The parole hearing for Charles Bronson, one of the UK’s longest serving and most notorious prisoners, will be held in private, a judicial Parole Board member has decided.
The decision comes after the 72-year-old – who later changed his name to Charles Salvador – took part in one of the country’s first public parole hearings in 2023.
On Tuesday a document was published in which judicial Parole Board member Jeremy Roberts KC, on behalf of the board chair, said he had not granted the application for Bronson’s parole hearing to be made public.
Bronson has spent most of the past 48 years incarcerated – apart from two brief periods, during which he reoffended – for numerous thefts, firearms and violent offences, including 11 hostage-taking incidents in nine different sieges.
Victims included prison governors, doctors, staff and on one occasion, his own solicitor.
Bronson – whose real name is Michael Peterson and who has been diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder – was handed a discretionary life sentence with a minimum term of four years in 2000 for taking prison art teacher Phil Danielson hostage at HMP Hull for 44 hours. Since then, the Parole Board has repeatedly refused to direct his release.
The 2023 parole review was his eighth.
Bronson was the first prisoner to formally ask for a public hearing after rules changed in 2022 in a bid to remove the secrecy around the parole process.
In the document published on Tuesday, Roberts said the application for a public hearing was made on 9 February by the prisoner’s solicitor.
Representations on Bronson’s behalf said he “feels that he is directly responsible for the change in law and Parole Board rules and so he should be allowed to participate in a public hearing”.
He has a “legitimate expectation that his subsequent parole hearings will be held in public following his lengthy proceedings to instigate the change in the rules”.
Roberts said the fact that Bronson is responsible for the change in the law “does not give him any legitimate expectation that his subsequent hearings will be held in public”.
Bronson’s solicitor said the prisoner “is not vulnerable and, given his wish for a public hearing”, it could cause him undue emotional stress if the hearing was not held in public.
They added: “He believes he will achieve best evidence and this will not be impacted by the hearing being in public.”
But Roberts said: “The prisoner is obviously highly intelligent (albeit liable to some eccentric beliefs and attitudes) and I do not think it likely that he would suffer undue emotional stress if this hearing is held privately.
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“I am sure that he will be able to ‘give best evidence’ whether the hearing is held in public or in private.”
Bronson’s solicitor also said the Parole Board’s work is often not well understood by the public and “there is a public interest in increasing understanding”.
The solicitor added his client “believes that his risk has significantly reduced” and that a “discussion about risk and risk reduction in a public hearing would aid public confidence”.
Roberts agreed that “there is a public interest in increasing the public’s understanding of the parole process and that transparency, where possible, is important for public confidence in the system”.
He also said the Parole Board has, over the last few years, made “great efforts” to improve the transparency of its proceedings.
Roberts said the introduction of public hearings is another step taken but added: “Public hearings and the arrangements for them are expensive and time-consuming, and unless and until the board is provided with the necessary funds to carry them out in more cases it must be selective in the holding of a public hearing only where it is likely to increase public understanding of the process or will benefit the public or victims in some other way.”
The secretary of state’s representations were provided on her behalf by a senior official in the Ministry of Justice, who said Bronson’s “readiness to resort to violence continues to be evident, and the secretary of state is concerned that a public hearing would prompt a display of violence in a way that a private hearing might not”.
Roberts said there had been a “marked improvement in recent years in the prisoner’s attitudes to (and relationships with) prison staff”.
