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

A decision by the Parole Board on recategorisation will be unlawful only if it is irrational or perverse in the public law sense. The Board may rely on evidence containing factual errors where those errors are corrected and the opinion has an independent evidential foundation. Risk must be assessed holistically; alcohol may be a significant factor without explaining the whole of an offender’s conduct. A cautious decision to defer transfer to open conditions may be rational where the prisoner remains a medium risk and unresolved issues remain.

The claimant, an indeterminate sentence prisoner held in Category C, sought judicial review of the Parole Board’s decision not to recommend his transfer to Category D open conditions. The Board had heard replacement probation evidence, including evidence from a senior probation officer who had not personally interviewed him and who made errors about courses he had undertaken or been assessed for.

The Board nevertheless concluded that the claimant’s risk factors had not been sufficiently analysed, that alcohol did not account for the totality of his offending, and that transfer would be premature. Permission was granted on a narrow irrationality and perversity ground. The issue was whether the Board’s reliance on the evidence and its conclusion were legally irrational.

1. The claim was dismissed. The claimant had not shown that the Board’s decision was perverse or irrational. Judicial review could not be used as an appeal on the merits.

2. The evidence of the senior probation officer contained factual errors concerning the claimant’s suitability for, or completion of, particular courses. Those errors were corrected during the hearing. They did not form the foundation or principal foundation of her opinion that alcohol was not the claimant’s only risk factor.

3. That opinion had an independent evidential platform in the psychiatric report and the offender supervisor’s report. The Board was entitled to consider the evidence in the dossier as a whole and was not shown to have proceeded on the basis that the erroneous courses evidence remained correct.

4. The Board was entitled to take a holistic view of the offending. It was not illogical to conclude that alcohol was a significant disinhibiting factor without accepting that it explained the totality of the claimant’s violence or that removal of alcohol eliminated the risk.

5. A cautious approach to moving a prisoner to open conditions was rational where the prisoner remained assessed as a medium risk and unresolved issues remained. The written material, particularly the offender supervisor’s report, provided ample justification for deferring transfer and recommending a fuller psychological assessment.

6. The court expressed sympathy for the claimant because he was beyond tariff expiry, had behaved well in custody, and had faced relatively stale written material. It hoped that the next review would involve psychological or psychiatric assessment and a shorter interval between preparation of the dossier and the hearing.