Bartholomew's Notes

A headline in the Daily Telegraph:

Rotherham rapist to be released from prison after serving only nine years of 19-year sentence

A member of a Rotherham grooming gang who raped and tortured his victims is set to be released from prison after serving only nine years of a 19-year sentence.

Banaras Hussain, 44, who is also a convicted drug dealer, will be allowed out on licence on Friday after being jailed for violent sexual offences in 2016.

That “only” in the headline strongly implies that Hussain has benefited from some controversial act of judicial leniency, when it is general knowledge in the UK that 50% of a sentence served is an “automatic release point”. Hussain has been freed, but he remains subject to various restrictions and can be recalled to prison at any time should be not adhere to the conditions of his licence. Some would argue that his overall sentence ought to have been longer (or been indeterminate, whch gives more leeway in keeping someone in prison beyond a minimum period), but the headline’s framing is misleading.

Also misleading is the reference to “nine years” rather than “nine and a half years”, which implies less than 50% and will put readers in mind of the government’s early release scheme to ease prison overcrowding (1). The text, though, grudgingly clarifies the point:

It is understood that Hussain had already served a number of months on remand and had, therefore, served more than half of his full sentence. Last year, he was moved to an open prison.

Sentencing council guidelines state that offenders sentenced to four years or more for violent or sexual offences can potentially be released at the halfway point under strict licence conditions.

…He was not released under the early release scheme introduced by Sir Keir Starmer’s government as sexual offenders are not eligible.

The phrasing “can potentially be released” downplays the “automatic” nature of the release point, implying that it’s a special privilege that might be applied from time to time rather than standard practice.

The false claim that Hussain has served less than 50% of his sentence has been promoted by GB News on Twitter/X, in a post stating “Maggie Oliver, formerly of Greater Manchester Police, reacts to grooming gang member Banaras Hussain’s release from prison after less than half his sentence”. Ignoring time served on remand in order to create a false impression that someone has been released exceptionally early is a strategy to watch out for in populist reporting.

The Telegraph article also provides a platform for politicians to strut and pose:

Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has written to the Parole Board, asking it to reverse its decision and “keep this monster behind bars”.

…Richard Tice, Reform UK’s deputy leader, said that if a sex offender is sentenced to 19 years in prison, they should be detained for 19 years.

He added: “A sentence is a sentence. I don’t believe in any early release for those sorts of crime. These crimes are heinous and you have to set an example. What is the point of giving someone 19 years and [letting them] out after nine and a half?”

Jenrick must know that the Parole Board cannot simply put aside the rules in the way, but his stunt will doubtless work to whip up misdirected resentment against professionals doing a difficult job.

And Tice similarily must know that determinate prison sentences cannot be dealt with differently according to the “sorts of crime” involved. This seems to be part of a broader Reform strategy of misrepresenting long-standing aspects of the law as capricious anomalies. For example, in July his partner Isabel Oakeshott suggested that the identity of a 16 year old on trial for murder was “being covered up”, when the identity of any minor on trial is protected (when corrected, she cited the naming of the 10-year-old killers of James Bulger in 1994, although she neglected the detail that they were named only after their trial had concluded with guilty verdicts).

The suggestion that Hussain has enjoyed special leniency also has another purpose in Reform rhetoric. Here’s the former Conservive MP Andrea Jenkyns, now Reform’s mayoral candidate for Greater Lincolnshire:

People are sick of this two-tier policing system, where we see a head of a grooming gang released early from prison. Whilst political prisoners are locked-up.

By “political prisoners”, Jenkyns means people who have been sent to prison following convictions for online incitement in the wake of the Southport child killings. The designation has not been made explicitly by party leader Nigel Farage, although it was implicit in his recent statement on Question Time (53:47) that “Kier Starmer locks people up who say nasty things on Facebook – Two-Tier Kier”.

Note

1. The early release scheme allows some prisoners to be released after serving 40% of their sentence, although headlines have tended not to make clear that this is a reduction of 10 percentage points down from 50% – i.e. a 25% reduction in the time to be served, rather than a massive cut of 60%.

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