This was an absolutely appalling case:
External Link/Members OnlyI'm glad I'm not a judge, but on the whole judges probably usually get things about right. (Not always, as when the original judge let the Fordingbridge teenage rapists off without a custodial sentence.) Judges know the law, they know the precedents and the guidelines.
For the victim's family, sentences will often seem inadequate – as indeed they seem for the "Bang them up and throw away the key!" brigade. And clearly a lot of people in prison are truly vile people.
However...
When it comes to early release schemes – or indeed "standard" releases on parole before the end of a sentence – the authorities surely need to be cautious about differentiating between types of crime.
The differentiation is expressed in the judge's original sentence. Rapists and people who mug old ladies get vastly longer sentences than those who steal Mars bars from a sweet shop (and, incidentally, much longer sentences than they would have got two or three decades ago, which is one reason prisons are so full). So the same proportionality arguably needs to apply when early release is considered. A "share" of 20 years is a great deal more than a share of 20 months.
This view would be vigorously rejected by many people, not least by a victim's family, who (as in the PC Harper case) are understandably immensely upset by the prospect of any early release.
Incidentally, just in case I'm coming across as too much of a wishy-washy liberal, another part of me would happily send some of these riff-raff to the scaffold!
