Parole essential for prisons

Letters

The news article titled, “Inmates behaviour impresses prison official” (The National, Sep 14), has prompted me to query the key role of the parole board.
Any statutory organisation has to fulfill its purpose and deliver services efficiently and effectively.
The parole board has not performed effectively since its establishment.
Its key role is to screen applications from the prisoners through the respective jails, select them and place them on parole.
The Correctional Service Department played its role in rehabilitating the prisoners and recommended for parole. The parole applicants are people that have already served one third of their sentence term and are qualified for parole release.
The parole board has rejected many of the applications saying insufficient time was served by the applicants.
They keep on releasing a few prisoners who are in the last year before the due date of release.
A negative effect is that the prisons are overcrowded with people who are supposed to be on parole.
Secondly, it is an economic burden to the state to maintain a prisoner who has been recommended for parole.
The parole board is therefore responsible for causing a financial burden on the state as well as the overcrowded condition in prisons.
If this is their job to make the last year as a year for parole release for everyone then let the job be done by the Correctional Service Department through remission in collaboration with the Provincial Community Based Correctional Services.
Prisoners need to be paroled in a proper way.
It is a waste of the nation’s limited financial resource to keep a defunct organisation like the Parole Board.
Therefore, it must must be dissolved.

Christopher Samor
Lae