The decision to release John Worboys has been overturned in a ruling by the High Court, which said that the Parole Board must reconsider its verdict, and also make its decision transparent. In the piece below, which was first published in the Spectator in January, Matthew Parris questions whether parole boards’ decisions should be open to challenge. Here, James Forsyth argues that more transparency is a good thing.
Hard cases make bad law. The release on parole of the ‘black cab rapist’, John Worboys, is a hard case. But ministers should not be panicked into throwing open parole board decision–making to public inspection.
The police have blundered, the sentence was surely too lenient, and the failure to inform his victims was disgraceful. But it was not upon some careless whim that Parliament barred parole boards from giving reasons, and the new Justice Secretary, David Gauke, should think hard before reversing the interdiction.
Much of the furore provoked by the release of this serial attacker of women after ten years in prison really arises not from the parole board’s decision but the original sentence and the flawed prosecution process which helped produce it.
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