Wouldn't It Have Been Quicker To Mutter 'Bloody Peasants!', Sir David?

Amazing strop by the head of the parole board in the 'Guardian' today:

Speaking to the Guardian, Sir David Latham said that public reaction to cases such as Jon Venables, the killer of James Bulger recalled to prison last month, heightened the danger of politicians and parole board members making "skewed decisions" based on wrong assumptions about the risks offenders would pose to the public.

Except, of course, as it turned out the decision to release Venables did turn out to be wrong...

Latham said he realised his message might be "distorted" by the tabloid press but thought it was important to have the debate out in the open. He said: "Any publicity about something that goes wrong in relation to somebody being released on parole is bound to make it more difficult to present the argument to the public that we have to operate in a way which means that some risk has to be accepted."

The problem, though, is that those risks aren't borne by the people who take the decisions, but by us, the poor bloody long-suffering public. As Pavlov's Cat points out:

"But it won’t be anyone you know will it, they don’t come and live near you do they, you will never meet them on the bus, or in the town centre or in the pub. "

If you are so convinced of how right you are to release these people, why aren't you arguing that they should be housed near you?

"People might think I'm saying we were right to release Venables in 2001 but what I'm saying has nothing to do with the release of Venables. That's a far more difficult and complex debate."

Oh, sure...

In the context of the Venables case, he said: "One can only hope that ultimately, people will be prepared to appreciate that those of us who have to make these difficult decisions will do so fully accepting the way the public is likely to react.

"But we have none the less to make our decision based on the material before us and applying the statutory tests imposed on us.

"If we took any other attitude, we would be moving towards simply not releasing anybody unless and until we were certain they were never going to offend again and that's not an acceptable, civilised approach to the job we have to do."

But that might well be what the public wants. The public, Sir David. Remember them?

They are the ones that pay for your salary, and expect that they will not be exposed to risk because keeping someone locked up offends your bleeding-heart sensibilities.

Unless society was prepared, he added, to take a "more sophisticated attitude" to the risks posed by prisoners released on licence, the criminal justice system would continue to incarcerate people, who would never re offend if released, for many years longer than they were sentenced to by the court.

That is unjustifiable, he said.

In your opinion.

But you are just an employee of the state, for all you seem to have been able to convince yourself you are one of its ruling class. And if the mood on prison policy changes with a new government, what will you do then?