‘Walking on ice’: The future of parole in a risk-obsessed society
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Author | Monica Barry |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619880555 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619880555
Theoretical Criminology
2021, Vol. 25(2) 325 –342
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480619880555
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‘Walking on ice’: The future
of parole in a risk-obsessed
society
Monica Barry
Independent Criminologist, UK
Abstract
The aim of risk assessment and management in criminal justice is increasingly about
minimizing opportunities to create harm to the public rather than maximizing
opportunities to create change in offenders. This seems to be particularly the case
in respect of parole, where the balance of public protection with rehabilitation has
become increasingly unstable in prioritizing the former. This article examines parole
decision making and management within the UK from the perspectives of both high
risk offenders on licence and parole professionals. It discusses two key drivers to
burgeoning recall rates: the stringency of licence conditions and the propensity of
professionals to recall in the name of risk elimination rather than risk reduction. The
article concludes that the effectiveness of parole is in question, not least in enabling re-
entry and reintegration of high risk prisoners. In particular, the future sustainability of
parole itself is deemed to be under threat.
Keywords
High risk, parole, public protection, recall, reintegration
Introduction
Risk assessment, for the purposes of identifying and classifying individuals or groups,
has been a feature of governance for hundreds of years. Within criminal justice, the first
risk prediction tool was piloted in the early 1930s (Harcourt, 2007), and today risk
assessment tools and techniques abound as a means of targeting the most effective and
Corresponding author:
Monica Barry, Independent Criminologist, UK.
Email: monicabarry.research@gmail.com
880555TCR0010.1177/1362480619880555Theoretical CriminologyBarry
research-article2019
Article
326 Theoretical Criminology 25(2)
efficient criminal justice interventions at the most dangerous offenders/offence groups.
Those high risk prisoners eligible for parole (the early release from prison on licence to
incentivize good behaviour in prison and to prepare for re-entry into the community),
and in particular those who have served long-term custodial sentences for sexual and
violent offences, are now less likely, however, to be granted—or to sustain the require-
ments of—parole. However, where parole is granted, such licensees are also increasingly
likely to be recalled to prison because of failing to comply with supervision requirements
or because of tensions among professionals tasked with the risk classification and man-
agement of such groups in the community.
This article argues that the term ‘high risk’ offers a justification to parole decision
makers (for whom public protection is the primary aim) to take pre-emptive action to
more closely monitor and more readily curtail supervision in the community for high risk
individuals. While the parole board may commit to releasing high risk categories of pris-
oner, other professionals within the community (namely police and probation) may have
a lower tolerance of managing that risk once those prisoners are released. In seeking to
contain—or more ambitiously to eliminate—risk at the expense of enabling rehabilita-
tion and reintegration, parole practices may prove counterproductive to public protection
since released prisoners without constructive support are more likely to fall back on
illegal means of survival (Harcourt, 2007; Robinson and McNeill, 2004; Weaver and
Barry, 2014a; Werth, 2011).
First, the literature on risk, notably its history and rise in criminal justice, is explored—
particularly in respect of parole. This article then highlights the lived experience of high
risk individuals subject to parole supervision and the views of professionals overseeing
the release of such prisoners into, and supervision within, the community. The implica-
tions for parole’s future of stringent licence conditions and professional propensities to
breach and recall are that the population of eligible prisoners for parole will become
increasingly high risk and high profile (Harcourt, 2007) as to make parole potentially
unsustainable in the longer term.
The rise of risk in criminal justice
The concept of risk is not new in criminal justice, and risk categorization has long been seen
as necessary, albeit controversial. Indeed, more than 250 years ago, Beccaria, cited in
Hudson (2003), suggested that treating certain offenders more harshly, based on risk, was
likely to be counterproductive to reducing crime. While originally used in criminal justice to
gauge the probability of recidivism, and thereby to maximize on cost-efficiency (Werth,
2019), risk assessment has increasingly been used to gauge the probability of harm, despite
Padfield (2002) suggesting that accurately predicting harm is highly unreliable.
Since the Second World War, rapid social and economic change has created uncer-
tainty and insecurity about increasingly tenuous social discipline, interpreted by succes-
sive governments as reflecting moral decline and the need for greater public protection
(Garland, 2001). This resulted in the view in the 1970s that ‘nothing works’ (Martinson,
1974), resulting in a growing shift from a more individualistic, rehabilitative stance to
one of collective managerialism and punitivism, not least for high risk offenders: ‘from
a focus on the singular case to group classification [. . .] [and from] knowing and
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