I have a couple of answers to that. One, the judges are sentencing someone 25 or perhaps 50 years before they are parole-eligible. So they are seeing a person in the span of time, likely at a point in time relatively close to when they committed the offence. It's likely they're seeing these individuals at their lowest, or close to it.
The criminal law is a blunt tool. We are all well aware of that, and at its margins that bluntness isn't nearly as nuanced as we want it to be, because Parliament has seen fit to enact a sentence of “life 25” for all first-degree murders, period, whether it's a very nasty first-degree murder or a less nasty one. I appreciate there's a range even amongst first-degree murders in terms of their calibre. But we have that one-size-fits-all sentence there.
What we did do, at least at the time, was vest the parole board with the discretion at a very long period of time away--and 25 years is a very long period of time--with the power, on an informed and nuanced basis, to look at how that person has reacted and responded to 25 years of incarceration, and then judge whether they are safe to be released. They are looking at and applying a very different test than what a judge is looking at.
A judge cannot, on the day of sentencing, say they will be safe to be released in 25 years from now or in 50 years from now. But at a certain stage the parole board does have the expertise, and it should have the expertise and trust of this committee, to sit there, on an expertise level, and say this person can now be released. I appreciate that 50 years, certainly in some crimes, like the one you just mentioned, obviously has a visceral good feel to it. You sit there and say that a person certainly deserves 50 years. But it's crushing.