Law Commission looks at doubling parole threshold

The Law Commission says prisoners should not be eligible for parole until they have served two-thirds of their sentence - twice the present threshold of one-third of the term.

"The amount of parole should be reduced: you're eligible for parole after only a third [of a sentence has been served] - we think you should be eligible only after two-thirds," said the commission's new president, Sir Geoffrey Palmer.

But the commission may also recommend that nominal sentences be reduced proportionately so prisoners would not actually spend extra time in prison.

"If you wished to keep sentencing severity as it is now, you would need to reduce court-imposed sentences in order to compensate," said deputy president Dr Warren Young.

He emphasised the commission was still considering just what recommendations it would make.

Sir Geoffrey said the present sentencing system was based on something that bordered on "deception". It said a high nominal sentence would be imposed but that would be mitigated "very, very greatly" by parole.

"We think that probably there needs to be a closer relationship between a nominal sentence which is imposed by a judge and the actual time served by a prisoner."

"The amount of punishment is not sufficiently transparent, especially because of the parole effects."

The purpose of parole was to manage the risk of re-offending, "and we think the Parole Board's activities need to be narrowed".

The parole system had lost credibility in recent years.

This was because the reasons for parole were not sufficiently clear and the portion of the sentence for which an inmate was eligible for release was too large.

Sir Geoffrey said the commission was also looking at providing judges with greater guidance on the exercise of their discretion in sentencing and possibly even setting up a local version of the sentencing guidelines council used in Britain.

"There isn't a lot of guidance available to the judges," he said.

There was a likelihood that this was leading to inconsistency in sentencing, and there needed to be a range of perspectives brought to bear on the development of sentencing policy.

In addition, there was potential for such guidelines to help manage prison musters better: "You have the capacity to predict what the prison population might be, in advance ... so that you can make provision for it."

This effect was made worse by the parole system.

"We want to reform the parole system in a way which is consistent with the 'truth in sentencing' approach," Sir Geoffrey said at a press conference in Wellington.

The commission wanted to build on the precedents set by the Appeal Court's guideline judgments, by adding guidelines for judges in lower courts.

- NZPA