Oscar Pistorius should still be in prison

The murderer Oscar Pistorius was released from prison on parole today, more than a decade after shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. He killed her in an horrific act of femicide: the murder of females by males because they are female.

Because such crimes are so normalised and common, criminal justice systems around the world tend to excuse these particular men for committing the most serious crimes against women. In the UK, for example, one woman dies every three days at the hands of a current or former male partner. Some men even come in for preferential treatment: those that are famous, wealthy and conventionally attractive are often treated less harshly than other men. Conversely, the female victims – even dead ones – are judged for their previous sexual history, alcohol and drug use, and physical appearance.

Pistorius is more likely than most to be described as a hero, for the simple reason that he is a double-amputee who became a Paralympic and Olympic sprinter. Disabled men are sometimes handed a get-out-of-jail-free card for violent offences against women. Men that frequent brothels heaving with trafficked women and underage girls might, for instance, use the excuse that, because they ‘can’t get a real date’, we should make exceptions for them.

Let’s look at the facts of this particular case. Pistorius killed the 29-year-old Reeva by shooting her through a bathroom door after she had locked herself in to escape from him, following an argument on Valentine’s Day in 2013. Despite his repeated claims in court that he mistook her for an intruder, he was eventually found guilty of her murder. But at the initial trial he was convicted of the lesser charge of culpable homicide (the equivalent of manslaughter in England and Wales) and given just five years. Eventually South Africa’s supreme court overturned it and substituted the conviction with murder.

During the trial, a number of Reeva’s messages to Pistorius were read out by the prosecution in order to show that the relationship was an abusive one. Reeva had messaged that she constantly felt ‘attacked’ by Pistorius, from whom she felt she ‘deserved protection’.

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She wrote to him in a text that she was, ‘scared of you sometimes and how u snap at me and of how you will react to me’. Her fears were well-founded: just weeks after this particular text he pumped her full of bullets as she cowered behind a door. Nevertheless, the judge described their relationship as ‘normal’. In my view, it was toxic and abusive.

The police officer turned media pundit, Mark Williams-Thomas, supported Oscar throughout the murder trial. He stood by Oscar’s side and claimed that the incident was not a ‘planned murder’ but an ‘accident’. To men like Williams-Thomas, Pistorius is just one of those decent blokes who took a wrong turn in life, or were dealt a bad hand by fate. But Reeva’s mother, June Steenkamp, knows what happened:

My dearest child screamed for her life; loud enough for the neighbours to hear her. I do not know what gave rise to his choice to shoot through a closed door at somebody with hollow-point ammunition when I believe he knew it was Reeva.

Reeva’s father Barry was so distraught at Pistorius’s refusal to tell the truth and admit that his daughter’s death was not as a result of a mistaken identity (Pistorius claimed he had believed she was an intruder, and that her death was therefore accidental), that he even visited the man in prison, hoping that the murderer would confess. He did not, though he did cry many tears of self-pity during the visit. Pistorius is clearly not a man who considers his own actions so heinous that he should do everything in his power to alleviate the pain and suffering of his victims’ loved ones.

I am fairly liberal when it comes to the prison system, and believe that the vast majority of the female prison population (and a sizeable proportion of the male one) should not be in there at all. I think prison should be only for the protection of others, and long sentences handed down only in the most extreme circumstances. I do not support whole life sentences, other than in the very rare case of a person so dangerous they could never be deemed safe to live amongst the public again.

But time and again, I have seen parole boards – in the UK and elsewhere – release men who have committed grave acts of violence against women and girls, including rape and murder, because they are seen to be safe. They are considered low-risk despite never having shown adequate remorse for their crimes. When they do display sympathy, they do so towards themselves more than they do their victims. Yet a number of these men go on to commit further acts of violence against women.

Pistorius is clearly judged by some not as a murderer, but as a handsome and wealthy elite athlete; to some South Africans, he remains a national hero. The way that the likes of Pistorius manage to garner public sympathy when they have a history of domestic abuse towards their partner prior to murdering them, is sickening. Meanwhile, the women that kill violent male partners as a response to extreme sexual and domestic abuse are often seen as straightforwardly evil, and locked up for life.

South Africa is facing a tsunami of domestic abuse, and this case will grant violent men even more permission to do their bidding, and instil fear in the women who are the victims of psychological and physical torture. Pistorius has never owned up to what happened that night. Until he does, he should be kept in prison.