Fit for purpose: OASys assessments and parole decisions — a practitioner's view

Abstract

This article is a practitioner's response to Wendy Fitzgibbon's article `Fit for Purpose: OASys Assessments and Parole Decisions' published in the March 2008 edition of Probation Journal. Fitzgibbon undertook a small research study of 72 cases before the parole board. The majority of these cases fell into four main categories of offences: violent offences, sexual offences, robbery and drug offences. The focus of Fitzgibbon's article is whether parole board decisions and the risk assessments that inform them adequately protect the public from the risk of serious harm.