The Tribune

By MALCOM STRACHAN

A NUMBER of concerns were raised last week when word went round that a prisoner guilty of a crime that shocked the nation back in the 80s was said to be back on the streets.

It turned out not to be quite the case – but it did throw the issue of parole into the spotlight.

The prisoner in question was Kevin Patrick Hanna, who killed his father, mother, brother and two sisters in 1984. He was a teenager at the time. He is now over 60 years old and has spent the time since in prison after being sentenced to life imprisonment.

Prison Commissioner Doan Cleare spoke to the case and said that Mr Hanna will have been seen in public as he has been part of a prison work release programme – but he has not been released. Yet.

The outrage at Mr Hanna’s presence in public makes me wonder if we are really ready for a parole programme – and if we really believe in the idea of rehabilitation.

Do we truly want prisoners to be rehabilitated or do we just want to throw them into prison forever and never have to think of them again, let alone see them? What do we really want our justice system to be about?

What happens with the prisoner who truly does regret his actions, who serves his sentence, does his time and is able to come back out of prison and not go back down the path of committing crime? Are we ready to accept that people can change, and that people can pay back society for what they’ve done and then be reintegrated into that society?

Commissioner Cleare was very open about Mr Hanna’s case.

He said: “Kevin Hanna is one of the best residents we have in this institution. He ain’t showing no signs, he is rehabilitated.”

Mr Hanna, he says, has done everything asked of him. The commissioner said: “There is no more programme I can push Kevin Hanna into in this institution. He has been through all of them, some six, seven or eight times.”

He added that “society has more dangerous people on the road than Kevin Hanna right now”.

Social media, as you might imagine, was far less generous, with talk of why would we want to have convicted murderers walking among us.

We are a small country, it is true, and the likelihood is that with parole, relatives of victims may well see their loved ones’ killers once they are released. This may be 20,30,40 years on from the crime – but I doubt it becomes any easier for those close to a victim to see the killer walking around when the victim was deprived of such a possibility.

The crucial part of this is rehabilitation. Does it work? We know that worldwide there are plenty of statistics to look at, in terms of reoffending rates by those on parole and so on.

A study in the US back in the 80s and posted on the Bureau of Justice Statistics website showed that 69 percent of parolees in the 17-22 age group were rearrested for a serious crime within six years of the release – although almost 40 percent of the arrest statistics came from just ten percent of the parolees.

A more recent study in California in 2019 found a significant change in those figures, however – with 2.3 percent of offenders convicted of a new misdemeanor or felony within three years of their release, and just 0.4 percent convicted of a felony against a person.

However, a study of those in prison long-term found that 47 percent, nearly half, presented a moderate risk for future violence and 28 percent presented a high risk. Note that those individuals are staying in prison – and that’s crucial in our judgement on who to release and who not to release.

Thorough assessments by professionals in the field can help to identify who is a risk, and who is not. It is not infallible, of course, but that 0.4 percent risk of a felony against a person might well be lower than from anyone other than the released prisoner.

I imagine the other risk to be considered is violence toward that individual. Revenge killings are far from unknown in The Bahamas – we hear it every time the police say there is a gangland connection in a new killing.

What are the advantages of parole? Well, we cannot get away from the fact that one of them is cost. Keeping someone locked up forever costs money, both in food and the ever-needed expansion of prison size if everyone is kept there long-term. That appeals to administrations always in need of saving money – but money should of course not be the sole criteria.

More importantly, it gives offenders a pathway to being a working part of society again, without leaving them with only one option – a return to criminal ways.

In theory, that sounds good – although given the stories we hear about how our prisoners live their day-to-day lives, with stories of slop buckets and tightly packed cells, it’s hard to accept that we have such primitive conditions in one sense yet our rehabilitation programmes are state-of-the-art. How good are the programmes we operate, and how confident are we in their outcome? Are we really turning these people around as individuals when they have to go back to a cell and empty a bucket? How possible is it to leave the past behind when we hear stories of abuse and violence within the prison walls?

We should not be a nation that locks people up forever when there is no need to – but we also need to be confident that when we talk about rehabilitation, we can trust that it is actually taking place, and that we are not adding greater risk to our already dangerous streets.

I applaud the goal – but I don’t have that confidence yet, and Mr Cleare’s admonition that we just need to accept it and “move on” is not enough to give that reassurance.