He got an 8 year determinate sentence, which means he serves 4 years in custody & 4 years on licence. This is how all determinate sentences work. The prison service, by law, can't keep someone in custody after the half way point. Only indeterminate sentenced prisoners have to go through the parole process, so they won't be released until assessed as being of a manageable level of risk in the community. However, because he's breached his licence, when he's caught he will undoubtedly go back to prison for the remainder of his licence & may get an extra sentence for the abscond. The fact he needed to be released to an AP shows he's still considered a high risk of harm by prison & probation, so he hasn't been released without assessment, but unfortunately there isn't the facility at the moment for GPS tagging & a release plan to an AP, no doubt with as many stringent licence conditions as possible was the best that could be done. I work as a probation officer in a prison & it's an impossible job in cases like these, but worse for my community colleagues, including those who work in APs, who are limited in what they can do because of the constraints of current laws. Unless someone hasn't alerted the police as soon as he's missed a signing in time, or knowingly allowed him to breach a licence condition then no one has screwed up. Sometimes it's the system that's flawed & it's too easy to blame the people working in it.