We Desperately Need "Three Strikes"

Murderer Back in Prison After Parole Breach

By Rob Kidd
Otago Daily Times


One of the country’s longest-serving prisoners is back behind bars after taking drugs while on parole.
Andrew Peter McGlynn (53) was sentenced in the High Court at Christchurch in February 1986 to life imprisonment for murder.  The defendant, who appeared in the Dunedin District Court yesterday for breaching parole, has made headlines in the past for his indiscretions while on release.

Soon after being paroled, in 1994 McGlynn was incarcerated once again after committing an armed robbery.  Another release in 2003 had an almost identical result.  McGlynn was back to prison to continue serving his life sentence after being convicted of aggravated robbery.

However, it was not enough to convince the Parole Board he should remain there.  In 2005, yet another stint in the community was abruptly ended when McGlynn assaulted a woman. 

His repeated failures to reintegrate resulted in him becoming a poster boy for Act New Zealand’s law and order spokesman David Garrett in his push for the "three strikes" legislation in 2009.  He called him the country’s “most recalled lifer”.

McGlynn, the court heard yesterday, had been released on parole on March 25 on a range of strict conditions, including a prohibition from using illicit drugs.  Just like on previous occasions, the killer did not last long.

Criminal Nonfeasance

That Which Beggars Belief

There are aspects of the New Zealand penal system which are despicable.  We long ago abolished the death penalty for murder.  Life imprisonment without parole is the most severe judicial sentence available.  The penal authorities strenuously labour to ensure that no-one spends the rest of their natural life in prison. 

Here is a case which strains credulity to the limit:

Dunedin student killer George Charles Trounson paroled for seventh time

Hamish McNeilly
Stuff

A man who bashed his teen flatmate to death has been granted parole for the seventh time.

George Charles Trounson, 45, is serving a life sentence of imprisonment for the murder of Russell Neil, 17, in Dunedin in June 1990.  Trounson was 18 when he bashed Neil to death with a broken balustrade. He was sentenced on February 26, 1991.

The New Zealand Parole Board noted Trounson's "unsatisfactory history on parole" in a decision released this week.  Trounson was previously released six times and recalled to prison after breaching the terms of his parole.  He was first released in March 2001 and was recalled in February 2006 – the longest time he spent in the community in recent years.  Subsequent recalls varied between three-and-a-half months and nine months.

His first release resulted in the longest period of freedom--five years.  Since that time he has been paroled another five times, and the longest time out was only nine months.  But--and this is the class working definition of insanity--the Parole Board decided that he should once again be paroled.  This time, things will be different.

The Bureaucratic Hive At Work

Political Correctness Can Cost Lives

A New Zealand court case is proceeding which is likely to make the average citizen mad.  It concerns how parole is granted to imprisoned offenders.  In this instance a probation officer's critical report about a prisoner was removed from documentation by the Department of Corrections.  It is alleged that the Department at the time had a policy to get young offenders back out into the community as soon as possible.  One size fits all bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude.  How so?  Well, the prisoner in question was subsequently paroled and quickly went on to commit further violent offences.  

A probation officer suing his bosses for secretly removing safety warnings from a report to the Parole Board was proved right when the inmate attacked a man with a bottle just months after being released from prison.

The prisoner was jailed for attacking a man with a hammer in 2012, causing life-threatening injuries and previously stuck a knife in someone's ear. His probation officer Stan Gilmour assessed Rere Pumipi to be a high risk to the safety of the public but the paragraphs detailing the risk factors were removed from his probation report by his bosses.  These included references to alcohol and drug use, anger management and "deliberate steps to obtain weapons and use them". [NZ Herald]

In a rare move, the probation officer is taking his employer to court over the matter.

Earwigs Scurrying For Cover

Politically Correcting the Corrections Department

The probation industry is fraught with tragic mistakes, errors, and pain.  It makes victim's pain more or less perpetual as successive probation hearings need to be testified at.  The anguish and pain to be re-dredged, re-remembered, and refreshed.  At times the Parole Board makes serious mistakes.  A paroled criminal re-offends and more victims suffer.

Now something even more serious has come to light.  The Probation Service and the Department of Corrections are bureaucracies (no surprises there).  Probation officers on the "front line" write reports about prisoners coming up for parole hearings.  Middle level bureaucrats in the Service and the Department of Corrections then edit the reports.  Clearly they want reports to have correct grammar and syntax.  If only.  In fact there is evidence that middle management wants probation reports to be politically correct.  They call it a "quality assurance check".  Now this may be entirely innocent.  Or not.