Kevin Palmer’s mother, Ilaria Legge, says she has dreaded the day Jade Lacey would be released on parole for the past 10 years, and despite begging for him not to be paroled to the Gold Coast, her pleas fell on deaf ears.

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“Friends say to me: ‘He’s done his time’. That’s fine. But if you’re face-to-face with the person who has [done this] to your child, how are you meant to cope?” she said.

“If I see him down the street, I don’t know what I’m going to do or how I’m going to act.

“It’s not like he stole a car. My son is buried here and I’m not moving.

“They’ve had their chance to live here and they ruined it.”

The mother-of-three’s comments come as the State Opposition says the current parole system prioritises perpetrators before victims and Queensland is big enough to ensure offenders aren’t put back in the same communities as their victims’ families.

Ms Legge’s pleas to keep serious violent offenders away from their victims comes just a month before the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council is expected to hand down a report into community-based sentencing orders, imprisonment and parole.

Mr Palmer was killed in 2007 after being shot by milk baron Ken Lacey’s sons, Jade and Dionne. After a trial, Jade Lacey was sentenced to more than 11 years in jail for shooting Mr Palmer in the leg.

He was acquitted of the 23-year-old’s murder, but convicted of unlawful wounding with intent. Dionne, who fired the fatal shot, was found guilty of Mr Palmer’s manslaughter and remains in custody in Victoria.

Last year former music producer and convicted cocaine and ecstasy trafficker Jade was released on parole – an order to which he will be subject until May 2022.

Ms Legge said she was originally advised Jade would be living in Brisbane, but could, with permission, visit the Gold Coast for work or to see his family.

In February this year, Mr Palmer’s family received notice Jade was now reporting to Burleigh Heads police station while on parole, less than 15km away from their home.

The Courier-Mail revealed at the time of his release that Jade planned to work at a mate’s Gold Coast gym, after earning the title “the fittest man in the Queensland prison system”.

He had planned to live with his Dutch fitness model girlfriend, Djanilla Boekweg.

The pair hooked up while she was living on the Gold Coast and Jade was behind bars, friends said.

“The day they say they’re going to jail, the court says when a person may be up for parole,” Ms Legge said.

“That’s the day you start thinking, ‘I have about 10 years before I need to deal with this other stuff.’

“So you’ve already got it in your head but you try to keep it inside so you don’t have to think about it until it gets closer.”

In her first interview since her son’s death over a decade ago, Ms Legge said she started panicking about a year before Jade became eligible to apply for parole.

The 58-year-old, who wrote several times to the Victims Register pleading for Jade not to be released back to the Gold Coast, said she didn’t feel her concerns were considered.

“To me, the questions they asked me were based around the fact Lacey was going to be released and it was more about how I was going to cope, not my views,” Ms Legge said. “When I found out he is on the Gold Coast, I thought what’s the use of me giving my view if they’re going to make up their minds anyway?”

Ms Legge said the parole system should be changed to prohibit violent crooks living in the same city as their victims while serving community-based sentences.

“I don’t want him to live on the Gold Coast,” she said.

“My life is here and my kids’ life is here and I do community work, so I travel all around the city.

“I just keep asking myself, how can I walk down the street knowing he’s going to be there?

“How are my children going to cope if I see him?

“That’s what I didn’t want to deal with.”

Deputy Opposition Leader Tim Mander told The Courier-Mail it was “completely unacceptable” for released offenders to be placed so close to the families of their victims.

“Imagine the grief the loved ones of victims are going through and then to have the added fear of running into their child’s offender in their local neighbourhood,” he said.

“Parole is a privilege, not a right, and the interests of victims and their families should always come first.

“Losing a loved one is traumatic enough without having to re-live that experience over and over again.”

Opposition police spokesman Trevor Watts said Queensland was “big enough” to ensure released offenders were not put back in the same community as victims’ families.

Homicide Victims’ Support Group chief executive Brett Thompson said many victims’ relatives did not believe offenders would abide by parole conditions once released.

“They feel can’t trust that person would follow those rules because they demonstrate in their life that they had no regard for rules, human life or respect for society,” he said.