Lord Bingham set out the difficulties faced by the Parole Board when dealing with prisoners who maintained their denials of guilt: ‘Convicted prisoners who persistently deny commission of the offence or offences of which they have been convicted present the Parole Board with potentially very difficult decisions. Such prisoners will probably not express contrition or remorse or sympathy for any victim. They will probably not engage in programmes designed to address the causes of their offending behaviour. Since they do not admit having offended they will only undertake not to do in the future what they do not accept having done in the past. Where there is no admission of guilt, it may be feared that a prisoner will lack any motivation to obey the law in future. Even in such cases, however, the task of the Parole Board is the same as in any other case: to assess the risk that the particular prisoner if released on parole, will offend again. In making this assessment the Parole Board must assume the correctness of any conviction. It can give no credence to the prisoner’s denial. Such denial will always be a factor and may be a very significant factor in the Board’s assessment of risk, but it will only be one factor and must be considered in the light of all other relevant factors. In almost any case the Board would be quite wrong to treat the prisoner’s denial as irrelevant, but also quite wrong to treat a prisoner’s denial as necessarily conclusive against the grant of parole.’
Judges:
Lord Bingham of Cornhill LCJ
Citations:
Unreported, 1 March 2000
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Appeal from – Regina v Parole Board and others ex parte Oyston Admn 28-Jul-1999
. .
Cited by:
Cited – Roberts, Regina (on the Application of) v Secretary of State for Home Department Admn 12-Mar-2004
The claimant complained at a decision not to reduce his Category A status to that of a category B prisoner. He continued to maintain his innocence of the murders for which he had been convicted. He was therefore ineligible to take part in . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Prisons
Updated: 17 June 2022; Ref: scu.416335