RELEASE ON LICENCE
A protective sentence should entail the minimum curtailment of the offender’s liberty compatible with its purpose of depriving the offender of liberty, beyond punishment for criminality, because of a further risk of harm.
Such a sentence will initially be served in maximum custody, but the offender should be released on licence as and when he no longer presents a real risk to the public, were he to be released, which should happen at the earliest opportunity. The condition of release should favour specific rather than general curtailments of liberty, but invariably include a power to recall on breach of any condition.The decision to release an offender on licence and to modify or terminate the conditions of the licence should rest with the Secretary of State for Justice for the duration of the sentence imposed by the court, subject to receiving the decision to review. As soon as the offender is formally notified that his entitlement to review is due, the offender should have access to an advisory body for advice and assistance in the procedure for review. The advisory board, known as the Protective Sentence Advisory Board, shall be independent of the prison administration.
The Secretary of State shall establish an independent body, known as the Parole Board, to carry out the review, assess and evaluate the risk of the offender re-offending, and shall not engage in any exercise of re-evaluating the protective sentence, save for evaluating the index offence for the sole task of risk assessment. The Parole Board shall be an impartial and independent tribunal in compliance with Article 5(4) of the European Convention on Human Rights and equally the principles of the Common Law of England; the Parole Board’s decision shall be automatically subject to judicial review, exercisable by 14 days’ notice but not subject to any appellate function, save for that established within the Parole Board to consider the availability of the material relevant to the conditions of release on licence. The Parole Board shall consult the Protective Sentence Advisory Board in any case that the Parole Board thinks ought in fairness to be consulted.
A prisoner released from custody in the course of a protective sentence should be subjected to an added element, namely supervision by the Probation Service until such time as the protective sentence expires. The prisoner, on recall, shall be subject to any further conditions of the licence by the Secretary of State for Justice after consultation with the Protective Sentence Advisory Board. If so, the Secretary of State for Justice may impose fresh conditions of the licence for a further period, not exceeding three years, after the sentence imposed by the trial court has expired. But it will do so only if the Secretary of State is of the opinion that such further conditions are desirable in the offender’s interest, or in the public interest.
The Parole Board shall consider the case of an offender as soon as is practicable after a protective sentence has been passed and should fix the date for review; in no case should this be later than that on which the prisoner will have served one third of the sentence imposed by the court, whichever be the less (alternatively, whatever fraction as would determine the prisoner’s eligibility for parole from a non-protective (ordinary determinate) sentence).