ABSTRACT
Early release, with and without conditions, has long been a feature of English sentencing and prison practice. A key date was 1967, when the government decided that the decision to release a prisoner could be helped by the advice of a body of experts: Parliament created a Parole Board. Initially, this body had an advisory role, but the Home Secretary decided to delegate certain decisions to it. Another important stage began in 1991, when the window of parole (conditional release) ‘opportunity’ shrank, but the Board gained more powers. It began oral, more court-like, hearings for some life-sentence prisoners, and over the years this expanded to cover the cases of all lifers, and those who disputed their recall to prison. But all powers of early release (now always conditional) for fixed-term prisoners have recently been returned to the executive. The system today is bifurcated: a Parole Board hearing for ‘lifers’, but fixed, half-time release for most determinate prisoners, with in addition up to four and a half months 1 discretionary earlier release. The cases of recalled prisoners who are not re-released within 28 days are also considered by the Parole Board. As we shall see, two other characteristics of the English sentencing and conditional release system are the frequency of change and the complexity of the rules. At the time of writing, another review of the process has been announced.
