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Life Sentences in the UK.

Mandatory sentences prevent the judge from carrying out his duties and make a mockery of our homicide laws. The life sentence is a mandatory sentence where a person found guilty of murder is not given a sentence but sent to prison without one to be sentenced retrospectively.

Justice should not only be done but seen to be done, and the proper place to sentence a convicted prisoner is in the court at the time of the offence when all the evidence is fresh, and where the judge, in all his wisdom and experience, can award an appropriate sentence. Not years later by a secret court called the Parole Board, who might consider a person?s behaviour in prison more important than the offence itself, when often behaviour in an abnormal environment such as prison is no guarantee of a person?s behaviour in society.

There is intense public dissatisfaction with the present situation in the UK because the public think that life should mean life, and not anything from five years upwards, with so called domestic killers being released early after having killed their wife or member of their family.

English Law states that to be guilty of murder one must kill with ?malice and aforethought? and be ?compos mentis? that is to kill someone with hatred, that the killing be premeditated and that the killer be of sound mind. However the interpretation of these words and the present rule, that one can only inflict injury to one?s attacker that would be carried out by a reasonable person in self defence, means that a person can be attacked and fighting in self defence and go past what is considered necessary in that self defence and be found guilty of manslaughter. Furthermore that if a person goes grossly past what is deemed necessary in that self defence by a reasonable man be guilty of murder.

If we take the hypothetical case of a man attacked by a gangster who by chance or fate gets the upper hand and wins a mortal struggle, he is bound to let his attacker live to carry out a further attack! Also another hypothetical situation would be that if a man was fighting in self defence, after being attacked, gains the upper hand he could then form the intention to kill his attacker in this struggle, and this would be premeditation and he would be guilty or murder or manslaughter.

It should be that if sometime attacks another with the intention to kill then the attacker should forfeit all rights, because he or she initiated the situation and that if the attacker is then killed it should be justifiable homicide. An attacked person might respond instinctively and the survival mechanism makes one kill in self defence and it is obvious that a person who suffers an unprovoked attacked is anything but reasonable!

?Life? sentenced prisoners, that is those who have never been sentenced to a fixed duration of imprisonment, can be released on parole but can be recalled by a decision of the Parole Board, that sits in camera, if the parolee?s behaviour is said to give rise for concern or that the parolee has committed a crime. In fact parolees are often recalled after having been found not guilty of a crime or guilty of a petty offence. Therefore they have no civil liberties but can be sent to prison by a secret court without a sentence again!
Everyone one who has been found guilty of a crime, and who is in prison, should have a fixed sentence and be released at the end of it unless they have been sentenced to natural life. The only way a person should be sent to prison while being at liberty is after a finding of guilt in a public court.

Homicides are different as chalk and cheese in their seriousness, ranging from pub brawls to the premeditated murder and torture of little children. If the judge?s sentencing powers were restored he or she could award sentences ranging from probation to natural life and thus satisfy the public?s desire for retribution. The public is right and life should mean life, but this sentence should be reserved for only the most heinous of crimes, and then the public would be assured that these killers would never be released.

Michael J Freeman.
Author and artist.

'In fact parolees are often recalled after having been found not guilty of a crime or guilty of a petty offence. Therefore they have no civil liberties but can be sent to prison by a secret court without a sentence again!'

Wrong. They are still serving the original Life sentence, and will be in all cases until they die. If they are recalled, the Parole board will make an assessment of the risk they represent before making any decision to release them again.

I don't know what your experience of prisons and the parole board is, but you clearly don't understand the process of risk assessment that informs how the PB works. They don't always get it right, but to say that an individual's behaviour in prison is no guarantee of behaviour outside is stating the obvious - there are NO guarantees, but indicators of risk include behaviour in custody, as well as other factors.

You obviously don't understand my thesis!!confused!

Okay, educate me..

It seems to me that you don't understand the basics of a Life sentence...

Now we can't hang the bastards they should be banged up for LIFE.
No fucking parole. Fuck them and the lily livered fucking liberals who can't see bad in anyone.!!!!

LOL. you should check out Mike's background Ragman, I dare say he has considerably more insight than you mate..

Maybe, but I doubt it.... Sort of do it for a living these last 20 years

What's your point ?

So the man has a particularly personal view of the sentencing around certain offences. Some might argue that that makes him biased and embittered and more subjective than objective. I don't know the man so I can't draw those conclusions.

For the record, I agree with what I think is the main point of his original post - that a 'one size fits all' approach to sentencing around murder and manslaughter is basically wrong and unjust. His own example, if the circumstances were as he describes, is a good example of why that is so.

When I worked at the Scrubs, I encountered one particular 'Lifer' who was in his seventies, had no previous criminal record, and after several years of caring for his wife who was dying of some cruel and agonising wasting disease took the decision to end her life by smothering her with a pillow. He maintained that it was what she had asked him to do and to be honest I believed him. The law being as it is, he was guilty of murder and was sentenced to life, the only available sentence under the law. His tariff was only 7 years, the lowest I've encountered, and assuming he lived long enough, I'm pretty sure he would have got out not long after that. He didn't pose any risk to anyone, and could easily have been left to live out his remaining years in the community harmlessly.

All that said, my response to the original post was simply to correct that part of it that I quoted - to say that someone sentenced to Life who is released can then be returned to prison 'without a sentence' is simply factually wrong.