Parole Board Hearings: law and practice – 2nd edition

If you're in prison, when, and how, you get out depends on a number of things: your sentence, naturally, and what you did to deserve it, almost as much. But precisely when you did what you did is just as important.

Over the last couple of decades, criminal justice has been vulnerable '“ possibly more than any other area of public policy '“ to the shifting tides created by fashion, logistics and sheer political expediency.

For example, the process by which a prisoner might seek his release, and the constraints he will be under if successful, will differ according to whether his offence was committed before or after 4 April 2005 (in other words, under the 1991 or the 2003 Criminal Justice Act). This excellent book isn't just aware of those changes, it understands them thoroughly and manages to explain them authoritatively and comprehensively, clearly and concisely.

It is hard to think of anything a practitioner might need to know that isn't covered here. There are 14 chapters, dealing with such things as the history and procedures of the Parole Board, and the test it must apply when deciding whether a prisoner may be released. And there is also detailed discussion of custodial sentences, of both the determinate '“ that of 1967 is the third CJA that could be relevant '“ and the indeterminate variety (including David Blunkett's notorious IPPs).

The book is well written and sensibly arranged, and while it certainly provides a wealth of practical guidance, it does more besides. The Parole Board might have changed in recent years, but it still hasn't experienced the radical change other judicial bodies have undergone.

So, for example, with the disclosure of documents: it seems prisoners are kept in the dark to a degree that would now be intolerable in the First-tier Tribunal. It is insights such as this that make Arnott and Creighton's marvellous book suitable not just for the specialist but also for the interested general reader.