Concerns around Government’s changes to the parole system

The Prison Reform Trust says the Bill undermines the independence of the Parole Board and its function as a court like body.

A new briefing paper from the Prison Reform Trust sets out the concerns of many criminal justice commentators and lawyers around the proposed changes to the parole system put forward in the Victims and Prisoners Bill currently under consideration by parliament.

The penal reform charity argues that Part Three of the Bill (the section that deals with parole) has been tacked on to a victims bill without “sufficient consideration, scrutiny or consultation”. Indeed, many of its provisions were not even included in the root and branch review which the Government has been engaged in over the last few years.. PRT says that several of the proposed measures raise significant constitutional questions regarding the independence of the judiciary and compliance with human rights obligations. The Charity thinks that if these measures are passed into law, they are likely to be subject to further legal challenge.

Details

Part three of the bill takes forward proposals in the government’s root and branch review of the parole system. This includes provision for the creation of a “precautionary approach” to the release of a “top tier” of prisoners convicted of murder, rape, certain terrorist offences or who have caused or allowed the death of a child. For these prisoners, the bill provides for:

• A new power and procedure to usurp the Parole Board’s decisions in certain serious cases (sections 35 to 37).
• A new appeal route to the Upper Tribunal where the Secretary of State has used the new decision-making power (Sections 38 and 39).
• A new power to enable the Secretary of State or the Upper Tribunal to set or direct licence conditions (sections 40 and 41).

Readers might find it helpful to be reminded that:

• Over 90% of people released from prison each year are released automatically without Parole Board involvement.
• The Parole Board only consider release of a prisoner after the period set for punishment by the judge and Parliament has passed.
• The Board’s sole focus is risk, not punishment, and in almost all cases Parole Board consideration will mean that a prisoner spends longer in prison, sometimes decades.
• Less than 1 in 4 of those whose cases are considered each year, are released.
• Whilst decisions to release prisoners may sometimes attract criticism, the Parole Board’s track record is sound with only around 1% of people released on parole charged with a serious further offence and far fewer are actually convicted.

Concerns

The Prison Reform Trust sets out seven major concerns:

1. The Bill undermines the independence of the Parole Board and its function as a court like body.
2. The bill disapplies the Human Rights Act to a specific group.
3. The lack of procedural safeguards for prisoners and victims.
4. The bill undermines the Parole Board’s expertise in public protection and risk assessment.
5. The lack of evidence justifying the need for the Secretary of State in intervene in Parole Board decision-making.
6. Further increasing the prison population and its impact on prison regimes.
7. The disproportionate impact on Black and Asian prisoners, and young adults (aged 18–20).

The most fundamental of these objections (and, to my mind, the most puzzling) is the proposal to give the ultimate decision-making power of whether to release a “high risk” individual the decision of the Justice Secretary rather than that of the Parole Board. I understand the political attraction of being able to respond to media pressure not to release the person convicted of a notorious crime. However, almost everyone is eventually released and the decision to make a politician responsible for all parole decisions relating to serious offences is double-edged. If any of these individuals commits a serious further offence, the Justice Secretary will be held personally responsible – something very few politicians would see as an advantage.

The Government’s own impact assessment estimates that the provisions of the bill will require an additional 640 prison places by March 2034, with an additional annual running cost of £28.7m. Given the fact that the prison system is currently so overcrowded that earlier this year, remand prisoners were being held in police stations, it appears even harder to understand the Government’s persistence with this approach. Many commentators thought that the new Justice Secretary Damian Hinds would be unlikely to persist with this plan which most assumed to be a personal project of his predecessor, Dominic Raab. However, this does not appear to be the case and we must wait and see whether politicians of all parties amend the legislation as it goes through parliament.