JUDGES are often publicly criticised for imposing sentences which people don't believe fit the crimes they are dealing with.

The criticisms might sometimes be justified but in recent years there have also been a number of disturbing instances where awful attacks have been carried out by offenders recently released from jail for similar offences.

They were often allowed back on the streets early because someone, somewhere, considered the killers or sex attackers "unlikely to reoffend."

Although a judge's sentence is a matter of public record the people who make decisions about early release are largely anonymous or able to shelter behind a committee decision.

So we are unlikely to ever know exactly who made the manifestly wrong decision that Sanders Hill should be freed from a 10 year jail term for two rapes after just five and a half years. Within days he attacked two more women in Burnley and was yesterday jailed for life.

Judge Raymond Bennett, who recommended that Hill should not be considered for parole for at least seven years, said he hoped the Parole Board would "have regard to what has happened in the past.

"If you had not been released the women might not have suffered the fate that you made them suffer," he added.

If board members were more publicly exposed like judges perhaps we would see more caution in their decisions.