Nicola Padfield is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University.

This book explores the changing role of the Parole Board. It pays particular attention to the effects of the early release scheme of the Criminal Justice Act 2005, which resulted in the Parole Board deciding in Panels to deteminate sentence prisoners, lifers, and recalled prisoners. A wide range of significant issues, and case law, has arisen as a result of these changes, which the contributors to this book, leading authorities in the field, aim to explore.

1. Introduction Part One: Setting the scene 2. Who should we keep locked up? 3. Parole and Risk Assessment 4. The Parole Board and the Changing Face of Public Law 5. Why fairness matters in criminal justice 6. The New Zealand Parole Board: independence and domestic and international challenges Part Two: Dealing with indeterminacy 7. Dealing with indeterminacy: life sentences and IPP 8. The Parole Board as a court 9. The Parole Board: Current Practice and Future Changes: a judicial member's perspective Part Three: Recall: Challenges for the Parole Board and NOMS 10. The Recall and Re-release of Determinate Sentence Prisoners 11. Discretion, Offender attributes and the recall process 12. Recall: Contested facts and risk assessmentPart Four: Is predicting risk fair? 13. Offenders' views on risk assessment 14. MAPPA, parole and the management of high risk offenders in the community 15. The paradoxical effects of stringent risk management: community failure and sex offenders Part Five: Pulling the threads together 16. Public Confidence - the real challenge 17. A personal overview