One of the city's most notorious criminals will remain behind bars for the foreseeable future. James Darren Bennett had reached a point in his sentence whereby he was legally entitled to apply for parole. He did so, but the Parole Board of Canada (PBC) denied his request for either day
parole or full parole.
Bennett, 52, will remain in a medium security prison where he is serving an indefinite jail term. He was sent to jail in 2000 for a set of crimes including five counts of sexual assault, three counts of drugging his victims into compliance and three counts of making child pornography.
His co-accused was his wife Crystal Diane Henricks, 18 years his junior. She was convicted on eight counts for which she was sentenced to 13 years in jail, which the Court of Appeals later reduced to seven years. By 2004 she was living under supervision in an undisclosed community, having reached the point of statutory release.
Their victims were a three-year-old boy, a pair of 10-year-old girls and a 15-year-old girl. The offenses were primarily in the Willow River home shared by Bennett and Henricks.
With approximately 50 convictions over his adult life, and a psychological profile that indicated he would likely hurt people again, Bennett was declared a dangerous sexual offender in 2004 so authorities could keep him from the public for a prolonged period of time.
"The most recent psychiatric and psychological assessments of your risk continue to assess your risk for general, violent and sexual offending to be high," said a PBC written ruling made only days ago and obtained by The Citizen. "Your case management team is of the opinion that due to your failure to address the sexual components of your offending, you remain primarily untreated."
Bennett has shown some progress by not deflecting as much blame as before onto Henricks, according to the PBC board. However, he has shown almost no other signs of rehabilitation.
He has behaved well within the undisclosed prison he currently resides. He has expressed hopes to be transferred to a minimum security facility, based on this, but that has not yet been agreed to by prison officials. According to his own conversations with his case management personnel, said the PBC, he doesn't believe himself ready for full reintegration into society. The board wholeheartedly shared this view.
"You are a violent offender and the seriously violent and deviant nature and gravity of your offending requires demonstrated improvements over a reasonable period of time to indicate that you have made gains against your risk factors," said the report. "In your case there is no such demonstrated improvement... The board concludes that your risk to re-offend is presently undue."
