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9787/82
It is the duty of the Parole Board to advise the Secretary with respect to
release on licence under Section 60 (1) and recall under Section 62 of persons whose case has been referred to the Board of the Secretary of State
the conditions of such licences.
The Parole Board deals with the case on consideration of documents given to it by the Secretary of State and of any reports it is called for and any information whether oral or in writing that it has obtained. It may interview the person concerned (Section 59 (4) (a) and (b).
The Parole Board include amongst its members
a person who holds judicial office
a registered medical practitioner who is a psychiatrist
a person with knowledge and experience of the supervision and after care of discharged persons
a person who has studied the causes of delinquency or the treatment of offenders.
Article 3(1)(a)
By
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The applicant was lawfully sentenced to life imprisonment, having pleaded guilty to the offences of which he was charged. virtue of that sentence he may be detained for the rest of his life. It follows that, provided that provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 1967 are complied with, his detention after recall is lawful by virtue of the original conviction and sentence. In this respect it is not comparable with cases concerned with detention on the grounds of mental ill-health. In the Van Droogenbroeck case the Court said that the Convention allowed a measure of indeterminacy in sentencing and does not oblige the Contracting States to entrust to the Courts general supervision of the execution of sentence. In the applicant's case there is sufficient connection between the revocation of his licence in October 1977 and the life sentence passed in December 1966 for the former to be contained within the latter for the purposes of Art. 5(1)(a).
The facts amply reveal that the applicant has remained a danger to the public. Moreover as the Court pointed out in X. v. United Kingdom the national authorities are in a better position than the Convention organs to assess whether the applicant was a danger to the public (judgment of 5 November 1981, para. 43, at p.20).