By Gabriel Princewill-
The Parole Board of England And Wales are expected to act in good faith when responding to an FOI request we made in relation to their grounds for recalling to prison a former drug dealer, Marcus Brown(pictured) the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) have said.
The Probation Services and The Parole Board For England And Wales are under scrutiny with regards the denial of Marcus Brown’s freedom, which our analysts are convinced has some connection to ulterior motives, and the fact the prisoners deplorable criminal history made it very unlikely they would come under the microscope.
Brown from Cambridgeshire was originally jailed in 2009, after cops foiled a plot to smuggle cocaine to dealers using a plane.
The court that convicted Brown heard how cops tracked the plane making a dummy run flying from Belgium across the Channel and dropping a kit bag full of sugar in Kent.
Cops said the gang planned to smuggle cocaine to dealers in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
However, after serving 8 years in prison, Mr Brown set up a business in Cambridgeshire where he was working on a daily basis, earning an honest living.
But he was recalled to prison four five years later for reasons that don’t stand up to factual scrutiny.
His desperate family was referred to this publication by a family friend of theirs who trusted us to look past his criminal past, and investigate their alleged corruption in the probation services and they police, which they insisted was motivated by selfish motives. and a drive to prevent what the authorities understandably saw as an unsavoury character attempting to fight justice for his son, Aaron Brown.
Brown who was in prison, first for assault, then later kept in jail on an IPP, after receiving an Osmon warning.
An Osmon warning is a threat to life warning issued when police have enough information to be aware of the risk of danger, but not enough evidence to arrest the potential killer.
Aaron’s family said he was refused Parole the mother of his child, who was cheating on him with a man allegedly related to a probation officer and a serving female police officer
This publication presented the Parole Board with a Freedom Information Request, asking for evidence of some of the details contained in a report they sent us to justify a recall that has all the hallmarks of corruption. Extensive details of the case has been thoroughly analysed and discussed with lawyers.
An experienced representative of the ICO unequivocally told this publication that the Parole Board ought to honour the spirit in which the validity of FOI requests are based and show integrity in dealing with ICO requests, addressing the Parole Board’s seeming evasion of scrutiny of a case that appears to bear all the hallmarks of corruption.
The board appears to have misapplied Parole Board rules in an attempt to circumvent its duty to the public to show its operations to be above board. The comments from the ICO suggest it has manifestly fallen short of those standards.
”Organisations are expected to act in good faith and honour the spirit of a Freedom of Information Request, and not try to frustrate it”, a spokesperson for the Information Commissioner said, after seeing the questions we presented to the Probation Services, and their attempt to evade the questions.
The clarification from the Information Commissioner’s office comes as this publication probes the integrity of the Parole Board for England and Wales in fairly assessing the cases of prisoners, after finding compelling evidence of impropriety in the probation services.
The question at hand is why they have recalled a man to prison nearly two years following his release, and on the same month he sent a pre-action protocol letter to Greater Manchester Police and the Probation Services?
Mr Brown has been held on remand since March 2022, and is due to remain there until December 2024 when his full prison term would have lapsed.
At the heart of the seeming corruption is the fact the probation services who recalled him appear to have a member there whose close relative once worked with the Greater Manchester Police-the same force against whom Mr Brown sought to sue- and another relative who was dating the mother of his son’s baby-whom the family accuses of keeping him in jail because she was pregnant for another man whist he was in jail.
Social services documents negligently released to the family reveal that Jessica Myles had an abortion around the same tine she was dating Michael Wood, who appears to have a close relative on the same probation team that recalled Mr.Brown.
All of the above facts have been presented to both the Probation services and the Parole Board, with no rebuttals presented.
A parole board officer, Chris Harrison told The Eye Of Media.Com that ”the parole board has erred in their judgement in using the exemption it is using.
Whether the Parole Board for England and Wales is exhibiting similarly deplorable levels of corruption or whether what appears to be glaring failings are mere signs of an alarming level of ineptitude is at work, has been the object of our investigation. Our strong suspicion of corruption has
Marcus Brown- a convicted drug dealer- was recalled to prison in January 2022, a few weeks after he made official complaints to the Ombudsman for the Probation Services and lodged a case against Greater Manchester Police for alleged corruption in the case of his son Aaron Brown, whose Parole was refused after the mother of his girlfriend, Jessica Myles told social workers he posed a threat to her.
Aaron Brown has been in prison since 2016
Parole
Mr. Brown had been out on Parole for just a year, when in August 2020, he found himself caught up in another drug case. The father of his daughter’s child was found with class A drugs in a vehicle registered to a business he runs. His daughter stresses the fact the business is registered in her mother’s name, who is also the director, but the connection to former dealer was deemed enough to rap him for it. Meanwhile, James also has a separate record for dealing drugs.
