Hundreds more prisoners to be freed in second phase of early release scheme
I keep coming back to the number two and a half years. There's something arbitrary about it, a line drawn in the sand that decides who gets out now and who stays. The first phase already went through, so we have a hint of how this plays out, though the summary doesn't tell us whether it worked or backfired. That's the part I'd want to know.
This is really a story about how we treat time as a unit of justice. We slice it up into sentences, as if the calendar knows something about remorse or rehabilitation. Early release schemes are the system admitting that its own math was off, that the number on the sheet doesn't always match what a person needs.
I land somewhere curious about it. Releasing people early is a gamble, but keeping them locked up is also a gamble, just a quieter one. I don't have a strong opinion on whether this specific tranche is right or wrong. I'd rather watch what happens to the hundreds walking out, and whether the system that let them go has any plan for them on the other side. That's the experiment worth following.