1,000 SEX FIENDS UP FOR PAROLE
‘Prisons are already under strain and we need places freed up’
MORE than 1,000 cases of sex offenders like black cab rapist John Worboys are due to come before the Parole Board, a Ministry of Justice official has warned.
The department is privately concerned that it may not have the prison capacity to keep them all locked up if there is a widespread backlash after the Worboys case.
It has been suggested that the need to free up prison places for new offenders could be behind lenient decisionmaking by the Parole Board.
The revelations came after Professor Nick Hardwick, who was forced to resign as board chairman this week, hit out at the Ministry of Justice, saying it needs to shoulder the blame for the Worboys fiasco.
The serial sex attacker drugged his victims with spiked champagne before attacking them in the back of his cab.
He was jailed indefinitely in 2009 with a minimum term of eight years after being found guilty of 19 offences, including rape and sexual assault, against 12 victims. But detectives believe he committed crimes against 105 women between 2002 and 2008.
Outrage erupted in January after it emerged the rapist was to be freed after less than a decade behind bars. He has now been returned to Wakefield prison.
A well-placed source within the Ministry of Justice has told the Daily Express that just over a third of the 3,000 cases involving convicted criminals on indeterminate sentences involve sex offenders, including rapists like Worboys. Indeterminate sentences were scrapped by the Coalition in 2012 after legal problems arose over the human rights of prisoners.
They were introduced by Tony Blair’s Government in 2005 for serious crimes to allow potentially dangerous criminals to be kept indefinitely in prison after their original sentence was completed.
But since they were scrapped the authorities have had to review all the cases, including that of Worboys, to consider whether they should be released.
It means that hundreds of potentially dangerous sex offenders could be allowed back on to the streets.
The source said: “It’s a nightmare. We have more than 1,000 Worboys-like cases coming up involving sex offenders. Of course each one of them is different and the department cannot intervene in Parole Board decisions but the backlash created by the Worboys decision will make it more difficult for individuals to be released even if they do not pose a threat.
“The trouble is we have to ask the question – do we have the capacity to keep them locked up? The answer is no. Our prisons are already under strain and we need places to be freed up for those who are being given prison sentences. The department’s got a really big problem.”
Meanwhile, in his first interviews since his resignation as chairman of the Parole Board was announced on Wednesday, Prof Hardwick revealed that he did not resign “willingly” and argued the ministry was equally guilty for shortcomings in the case.
The MoJ pointed out that Justice Secretary David Gauke had apologised to Worboys’s victims and acknowledged the department’s failings after the judgment was handed down.
Prof Hardwick, who was told by Mr Gauke that his position was “untenable” in a meeting on Tuesday, said: “I don’t think the Ministry of Justice is being correct in this. I absolutely accept that the Parole Board was at fault in these matters.
“I don’t accept that we were any more at fault than the Ministry of Justice and I don’t believe that the right lessons will be learned from this case if the only people accepting any responsibility for the things that went wrong here is us.”
He added: “I don’t think the Secretary of State should resign. I do think the Secretary of State should, as I’ve done, accept responsibility for the mistakes that were made because that is the only way that things will be put right.” Prof Hardwick said the MoJ failed to include all the necessary information in a dossier of evidence assessed by the three-member panel that concluded Worboys was safe to be released.
He pointed out that he had no personal role in the release decision but stopped short of claiming he had been made a scapegoat.
He said: “I wouldn’t use the word scapegoat but what I would say is that all of those responsible for what went wrong in this case have to take their share of responsibility.”
THE news surrounding the Worboys story just gets worse and worse. First we had to contend with the fact that the black-cab rapist, who many consider to be still a real threat to women, should be allowed to go free. Now we are told that there are more than 1,000 sex offenders who might also come up for parole. Is the Ministry of Justice fit for purpose or not?
One of the foremost duties of any government is to protect its people from threat and that most certainly includes guarding women from monsters such as Worboys and his ilk. The one positive to have come out from all of this is that at least a light has been shone on a very murky area.
But how did we get to this state of affairs at all?