Chairs from the PCF network have enthusiastically signed up to be mentors in the year long diversity mentor programme, where they will be partnered up with mentees drawn from a wide range of backgrounds. Caroline Corby, Chair of The Parole Board for England and Wales, has kindly written a few words.

I am Chair of the Parole Board for England and Wales and I was delighted to be asked to become a mentor as part of the diversity mentor scheme. In this blog I explain a little bit about the Parole Board and our recent approach to improving diversity and inclusion.

The Parole Board has almost the largest number of public appointees. We currently have around 300 Parole Board members as well as three non-executive directors on our Management Committee, all of whom are appointed by our Minister.

At the Parole Board we are committed to ensuring that both our members and our management committee is diverse, drawing on talents from across society. We genuinely believe that our decision-making is improved through diversity.

In the criminal justice system, the historic lack of diversity amongst key decision-makers has led to low levels of confidence in the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, as highlighted in the Lammy Review. The Parole Board was determined to address this issue amongst our membership, which was not sufficiently representative.

In 2019, we were pleased to be given ministerial permission to undertake a further recruitment of new Parole Board members with a view to increasing our diversity. The Parole Board radically altered the way it approached this campaign including undertaking significant outreach work and getting the agreement of the Cabinet Office to the use of ‘equal merit’ provisions.

At the end of the campaign, 48 per cent of the new members joining the Parole Board had a BAME background and the quality of the candidates was so high that our Minister agreed to increase the number of appointees to 50 people.

This successful public appointee recruitment campaign is now regarded as an exemplar.

This hopefully illustrates that we have a genuine commitment to increasing diversity and inclusion, and is one of the reasons we look forward to being part of the diversity mentor scheme.