Parole chief warns fewer prisoners are getting tested under new open prison rules
The chief executive of the Parole Board Martin Jones has warned that changes introduced last year by the justice secretary Dominic Raab to the criteria for transfer to open prison conditions will mean fewer prisoners will have the opportunity to be tested under the controlled conditions of an open prison.
This, he says, “is likely to inevitably lead to some people being released without this crucial testing, and others staying in custody for longer than might have been necessary for the protection of the public.”
Writing in a specially commissioned article on the history of parole in the January 2023 edition of the Prison Reform Trust’s Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile, the chief executive of the Parole Board says:
“Release is not the only issue which the board considers. For many years, it has advised the secretary of state on whether a person serving an indeterminate sentence should progress to an open prison. Whilst the final decision rests with the secretary of state, historically those recommendations have almost always been accepted, because the published evidence is strong; when a prisoner is afforded a successful period in open conditions it makes the public safer, and increases the chance that the individual can succeed on release by their gradual reintegration back into society.
“So, it is hard not to be concerned that since June 2022 the secretary of state has chosen not even to seek the board’s advice in a much higher proportion of cases, and his officials have chosen not to take our advice in nearly nine out of every 10 cases where we have recommended a progressive move to open conditions.”
Martin Jones, chief executive of the Parole Board
The new rules, introduced in June 2022 without consultation with any key stakeholders including the Parole Board, tightened the criteria for transfer from closed to open conditions.
In order to gain a transfer to an open prison under the new criteria, a prisoner must be:
- of low risk of abscond;
- a period in open conditions must be considered essential for their progression to release; and
- their transfer must not undermine public confidence in the criminal justice system.
The Parole Board can recommend a prisoner for transfer but it is for the Ministry of Justice to decide whether to accept or reject a recommendation. Until the change to Parole Board directions on 6 June, 94% of recommendations by the board that someone should progress to an open prison were accepted by the ministry. Since 6 June, 87% of such recommendations have been rejected.
In his article, Jones mounts a robust defence of the Parole Board and its record, highlighting how in recent years the Board has become more transparent and accountable in its work, including the first ever public parole hearing, which took place last month. Jones also highlights the Board’s impressive record on public protection:
“The facts demonstrate that the Parole Board is very cautious in its decision making. Only around one in four people considered by the Parole Board each year are released, and we know that the majority of people we release repay that trust in the community. Less than one of every 200 prisoners we release go on to be convicted of a serious offence within three years of their release. We do not have a crystal ball but we do know some facts about how risk changes over time. We also know that the opportunity to test in open conditions, education, employment, accommodation and support in the community are key to a safe and successful release. We should not shy away from telling victims and the public why and how we make our robust decisions.”
Martin Jones
Elsewhere in his article, Jones charts the gradual evolution of the parole system over the past three decades, which he says was “often precipitated by legislative change and judgments of both the domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights.”
“As long ago as 1989, the House of Lords Select Committee on Murder and Life Imprisonment recommended that the decision to release indeterminate prisoners should be an entirely judicial one, “independent of the executive.” The Government of the day rejected that argument, and until the 1990s the final decision on the release of those serving life sentences continued to rest with the Home Secretary. However, a series of judgments chipped away at political decision making, with Government and Parliament gradually ceding that the final decision on the release of prisoners should rest with a “court” and that the Parole Board was the right body to perform that function.
“Having worked on sentencing in that era, I know that not all of these changes were politically welcome, but I think they were right. They removed some of the political sting from high profile release decisions, but fundamentally they meant that decisions had to be based on evidence and the law.”
Martin Jones
The current justice secretary has said that he wants the Parole Board to adopt a more “precautionary” approach and has promised to legislate to enable him to intervene directly in Parole Board decision-making. Before Easter, it is expected that the government will introduce a victims and parole bill, which will include provision for a new power for the secretary of state to review and refuse a release decision made by the board.
The board has previously raised principled and legal objections to the secretary of state being “judge in his own cause” by taking on release decisions in high profile cases. In documents released to the Prison Reform Trust last year under freedom of information, it states its view that Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights requires decisions on release to lie with a court or court-like body, and it goes on to explain the basic problem in domestic law of anyone being “judge in their own cause”.
Commenting in the introduction to the briefing, Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, says:
“The parole system exists to assess and manage risk — it cannot eliminate it. But changes made in the summer of 2022 seems to have that goal in mind. As a result of changes made without parliamentary scrutiny, almost all opportunity for indeterminate sentence prisoners to move to an open prison has disappeared. Overnight, a 94% acceptance rate has turned into 87% rejected. The Parole Board’s advice — proven over many years to be both cautious and reliable — is now either not sought or ignored. Legislation to allow a political veto over the Parole Board’s expert decision on release in high-profile cases is promised for 2023.
“The cumulative effect of these changes is to make release an unfairly distant prospect for a growing number of prisoners, regardless of the progress they make over the many years set aside as punishment. The expectations on which both prisoners and staff rely to preserve hope and meaning in the long years of custody are being systematically undermined, and the punitive impact of the sentence in practice now exceeds what either parliament or the sentencing court intended. The legislation that created the discredited imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence in 2003 fell into a similar error, creating a punishment that was neither humane nor just — 20 years later a government with a short memory is repeating that mistake.”
