Witchcraft and Prophesy

Or as the prison and probation services call it, "risk assessments". It is the in-thing, the Holy Grail of penology and a minor Deity before which all must bow, or face heinous penalties. I kid you not, risk assessment is an industry, an aspiration and - frighteningly - an article of faith. And I mean hat in the literal sense, a belief in something which exists sans evidence of its existence.
Of course, no one wants to release a person from a life sentence who can fairly be said remains a risk to the life or limb of others. And there is the central point - how to separate out the dangerous from the benign?

You could visit Gypsy Rose Lee at the local fair. You could toss a coin. Or you could rely upon clinical or actuarial judgements.

The last decade has seen a shift amongst those who decide our futures - prison staff, probation officers and the Parole Board. Prior to this shift, these staff made decisions relating to risk on the basis of personal judgements. Or, as these were fancily termed – ‘clinical assessments’. You observe a person for long enough and his character can be discerned. Is he stable, or not? Safe, or not?
And in the case of Lifers, these judgements were accurate to the tune of about 98%, in terms of released murderers committing a second homicide. Of course, I maintain that personal judgement had bugger all to do with it; murderers rarely kill again because they just aren't like that. Whichever, the reality is that decisions about release were overwhelmingly right.

But then came the introduction of psychologists, offending behaviour courses and managerialism. This deeply toxic mix led to the abandonment of personal judgement in favour of statistical tools which were intended to measure risk. I can safely say that more people have been kept in prison unnecessarily because of these tools than for any other reason, including the incompetence of the parole board and the mendacity of the Ministry.

The most popular of these risk assessment tools rest upon actuarial measures. These are simple in conception. You gather large quantities of biographical data of criminals and see if there are features which can be used to predict re-offending. So if cons who re-offend tend to include a higher than normal proportion of those whose first offence was early in life, then this is a useful predictive item.
The statistically minded amongst you will have noticed the potential problems with actuarial data. It is static. It cannot change. If you committed your first crime aged 17, and this is linked to risk of later offending, then this is unalterable. The statistical model will give you the same odds of re-offending whether you are now 18 or 80.

Actuarial models also fail to note change. You may well have been a teen tearaway but that doesn't mean that you won't develop into a settled, dull, middle aged family man. It's just that the algorithm doesn't see it, literally.
Most importantly, though, is the fact that these models are useless when applied to individuals. It may well be the case that in comparing a million criminals with a million criminals who re-offended, the re-offenders may well have committed their first crime earlier. But you cannot apply this aggregate data to individuals in either group. Actuarial tools measure the relative probabilities between groups, they cannot and do not measure the probabilities of events between the individuals in these groups.

For instance, the actuarial group you are assigned to may give you a 50% chance of re-offending. But you either re-offend, or you don't. You can't re-offend to the tune of 50%.

This may be obvious and yet the prison and probation services use these tools with gay abandon, cheerfully labelling individuals with scores which have the patina of scientific rigour and precision but which are, in reality, utter nonsense.
A closer look at one such tool, the Risk Matrix 2000 which is applied to sex offenders, illustrates this sorry tale perfectly. People flogged by RM2000 as being High Risk have an estimated 36% chance of re-offending. However, unpicking the stats reveals that the score is actually a spread of between 28% and 45%. And extrapolating this to the individual gives a range of between 3% and 91% - that is, utterly meaningless.

The main risk assessment tool is the Offender Assessment System •
OASys. Used by prison and probation, at it's heart is an actuarial statistical algorithm called OGRS3. The OGRS3 rests on a mere 8 pieces of biographical data to churn out its chance of an offender re-offending. You don't need to be statistically literate to raise an eyebrow at that piece of witchcraft.
Worse than the inherent flaws in these risk assessment tools is the manner in which they are deployed. Without any statistical knowledge or understanding, staff deploy the scores generated by OASys against individuals. That is, wholly improperly and without any statistical basis. But if OASys says that a man belongs to a group whose odds of re-offending are 50%, they will always write, "This man has a 50% chance of re-offending...".

And the Parole Board laps it up. These tools are, literally, a new religion that no one dares to question. Their attraction is obvious, in that they offer those in charge of our lives a way to duck personal responsibility or decision making. Now, they just point to the risk assessment to justify their actions.
It is a travesty of monumental proportions, a statistical fraud and it is one of the many weeds which entangle prisoners and obscures their view of a future.

Risk to life or limb

This is the crux of a lifer's detention once the tariff has expired. On the face of it, it is not unreasonable to keep in prison a person who has killed another until it can be shown that he does not pose a risk to life and limb.

But that bare statement conceals a morass of complexity. In my own case, for example, it is not actually claimed that I pose a positive risk to life and limb. It never has been, in that my crime took place in unique, unrepeatable circumstances.

Rather, it was the view of the Parole Board at the last hearing that I could only demonstrate that I did not pose a risk by being in an Open prison without incident. In essence, the claim is that I will find it so difficult to move back into society that I will blow some mental fuse and go running through the streets wielding am axe.

Note that this argument is not rooted in my original crime, nor does it rest upon any claim that 1 am inherently prone to violence. Rather, it is an assertion that society is so difficult to deal with that I will need to be "tested" - in the twisted way that Open prisons function - to see if society and myself are on a course for a violent collision.

You will appreciate that I feel that this is an utterly pathetic, incoherent reason for keeping me detained. It also reveals a truly frightening lack of understanding of the nature of murder on the part of the Parole Board.

Murderers can be viewed in one of two ways. Either they are individuals who are inherently prone to violence, bearers of a profound psychological flaw that erupts sporadically; Or, they are individuals who are overwhelmed in very specific emotionally or psychologically charged situations.

As the rate for murderers committing second homicides in around 1 to 2%, then I contend that the latter is the correct view. Murderers are not inherently violently flawed people, but rather individuals who react homicidally to specific circumstances - and these circumstances rarely occur more than once in their lives.

If this is indeed correct - and I see no evidence otherwise - then to suggest that I may react violently to the stresses of daily social life is absurd. Do you react violently to daily frustrations? No. Neither do I. And whilst the particular stresses of life out there are not precisely replicated in prison life, prison life is incredibly stressful. This is why, for example, our suicide rate is so high. And yet, in the face of institutionalised degradations and provocations, I have shown no inclination to violent behaviour.

Why, then, should I not deal with the issues posed by daily life in precisely the same way as you? I didn't "fail" life, I "failed" a specific, unrepeatable situation. To keep me in prison longer is to reveal an incoherence at the heart of the release process.