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Archived Press Releases 2007 9th January 2007

BURTON PAROLE SCANDAL MUST NOT BE REPEATED

(9th January 2007)

"Announcing an inquiry is a standard government tactic to muffle outrage. The tactic can backfire, when the enquiry takes on a momentum of its own, and prolongs the politicians' deserved exposure. In 2006 the Noel Ingram report on Taito Philip Field MP worked that way."

So will the Burton inquiry. The death and injury from Burton's parole are a statistically predictable and inevitable cost of a calculated political policy. The Sensible Sentencing Trust is determined that the case will be seen for what it is, the result of putting money and fake compassion ahead of lives and safety. To make trivial savings in prison costs the politicians have sacrificed confidence in justice.

There are sensible savings to be made in the criminal justice industry. The Sensible Sentencing Trust urged them before the last election, and when the Parole Act was being considered. The suggestions were not just ignored. The government went the other way.

We opposed legal aid for prisoners to have lawyers arguing for parole. Instead the government has expanded it into common practice.

We said that parole should be a privilege, not a right. Instead it has become a right, with the Parole Board being forced by the direction of appeals to justify refusals.

Prisoners should have to justify getting out before paying the price for their crime, and extremely grateful if they get any time off. In practice they demand parole, and victims and other opponents have the impossible task of proving a hypothetical negative - that the offender is not safe.

The system is not just absurd - it is sick and dishonest. The Sensible Sentencing Trust will make the Burton inquiry useful, if the public are allowed any involvement at all. Burton's first murder was of an innocent bystander. He got a life sentence only a few years ago. He was released because of a scandalous government preference for criminals over certainty of justice and the safety of the public.

We will campaign to end parole as a right. There is no truth in sentencing while life does not mean life. And we will campaign to end the state's squandering that allows vicious liars to hire lawyers to make their parole lies more believable. If the money saved keeps them in prison at least their sentences will be truthful.

Regards,

Garth McVicar
National Spokesperson,
Sensible Sentencing Trust.