Colin Pitchfork can be released

It just a murdering rapist but a fraudster, he got someone else to take the DNA test for him. I can't imagine that he is repentent, maybe he will have learned what to say when questioned on the subject. He had years of freedom after the murders. Had the woman who overheard the conversation not passed on the info to the police, or if.no one heard it then he might not have been caught for years
It is proba ly impractical but there should be an island where such people are sent, not prisons but no access to boats and no women in the shops or offices etc
So freedom in a tightly controlled envjeonment

I agree, Luckygirl and, as I said, he is manipulative.

Prison is for punishment and supposedly for reform but it is also there to keep the rest of society safe from people such as these. He has proved once already that he has not reformed and society must be protected from him.

Me too Dickens.

Iam64

Luckygirl3

Sadly I do not think that killer sex offenders are capable of change - this is just how they are wired up. Parole boards need to realise this and stop putting people at risk.

In general I do think that people can change and begin new lives - but not in the case of this crime - especially when it has been repeated.

I agree luckygirl. Working with offenders, children/families over 40 years and reading research leads to my conclusion

Sadly I do not think that killer sex offenders are capable of change - this is just how they are wired up. Parole boards need to realise this and stop putting people at risk.

Simplistically put - but probably profoundly true nonetheless.

Unless the rehabilitation can 're-wire' such individuals as Pitchfork I doubt he will ever be a safe bet for release.

Iam64
Your 40 years experience in the field - and your research - well, let's just say I'd trust your judgement more than I would trust the judgement of the PB.

He is only 63 so potentially could be a danger to girls and women for many years to come.

Luckygirl3

Sadly I do not think that killer sex offenders are capable of change - this is just how they are wired up. Parole boards need to realise this and stop putting people at risk.

In general I do think that people can change and begin new lives - but not in the case of this crime - especially when it has been repeated.

I agree luckygirl. Working with offenders, children/families over 40 years and reading research leads to my conclusion

Maybe release him and tell girls families where he is they may want to have a chat
But seriously how does he even have any rights ?

It doesn’t make sense to me, but as a general rule the Parole Board have access to a lot more information than I do so I’d usually trust their judgement.

Life seems very cheap to the Patrol Board, I think they need investigating.
Those families are serving a life sentence, murder most foul should mean life.

No.

Sorry, but it is too big a risk to give him the freedom to commit more crimes.

Iam64

Thanks Dickens , helpful summary in your post.
I’m a believer in reform and use of life licence or alternatives to custody.
Not for violent murderous sex offenders like this man.

This.
I too believe in rehabilitation but unfortunately there are some people who are simply beyond it.

As so very often the Parole Board and the ‘justice’ system is completely out of step with public opinion. But, hey, what do we matter? We’re just the idiots who pay for it all and kid ourselves that we live in a democracy!

Sadly I do not think that killer sex offenders are capable of change - this is just how they are wired up. Parole boards need to realise this and stop putting people at risk.

In general I do think that people can change and begin new lives - but not in the case of this crime - especially when it has been repeated.

SueEH

Smileless2012

Absolutely henetha life should mean life or what's the point in passing a life sentence?

But life sentences - apart from whole life terms - mean a lifetime on parole but release from prison after the minimum set term has been served.
This is why I don’t believe in whole life terms. One of the aims of prison is rehabilitation and the hope of parole; if we set whole life terms where is the impetus to change? If all hope is gone why would anyone engage in anything offered by the prison rehabilitation service if it would make no difference ?

One of the aims of prison is rehabilitation and the hope of parole; if we set whole life terms where is the impetus to change? If all hope is gone why would anyone engage in anything offered by the prison rehabilitation service if it would make no difference ?

Perhaps because in some instances - hopefully rare - the individual is beyond rehabilitation... certainly in the prison environment?

Hindley's accomplice, for example - Ian Brady - was never amenable to rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation is not an exact science is it - if you apply a principle, the predicted or expected result is not necessarily going to be the outcome desired.

The general public have a right to protection from such individuals - especially children, women and girls, who are more often than not the targets and victims of psychopaths like Brady. This man, Pitchfork, may also be a psychopath and be beyond redemption.

