This is a canard that should have been roasted some time ago. A life sentence really does mean the rest of your natural, however the judge has the right to set a minimum length of term tariff, which is what you're referring to here. Admittedly, few people are given a "whole life tariff" and expected to die in prison, but beyond the tariff the length of term is at the discretion of the parole board and ultimately the Home Secretary. A perverse individual could send his entire life in prison with a modest tariff simply by resolutely denying his guilt.

No-one is interested in how much time a criminal could theoretically be locked up for if a limited set of circumstances should happen to apply. They're interested in how much time the criminal is actually locked up for. You may not have noticed the large number of people who've been attacked, raped, and murdered lately by criminals let out long before their sentences are up. I can assure you that the victims are not interested in your no-doubt-legally-fascinating argument that, in theory, those men could have been locked up for the rest of their lives, had things turned out very differently. Things didn't.

Your sentence is your punishment. What a sentence really means is the punishment you really receive. You seem to think that what your sentence really means is some abstract theory that is only very loosely related to your actual real-life punishment. Good luck selling that.

> the judge has the right to set a minimum length of term tariff, which is what you're referring to here.

Yes. Obviously. In what way is this a canard? This man will qualify for parole after his minimum sentence of two years. If he's well behaved and impresses the parole board, he could be out of jail in two years. That's what parole is. The only canard here is the bizarre idea that that really does mean the rest of his natural life. It clearly doesn't.

Just so you know, when people say "life should mean life", what they mean is that the only minimum sentence should be "until just after the convict dies". You may think that's a weird idea, but trying to come to terms with it will help you to understand conversations.

Oh, and by the way....

> A perverse individual could send his entire life in prison with a modest tariff simply by resolutely denying his guilt.

Really?

I did jury service many years ago, and in one case a man was convicted of "wounding" a teenage boy with a kitchen knife, his behaviour was inexcusable and he was as guilty as hell, but it was very clear he had intended to scare rather than harm, however, because he broke the skin (a very minor scratch at that), the sentence was "wounding".

The judge decided under the circumstances to award the minimum possible sentence for that crime - 18 months.

So, even without the parole stuff, Oldfield gets only six years for what is obviously a far more serious attack that extends way beyond a scratch.

Something has definitely changed since I did jury service, there is no doubt minimum sentences for violent offences have been drastically reduced, and it is obvious that with all the guilty pleas and good behaviour reduction, plus the "parole at 1/2 way" (which is automatic on 4 years or less), we will see more and more cases like this where violent criminals literally get away with murder as they start to "work the system".

I think parole's back to front. You shouldn't get time off for good behaviour; you should get extra time for bad behaviour. And what is this "good behaviour", anyway? Not starting fights, not causing trouble, not rioting, etc. Outside prison, that's called "normal behaviour": the rest of us don't expect any big reward for simply being civilised and non-violent on a day-to-day basis.

"A perverse individual could send his entire life in prison with a modest tariff simply by resolutely denying his guilt."

And there have, I think, been several cases where someone (having served WAY OVER his assigned tariff, has then had their conviction quashed.

This rule is dreadful - where a miscarriage of justice has occurred it results in the victim serving far longer than they should. And in practice, it is almost invariably victims of miscarriages that get caught by the rule.

I think there was a case recently in America where someone either was (or actually, nearly was, I think) executed as a direct consequence of this very rule.

Cheers,
Wol

There's a prison somewhere in the South of England inhabited entirely by very old men who have refused to admit their guilt. Apparently, they routinely win gardening competitions.