BRITAIN: The Home Secretary in Britain will in future have the final say over whether a prisoner is eligible for early release.
The decision was taken by the Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, following a recent application for early release by Maxine Carr, the former girlfriend of Ian Huntley, the man who murdered the two Soham schoolgirls, Holy Wells and Jessica Chapman.
Last month, Huntley was jailed for life and Carr was convicted of lying to the police.
She was jailed for 3½ years. She had already served 17 months on remand and will be eligible for parole on May 17th. However, Carr could be released before then if she applied successfully for the early release scheme, known as the Home Detention Curfew scheme, which involves releasing prisoners judged no threat to society and tagging them with alarms that go off if they do not adhere to a 7 p.m. to 7a.m. curfew.
Decisions on applications used to be made by prison governors. Now, however, as a result of Carr's application, the Home Office has decided that in certain cases, the Home Secretary will have the final say. The decision may be open to challenge in the European courts. British Home Secretaries used to have the power to decide the prison tariff - the number of years to be served by convicted murderers - until the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a politician should not have such powers in the judicial process.
The case which prompted the European decision involved Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the killers of the Liverpool toddler, Jamie Bulger, whose sentences were increased by the then Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard.