CCR Seminar Series: Accountability, parole and risk

The Centre for Criminological Research is hosting a series of seminars and events centred around the theme of ‘Accountability’. Our first event on Wednesday 9 October will be a hybrid panel discussion considering accountability, parole and risk, with the following speakers: Professor Nicola Padfield (University of Cambridge), Professor Chris Bennett (University of Sheffield) and Professor Stephen Shute (University of Sussex).

Lunch will be served at 1pm prior to the event outside the Moot Court, with the speaker session starting at 1.30pm.

There are multiple options for the tickets of this event. Please ensure you have selected the ticket with the attendance you would prefer, and let Emily Rose Hay (e.r.hay@sheffield.ac.uk) know if there are any dietary requirements. A link will be provided on the day of the event to all those who have registered to attend virtually. On-campus ticket holders should be prepared to show their ticket on arrival at the event.

For further information, please contact either of the event coordinators, Dr Marie Hutton or Dr Emily Rose Hay.

This will be a seminar with three speakers:

Professor Stephen Shute, University of Sussex: “Radical Transparency: Opening the Parole System in England and Wales to Greater Scrutiny and Accountability”

In his 1914 book on banking, US Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis famously wrote that sunlight was “the best of disinfectants” and “electric light the most efficient policeman”. Following the decision taken by the Parole Board for England and Wales in December 2017 to direct the release of the so-called "Black cab rapist", John Worboys, a series of changes were made to the parole system which were designed to render it more transparent and accountable. The hope is that these measures will restore the public and political confidence in parole that was so damaged by the Worboys case. The reforms that were introduced have included holding some parole hearings in “public”; introducing decision summaries which are primarily made available to victims and sometimes to the press; and the creation of a new “reconsideration mechanism” which allows some parole decisions to be given a second look without the need for the intervention of the courts. The strengths and weaknesses of these measures will be examined in this paper. It will also ask what else needs to be done to move parole in England and Wales further into the sunlight. The paper will conclude with some reflections on the dilemmas that all parole systems face when deciding which prisoners can and which cannot be safely released into the community.

Bio: Stephen Shute has been Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice at the University of Sussex since 2009. From 2014 to 2021, he was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University. Previously he worked at the University of Birmingham (where he was Dean of Arts and Social Sciences and also Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice) and at the University of Oxford (where he was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College). He had published widely and his work has been cited by policy makers, law reformers, and academics throughout the world. He has also been a member of several national and international bodies. For example, he was Inaugural Chair of the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee; a Founding Member of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody; a Founding Member of the Ministerial Advisory Board on Joint Inspection in the Criminal Justice System; and a member of the Joint Audit Committee for Sussex Police and the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner. In 2023 he commenced a five-year term as President of the International Penal and Penitentiary Foundation (IPPF).

Professor Nicola Padfield, University of Cambridge: Accountability parole and risk

Nicky will reflect on the nature of accountability for Parole Board decision-making in England and Wales: public accountability (should more hearings be heard in public?); political accountability (should the Board be more independent of Government?); legal accountability (are appeal mechanisms appropriate?). Her conclusions will lead her to raise some fundamental questions about the purpose of ‘parole’ today.

Bio: Nicola Padfield is Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Penal Justice at the Law Faculty, University of Cambridge. She was Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge from 2013 - 2019. She has a broad research lens, engaged in both ‘hard’ law and in socio-legal-criminological research. She is a leading European expert on sentencing law, including the law and practice of release from (and recall to) prison. Her books include The Criminal Justice Process: Text and Materials (5th edition, 2016); Criminal Law (10th edit, 2016); Beyond the Tariff: Human rights and the release of life sentence prisoners(2002). She sat as a Recorder (part-time judge) in the Crown Court from 2002-2014, and is a Bencher of the Middle Temple.

Professor Christopher Bennett, University of Sheffield: Experts, Lotteries and Legitimacy in Criminal Justice: The Case of the Parole Board

In the first part of this talk, I look at whether there is a crisis of confidence in expert decision-making structures in criminal justice, and if so why. I focus on the case of the Parole Board. I suggest that justified public confidence in governance mechanisms such as the Parole Board requires i) trust in public officials, or ii) the existence of robust mechanisms of control and accountability; and that public anxiety over parole decisions suggests that neither obtains. The second part turns to an examination of potential solutions. First, I examine the prospects for rehabilitating trust in public officials and experts. Although I do not altogether reject the relevance of trust, I argue that this route is a long one, and furthermore that it does not address some of the most important issues about legitimacy. I therefore argue that decisions should be made in conditions of greater democratic oversight. However, by this I do not mean that institutions like the Parole Board should lose their political independence, and that they should be made more accountable to elected officials. Rather I argue that such decisions should be made, or at any rate overseen, by a board of unelected, randomly selected laypeople: citizen juries with real decision-making power. Drawing on recent work by Alexander Guerrero on ‘lottocratic governance,’ I consider some of the strengths, as well as some of the problems, of this jury-inspired model of participatory democracy.

Bio: Christopher Bennett is a Professor of Philosophy in the School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities at the University of Sheffield; and a Deputy Director of CCR. He has written widely on foundational questions relating to criminal justice, such as the justification of punishment and its alternatives; the relation of criminal justice to interpersonal interactions like blame, apology and forgiveness; so-called 'invisible punishment'; and the pros and cons of greater public participation in decision-making in criminal justice.

Location: Hybrid

• On campus: Moot Court, Bartolomé House

• Online: Google Meet