Who Are We?

The Parole Commissioners are an independent body to make decisions on the release of all life sentence prisoners in Northern Ireland. The Parole Commissioners replace the Life Sentence Review Commissioners, the hitherto existing body for that purpose. This site is in the process of being modified to reflect the re-naming. In the meantime references to the Life Sentence Review Commissioners should be read as the Parole Commissioners.

General procedure

This Guide sets out information on our process which prisoners might find helpful. For easy reference, it summarises parts of the relevant legislation - the Life Sentences (Northern Ireland) Order 2001 ("the Order") and the Life Sentence Review Commissioners' Rules 2001 ("the Rules").

Downloadable documents

Much of the information on this site will serve for reference and therefore may more useful in printed form. Downloadable documents are in Rich Text Format, readable by most word processors.