This is a guest post by Professor Mike Maguire, retiring External Academic, Research Governance Group on the Inaugural Parole Board Research Governance Group Conference.
Shaping the future of parole
On 20th November I spent an informative day at an inaugural one-day conference in Jesus College, Cambridge, organised by the Parole Board’s Research Governance Group (RGG) and attended by Parole Board members, senior managers and staff, academics, lawyers, and other specialist practitioners.
The event highlighted key current issues and debates around parole in England and Wales, including transparency, implications of the Sentencing Bill, remote hearings, methods of risk assessment, and questions about specific categories of offender. There were also broader discussions about the future of parole and the form it takes in other jurisdictions. A key cross-cutting theme was the importance of high-quality research to fuel evidence-based policy and practice.
Transparency
The first plenary session focused on transparency, with challenging presentations by the authors of the Transparency Review (HHJ Peter Rook and HHJ Michael Topolski) and a leading academic writer on parole, Professor Stephen Shute. Their message was that genuine transparency is vital to the legitimacy of the Board, and despite significant progress since the Worboys case in 2018 (including publication of parole decision summaries and introduction of some public hearings), reforms must go further and faster. The Review calls for more public hearings, victim observation of private hearings, and trialling live-streaming of hearings to accredited journalists. All three speakers emphasised a need for deep-rooted cultural change, embedding a mindset and practices in which transparency is not ‘token’ and the ‘default position’ is disclosure. This should include replacing summaries with redacted decisions and routinely naming panel members. Incidentally, in discussing this with members, I found agreement with most proposals, but some safety concerns about being named publicly in individual cases.
Psychological risk assessments
Break-out groups followed. Professor Mary McMurran reported findings from interviews with Parole Board members concerning their views about case formulations in psychological risk assessments (PRAs). These integrate a range of factors about a person into a structured hypothesis about why they offend. While some found them useful, others were sceptical of the value of information about matters they did not regard as directly related to the assessment of risk. Important lessons for PRA authors seem to be that they should integrate analysis of risk or protective factors, rather than simply list them; and they should ensure that the relevance to risk assessment is made clear. A further viewpoint worthy of consideration is that formulations should be largely restricted to more complex cases, where some argued that they add greater value.
IPPs
The parallel breakout session, led by Lisa Smith and Jo Capelin of HMPPS Psychology Services, presented findings from the former’s research on prisoners’, staff and Parole Board members’ experiences of the IPP Sentence. She found that IPP sentenced prisoners’ can experience the sentence in ways that give rise to ‘threat based survival strategies’ to try to mitigate pain caused by the uncertainty of release, their sense of powerlessness and the challenges of the prison environment, often combined with pre-imprisonment trauma histories. Such strategies can affect beliefs relating to trust of authorities and engagement with rehabilitation, which are important considerations for risk assessment and the parole process. These findings suggest (a) that desistance-based and trauma-informed environments can be helpful and rehabilitative for IPP sentence prisoners, and (b) that PRAs and the Parole Board should examine the impact of the sentence upon IPP sentenced prisoners’ behaviour and attitudes. Consideration of the support and reflective opportunities for staff and Parole Board members were highlighted given the complexity of the work with the IPP cohort. The findings relating to PRAs indirectly support Mary McMurran’s assertion of the value of well-constructed and well-presented formulations in complex cases, as well as the use of the Power Threat Meaning framework and ‘compassion focused’ approaches, which seem particularly relevant to this population.
Remote hearings
In an afternoon breakout session, Dr David Peplow and Dr Jake Phillips presented findings from interviews with prisoners who had experienced remote oral hearings, as well as linguistic analysis comparing transcripts of face-to-face and remote hearings. They reported that remote hearings produced more communication problems and more adversarial questions, and prisoners were more likely to feel they had not been listened to or respected. Whether such differences affect the legitimacy or outcomes of parole proceedings is not yet clear. However, as remote hearings are doubtless here to stay, it seems important to explore ways of reducing their negative impact, and to consider more sympathetically requests from prisoners, especially the most vulnerable, to have an in-person hearing.
Women
In the parallel session, Ellen Bishop presented interview findings from her doctoral research with women prisoners, focusing on their preparation (or lack of it) for a parole hearing. Highlighting cases where the woman had little knowledge or understanding of the process, as well as experiencing major anxiety, she argued that panels should be made more aware of these issues and that women should be given more trauma-informed support to assist their preparation.
Parole research
Cecilia French, Parole Board CEO, then spoke about the importance of research for the Parole Board and progress made since the creation of RGG in 2018. She highlighted the significant number of studies that RGG has facilitated, and how findings have been used to improve policy and practice. As the External Academic in RGG, I have been impressed by the openness of the organisation to external scrutiny, including critical scrutiny, and the help given to researchers to access documents and contact interviewees. However, I would add that progress is handicapped by the fact that the Parole Board has no funding for research. It would be a major boost if it had even a small budget to seed fund projects to explore topics in its priorities list. Another way forward might be to propose to major research funders that they fund a linked package of projects on parole, the Board providing the necessary access.
Despite the obstacles, and largely due to the proactive work of RGG, there is now a growing group of academic researchers with a strong interest in parole, and new publications are appearing. One such academic, Professor Harry Annison, was the next speaker. With Nicola Carr and Thomas Guiney, he recently published an edited book (Parole Futures) in which international writers describe and critique core features of their countries’ parole systems. He commented that while there is wide variation in aims, philosophy and practice, there are also common problems, with many countries experiencing crises of administration, legitimacy, and/or ideas. Professor Annison used examples from Japan, Belgium and USA to illustrate how well-intentioned policies can have unintended negative consequences. He concluded that there is much to be learned from studying other jurisdictions – not to copy others’ approaches, but to take lessons, foster reflexivity and clarify thinking about our own approach to parole.
The future of parole
In the final plenary session, the Cambridge host of the conference, Professor Nicky Padfield, gave a general warning about ‘icebergs ahead’, arguing that parole is a small cog in a penal system under pressure and will not easily escape the impact of major problems in prisons and probation as well as the growth of ‘penal populism’. She argued that it is vital to remember that parole can have broader purposes beyond its current ‘risk obsession’, and that rehabilitation and reintegration were once prominent goals in its mission.
Lastly, Cecilia French and Lucy-Linton-Briggs (Parole Board COO) discussed implications of the changes to the recall system contained in the Sentencing Bill. They presented modelling showing that with the introduction of Fixed Term Recalls for most standard determinate sentence prisoners, there will be significant drops in caseloads and oral hearings. This, they stated, will create challenges, but also opportunities – for example, to improve the management of more complex cases, develop transparency and enhance training.
In conclusion, this was a successful first conference in what will hopefully become a regular event to showcase and disseminate results of research.
More information about the RGG and research at the Parole Board can be found on the following web pages: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/parole-board/about/research
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
