The Parole Board. Working with others to protect the public.
About the Parole Board
A number of factors have combined to make the last year one in which the Parole Board found the landscape around it changing quite dramatically. Court judgments, proposed changes in legislation and a new political tone have combined to produce a situation in which the Board has not only seen a huge amount of change but faces even more potential change in the future.
The year started with much upheaval on the political front, as the Boardmoved from the oversight of the then Home Secretary, John Reid, to a warm welcome from the newly appointed Secretary of State for Justice, Lord Falconer. No sooner had Lord Falconer promised the Annual Conference that he was fully committed to preserving the independence of the judicial processes of the Board than he was succeeded as Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor by Jack Straw.
The messenger had changed but the message in this case was the same and Jack Straw also gave his full support to a stable and better defined arms-length relationship between the government and the Parole Board. He also pledged to ensure that the Board continued to be free and able to make unfettered decisions on individual cases and in particular indicated that he would expect to waive his right as
Secretary of State to reject Parole Board recommendations for open conditions unless he had serious concerns about them.
Moving in the same direction, a number of legal judgments during the course of the year, including Johnson, Hindawi and most recently Black, progressively reduced the Secretary of States role, while
passing increasing responsibility to the Parole Board. The Parole Board was now routinely being described as a court in legal judgments.
Of more import to the position of the Board than these, however, was the judgment in the case of Brooke. In this case the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that the then current sponsorship arrangements for the Parole Board did not sufficiently demonstrate its objective independence of the Secretary of State as required by both English Common Law and Article 5(4) of the ECHR.
The Ministry of Justice is still considering their full response to this judgment, although they have decided not to appeal. But they have already moved quickly to transfer the sponsorship of the Board from NOMS to the Access to Justice Group at the Ministry and Ministers are now deciding how to ensure that the Board is sufficiently independent of government in line with the terms of the judgment.
The nature of the Board has now moved decisively from being an executive body making administrative decisions on the papers to being a court, making decisions in the cases of the most dangerous offenders, normally at an oral hearing. As the Parole Board evolves towards its natural destination of becoming a parole or public protection court it is likely that the Board will end up as part of either HM Courts Service, or the Tribunals Service, both co-located with the Board in the Access to Justice Group at the Ministry of Justice.
The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which received Royal Assent on 8 May 2008, has a number of sections in it which will have a significant impact on the work of the Board.
One of the key challenges facing the Board last year was how to respond effectively to the implications of indeterminate public protection sentences, especially where the tariff was a very short one. The number of these cases was starting to build up, each potentially with the need for an oral hearing, and many of the prisoners had not had the time or opportunity to provide evidence of how their risk of re-offending had been reduced whilst inside prison.
Parliament has now acted partially to address this problem and has legislated to ensure that IPP sentences can only be handed down where the offence merits a minimumtariff of two years. So reducing their numbers and restoring the original intention of targeting the use of IPPs to serious offenders.
Also contained within the Act is a section that introduces fixed term recalls for 28 days for certain offenders and the provision for the Secretary of State to release other offenders within 28 days of return
to custody if theymeet set criteria, without consideration by the Board.
Recalled offenders who have not been re-released by the SofS before 28 days and all extended sentence recalls will be referred to the Board. The right to make representations against recall to the Parole Board will remain in place. The intention is to cut significantly the number of recalls that the Board deals with, but it is unclear to what extent the numbers will actually decrease.
The Act contains changes to extended sentences so that offenders sentenced after implementation of the Act are released automatically halfway through their custodial period, but left on licence for an extended period. This removes the role of the Parole Board in their release.
Finally, the Act extends the automatic release arrangements in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to include those prisoners sentenced under the 1991 Act to fixed terms of four years or more, who have not committed a specified sexual or violent offence. This again removes the role of the Board in their release.
The Board is currently awaiting the latest projections from the Ministry of Justice on the numbers of prisoners these changes will affect. However, it is likely that they will reduce the number of cases
handled and will allow the Board to concentrate on the most dangerous offenders.
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