In a new BBC documentary airing tonight, the agonizing dilemma about whether or not to release a killer who violently stomped a man to death 25 years ago will be exposed.
After the death of Leigh Shaw in a violent bar fight over football allegiances in October 1997, killer Colin Stacey was given a life sentence.
The West Ham supporter Mr. Shaw was assaulted by the Brighton and Hove Albion fan with a sock full of pool balls before being fatally kicked.
In an uncompromising look at the system that frees hundreds of convicts each year, the new five-part BBC series Parole will follow Stacey, now 54, to see whether a Parole Board thinks he is safe enough to be released from jail.
The person I was 25 years ago is no longer me. According to Stacey, who asserts in the documentary, “I should be freed without a doubt” since “I’m a lot older, a lot more mature, I realize the implications of my acts.”
One of the 16,000 potentially dangerous felons seeking parole, of whom 4,000 are released annually, was Stacey of Brighton.
One of several crooks featured in tonight’s first show, along with a drug dealer and a serial cheater on love known as the “Casanova Conman,” is the convicted murderer.
After receiving parole in 2017, Stacey was sent to prison after a brawl. In the BBC series, he needs to persuade a two-person parole board that he has dealt with his rage.
You have to hope that they will let you leave, Stacey advises.
The murderer should remain imprisoned, according to his victim’s widow, who told the program: “To me, the correct option would be to keep him locked up… a life is a life.”
David Coombs, a Southampton resident who has spent years in and out of jail, is the second subject of tonight’s episode.
Coombs, 58, who goes by the moniker “Cassanova Conman,” defrauded his victims of a fortune by luring them in with false tales of his glamorous employment, pretending to be a helicopter pilot one day and a real estate developer the next.
He received a four-year jail term in 2017 on nine charges of fraud after police discovered his network of deceit.
Coombs, who has 23 convictions going back to 1982, spent decades defrauding victims out of their life savings and thousands of dollars in lavish hotel expenditures.
He charmed his victims on the dating site Smooch.com before robbing them of their money and wasting it all living the high life at Claridges Hotel. As a consequence, his victims were left in a financial crisis, with one, Carol Board, being forced to go homeless.
The “predatory” conman even carried a lady who had recently had a leg amputated to a hospital cash machine to withdraw money for him in one instance in Hampshire.
The conman was even repeatedly expelled from Norway after being charged with picking off hundreds of women there.
He claims to have changed for the better now, telling the BBC documentary that he is “an honest guy” after almost falling victim to deception himself.
In June 2022, forensic psychologist Noreen Shami and Lucy Gampell, who has served on the parole board for 13 years, met with Coombs to evaluate his case and determine if he was eligible for release. For the BBC, their choice was captured on camera.
When the first episode airs on Monday night, Ms. Gampell assures me that “people can change”—not everyone, but people.
By the time they appear before the Parole Board, they have already served the minimum term that the court at the time deemed appropriate for their offence.
“You appraise someone after many years have passed.” Has anything changed? Fundamentally, if we decide to reveal them, would the public be secure or at risk?
We’re not very worried about the danger of reoffending, she says. Our responsibility is to safeguard the public from significant damage.
Over 90% of offenders are automatically freed midway through their sentences, therefore the majority never appear before the Parole Board.
Only offenders serving sentences of more than four years will be heard by an expert panel.
The documentary is being broadcast at a time when controversy surrounds the number of dangerous criminals who are released from prison each year and how probation agencies oversee them.
Offenders on probation commit three homicides or major sex offenses per week.
Since 2010, convicts who were on probation have received over 700 murder convictions, or one per week.
And during that period, 950 more rape, attempted rape, or violent sex assault convictions, including assaults on small children, have been obtained against known criminals.
The crime statistics were acquired by the Labour Party, who said the information revealed the probation department was “in anarchy.” It attributed the failure to invest in the system on the government.
Murderers and rapists must not be allowed to prowl the streets and prey on fresh victims, according to Labour’s justice spokesperson Steve Reed. Our probation services are in disarray as a result of 13 years of Tory mismanagement… The service is now dealing with a staffing crisis, excessive workloads, and very low morale.
That follows a study that was released last week that exposed a number of shortcomings in how probation teams treated violent criminal Jordan McSweeney, who later killed Zara Aleena.
Six days before to the assault, McSweeney should have been sent back to jail, but because of delays, he was out on the streets free to murder the 35-year-old aspiring attorney.
Another investigation of the management of murderous rapist Damien Bendall, which was released two weeks ago, drew attention to similar horrific shortcomings.
Due to mistakes made by probation authorities, Bendall was allowed to kill Terri Harris, who was pregnant, and three of her children: Lacey Bennett, 11, John Paul Bennett, 13, and Connie Gent, 11, as well as Terri Harris.
McSweeney and Bendall had both been incorrectly labeled as “medium risk” as opposed to “high risk.”
Chris Taylor, the director of the BBC’s Parole, said that “Showing the underlying reality behind the justifications is a powerful thing.” Individuals may disagree with the judgments.
BBC Two will begin airing Parole tonight at 9 p.m.
Five-hour sessions are typical, the series’ chair Lucy Gampell explains.
People will realize how seriously we take our jobs, she continues.
BBC2, 9 p.m., parole.
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