Many offenders in jail too long, says parole chief

Large numbers of prisoners are spending longer in jail than necessary due to the increasingly risk-averse attitude of the public and politicians, according to the chair of the parole board.

On the day the board’s annual account was published, Sir David Latham criticised society for keeping in jail offenders who pose little or no risk to the public.

“Our release rates have reduced in the last few years in a way which is arguably an overreaction to public concern about the reoffending by released prisoners,” said Latham. “Actually, the serious further offending rate of released prisoners is just 1-2%, a level that has remained stable for many years.

“It is grotesquely unfair because in relation to a prisoner for whom there’s a one in 10 risk of him committing a future offence but a nine in 10 chance of him not, if you’re risk averse, you keep those nine in prison for significantly longer than you should do.”

Latham said past remarks by politicians had been unfortunate.

“There was a distinct change after [former home secretary] John Reid made a speech to the parole board [in 2006] in reaction to one or two rather dramatic events, suggesting – wholly unfairly – that the parole board members were not doing enough to protect the public”.

Latham said the problem centred around prisoners who were serving indeterminate sentences. They can only be released if the board is satisfied they no longer represent an “unacceptable risk to the public”.

At present there are 14,000 such prisoners in the system, a substantial proportion of the currently sentenced population of around 85,000.

Of the 14,000, around 7,500 are serving life sentences and 6,500 serving sentences of imprisonment for public protection, or IPPs, bought in five years ago as a result of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

“In 2004, there were 5,500 prisoners serving life sentences, meaning that all those who reached their tariff period were entitled to regular reviews,” Latham said. “In 2005, the sentences for IPPs were bought in, so there was this sudden jump.

“The problem very simply is that no one had predicted that there would be that increase,” he said. “To say it’s the parole board’s problem is putting the cart before the horse. No one had thought through the consquences for IPPs.”

Since beginning his job in Feburary 2009, Latham said, he had “put in place the building blocks to address the problem” by hiring more judges.

The annual report and accounts for 2009-2010 shows that the board considered 24,204 cases during the year, down 15% on the previous year.

This fall is due to a rise in the number of IPPs and the associated phasing out of determinate sentences and recall cases. During the year, there were 45% fewer determinate sentence cases considered by paper panels (where the prisoner is not present) compared with a 20% rise in three-member, indeterminate sentence oral hearings (which normally take place in a prison, with the offender and others able to give evidence).

The accounts also show a 22% fall in the number of recall cases considered.

The number of determinate sentence cases where parole was granted has decreased by 24% in the past year, the second year running that the number has fallen. However, Latham said this is because such sentences are being phased out so only the most serious – on longer, fixed-term sentences – remain in the system.

Just 50 determinate sentence prisoners were recalled from parole during the year after an allegation of a further offence, down from 97 in 2008-09. Out of an average of 1,263 such prisoners on parole during the year, this is a recall rate of 4%, which is the same as the previous year.

Ninety prisoners on life licence were recalled last year for any reason, out of a total of 1,797 life sentence prisoners under active supervision in the community. The rate is stable compared to the previous 12 months: 5%, compared to last year’s 5.4%.

The report also reveals the difficulty the board has in keeping to its performance targets: during the last year, just 21% of dossiers on prisoners were provided to the body on time. “This makes it impossible for us to meet our target of issuing 80% of intensive case management directions or no decisions by week 12 of the generic parole process,” said Latham.

The delays meant that the board was only able to determine 32% of oral hearing cases on time.