The Prisoners Review Board of Western Australia: What do the Public Know about Parole?

Abstract

One of the key doctrinal developments of the High Court of Australia in relation to its constitutional limitations jurisprudence is the structured test of proportionality. In recent cases involving the implied freedom of political communication, the Court has indicated that its constitutional adjudicative function will be informed by the extent to which a parliament has, or has not, considered issues of proportionality. In this article, we examine these developments through the parliamentary institutional lens: we ask what the implications are for Australian parliaments if the Court adopts an approach to proportionality reasoning that is sensitive to parliamentary fact-finding and deliberations. We explore how the Court's restraint in applying the proportionality test might have two, interrelated, consequences. The first is the type of factual material that the political branches should be seeking when they make determinations about whether a law is 'reasonably necessary' to achieve a stated objective, and whether the regime has struck the most appropriate 'balance' between competing claims on the public good; and how parliamentarians should deliberate about that material. The second is whether evidence could be led in court to satisfy the judiciary that a parliament has considered the relevant facts, and deliberated appropriately about them, and, if so, the process that should be adopted for leading such evidence.

Gendered views on parole: exploring how emotion and emotion management help to explain gender differences in the Australian public’s views on parole

“…Similar results have been reported internationally (Ostermann, 2013;Ostermann & Hyatt, 2016). Despite this, the public tend to overestimate the proportion of parolees who reoffend and often express a preference for prisoners to be released unconditionally at the end of their sentence, rather than being paroled (Gately et al, 2017;Roberts, 1988).…”

“…There, a larger proportion of respondents agreed (46%) than disagreed (38%) with the idea of parole release (Fitzgerald et al, 2016). A second study, which drew from qualitative interviews with 38 individuals from Western Australia, also revealed mixed support for parole, although also confirming that members of the Australian public hold very little accurate knowledge of this criminal justice process (Gately et al, 2017). These studies did not, however, examine whether Australian men and women differ in their support of parole.…”

“…While there are some differences across each Australian state and territory, parole generally refers to the conditional release of a prisoner after they have served a legislatively or judicially determined minimum term of imprisonment (Gately et al, 2017;Queensland Government, 2018). Parole release can occur either at the discretion of a parole board (referred to as 'discretionary parole') or automatically upon the expiry of a prisoner's minimum non-parole period set by the sentencing court (known as 'mandatory parole') (Fitzgerald et al, 2016).…”

“…Each Australian state and territory has its own parole board, which is responsible for determining when prisoners ought to be released or returned to prison (Gately et al, 2017). The factors weighed by parole boards when making release decisions differ across jurisdictions (for an overview, see Bartels, 2013), however, in most states legislative requirements dictate that primary consideration be given to issues of community safety.…”

Public opinion on sentencing and parole in Australia

“…This was also one of the findings of another recent study on parole conducted in Western Australia. In that study, Gately et al (2017) found that nearly two-thirds of the 38 interview respondents understood that parole involved releasing prisoners back into the community before completing their sentence, but many thought that this involved the sentence being shortened. In addition, although most respondents were aware of the concept of a 'parole board', there was limited understanding about how this worked.…”