In the end, I believe the rights of the lay public trump the rights of the convicted murderer - particularly one like Pitchfork who was savage in the extreme in his brutality.

I don’t see how proof he can or has change can be established so soon after the past failure

ElaineRI55

Surely there should be no second chance for parole for someone whose original crimes were so heinous and had to be recalled to jail after just a couple of months. There should be no way the PB should risk another young women being assaulted or murdered by this man. The PB shouldn't even consider releasing someone unless they were so convinced of successful reform they would be happy having him live next door to them or their sister, niece, daughter, or granddaughter.

I agree.
He had a chance and blew it.

The PB shouldn't even consider releasing someone unless they were so convinced of successful reform they would be happy having him live next door to them or their sister, niece, daughter, or granddaughter.
This.
The thought of him perhaps being given a new identity and sent to live in a town where the residents have no idea who their new neighbour might be, is terrifying.

Surely there should be no second chance for parole for someone whose original crimes were so heinous and had to be recalled to jail after just a couple of months. There should be no way the PB should risk another young women being assaulted or murdered by this man. The PB shouldn't even consider releasing someone unless they were so convinced of successful reform they would be happy having him live next door to them or their sister, niece, daughter, or granddaughter.

Thanks Dickens , helpful summary in your post.
I’m a believer in reform and use of life licence or alternatives to custody.
Not for violent murderous sex offenders like this man.

Silvertwigs

If it was up to me he wouldn’t be alive and there would be no discussion.

Unbelievable in this day and age.

Smileless2012

Absolutely henetha life should mean life or what's the point in passing a life sentence?

But life sentences - apart from whole life terms - mean a lifetime on parole but release from prison after the minimum set term has been served.
This is why I don’t believe in whole life terms. One of the aims of prison is rehabilitation and the hope of parole; if we set whole life terms where is the impetus to change? If all hope is gone why would anyone engage in anything offered by the prison rehabilitation service if it would make no difference ?

Excellent post, Dickens. Why has the PB not taken notice?

Philippa111

No

If he had therapy during his prison stay for all those years it obviously hadn't worked as he was about to reoffend again. I don't think he will have changed in the last couple of years unless he has done some different kind of intensive therapy, which is probably unlikely. I'd like to know if he has?
I can't help but question why the parole board think he was Ok to be let out and I think the public have a right to know what their decision was based on.
It is really unnerving to think that offenders are released when they are obviously still a risk to others.

Hear, hear.

If, after 33 years, he breaches his probation licence after a couple of months out of prison - one has to question whether the rehabilitation during those 33 years had any effect.

Pitchfork has especial notoriety, even for a killer and attacker of children, because of his extreme brutality and deviousness in avoiding arrest. He has been memorialised, also, as the first criminal to be convicted via his DNA. After David Baker, lead detective in police investigations, read that a scientist, Alec Jeffreys, was working on genetic fingerprinting, 5,000 local men were screened. But Pitchfork’s arrest owed much, as a TV dramatisation showed, to luck. He paid a friend, Ian Kelly, to supply DNA for him, an ambitious trick that might, had Kelly not openly boasted about it, have left him free to reoffend. Pitchfork pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, 10 years for each count of rape, three for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and three for two separate offences of indecent assault (the girls were 16).

Lord Lane, then the lord chief justice, said: “From the point of view of the safety of the public I doubt if he should ever be released.”

The above is an extract from an article written by Catherine Bennett in The Guardian Sun 13 Jun 2021.

Germanshepherdsmum

Rightly or wrongly, I always consider PBS to be predominantly composed of people like Lord Longford - what I would call do gooders. Nothing wrong with genuinely doing good of course, but you get my drift.

Nothing wrong with genuinely doing good of course, but you get my drift.

Yes.

Rightly or wrongly, I always consider PBS to be predominantly composed of people like Lord Longford - what I would call do gooders. Nothing wrong with genuinely doing good of course, but you get my drift.

No he should never be released and they should name every one of the Parole Board against further offending and their personal accountability.