Early Release

pblakeney

New thread as this annoys me but isn't trivial.
If a prisoner on early release requires armed surveillance then they are not suitable for release.

lincolndave

Definitely not, they should be locked up and never let out in my opinion

mr_goo

Two early released prisoner terrorist attacks in a short space of time.
This situation certainly requires urgent review of sentencing/release of any individual convicted of terror offences.

john80

This is the problem with ideology driven crimes. You could have held him indefinitely until he demonstrated that he had moved away from this views. However this leads to the issue where a parole board have no idea if they prisoner is lying about reforming or not.

Your average burglar is generally committing crime to fund his life and with a bit of education and some better career prospects they are most likely to reform their ways. Lets face it we are not very good at reforming burglars and other petty criminals looking at the re-conviction rate for those that have left jail give we do little of the above.

rjsterry

pblakeney said:

New thread as this annoys me but isn't trivial.
If a prisoner on early release requires armed surveillance then they are not suitable for release.

He was originally jailed for 3 years 4 months for the relatively lesser offence of possession of extremist material. Clearly he wasn't fit for release but it also seems pretty obvious that without funding effective deradicalisation programmes as they do in Denmark and Saudi Arabia, adding a few more years to the sentence will just delay the inevitable.

rick_chasey

john80 said:

Lets face it we are not very good at reforming burglars and other petty criminals looking at the re-conviction rate for those that have left jail give we do little of the above.

Surely this ought to be the priority.

ballysmate

Priority is, or rather should be, citizen safety.

rick_chasey

Yeah sure. I guess that comes into that right?

surrey_commuter

pblakeney said:

New thread as this annoys me but isn't trivial.
If a prisoner on early release requires armed surveillance then they are not suitable for release.

Interesting that the legal system deemed him suitable for release and the police deemed him suitable for armed surveillance.

So long as you weren't one of the stabbees it could be seen as a good outcome

tangled_metal

Automatic release at half sentence. Good idea or a sign of too few prison places?

No parole board involvement, good idea or bad? Like they aren't known for bad decisions based on not being able to see the full information on a prisoner because it wasn't used in their case / they weren't prosecuted based on it.

Aiui this guy was planning an attack but they decided to only prosecute on the lesser charge despite believing him to be dangerous.

Many deradicalisation programmes are under funded or simply not very good. Austerity has another thing to take the blame over, right?

So many issues, so much needs improving. We're failing badly, call in OFSTED for help. Special measures needed.

Longshot

You're right in the fact that it appears as though the system is failing everyone involved. We need to have a clearer idea on whether the emphasis behind the concept of incarceration is:

1) Pure punishment
2) Punishment and re-education/rehabilitation
3) Protection of the public

In reality, it's probably a mix of 2 & 3 but (even without headline grabbing stories like this) it doesn't seem to be working and, no doubt, a lack of funding is driving this.

Another subject that is on the 'needs sorting out' pile.

rick_chasey

Presumably we don't know all the context.

rjsterry

oxoman said:

Either way, I suspect in away. The best result was to be had. No innocent deaths, money saved as no lengthy prison sentence, or surveillance and rehabilitation costs.

F*** me, you're on top form this morning. Only a couple of people stabbed, so happy days all round, eh? This after advocating summary execution earlier in the thread.

fenix

If only the Government hadn't had some time to sort out nonsense like this in the past.
A decade should have been enough ?

rick_chasey

Presumably what's happened is the rozzers decided to put him behind bars on a lesser charge as the evidence for the more hefty charge was shakier, and so for the lesser crime you (not unreasonably) get things like parole blah blah.

rick_chasey

On the flip side, if you're in for minor charges you wouldn't necessarily want the state to be able to lable you a potential terrorist without decent evidence and keep you in for materially longer, right?

So presumably that's the balancing act the police were treading, and so they knew more than they could prosecute on and so made sure they were as on hand as possible.

rjsterry

rick_chasey said:

Presumably what's happened is the rozzers decided to put him behind bars on a lesser charge as the evidence for the more hefty charge was shakier, and so for the lesser crime you (not unreasonably) get things like parole blah blah.

Rather than posting assumptions, it might be better to look up what actually happened.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/03/who-was-the-streatham-attacker-sudesh-amman-and-why-was-he-imprisoned

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51351885

rick_chasey

Yeah i'm not going near any news site other than the FT since I'm avoiding various sports spoilers.

“There was nothing that could be done to keep him behind bars under existing laws, hence why he was under surveillance and strict licensing conditions,”

is what the rozzers said. They put him behind bars on the premise that he was in possession of and distributed extremist material.

And yet when he left, they put him under armed surveillance? Which suggests they knew something more, but couldn't do anything about him being released. I'm not presuming that much, in that context, am I?

john80

They might want to keep an eye on the family and the girlfriend as that is some family whatsapp group they were running there. We have one in our family and funnily enough jihad and going to heaven are topics that have yet to come up.

rjsterry

rick_chasey said:

Yeah i'm not going near any news site other than the FT since I'm avoiding various sports spoilers.

“There was nothing that could be done to keep him behind bars under existing laws, hence why he was under surveillance and strict licensing conditions,”

is what the rozzers said. They put him behind bars on the premise that he was in possession of and distributed extremist material.

And yet when he left, they put him under armed surveillance? Which suggests they knew something more, but couldn't do anything about him being released. I'm not presuming that much, in that context, am I?

The relevant points are that the terrorism offence had a fixed tariff. From the evidence in that case it was very clear that he would still be a risk when released. You're not far off, but I think it's important to be accurate with cases like this.

