Parole Madness

Parole Madness

By: Ben Gunn

Lifer Ben Gunn considers the parole board are ‘dredging the wilder excesses of dossiers and credibility to find any reason to give knock-backs’.

For reasons best known to the Editor, people from the Parole Board Secretariat occasionally contribute to Inside Time. Personally, I wouldn't like people to know that's where I worked, but there you go. These forays into print try to persuade us that the Parole Board are bastions of reason and light.

Being 16 years over tariff, I've had more dealings with the Board than any sane man should have to bear. Trust me, I have met marmosets with greater insight. The whole process of parole is such a monstrous affront to rationality and justice that just thinking about it makes my spleen try to eat itself.

From the beginning then. Parole Board members are selected by the Home Secretary. Despite this, the Courts accept they are independent of the Executive. As well as Judges, there are sprinklings of psychiatrists and criminologists. Not exactly open-minded professions. Each of them adopts a particular world-view. That's why they were appointed to the Board. Shrinks and social scientists who don't bow before the great God of Offending Behaviour Courses and OASys risk assessments are not invited to play in this screwed-up game. And don't get me started on the ‘independent members’ - ex-coppers, probation, the odd TV executive (don't ask).

They are then fed gibberish dressed up as fact in their training, further predisposing them to accept black as white when they are reading dossiers. One example - the overwhelming urge they have to send lifers to Category D conditions instead of releasing them. I will keep repeating this until someone finds evidence to the contrary - open prison is based on the myth of institutionalisation. It’s based on crap. But the Board invariably sends us there, for at least two years, because they just can't see beyond the horizons of their own inbred, ill-founded beliefs.

In the parole process we have reports written by staff who just don't bother to interview the subject. Worse, so many of these staff abrogate their professional responsibilities by refusing to make their own recommendations - they invariably copy those of psychology or probation. That undermines the whole point of the process, which is to get a rounded picture of the inmate. Spinelessly copying other staff reports is not only unjust, it is defrauding the taxpayer.

Writing reports isn't difficult; for the hard of thinking there is a whole chapter in the lifer manual. It's full of grand aspirations, such as evidencing claims. It’s quite funny, in its twisted, parallel universe way. So often lazy staff repeat old allegations, endlessly rehashing ancient disputes. Add in a careless use of language. There is a world of difference between ‘he has done no offending behaviour courses’, and ‘he has been assessed for, and found to not require, offending behaviour courses’. Both can mean the same thing; but the latter allows the Parole Board to claim that the man has not addressed his offence - as happened to me lately - due to lazy, incompetent staff.

Added to those staff reports is the summary of the offence, and summary of previous reports. The offence summary is a rehash of the Prosecution’s claims; as if being found guilty is enough to say that everything the prosecution claimed was correct. The summary of past reports is a collection of the worst paragraphs from old reports. No context, no revision in the light of new information, no evidence to substantiate claims - a miscellany of cobbled together bile.

So by the time the dossier arrives, the process is doubly screwed-up. A blinkered Parole Board, a worthless set of reports - this really sets the stage for a decent hearing doesn't it? And as Barrister Stanley Best recently highlighted in Inside Time, indifferent lawyers can become a hurdle in their own right. Looking at the adverts in IT, you'd get the impression that the nation is over-run by 'prison law specialists'. It so isn't.

That parole answers can be baffling is quite understandable in the light of the stupidities I have outlined above. So far, so much we already know. But to add to this dunghill, for the last few months a lot of staff, particularly probation, have been excelling in writing reports and making recommendations that are so flawed on the face of the evidence that they are embarrassing. We know why – because ever since the Anthony Rice case (a serial sex and violent offender who murdered a 40-year-old mother nine months after being released from prison on licence) everybody involved in the parole process has been blinded by the fear of publicity. None more so than the Parole Board themselves. Time after time, people are going before panels with no work to do, no issues to address. I even had a set of reports that managed to make no mention of any risk whatsoever. And yet, since Rice, man after man has been handed what I can only describe as being a vindictive, desperate knock-back. The Board are dredging the wilder excesses of dossiers and credibility to find any reason to give knock-backs.

I'm sure this isn't a conspiracy. It is a shared mindset, 'groupthink', an individual and collective determination not to be hoisted on the end of the tabloid rope. This is a common human trait, and nothing that is usually blameworthy. But Board members are paid a healthy sum for their time and experience, which they are tasked to use in a fair and professional manner. For the past few months they have lost their heads. Professionalism has gone down the drain. Such a pity they are so contemptuous of the people who come before them that they will screw us over rather than do their jobs properly.

It may be unfair to level my barrels at the Board. But as they are so keen that we take responsibility for our actions, I wondered if they would care to try it? They can deny all of this .. but I'll bet my overworked spleen that when, in a year or so, the Parole Board figures come out for this year, they will show a remarkable downward turn for the second half of 2006. Watch this space!

Ben Gunn is currently resident in HMP Shepton Mallet