I also wonder what his reaction would have been had his daughter been involved.
Taylor's legal bill topped $300,000. Lisa's parents met all their own expenses and received no compensation.
Despite the bleatings of the Howard League for Penal Reform and other do-gooders it is time our legislators looked at abolishing parole except for minor offences, and sentences where violence, rape, murder is involved were made finite. Even then there could be sound reasons where some prisoners should never be released, or others released only with close monitoring. The Sentencing Act and the Parole Acts are sadly flawed.
