Dominic Raab was accused by a senior Parole Board official of making a “difficult job next to impossible” after making big policy changes without notice, newly uncovered documents show.
Members of the Parole Board also said the justice secretary would have to increase the number of prison places by 800 every year if he was to force through major changes.
The disclosures have emerged in documents released to the Prison Reform Trust under freedom of information laws. The charity requested copies of communications between the Parole Board’s chair, Caroline Corby, its chief executive, Martin Jones, and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).
In June, the board objected to a move by Raab to ban psychologists, prison staff and probation officers from informing the Parole Board whether they believe prisoners should be released.
Under the previous system, parole panels considering applications for release were given reports including risk assessments and recommendations from professionals who had worked with the inmate.
Last month, however, the system was changed by Raab so that the parole panel will no longer receive recommendations from state-appointed officials.
After receiving notification of the planned changes, Jones or Corby – the redacted documents do not disclose who – sent a blunt email to the MoJ.
“I am sorry to cut up rough, but I have to say it is extremely difficult and very disappointing that the Parole Board is the last to hear about important decisions which strike at the very heart of the difficult decisions we are asked to make. It makes our members’ already difficult job close to impossible,” the senior board representative wrote.
Raab has said he changed the rules on risk assessment because there was a risk that separate reports, whether from psychiatrists or probation officers and those who manage risk, might give conflicting recommendations.
The Parole Board is responsible for deciding when to release offenders who are subject to life sentences, indeterminate sentences for public protection, extended sentences, and certain recall sentences.
Raab forced through a number of changes to the system this year after a public outcry over the decision to release the double child killer and rapist Colin Pitchfork from jail as well as the London taxi driver and rapist John Worboys.
In another document, Parole Board chiefs told MoJ officials that proposals to strengthen the justice secretary’s powers to block Parole Board rulings would mean there would be an increased requirement of 800 prison places every year.
A letter sent in May from the board to the MoJ said: “It does seem inevitable to us that the higher the bar set by the release test, the greater the chances that hearings will get longer, and that the number of prisoners directed as safe to be released will reduce.
“If our release rate reduced from 25% to 20%, it would increase the prison population by approximately 800 places per year.”
Raab’s root-and-branch review proposed that all indeterminate sentence offenders should face a revised Parole Board release test “to ensure public protection is always the overriding consideration and a new power for ministers to block the release of the most dangerous offenders in the interests of public safety”.
Peter Dawson, the director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “These papers give us a glimpse of the chaos behind the scenes that Dominic Raab’s cavalier approach to changes in the parole system has caused. They reinforce the suspicion that some of those changes have been motivated solely by a personal obsession with the political inconvenience high-profile cases create.
“These papers show changes that are unjustified, unprincipled and underprepared – it is no wonder the people who have to implement them are angry.”
A government source said: “This just reinforces the case for reforming a parole process that has become skewed away from its number one priority, which must be protecting the public from dangerous criminals.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We are overhauling the parole system to make protecting the public from dangerous criminals its number one priority.
“Our reforms will champion the rights of victims, make public safety the overriding factor in all parole decisions, and introduce a ministerial check for the release of the most serious offenders – putting victims first, cutting crime and making our streets safer.”
