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A rapist has been set free to walk the streets, and the righteous are angry.

John Worboys was a taxi driver who picked up lone women, told them he'd won the lottery and ask them to share a drink. When he was finally arrested police found he carried a "rape kit" of miniature champagne bottles, plastic gloves, condoms, sedatives and an ashtray which he used to crush the drugs before spiking the drinks.

Because he drugged his victims, many do not recall whether they were abused or not. When Worboys went to trial he faced 21 charges involving 12 women, half of whom remembered a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault, and half of whom remembered only being drugged. He was convicted of 19 counts, including one charge of rape, and was given an indeterminate sentence with a minimum term of 8 years.

Those 8 years are up. He applied for parole; he won it. He is due to be released and there is little anyone can do to stop it . There is unfocused anger and justifiable questions, and most of these are being directed at Labour MP Keir Starmer, now Shadow Brexit Minister and at the time of Worboys' conviction the man in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service.

There's just one problem with that. Which is that it's not got much to do with Starmer, whose critics are noticeably Brexit-supporting wingnuts unattractively keen on using the rape of women as a way to scalp a political opponent.

In fact the reason Worboys got out of jail now is because the Great British Public demanded he do so. It's just they've forgotten.

(Image: Asda)

Worboys was charged with crimes dating from 2002 to 2008. He was first arrested after a complaint from a student in 2007 who said he had forced a pill down her throat, she'd blacked out, and woken up injured. He was released when police believed his claims that she was drunk. Although sedatives were found in her bloodstream, there was CCTV footage of her kissing him as he helped her out of the cab when he dropped her off. Worboys went on to commit further offences before finally being jailed in 2009.

That student lodged a complaint about the police, claiming they'd laughed at her, said her injuries must have been from falling over, and that they'd lied to her by saying the CPS had considered and rejected her case. No officer was sacked, and the investigation found the CPS had never seen the file.

It later transpired the student was one of many women who had reported Worboys, and whose claims were not linked by police until February 2008 when the Met's serious crimes directorate got involved.

Worboys was rearrested and a few months later Starmer became Director of Public Prosecutions. We do not know whether he had any personal involvement in the case, but as it was high profile it would be surprising if he did not keep an eye on it.

When newspaper reports of the investigation broke, dozens of other women came forward with stories of being handed pills by a cabbie, of blacking out, of 'snapshot' recollections of him on top of them, of unexplained injuries. They did not all go to trial, which is a decision someone - perhaps Starmer, perhaps someone else - at the CPS made.

After the trial senior police officers, who have some protection in their public statements from being sued for defamation, said they believed Worboys could have attacked 100 or more women. It appears some thought was given to a further prosecution, but because he had an "indeterminate" sentence it was decreed a waste of public money.

Now he's out. The parole board won't say why, some of his victims were not informed in advance, and the world is asking what, exactly, is the point of locking up a nasty rapist if you let him out again so soon?

Well, the point is that you asked for it.

Release at the halfway point of a sentence was introduced by the John Major government in 1991 in the wake of a series of prison riots across the country, the worst of them at Strangeways where prisoners took over the jail for an astonishing 25 days. A report by Lord Woolf found that they were sparked by Victorian conditions, slop buckets forcing prisoners to defecate in their cells, a lack of contact with families, and an urgent need for reform.

Strangeways was so damaged it cost £90m to rebuild and the public demanded the government stop any repeat. It was decided to undertake many reforms, including an end to overcrowding by making prisoners eligible for release after serving two-thirds of their sentence.

They could apply for parole at the halfway point, and if considered safe they would be released earlier, saving the taxpayer £40,000 per year per prisoner and giving inmates an incentive to behave behind bars.

The rule was introduced by Home Secretary Kenneth Baker, who you elected and who has a law degree. He is now 83, a lord of the realm, and not currently subject to angry mobs demanding he justify himself.

(Image: Rex)

The next Home Secretary Michael Howard - a former QC - reversed many of the reforms, and according to the Prison Reform Trust while there were 45,000 prisoners at the time of the Strangeways riots we now have 80,000. In the past decade austerity and cutbacks has meant a series of prison closures, a return to overcrowding and, oh LOOK, riots in the last year alone at HMP Birmingham, HMP The Mount, and HMP Long Lartin.

That's why they get out earlier. So why not just jail 'em for longer in the first place?

Judges deliver sentences relying on guidelines created from a mix of lawyers and politicians, who are there to represent the people. The Sentencing Guidelines Council was responsible for that in 2009 when Worboys was convicted. It was chaired by the Lord Chief Justice, the country's top judge, and its board members included judges and political appointees. At the time, the Lord Chief Justice and judges were appointed by the Lord Chancellor and the others by the Home Secretary.

The Lord Chancellor then was Jack Straw, who you elected and was a trained barrister, and the Home Secretary was Jacqui Smith, who you also elected. Both are Remainers, but are as yet untargeted by any pitchforks.

(Image: Getty)

Worboys was sentenced under an intitiative called Imprisonment for Public Protection, which ran from 2005 to 2012 and ended when it was felt to be unjust . It placed the burden on prisoners convicted of serious violent or sexual offences to prove they were no longer a danger to the public, and kept them inside until they could do so.

Worboys was given an indefinite sentence as a result, and the judge decided that had he been given a standard term it would be for 16 years, and eligible for parole after 8. Had the public been outraged, the Attorney General could have appealed this sentence. At the time it was Baroness Scotland - the first black woman to be made a QC - and who was appointed by Gordon Brown who you had voted in, and she made no such appeal.

So Worboys is out because:

a) you elected many of the people who publicly stated this was what they were doing

b) you didn't get annoyed when he was sentenced

c) you wanted cheaper, safer, emptier prisons

And none of this, so far, has much to do with the former lawyer and current Brexiteer-botherer Keir Starmer.

(Image: PA)

Perhaps we will learn that Starmer personally decided evidence from drugged women was too weak to pass the jury test. If so, he'll have had a point - it is far harder to convict a man in a criminal court than it is in the court of public opinion, where Worboys has already, and quite rightly, been hung, drawn and quarted.

There are many questions to be asked and answered - whether the police have repaired all the problems which led to Worboys being free to offend for so long, who at the CPS decided not to proceed with other victims, why a possible release at 8 years didn't occur to any of the many trained lawyers involved, and why on Earth the parole board did not inform all his victims that their abuser's face was going to be on the news.

More importantly, it raises questions about why Parole Boards do not have to make the reasons for their decision public. Worboys had to prove he was reformed - what was the proof? He has to be under strict supervision - what sort? The public, and his victims, deserve to know. And if our prisons have managed to rehabilitate a prolific offender, we should be know that too.

But this is the justice system you demanded. If you don't like it, change who you vote for. Personally I'll be surprised if the public outcry doesn't mean the CPS re-examine the evidence of Worboys' further alleged victims to see if they can bring a new case against him and lock him up once more, so perhaps the pitchforks will have been useful, for once.

But don't use the proven rape of one woman, the abuse of 12 others, and potential crimes against 100 more to score a political point about Brexit.

If you're that mad, you shouldn't be allowed anywhere NEAR forks.