It has been recent practice to release prisoners upon completion of just half of their sentence if their behaviour 'inside' is not too terrible. This has been applied to all sentences of under 4 years.
Those over 4 years have only had a remission of one third although I note that recently, one half has become the norm and serious criminals are suing if not given this!
In addition to this we have 29,000 prisoners who have been released even earlier over a period of just 11 months in order to release pressure on our wretched prison system.
Please do NOT believe the propaganda in the BBC's Criminal Justice drama which indicated that a life sentence for murder would carry a full 15 years. It is simply and laughably untrue.
I shall repeat the facts and leave you 'to do the math'.
We have some 3,600 'lifers' currently. We hand out about 8oo life sentences each year, the vast majority of which are for homicide.
Now do you believe the propaganda? - An average life sentence is therefore ....