No evidence of drugs was found on Mr. Brown, but he was charged for conspiracy to supply class A drugs in August 2020. He was arrested at his home, not at the scene, although Marcus was in the vicinity of the area during the time of the arrest.
Most conspicuous about this recall is the fact that between August 2020 and December 2021, the probation services found no reason to recall the ex-convict until he decided to lodge a complaint against Greater Manchester Police to the GMP professional standards, and also against the probation services to the Ombudsman for the Probation Services.
The 63-year-old routinely attended his probation meeting on the 21st of December without incidence, yet the official date of recall was made on the 15th of December. Had Mr. Brown genuinely been recalled on December 15, he would have been expected to have been informed of this during his meeting on the 21st
The glaring anomaly itself raises questions of the integrity of the recall which appears indefensible.
Following his unsuccessful appeal to the Parole Board, we asked the board for the full written grounds of the refusal, for independent and thorough scrutiny.
Report
The Parole Board Of England And Wales sent a comprehensive report to this publication, aimed at justifying its reason for approving the recall imposed by the Probation Services.
When we sought to probe the veracity of the contentious aspects of the report, the board declined, citing confidentiality, and quoting internal parole board rules which accords power to the parole board chairwoman to determine what information it divulges to the public. Its effrontery to circumvent the rule of law which underpins the functions of all organisations, and which necessitates a purposeful interpretation of statute, is galling.
Flawed Application Of Law
The board quoted Section 32(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act:
32(1) Information held by a public authority is exempt information if it is held only by virtue of being contained in—
(a) any document filed with, or otherwise placed in the custody of a court for the purposes of proceedings in a particular cause or matter.
Further to this Rule 27 of the Parole Board Rules 2019 states:
(5) Subject to paragraph (1), information about proceedings under these Rules must not be disclosed, except insofar as the Board chair directs.
(6) Other than those of the parties, the names of persons concerned in proceedings under these Rules must not be disclosed under paragraphs (1) to (5).
(7) A contravention of paragraphs (5) or (6), is actionable as a breach of statutory.
ICO
Discussing the case further , ICO representative, Chris Harrison told The Eye Of Media.Com: ”it appears the Parole Board has misapplied the exemption rule here. Section 32 would only apply where the information in question is being held only for the purposes of proceedings in a particular case.
”The information you have requested was not placed in the custody of a court only for the purposes of proceedings. That information was always going to remain in the possession of a court. The board would always have that information, and in any case the Parole Board is expected to act in good faith and honour the spirit of exemptions and the Freedom Of Information Act’, not ty and frustrate its purpose”.
Harrison, on of the smart decision makers in the ICO, pointed out that this was not a conclusive official decision, but confirmed that backlogs for ICO requests are about a year long, adding ”we are trying to get through them as quickly as possible”
Consistent with the Parole Board Publication Scheme, which explains what information the Parole Board makes available to the public, it is expected to be fully accountable to the British public about its dealings. The board is expressly committed to making certain classes of information routinely available, such as policies and procedures, minutes of meetings, annual reports and financial information.
None of the information requested has been placed in a court for the purposes of proceedings, given that the criminal violence referred to by the Parole Board has already been the subject of proceedings in a court of law. Only details associated with the names of the complainant in the already concluded proceedings was requested.
The board could argue that details of past violence may be relevant to his forthcoming drug case, the allegation that he maintained criminal friends is ‘a question of fact’ without any supporting weight to an allegation of conspiracy to supply drugs, without hard evidence.
Neither was the parole board able to explain why they are unable to support their claim that he has kept criminal friends either to this publication or to the accused.
The parole board appears to have failed in its duty to be accountable to the public.
The ICO representative confirmed that the public interest test is the general determinant of disclosing information but cautioned that the exemption of Section 32 is absolute and not subject to a public interest test unless section 32 is engaged. It is not.
Spurious Claims
The spurious report claimed Marcus Brown’s recall was based on his high propensity to violence without considering the consequences for the sake of money,
The uncorroborated report also said he maintained criminal friends, claims his family strenuously deny..
Stance
The Brown family has been adamant in their stance that any violence exhibited by Mr. Brown was before he was out on parole, and therefore should be irrelevant to a decision to recall him. They declined to consent to precise information about the stated violence of Mr.Brown divulged to this publication, but sent a written authorisation to the Parole Board to justify to us their grounds for upholding the recall by the probation Services.
her volatile daughter Tiffany becoming deplorably unsavoury in her words over our insistence of seeking details about the violence in question.
