NAO Report

On 5 March 2008 the National Audit Office published a Report on the work of the Parole Board. The background to the Report was that in the spring of 2007 the NAO announced their intention to carry out a value for money scrutiny of the Board. The Chief Executive as Accounting Officer for the Board welcomed this initiative as it had been eight years since the last NAO Report on parole and the business of the Board had changed very dramatically in those intervening years.

The previous NAO Report in May 2000 had focused very largely on the effectiveness of the paper hearing based discretionary conditional release process for Determinate Sentenced prisoners because at that time this was the bulk of the Boards business.

Following the changes brought about by the Stafford (2002) and Smith and West (2005) judgments and the implementation of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which had resulted in a substantial increase in resource intensive oral hearings, the time was right for a
further external audit review of the Boards workings.

The NAO work concentrated on three areas:

Parole Board members

This part of the scrutiny looked at the structure and membership of the Parole Board. The auditors reviewed the recruitment, selection, training, appraisal and output of Parole Board members and the Report was generally favourable about these processes. The Report
nevertheless identified that, despite considerable efforts in recent years, the membership of the Board, while having almost equal numbers of male and female members, did not reflect the ethnic make up of the population.

The Boards joint project with Operation Black Vote to develop a civic leadership programme is one of the initiatives in which the Board and the Ministry of Justice are engaged to address this imbalance.

The NAO Report also called for the Board to build on existing procedures for the monitoring of the output of Board members. The Quality Unit will monitor both the workload undertaken by individual members and the quality of member decisions to ensure that standards are maintained.

The Boards changing workload

The Report acknowledged that, while the Board is working hard to manage its changing and increasing workload, it is nevertheless struggling to cope with its oral hearing commitments for those serving Indeterminate Sentences. The NAO highlighted that the Board was facing particular difficulties in holding timely oral hearings because of a number of factors many of which are outside of the Boards direct control.

The Board has been concerned for some time about the timeliness and quality of the information on which it has to base its decisions and also about the rate of deferrals in some cases. The Board is dependent upon its partner agencies to provide timely and
accurate information, but it must make sure that it manages cases effectively itself and keeps its partners fully informed about the information that it requires.

That is why the Board introduced its Intensive Case Management initiative in September 2007, to make sure that panel members had the right information available to them at the right time to progress cases in a timely and robust manner. The NAO Report welcomed the ICM initiative.

The Board welcomed the NAO recommendation that the Ministry of Justice must work with the Board and others to introduce a whole system target for the timely consideration of oral hearing cases and ensure that dossiers are adequate for the Boards risk assessment requirements.

Challenges to and outcomes of the Boards decisions

The NAO acknowledged the good work that the Board is doing through its Review Committee and more recently in co-operation with other agencies through the Joint Review Panel (which the Board inaugurated). These forums provided opportunities for learning lessons where there have been violent or sexual offences committed while the offender might otherwise have been in custody.

While the Report also recognised the efforts of the Post Panel Team of the Board in successfully managing challenges to the Boards decisions it nevertheless noted with some concern that delays to oral hearings had the potential to result in litigation against the Board and for the consequent payment of compensation to prisoners.

The Board is also investigating the reasons behind the falling release rate of prisoners in 2006/07 which the NAO felt was inadequately explained by structural changes such as the introduction of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and the shift towards focusing on more
dangerous offenders.
 
The work of the NAO with the Board and others took the best part of a year. The resultant report was published on 5 March when the Comptroller & Auditor General, Tim Burr commented:

'The Parole Board has a central role to play in the effective running of the judicial system. It is working hard to improve its performance in managing its workload. But if the Parole Board is to make decisions about the release of prisoners which are both fair and minimise the risk of harm to the public for the Board to do its job properly, it must have access to complete information. Currently that is not always happening.'

In her response as Chief Executive and Accounting Officer for the Board Christine Glenn commented:

'I welcome the findings of the NAO Report and am very pleased that it acknowledges the efforts we have made during the past year to improve our performance in handling our workload. I accept that there is still more to do in terms of reducing delays within the system and we are working with our partner agencies to raise standards across the Board.

' I am pleased that the Report highlights the quality of our new member training and mentoring programmes, as well as the written guidance we provide for members. The Report also acknowledges the important work of our Review Committee in providing rigorous
feedback for members in cases of serious further offending and identifying wider learning points.
 
'At the heart of our role is public safety and we retain our objective of making risk assessments which are rigorous, fair and timely, with the primary aim of protecting the public.'

The Board is now taking forward the agenda generally set by the Report and specifically has objectives in its Business Plan for 2008/09 to fulfil the NAO recommendations.

The Parole Board for England and Wales

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

Telephone 0845 251 2220