Hier kommie Oscar – and you know things are about to get very heated once more.

In two weeks Oscar Pistorius will be released from prison and his name will again dominate headlines around the world. He will spend his days in his uncle’s mansion in Waterkloof, his ten months behind bars now complete and the remaining 50 served under house arrest.

Mandy Weiner over at EWN has written a piece detailing what the reaction will undoubtedly be and whether or not the anger is justified, with these excerpts below from said piece:

We can expect social media to light up with condemnation and for many to spew vitriol, with the underlying theme being that Pistorius is receiving beneficial treatment because of his celebrity, money and fame. He’s the Blade Runner, so surely he is not being treated ‘normally’ like the ‘regular convict’ – we’ve heard it all before.

However, the decision of the Parole Board should really not come as a shock to anyone as it was always going to happen…

According to the piece of legislation governing Pistorius’s incarceration, Section 276(1)i of the Criminal Procedure Act, the Commissioner of Correctional Services and the Parole Board can place a prisoner under correctional supervision after they have served one-sixth of a sentence. The individual would have had to have shown good behaviour in prison, attended courses such as anger management in Pistorius’s case and given an indication that they could be rehabilitated.

The victim’s family would also have been consulted, and in this instance, the Steenkamps were present at the meeting of the Parole Board and apparently indicated that they had forgiven Reeva’s killer. Therefore, there was no reason for prison officials not to follow standard procedure and release Pistorius one-sixth of the way through his sentence.

Wiener also stressed that Oscar’s house arrest [at the residence above] will be no walk in the park. He will most likely have to do community service, report to a police station regularly and satisfy a parole officer who will oversee that the conditions of his release are being met. Should he fail to do so he will once again be incarcerated.

Not that it will matter to many but a sentence that includes house arrest is actually lighter on taxpayers’ pockets:

It also costs government, and by implication the taxpayer, less to release prisoners and allow them to do correctional supervision instead. This is particularly true in the case of wealthy convicts such as Pistorius. According to the department of correctional services’ website, the average daily cost for incarcerating a prisoner is about R329.20 which translates to close to R10,000 a month.

Those who will erupt in rage across various social media platforms will say that no amount of money or time spent behind bars will bring Reeva back, and they are of course right. You can offer any number of precedent cases, pulling statistics out until you’re blue in the face, but convincing the South African public that justice has been served in this case will prove a step too far.

[source:ewn]