A third of lifers are out

Marty Sharpe at Stuff reports:

A third of people sentenced to life in prison are in the community on parole.

Hardliners on crime say this makes a mockery of the term life imprisonment, but the Ministry of Justice says it is an accurate description as people on parole can be recalled to jail.

Figures issued by the Department of Corrections under the Official Information Act show that of the 719 people serving life sentences, 217 have been freed on parole.

I don’t think all murderers should spent the rest of their lives in jail. With the ability to now give lengthy non parole periods, and even life without parole, the sentencing regime is getting reasonably close to where I think it should be.

However what I would be interested on is whether those killers who are now out on parole, have offended since they were released.

Here’s the data I’d like to see.

• Number of criminals sentenced to life
• Number who have been given parole, and median and mean periods before parole
• Mean and median period between being eligible for parole and getting parole, for those who got it
• Of those given parole, how many have not breached any of their parole conditions
• Of those given parole, how many breached a parole condition, but were not recalled
• Of those given parole, how many breached a parole condition, but were recalled
• Of those given parole, how many have committed further crimes
• Of those given parole, how many have committed further serious (say strike eligible) crimes

Anyone able to provide or obtain that info? I could OIA it, but am in the Zion National Park in Utah at the moment, so would rather reduce keyboard time to a minimum!