Mr Brown’s hot-headed daughter has become so angry about her family plight, which has seen her brother and father incarcerated for offences she believes to be concocted by various agents, she has sometimes reduced herself to the use of expletives when defending her beleaguered family.
Medical evidence seen by this publication shows that all members of her family suffer from multiple health conditions- the aggregate effect of which the family says is stabilising.
Sue Brown , 64 is said to frequently fall ill due to her multiple illnesses which are aggravated by ongoing stress relating to the imprisonment of her loved ones. She also lost her mother last year, whose last words expressed a hope for her son and grandson to be let out of prison, and also praised our publication for our investigative work in holding the authourities to account.
The relevance of past violence to the legitimacy of the recall can only be justified if there was some detail associated with it which required long term investigation to determine a recall.
Safe To release
The Parole Board’s job is to determine if someone is safe to release. The board said it does so with great care, and public protection is our number one priority. It deals with 25,000 cases a year which are referred to us once the prisoner has served the punishment determined by the courts. We act as a court-like body and are
independent from government.
Hearings are conducted by Parole Board Members who sit as a panel. All are public appointees recruited by the Secretary of State for Justice, and all receive extensive training.
They come from a variety of backgrounds, including specialist members who may be judges, psychiatrists or psychologists.
They are made up of 1 to 3 members and specialist members will be allocated based on the facts of a particular case. The board declined to give us the grounds on which it honoured the decision of the Probation Services to recall Marcus Brown, arguing that we had referred to it as the London Parole Board, and that it is the Probation Services which keeps details of its reasons, even though the Parole Board was presented with all those reasons, and can ascertain the associated facts.
Appeal
Following his recall, Mr Brown appealed the decision through his lawyers, whom the family accuse of poorly representing them in the hearing. They have also accused their former lawyer, Howard Beirnstein of a catalogue of misdemeanours, including acting against the best interest of his client, and falsely claiming to be a barrister, when he is in fact a solicitor.
The panel rejected an appeal made to the Parole Board in July to release ex-convict, Marcus Brown. The parole told this publication that it rejected the application based on an assessment of the level of risk Marcus Brown poses to society.
However, under what appears to be the spurious context of confidentiality, the board declined to substantiate its grounds for rejecting the appeal by co-operating with our investigation which asserts the recall of Mr Brown to have ulterior motives which could be malicious and corrupt.
Marcus Brown’s family insist there is an all-round conspiracy to keep both he and his son in prison.
If the probation services failed to dutifully fulfil their remit fairly, one would at least expect the parole board to be above board. Yet, we have so far spotted questionable ethos at work in the Parole Board for England And Wales.
Offender’s are released to prison when they pose no risk, and when the likelihood of re-offending is now small enough to be effectively managed in the community. The prisoner’s Offender Manager (also called a Probation Officer) is required to submit a risk management plan, outlining how they will manage the offender in the community if released. The panel will consider whether this plan is robust enough when making their decision
Contradiction
While providing The Eye Of Media.Com with a comprehensive report elaborating the underpinning reasoning of its findings one the one hand, the board subsequebtly contradicted itself when probed on details contained in the report, citing confidentiality. The report sent to us for publication was not confidential until we decided to probe its contents.
The family say one of the officers involved in the case lied on oath and was rebuked by the sitting judge. Aaron Brown had hoped to be released from prison on parole in 2016 but was refused parole after cops say they received intelligence that suggested his released posed a danger to the mother of his child, Jessica Myles.
Mr. Brown’s family told this publication that the probation services had ignored every one of their requests inquiring why no evidence had been presented to them for his son’s refusal of parole. He complained to the Ombudsman for the probation services, who opened up an investigation into his complaints.
Our investigation was undertaken to establish the truth about the allegation, and at a latter stage, to ascertain if his recall was premised on ulterior motives aimed at obstructing his attempt to fight for his son’s freedom.
It calls attention to a much-overlooked area in the Ministry Of Justice, in relation to the question of whether the authorities observe the rule of law when dealing with offenders, or whether they act with impunity because they are dealing with convicted criminals.
The oddity of the recall lies in timing, and the fact Mr. Brown attended his monthly probation meeting on December 21 with no incidence, just over a week after he made three official complaints against Greater Manchester Police and the Probation Services whom they accused of evading questions as to why his son, Aaron, was imprisoned without seeing full evidence of his offence.
Mr Brown’s lawyers have applied for another consideration to the Parole Board for his case to be heard and considered.
The Parole Board told this publication they would consider every detail carefully wants they receive the second application for Parole since last June.
They said they could not comment any further.