This was a new one for me. Probably because it is Scotland only, which explains why we never hear about them.

It appears to be a kind of IPP and SHPO combination, but I can't work out why they don't just use SHPOs instead. It might be because, unlike an SHPO, the OLR has no possibility of being discharged. It is like an indefinite SHPO, except it cannot be appealed after 15 years, like an SHPO can.

But in that case,why has it not fallen foul of the ECHR? The IPP also ran into trouble because of human rights concerns and was scrapped but the OLR still exists.

Edit. according to an FOI request, the supervision element of an OLR can be terminated, seemingly at any point, by the Parole Board. But that actually makes it less restrictive than either a life licence (which can be terminated only after a minimum of 10 years), or an indefinite SHPO, which has a minimum termination of 15 years.

So if the OLR really were intended as a "sentence of last resort", for the most dangerous offenders, why make it shorter than an SHPO?

I think it's not just because it's in Scotland - it's mainly because cases like this are very rare, thankfully, and the orders are only for serious violent and/or sexual offences. The OLR means they remain under the Scottish equivalent of probation, which I believe is run by social services, rather like the youth equivalent in England. An SHPO is solely down to the police, and although Police Scotland wasn't included in the Creedon Review, I'm sure they are just as stretched as every police force in England and Wales (and probably PSNI in Northern Ireland as well). With the best will in the world, I doubt the police would have the resources to carry out that intensity of supervision for that length of time, and they're probably not trained for it, either. As for the ECHR, it probably comes down to how the system is set up, rather than just because it's indefinite. As some of the more serious SOs south of the border have been given discretionary life sentences, which doesn't seem to be an issue, it would be up to the person subject to an OLR to take a complaint to the ECHR. The best outcome for them would probably be that the OLR is no longer applied, but they would still be under supervision until the Parole Board for Scotland decides otherwise.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

I remember reading a lot about the Order for Lifelong Restriction in the Inside Time newspaper when I was inside. From memory, the gist of the explanation given as to why the order hadn't fallen foul of the ECHR in the same way as IPP did was because of the robust nature of the process required to sentence somebody to an OLR in Scotland, which isn't just at the whim of a single Judge, but requires (by law) input from psychologists, probation officers, and other appropriate risk management professionals in advance of the sentence being decided. 

There also must be a "pattern of offending" if I recall correctly - which means the OLR sentence can't be used for a single charged offence, there has to be multiple convictions with at least one being for a serious violent or sexual offence to even trigger the process of consideration for an OLR.

Having a quick Google, there's a lot of extensive information about the OLR sentence on this website seemingly: About the OLR - RMA - Risk Management Authority

In theory at least, everyone released on parole should be thoroughly assessed by psychologists etc. I don't think that is unique to the OLR, but what is unique is that OLR imposes a life sentence, where the index offence has a much lower maximum sentence than life.

A lot of the debate has been about mental illness and the fact that personalty disorders are incurable, but in the most recent case in Scotland, that was not an issue. It seemed from the judges comments that the OLR was being used as a punishment rather than a means of preventing future offending.

Suppose for example, one of the offenders was given an 8 year prison sentence, followed by an indefinite SHPO. The police could then monitor them for the rest of their lives, just as they can with an OLR.

So, in this particular case, it sounds to me as if the judge was really saying. I want to sentence you for life because of what you have done, but I cannot do that, so I will impose an OLR and hope that you are never released from prison.

Don't fall into the trap of seeing the tariff as saying when they will be released. It is likely they will be in for longer than that. If the system is anything like the discretionary lifer system in England & Wales, they won't be doing any of the courses they would need before release until after they have gone beyond their tariff, and that is if they are compliant and genuinely want to avoid re-offending. I met a few discretionary lifers during my time inside. One had already done thirty years of his five-year tariff, one had done thirty-five years of his eight-year tariff and a third was already beyond his tariff and hadn't started any courses yet, despite his solicitor pushing for them to start.

As I said before, being on licence means supervision by the Scottish equivalent of probation, who have more powers than the police, and are in a position to monitor them more closely and frequently. As they are in Scotland, they would be under the tender mercy of social services. As child sex offenders.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

I assume that is the whole point of having the OLR or the IPP in the first place. It was to find a way of detaining certain individuals for life, without a life sentence. The obvious example being incurable personality disorders, which do not technically meet the requirement for a mental illness and so they cannot be held under the Mental Health Act.

But in the Glasgow case this week, there were 7 people all given an OLR. What are the odds that all 7 would have an incurable personality disorder? They had previous convictions, but none for sex offences and all were drug addicts. I assume they were all assessed individually. This raises the question of why the OLR was needed in every persons individual situation.Are they going to be held in prison until they are drug free, or is there some other test that they all have to meet? 

Who knows why judges make the decisions they make? In this case, it might be a question of passing the threshold to qualify for that sentence, as with discretionary life sentences in England & Wales. Why did they all get OLRs? If it was seen as a conspiracy, that would probably be all that was needed to justify the decision. The rest would then be a question of tariffs.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

Isn't the whole point of OLR to assess the risk of future offending, not just to punish for past offending? The tariffs were different, but with 7 different people involved, you might expect some to qualify for lifelong management and not others, if they were truly looking at future risk. 

I hope most users of this forum agree that past performance is no guide to future performance, but the whole criminal justice system is infected with the belief that "they're all the same". I didn't pay much attention to the details of the offences, so I don't know whether they all actually passed the threshold for an OLR, and I don't know whether this was a conspiracy in the usual sense of the word or people acting similarly but separately. Generally speaking, if it was a conspiracy that would probably be an aggravating factor in the sentencing guidelines. I believe at least one of the defendants is or will be appealing against sentence, so let's see how that turns out.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)