Hi

This is an old post of mine that in essence has being revolving around the "relevant date" in regard to when the initial signing for a SOR requirement begins. For those who don't know I signed my initial SOR in court (then again in a Police station the 2 days later after a change of address) on the day of my guilty plea, then placed on bail for 11 months whilst waiting sentencing. My sentence included 2yrs inside; so SOR indefinite.

For the last decade I have been trying to resolve when the date is I can apply for discharge (15yr point).
This year I finally got an agreement with the Force solicitor that my "relevant date" was when I signed in the Court and not when I was released on licence.

I've have just had an email from my new OM saying that she has taken over, something she assumed I knew, and that the date for my application is basically a year later that agreed ie 15 years starts from my release!
Obviously I immediately called her and followed up with an email, informing her (politely) that she has made a mistake. Her reply was that she will start the process once again to get an agreement. 

The warning I suppose I am making to everyone is that please ensure you keep records of all your conversations, agreements etc as I share the above knowing I have discovered false entries in my Police file, that my Court and Police files where lost somewhere between them and the archives, and that information is not pasted between OMs!

The strange thing is that there has been so many incidents of the system defending itself and original decisions yet even the Judge who discharged my SOPO conditions years ago has questioned why I am still on the SOR? trouble is I cant contest my sentence!

I will keep you updated but please heed my advice.

Hi

This is an old post of mine that in essence has being revolving around the "relevant date" in regard to when the initial signing for a SOR requirement begins. For those who don't know I signed my initial SOR in court (then again in a Police station the 2 days later after a change of address) on the day of my guilty plea, then placed on bail for 11 months whilst waiting sentencing. My sentence included 2yrs inside; so SOR indefinite.

For the last decade I have been trying to resolve when the date is I can apply for discharge (15yr point).
This year I finally got an agreement with the Force solicitor that my "relevant date" was when I signed in the Court and not when I was released on licence.

I've have just had an email from my new OM saying that she has taken over, something she assumed I knew, and that the date for my application is basically a year later that agreed ie 15 years starts from my release!
Obviously I immediately called her and followed up with an email, informing her (politely) that she has made a mistake. Her reply was that she will start the process once again to get an agreement. 

The warning I suppose I am making to everyone is that please ensure you keep records of all your conversations, agreements etc as I share the above knowing I have discovered false entries in my Police file, that my Court and Police files where lost somewhere between them and the archives, and that information is not pasted between OMs!

The strange thing is that there has been so many incidents of the system defending itself and original decisions yet even the Judge who discharged my SOPO conditions years ago has questioned why I am still on the SOR? trouble is I cant contest my sentence!

I will keep you updated but please heed my advice.

Sorry to hear that the local plod are being awkward again. Maybe she just doesn't understand the concept of "outranked". In any case, either she understands the law and agrees with the force solicitor or she doesn't understand, in which case there's not much she can do. It's not for her to restart any processes to get an agreement that suits her when that agreement was signed off by someone of higher rank.

I don't think Offender Managers understand the law correctly. When I was going for my SHPO removal I told her I was doing this so that my conviction would be spent. She then told me that my conviction wouldn't be spent anyway as I am subject to SOR. Once that was cleared up there was another discussion that even if my conviction was spent that I would still not have a clean DBS as my conviction would always show as it is never removed, which was incorrect as it would only show on a standard and enhanced DBS not a basic DBS which is required for majority of jobs. 

Where possible I do try to get things in writing now. I was told last year when I had a visit they had no idea I was doing a particular thing at work, despite this being discussed and agreed with my previous OM. There are many times when it suits them to have selective amnesia.

They also tried to stop me from going on a family holiday last year claiming that Children Services had told them that I couldn't go on family holidays, despite there being no such agreement in any of my paperwork or discussions with Children Services barring this. This was something that appeared to have been stated by my previous OM which then became fact.

I sympathise about how hard they are to deal with. 

I am sorry you are having trouble getting a definite date for when you can start your application for discharge but hopefully it will get sorted out. The whole system is set up to be so complicated, it should be a relatively easy thing to give a date for when this can happen.