A victims' rights group is decrying the lack of real consequences for killers after four of the six men convicted of a Timaru man's death were granted parole.
Father of three Wayne Bray, 26, died four days after he was attacked and stomped on the head by six teenagers while walking past a party in Timaru in February 2008.
The parole board has in recent weeks agreed to release three of the six men convicted of his manslaughter.
Morgan Christopher Parker, 21, was released last month, while Simon Antony Anglem and Ashley Jordan Moffat, also 21, will be released within the next week.
Another man convicted over the death, Nicholas John Peters, was released on parole last year.
John Oliver Jamieson and Daniel Raymond Kreegher, who along with Anglem were deemed to be the principal offenders, remain in prison.
The trio, who were recently granted parole, will have served 2-1/2 years of their sentences. Anglem had been sentenced to seven years and five months in prison, while Parker and Moffat were sentenced to five years and six months.
The remaining two killers will have parole hearings soon.
Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesman Garth McVicar today said the lack of any real consequences for taking a life was "an insult to the victim's family''.
"Surely it is time we questioned if the lack of any real consequences for killing an innocent person is instrumental in New Zealand's exceptionally high violent crime rate,'' he said.
Mr McVicar said New Zealand had gone from being the safest country in the Western world to one of the most violent, as a result of half a century of liberal ideological experiments that had become entrenched in the justice system.
"The lack of any real consequences for taking a life is not only an insult to the victim's family, it is the one constant factor in today's violent society,'' he said.
In the only recent decision on the killers to be released publicly, the parole board said Anglem's family had strongly opposed his release and were concerned he had not undergone any individual psychological counselling.
"They do not accept that he has ever shown genuine remorse,'' the board noted.
The board said it had been "a difficult decision'' and it understood why his release was so strongly opposed.
But it noted the board's role was to assess risk to the community with a focus on the likelihood of reoffending during the remaining sentence.
The board said it was relevant that the manslaughter conviction was Anglem's first serious violent offence, and the psychologist had assessed his risk of reoffending as moderate to low.
