While the BBC did find space to report the sentencing of 20 year old Robert Tozer for the brutal murder of 85 year old Joan Charlton, uniquely among media outlets they forgot to mention that he’d been released from prison only weeks before.
In fact he’d served only 5 months of a fifteen-month sentence for assaulting a man with a pool cue before he was released “on licence”. He’s just one of hundreds who kill under probation service “supervision”.
Why the BBC report should omit this fact I really can’t imagine. They’re terribly keen to amplify calls for “corporate manslaughter” charges to be brought when private organisations – or prisons for that matter – are implicated in avoidable deaths. I think it’ll be a long time before we hear Helena Kennedy, Marcel Berlins or Michael Mansfield (he’s just on R4 now) being interviewed on the BBC about the need for the Probation Service to be included in corporate manslaughter law.