Where I live, an identity change costs $137, and even then a lot of people wander about using an alias (particularly married women), which is legal provided it is not done to commit fraud.
I know what will happen. The Prison service will try to do nothing until ordered to by the courts. Then they will reluctantly comply, find some way to avoid the required residence in a Cat D prison; the home office will reluctantly give him a new identity and the press will be placed under an injunction.
It will happen, but slowly. He will probably receive damages eventually for wrongful imprisonment.
The article implies that this has already happened because of the failed trial in an open prison.
Is it really standard procedure in the UK to prohibit the press from publishing information about released convicts?
The irony of that is off the scale. And I thought our system was pretty screwed up. 
Transport him to Van Diemen’s Land.
There is something that used to be called a Mary Bell order that prohibits the press from publishing information about certain high risk (to themselves from the public) ex prisoners. There are four well known ones in effect and an unknown number of unknown ones.
Mary Bell, Maxine Carr, the two Bulger killers?
By “press” you mean the printed press, right? Not the stuff people actually read.
All media.
Yes. But one covers Mary Bell and her daughter and any offspring.
Something here doesn’t quite add up. Can you guess what it is?
No. I suspect you know little of English law.
It’s just curious to think that a “life” jail term could expire, without the prisoner expiring as well.
The term ‘life sentence’ refers to control, not to imprisonment. The person is under the life sentence for ever, but once the tariff has expired they have a right to be fairly assessed to serve the rest of their sentence outside of prison. If they give cause for concern, they can be returned to prison.
No, a life sentence means that the offender is on licence for the rest of their life.
A minimum tariff will be set by the trial judge made up of components that reflect concerns about punishment, public protection, deterrence but it is up to the offender to demonstrate they are fit for release.
A life sentence offender may well serve decades beyond their tariff if it is deemed that this last point cannot be demonstrated.
If an offender has made their way down to Cat D, there is an implication that they are pretty much on their way out of the system and the matter is down to parole boards.
It is a certainty that if he really was ‘One of the most dangerous men in Britain’ there is absolutely no way at all he would be held in Cat D open conditions, he would be in a Cat A and with no prospect of release at all. This story and the facts do not sit together at all.
Here is how it works,
Cat D = Minimal threat , can be sent out to outside employment and be trusted to return to prison each evening.
Cat A = Serious threat to society/national security, will have every moment, awake or asleep tracked 24 hours a day. It may not be possible to move such a person from one building to another - even within the confines of a maximum security prison - without the presence of two or three escorting staff plus a dog team, might well be wearing cuffs of closeting chains.Will never be released until the threat has diminished or is dead.
In order that a realistic assessment can be made of the suitability of a lifer from Cat D, there is a hugely long and complex process which can easily be derailed by media attention. Part of that might well be the safety of the prisoner after release.
Classic case, the Moors murderers, even if they had been marked as no risk, there is no way they could ever be released as their safety was as risk - and this was put at greater risk by the media.(and you may be horrified to know that there have been worse killers than these released)
Now you might say such folk deserve to be at risk of harm after their release, but that is not for the Penal system to determine.
That’s just the tariff before parole becomes a possibility. Any prisoner released on parole is still “under licence”. For minor crimes this licence period usually expires at the end of the original sentence, but for a life sentence it never does, so there’s a fair measure of control over behaviour until death. There are also “whole life” tariffs for the worst offenders, where there is no eligibility for parole.
If the Woolwich guys are convicted of murder, it looks like the tariff will be at least 25 years (because of the use of knives), or possibly at least 30 years (because there was a firearm involved - it wasn’t the murder weapon though), just to give an example.
When I was a kid, I used to live on the grounds of the 1970s equivalent of a Cat D prison. No fences, gates or anything. Us kids used to play bowls on the prison bowling green, and raid the prison orchard for apples.
It’s not a prison any more but here it is now The Grounds at Penninghame |
The interesting conundrum is that the Prison Service has a legal duty to prepare this man for release but apparently lacks the estate or other means. The Home Office is responsible for the person’s safety when back in the community, and it now looks like this will need a complete identity change and a Mary Bell order.
I doubt this will happen before they are ordered to do so by a court.
First, I must say that British socialized medicine must be doing a good job, given that they were able to give this chap an absolute guarantee that he would not die for at least 20 years.
Second, I’m not sure how the government is supposed to secure his post-mortem “freedom”. If his spectre is having problems in that regard, I infer that it is weighted down with the tokens of his crimes, a la Jacob Marley. Alas, no mortal man has the ability to remove such fetters.