The Parole Board. Working with others to protect the public.
News
28/02/2006
The Parole Board welcomes and will study carefully the Report of the HM Inspectorate of Probation Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the release of Damien Hanson and Elliott White. The issues raised in the Report are rightly ones of great concern to both the public at large and professionals working in the criminal justice field.
It is vitally important that we learn from such cases and apply that learning to the way we handle cases in the future, so that we can do everything within our power to prevent a repeat of the tragic events that led to the murder of John Monckton.
Parole Board members are tasked with making judgements about whether and when it is safe to release offenders back into the community. The safety of the public is always our overriding concern.
"The most important objective of the Parole Board is to ensure that rigorous risk assessment procedures are in place to underpin our role in protecting the public. The quality of information available to Parole Board members is crucial to the success of this risk assessment process and I warmly welcome the commitment made by the Home Secretary, in his 5 year strategy for protecting the public and reducing re-offending, to provide a full report on each offender that we consider for release.
Following Home Office research into the usefulness of the Parole Board member interviews of offenders, 90% of the funding for them was withdrawn in 2004. As a consequence only a small number of interviews have been carried out. In the Boards Business Plan for 2006/07 I have proposed that we re-introduce them selectively for violent and sexual offenders with a sharper focus on the risk such offenders may pose.
I fully accept the principal recommendation for the Parole Board of the HMIP Report that we should specify clearly how we wish to deal with situations where an offender's circumstances change between the date of the Board's decision to release and the prisoners release date. Work is already in hand to put in place firm arrangements to achieve this.
In 2003 the Parole Board set up a Review Committee to look into cases where prisoners on licence have been recalled to prison suspected of violent or sexual offences. The Committee looks for any learning points from such cases for both the Board and its partner agencies. We are currently strengthening this review process by including distinguished individuals from outside the membership of the Parole Board on the Committee to ensure an external perspective."
Professor Sir Duncan Nichol, Chairman of the Parole Board
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
For further information please call Tim Morris, Head of Communications for the Parole Board, on 020-7217 0564 during office hours or on 07725-927954 out of hours or e-mail tim.morris5@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Grenadier House, 99-105 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 2DX
Telephone 0845 251 2220