Public Accounts Committee

Protecting the public: the work of the Parole Board

In last year's report reference was made to the Public Accounts Committee report, 'Protecting the public: the work of the Parole Board', which was published on 17 March 2009. The report raised a number of concerns about the parole process and in particular the delays in oral hearings and the impact that this was having in terms of cost and the prison population. The report made 12 recommendations aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the parole process. The Government's response was issued on 20 May 2009 by way of a Treasury Minute presented to Parliament by the Treasury. This accepted the conclusions and recommendations of the PAC and set out the steps that were being taken across the criminal justice system to improve the process.

The Board has been working closely with the Ministry of Justice throughout the year to implement the recommendations and considerable progress has been made in several areas. On 1 April 2009 the Generic Parole Process was introduced for indeterminate sentence prisoners, which established the performance monitoring of all agencies at all key stages of the parole process. The Board also established a Quality Unit to take forward the agenda on quality decision making across the work of the Board. Every indeterminate sentence prisoner now has a target date for their oral hearing which is set by the Ministry of Justice as part of the GPP. To address the PAC's criticism of the Board's administration of cases, a new case management system has been developed which will provide for one shared database for all cases.

The workload of members is now monitored on a monthly basis and a change in the Parole Board Rules from 1 April 2009 has allowed the Board to use members in a much more flexible way. A Reasons Framework was introduced in January 2009 for all determinate and indeterminate parole cases and members are required to provide evidence that they have signed off the final draft of the reasons. The Parole Board and the Ministry of Justice are working to increase the profile of the Board and encourage applications from as diverse a population as possible. The arrangements for forecasting caseloads have improved with close co-operation between the Board, MOJ's Analytical Services and the Public Protection Casework Section with the result that projections have been much improved.

NAO follow-up work

In October 2009 the NAO advised the Board that they would be carrying out additional work to see what progress had been made before reporting back to the PAC. This included:

1. Establishing the current position on the future of the Parole Board.
2. Identifying evidence of how actual workloads compared with forecasts.
3. Obtaining the first results from the GPP in relation to the performance of the Parole Board, the Prison Service and the Probation Service and investigating any significant variations in performance against targets.
4. Establishing that progress had been made in agreeing the content of a parole dossier for indeterminate sentenced prisoners.
5. Establishing release rates for indeterminate sentenced prisoners and making comparisons with previous years;  discussing the quality of decision making; and reviewing use of the reasons framework.
6. Establishing progress on the Board's new Case Management System.
7. Identifying measures taken to recruit members from ethnic minorities.
8. Identifying how the Board monitors the amount of work undertaken by members.

The NAO visited the Board and other agencies in February 2010 in order to gather evidence to establish what progress had been made. Their final report was received in May 2010.

The Parole Board for England and Wales

Grenadier House, 99-105 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 2DX

Telephone 0845 251 2220