07 February 2008
Sentencing
The Parole Board is too close to government and should be more independent, the Court of Appeal has ruled. In an earlier ruling, the High Court found that the board had failed to demonstrate objective independence from the executive, thereby impeding the chances of prisoners being given a fair parole hearing. The justice minister, Jack Straw, argued that the board was a long-standing institute and that the High Court’s findings were unjustified. However, in R (on the application of Brooke) v Parole Board; R (on the application of Murphy) v Parole Board the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, said that the High Court’s findings were “fully supported by the evidence”. He said that the cause of the problem had been the “change of function of the board from that of a body advising the secretary of state in relation to an executive discretion to release prisoners whose penal sentences were part served, to that of a judicial body assessing whether continued deprivation of a prisoner’s liberty was justified because of the risk that he would re-offend if released”.
He said there was still uncertainty about which role the board was performing in the case of a diminishing number of prisoners sentenced under previous regimes.
