[2012] EWHC 2184 (Admin)

There was no reason to apply a more stringent test for early release to long-term prisoners under a determinate sentence who had reached the half-way point of their sentence than to prisoners under an indeterminate sentence at the expiry of the tariff, which was the point at which the punitive element of the sentence was normally regarded as having been served. In both cases, any further time to be spent in custody pertained to the risk which the offender posed to the public and there was therefore nothing to prevent a comparison between the two for the purposes of establishing discriminatory treatment.

QBD (Admin) (Sir John Thomas (President), Treacy J)

27/07/2012