Emirsoylu, R (on the application of) v The Parole Board

A Parole Board must ensure that it has sufficient information to make a properly informed decision about recall and continued detention. That duty is informed by the public interest both in protecting the public and in preventing unnecessary detention. The Board is not required to obtain a fresh probation assessment whenever it rejects one factual allegation forming part of the recall decision. It may rely on existing reports where the risk assessment remains materially independent of that allegation and the reports already address the relevant matters. The parties’ failure, despite legal representation, to request further evidence is an important consideration, although it is not invariably conclusive. The Board must make its own assessment of risk and manageability in the community.

The claimant challenged the Parole Board’s decision of 15 December 2006, which upheld his recall to prison and set a review date no later than 1 December 2007. The Board rejected an allegation that he had committed a further sexual offence, but found that he had deliberately failed, for the third time, to return to his hostel after release on police bail. It concluded that he presented a high risk of reconviction and that effective supervision in the community was no longer possible.

The claimant argued that the Board should have adjourned or fixed an early review to obtain probation reports based on its finding that the alleged offence was unproved. The central issue was whether the Board could lawfully reach a properly informed decision without a fresh assessment.

1. The application for judicial review was dismissed. The Parole Board’s decisions in December 2006 were lawful.

2. The Board’s duty is to consider whether it has sufficient information to reach a properly informed decision about risk, recall and continued detention. The public interest includes both protecting the public and avoiding detention longer than necessary. The Board is not confined to the parties’ positions, but their informed stance is relevant. A legally represented claimant who did not request a probation officer’s attendance, further reports or an early review will ordinarily face substantial difficulty in complaining that the Board failed to obtain them.

3. The Board had to consider the significance of the changed factual finding, what could be obtained from the existing reports and what further reports might add. It did so. The reports showed a high or very high risk arising from the claimant’s established pattern of sexual offending, previous failures of supervision and limited progress. That assessment was not dependent on the unproved allegation.

4. The Board was entitled to conclude for itself that safe management of a high risk in the community required a correspondingly high level of co-operation with supervision. The claimant’s repeated failures to comply with the residence requirement, particularly the deliberate third breach, and the absence of sufficient self-discipline justified the conclusion that effective supervision was no longer possible. A fresh probation assessment was not necessary to reach that conclusion.

5. The decision was fact-sensitive. The court did not hold that a changed factual background could never require further assessment. In this case, however, the existing material enabled the Board to examine the competing public interests and reach a properly informed decision.