“You have been in prison for a very long time and are described as a model prisoner. However as observed by previous panels your ability to function well in the present environment gives little indication of how you will behave in the community, particularly when exposed to the pressures of an intimate relationship. Your risk of serious harm to others remains high in such a situation and will remain so until the professionals can properly assess your risk factors, and until you can demonstrate positively that your risk of serious harm has been reduced. The panel is not satisfied that you meet the test for release; it does not therefore direct it. Neither is it satisfied that that you are suitable for transfer to open conditions; before that can happen, it is essential that you are seen to address your outstanding risk factors. Professionals will need to think creatively about how this might be achieved, given your continued denial. There are interventions that will not require you to admit the index offending and these should be explored.”
“The issue is whether the release decision was so outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it.”
“If [the Applicant] had accepted responsibility for the offences it would have been possible during his sentence for him to be assessed to ascertain whether he would benefit from undertaking a psychologically informed intervention such as a Therapeutic Community. As a consequence of his maintenance of innocence, he has not undertaken any significant offence focused intervention prior to the recent one-to-one work with his prison offender manager.”
“Although [the Applicant] has not taken the recommended pathway of undertaking [the psychologically based programme which Dr P had advised against], which [the Applicant] has refused to do, he has successfully completed a one-to-one intervention with his prison offender manager that covered a large part of the work that would have been undertaken in [that programme]. In consequence [the Applicant] has at least partially and possibly fully achieved this target.”
“She said that they had fourteen 90-minute sessions, and although it was originally anticipated she would have a co-worker, this was not possible but the work was subject to the supervision of her senior probation officer. She said that the work was based on the “Toolkit for Change” material. She agreed the work had been on [the Applicant’s] terms and if he had undertaking [the programme which had been one of his sentence planning targets] he would have done so with two or three other participants. She said [the Applicant] acknowledged some intimate partner abuse, such as for example locking his partner in the bathroom, but his acceptance of this kind of behaviour appeared to be minimal.”
“[Ms W] did … consider that the risk management plan was sufficient for [the Applicant’s] needs. She stated that she considered [the Applicant’s] risk is definitely manageable in the community, that he has done all the necessary work to bring about a reduction in risk and that if he was to transfer to open conditions she did not consider that he would pose an abscond risk but did not consider time in open conditions to be essential.”
“The PNC [Police National Computer] indicates [the Applicant] never received a warning, reprimand, or caution. There have however been concerns that he engaged in intimate partner violence.”
“If weight is to be given to an allegation of criminal or other misbehaviour in the risk assessment, the Board should first attempt to investigate the facts to enable it to make findings on the truthfulness of the allegation.” “If, as may often be the case despite its efforts to obtain the needed information, the Board is not able to make such a finding, it should investigate the facts to make findings as to the surrounding circumstances of the allegation which may or may not point to behaviour by the prisoner which is relevant to the assessment of risk.” “In some circumstances, however, the Board may not be able to make findings of fact as to the truth of an allegation either because of an inability to obtain sufficiently reliable evidence or because it would be unfair to expect the prisoner to give an answer to the allegation when he is facing criminal or prison disciplinary proceedings in relation to that allegation.” “In such circumstances the Board, having regard to public safety, may take into account the allegation or allegations and give it or them such weight as it considers appropriate in a holistic assessment of all the information before it, where it is concerned that there is a serious possibility that those allegations may be true.” “But the Board must proceed with considerable caution in this exercise because of the consequences of its decision on the prisoner. Procedural fairness requires the Board to give the prisoner the opportunity to make submissions about how the Board ought to proceed. There may be circumstances where, because of the inadequacy of the information available to the Board, it concludes that it should not take account of an allegation at all. There may also be circumstances where the information is less than would be desired but the allegation causes sufficient concern as to risk that the Board treats it as relevant.” “Its assessment of the weight to be attached to an allegation is subject to the constraints of public law rationality. Thus, a failure to make findings of fact where it was reasonably practicable to do so or an irrational reliance on insubstantial allegations could be a ground of a successful public law challenge.”