NCJ Number
166951
Date Published
1995
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This essay uses the perspective of accountability to examine the operations of Canada's National Parole Board.
Abstract
The board is the Canadian agency responsible for making decisions about early release from imprisonment, including whether prisoners on conditional release should be returned to confinement. In most jurisdictions, vehicles for early release are established by statute. The mandate and structure of these agencies differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, depending on the statutory authority that creates them and the array of functions allocated to the agency. The extension of judicial review to the parole process has removed some of the arbitrariness that disturbed chief Justice Laskin back in 1976. The advent of the Charter (1982) has added another dimension to judicial review, but these constitutionally entrenched norms operate mostly in the procedural realm. When coupled with the recognition that the majority of board members do not come to their responsibilities with relevant criminal justice experience, the restricted scope of judicial scrutiny is cause for concern. This insulation is compounded by the limited degree of legal representation available to prisoners in many Provinces. At the political level, the board is regularly exposed to examination and inquiry. These forms of scrutiny are easily manipulated to fit public opinion. If accountability means exposing an agency to scrutiny, effective accountability requires some guarantee of a frank and serious response to what is found, not simply new slogans to fuel an already distorted public perception. 26 notes