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August 20th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Updated
A damning report by the retired High Court judge Ian Callinan has lashed Victoria’s besieged parole system.
Part of his criticism focuses on the man who raped and murdered the ABC staffer Jill Meagher, who was allowed to go free despite breaching his parole.
The Callinan review found several violent criminals had been released into the community in Victoria without proper consideration of public safety.
The report recommends requiring the Adult Parole Board to be certain that inmates have a negligible risk of re-offending.
It also recommends that police should be consulted before any prisoners are granted parole.
In his report Mr Callinan calls it the “notorious case of Bayley” and says it is not easy to understand why Bayley was not jailed in February last year after pleading guilty to king-hitting a man in Geelong while drunk.
At the time he was on parole after serving a sentence for a series of violent rapes.
He pleaded guilty but appealed against the three-month sentence handed down by a magistrate.
Surprisingly, Bayley was not sent back to prison by the Parole Board while the appeal was pending.
“He ought to have been known by then to be a recidivist, serious, violent sexual offender, with a history of being so from a young age and with an established pattern of doing so,” Mr Callinan said.
“There was no single document containing a straightforward complete chronology of his criminal history or analytical material relating to it on the files.
“Offending in a violent way when on paroles should not have been countenanced as effectively as it was by awaiting the outcome of the appeal.”
Mr Callinan said there is too much emphasis on the rehabilitation of offenders and not enough on the possibility of them re-offending.
“There is a mode of thinking – an assumption, perhaps almost a presumption – that after a non-parole period has expired, a prisoner has a right to parole,” he said.
‘Culture of change’ needed at parole board
Tom Meagher’s widower was not consulted for the Callinan review but he says the parole board’s mistakes were indefensible.
Mr Meagher has despaired at the failings and recently raised them directly with the Parole Board.
“They admitted that that was an indefensible mistake, which I was surprised at, but then again it is indefensible, I suppose,” he said.
Victorian Premier Denis Napthine says a cultural change is required inside the Parole Board.
“We’ve introduced laws that make the Victorian parole system the toughest in Australia,” he said.
“This report draws a line in the sand; the culture of parole in Victoria must and will change. Dangerous offenders in the past have been given the benefit of the doubt that they shouldn’t have been.
“That changes today. Parole is a privilege, not a right.”
Mr Callinan wants victims’ families to be given two weeks’ notice before an offender is paroled. He has also recommended a second panel review all parole approvals.
The Victorian Government says it supports all 23 of the Callinan report’s recommendations and will move to implement most of them immediately.
Topics:
prisons-and-punishment,
law-crime-and-justice,
courts-and-trials,
murder-and-manslaughter,
crime,
sexual-offences,
melbourne-3000,
vic,
australia
First posted
Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-20/callinan-parole-system-review-criticises-handling-of-bayley-case/4900788
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