NZ’s longest serving prisoner dies
New Zealand’s longest serving prisoner, who was freed in February after 52 years in jail, has died in the community aged 83.
Alfred Thomas Vincent, a repeat child sex offender, had multiple health problems by the time a judge decided in late 2020 that he no longer posed an undue risk to the safety of the community and could be released on parole.
Care was arranged for him and on February 18 he finally left Rimutaka Prison.
Details of his accommodation after prison were suppressed.
The human rights lawyer who won his release, Tony Ellis, said it was a sad but inevitable end for New Zealand’s longest serving prisoner.
Ellis said he was pleased the court action was taken. At least a vestige of humanity was restored for Vincent in the end, he said.
Crown Law represented the Department of Corrections in the court case, and told Ellis on Wednesday that Vincent had died.
Vincent was originally from Canterbury. He spent many years at Rolleston Prison before being transferred to a high-dependency unit at Rimutaka Prison, north of Wellington, as his health failed.
In 1968, after earlier sexual
offences against boys, he pleaded guilty to seven charges of indecent assault and was sentenced to the open-ended term of preventive detention.
He was eligible to be considered for parole after seven years and went before the Parole Board most years after that. But after 52 years he was still serving the sentence because the board said he remained an undue risk to the safety of the community.
In a decision issued by the High Court in Wellington in December, Justice Jill Mallon found the board wrongly assessed the risk Vincent posed. A doctor’s report made it clear, ‘‘in black and white’’, that Vincent was no longer a risk to young men or boys, or other residents, and that had been the position for some time, she said.
Ellis said Vincent was thought to have an IQ of just over 80 when he entered prison. It appeared that it had since dipped to about 60, or perhaps lower. Institutionalisation and a lack of stimulation seemed to have added to his decline.
In 2015, a Stuff journalist attended his parole hearing, reporting he wore hearing aids and had only one eye.
Despite then being 78, age had not affected his sexual conduct. A psychologist said Vincent had a strong and persistent pattern of highly sexualised behaviour.
He had become less discriminating and new arrivals in the same Rolleston Prison unit made him inappropriately excited, it was reported.
His work in the prison garden nursery was ended due to his enthusiasm for younger prisoners.
In 2012, Stuff contacted all four of Vincent’s surviving victims from the 1968 preventive detention case.
They were shocked to hear he had remained in jail all that time, and three supported his release as long as he was kept away from children, it was reported.