Justice on parole 

Prison must not penalise innocence

The quashing of Stephen Downing's conviction for murder last week was not just an
indictment of our police and courts. It sheds awkward light on our parole system,
too. Mr Downing's prison treatment was prejudiced throughout by his refusal to admit
guilt. 

During 27 years of incarceration - convicted of an offence for which you might
normally serve 12 years - he was beaten, scalded and abused. That is still
disgracefully commonplace in our prisons. But Mr Downing was also deprived of better
jobs, training opportunities and parole consideration on the basis that he was - in
Home Office jargon - IDOM, in denial of murder. Parole is no longer automatically 
refused in such cases, but it is still frequently withheld. (The exceptions are, all
too often, only those where journalists are taking an interest.) 

In principle, admission of guilt is needed for a prisoner to begin addressing his
offending behaviour. In practice, only a tiny number of inmates maintain a fiction of 
innocence beyond their first years in prison. The requirement to acknowledge blame in 
order to be assured of parole was all very well in an era when it was assumed that 
those in prison were indeed guilty of the crimes for which they had been convicted. 
We now know that all too many people are not. Meanwhile, the actual perpetrators of 
serious crimes go unpunished. Not just Mr Downing but others, such as Stefan Kiszko 
and the Birmingham Six, have been the victims of this approach. It is deeply unjust 
and should be ended. 

While assessing what lessons to learn from Mr Downing's case, one other feature of 
last week's hearing deserves note. Yet again, the judges involved in the appeal offered
not a word of substantive apology to the victim of an appalling miscarriage of justice
on behalf of the system they represent. 

Such repulsive arrogance is a direct descendant of Lord Denning's outrageous 1980 
observation that to allow the Birmingham Six the opportunity for appeal would open an
'appalling vista'. That vista, of course, was one which revealed the uncomfortable 
truth. In spite of Mr Downing's near-beatific forgiveness of those responsible for
his mistreatment, Lord Justice Pill, who presided over his appeal, should be ashamed
of himself and apologise fully now. 

              Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 
Leader
Sunday January 20, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4339084,00.html

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