Editorial: Pity Parole Board not kidding us

Joanne Quinn has been released from prison - just a third the way through her two-and-a-half-year sentence.

This writer was hoodwinked with an April Fool's Day cracker yesterday.

Napier City Council issued a press release stating a few Marine Parade Norfolk pines would be felled and replaced with plastic trees to maintain the aesthetic.

Furthermore, they'd be doused with pine-scented spray to perpetuate the illusion.

I mentioned to a colleague the idea was rather odd - only to be told by said colleague I was, effectively, an idiot.

Well played, NCC.

But of all the April Fool's news yesterday an item from the New Zealand Parole Board was head and shoulders above the rest. It said Joanne Quinn had been released from prison - just a third the way through her two-and-a-half-year sentence. April Fool?

Quinn was jailed in May last year after leaving her mother, Maureen, 82, to fester in their Napier home. Medical staff discovered the mother of eight on November 15, 2011, embedded in a couch and blanket with leg wounds.

She died of bronchial pneumonia six weeks after being admitted to hospital.

A condition of the 52-year-old's parole decision read: "Not to be in the position of caregiver for any person or persons dependant on that care". Unlikely, and highly ironic, that she could, in fact, be sent back to prison for caring.

One can't argue with the board that her risk to wider society is negligible. But that was true before she went to prison. Hence, the decision is a tad baffling.

This Neanderthal offending was negligence of the kind we see heedless dog owners go to prison for; the type of crime that lands them on the SPCA's annual List of Shame.

Pity the Parole Board isn't in the joking business. This would have been a cracker.