Pross

rick_chasey said:

Presumably what's happened is the rozzers decided to put him behind bars on a lesser charge as the evidence for the more hefty charge was shakier, and so for the lesser crime you (not unreasonably) get things like parole blah blah.

You do realise that it isn't the police who decide what charges are brought don't you? In my experience they tend to get a bit pissed off with the CPS for taking the easy option to help secure a conviction.

laurentian

rick_chasey said:

And yet when he left, they put him under armed surveillance? Which suggests they knew something more, but couldn't do anything about him being released. I'm not presuming that much, in that context, am I?

This is a really really difficult area for the police.

It is not (and nor should it be) and offence to sympathise with extreme political or religious views, or to idealogically support what most of us see as acts of terror. It is, of course, an offence to carry out such acts. Through their "Prevent" strategy, the police operate in that space between extremist thoughts/views and extremist actions. The former being perfectly legal and the latter illegal and potentially fatal for some. They have to try to deradicalise in that very, very small space.

In this case, they guy was imprisoned for having and circulating extremist material so he had already done "the illegal thing" albeit not one that directly hurt anybody. I guess they had two options: either bust him for possesssion/circulation or wait until they could catch him red handed in an act of terror. The less risky option was taken and the guy relased sfter half his term as per the policy. The police knew full well that he is radicalised and "back on the street" hence the surveillance.

mr_goo

On Nicky Campbell's Radio 5live phone this was topic of debate. One 'guest' who was an ex member of an exceptionally nasty prescribed organisation claimed that it starts with youngsters of the mulim faith being disenfranchised with society and being preyed upon.
Not sure that I buy into that at all.
Who is doing the preying, as surely this must be someone within the closed family. Or someone in the mosque pointing them in the direction of unsavoury characters and internet articles.

Not being religious myself I just cannot get my head around anyone perpetrating heinous acts in the name of fairy tales. Beyond me.

rjsterry

mr_goo said:

On Nicky Campbell's Radio 5live phone this was topic of debate. One 'guest' who was an ex member of an exceptionally nasty prescribed organisation claimed that it starts with youngsters of the mulim faith being disenfranchised with society and being preyed upon.
Not sure that I buy into that at all.


Who is doing the preying, as surely this must be someone within the closed family. Or someone in the mosque pointing them in the direction of unsavoury characters and internet articles.

Not being religious myself I just cannot get my head around anyone perpetrating heinous acts in the name of fairy tales. Beyond me.

You don't think an 18 year old can find stuff on the Internet all by themselves? And what's a "closed family"?

From what I've read, the grooming is pretty similar to other forms more often in the news, and specifically targets vulnerable people who are likely to be won over.

TheBigBean

I read an article written by someone who was put under surveillance. MI5 turned up to buy his laptop when he tried to sell it, people followed him everywhere. Sent him a bit crazy, and he eventually decided that he hated the country and the people. Only then did he go down the path of terrorism.

rick_chasey

TheBigBean said:

I read an article written by someone who was put under surveillance. MI5 turned up to buy his laptop when he tried to sell it, people followed him everywhere. Sent him a bit crazy, and he eventually decided that he hated the country and the people. Only then did he go down the path of terrorism.

I did quite a punchy 180 whilst reading that!

All seems fai..actually no.

mr_goo

Close family. Damned auto spelling.

I know it's possible to find anything you want on the interweb if you look hard enough. But the prescribed stuff is surely not that accessible. I'm just thinking that some of the younger offenders of these terrorist attacks are being guided to look for the stuff... Groomed if you will.

It's not just an Islam thing either. It certainly applies to Christianity and some branches of that faith with unsavoury links to right wing ideology.

rjsterry

TheBigBean said:

I read an article written by someone who was put under surveillance. MI5 turned up to buy his laptop when he tried to sell it, people followed him everywhere. Sent him a bit crazy, and he eventually decided that he hated the country and the people. Only then did he go down the path of terrorism.

Presumably if he's writing newspaper articles he had changed his mind again about the terrorism bit.

rick_chasey

mr_goo said:

Close family. Damned auto spelling.

I know it's possible to find anything you want on the interweb if you look hard enough. But the prescribed stuff is surely not that accessible. I'm just thinking that some of the younger offenders of these terrorist attacks are being guided to look for the stuff... Groomed if you will.

It's not just an Islam thing either. It certainly applies to Christianity and some branches of that faith with unsavoury links to right wing ideology.

It's nothing to do with faith.

I can point to tonnes of examples of the same things occuring when faith has nothing to do with it.

TheBigBean

rjsterry said:

TheBigBean said:

I read an article written by someone who was put under surveillance. MI5 turned up to buy his laptop when he tried to sell it, people followed him everywhere. Sent him a bit crazy, and he eventually decided that he hated the country and the people. Only then did he go down the path of terrorism.

Presumably if he's writing newspaper articles he had changed his mind again about the terrorism bit.

Yes. I think he ended up in a Danish programme somehow, and that showed him another direction. I remembering finding the programme very uninspiring though - it was broadly along the lines of "accept that you are different and that people hate you because of your religion/race but you're better off not trying to fight it"

Two of the ISIS fighters from Brighton had a not that different story. Years of racism, abuse and being victims of crime with no action from authorities led to the creation of a gang to get revenge. Gang was successful, but underlined the us and them which eventually led to ISIS. Of course, plenty of other people are victims of racism and crime without running off to ISIS, so it is not an excuse, but it does provide a bit of background.

Longshot

rjsterry said:

You don't think an 18 year old can find stuff on the Internet all by themselves? And what's a "closed family"?

He probably came here and read the Brexit thread. That would radicalise anybody.