Editorial: When do we throw away key?

The Parole Board's decision to release child-killer Tony Roma for a second time is, put very mildly, of understandable concern.

His fatal bashing of a 7-year-old boy, otherwise safely asleep in his family's home early on a Sunday morning back in 1991, was as bad and unthinkable as it gets. That's one thing.

Roma was sentenced to life, his parole eight years ago was a dismal failure and he was back in jail less than six months later, and on release again he's still considered a medium to high risk of reoffending. That's another.

Having been through an attack of savagery by a stranger in my own home in the middle of the night, without any reason, gives me some insight into what the boy's family, the Reaneys, are forced to go through in reliving the horror, probably on some sort of daily basis.

I was out of hospital within 15 hours of the event and eventually back at work, but the images and sounds of the moment do not go away, even the moment I thought I was dead.

The man who smashed through my front door, swung rabidly but thankfully not particularly accurately at my head, before gouging at my eyes, biting off part of my left ear and punching his elbow and forearm so solidly into my throat it's a wonder my head didn't snap off.

He was later found unfit to plead to a charge which could have been murder, but for a few seconds, not to mention his withdrawal in the apparent belief that I had expired.

He was placed in the secure care of the mental health system, which does allow room for sympathy for a man and family blighted by a condition which may exist forever.

So far as I'm aware, almost five years later, he remains in that care, and will only be freed if the most strenuous psychological and psychiatric assessment determines he is of little or no risk to society any more, which, I have been told, albeit unofficially, is unlikely.

The merits of criminal incarceration will be debated forever - and in Hawke's Bay we have two prominent groups, in the Sensible Sentencing Trust and the Napier Pilot City Trust, who argue opposing points.

But where there is some accord is that imprisonment is an issue of public safety, and protection of the community. If the offender remains a risk, he or she is locked up.

Thus, what integrity the assessment before the Parole Board? That Tony Roma remains a medium-high risk?

Ridiculously, the Reaneys have had to live with the knowledge Simon's killer was likely to be released, eventually, and that they would even be a part of the process under which that has now happened.

The board observed the family remained devastated. Society may observe it has done nothing to help.