If you get sentenced to prison, you may be let out early; but only if you're not considered a danger to the public. That decision is made by the Parole Board, whose workings we see in this series. It's really quite fascinating: many of those we see in the series have committed quite terrible crimes; and whether they qualify for parole is only loosely related to how much human sympathy we might have for them. The board members we see are surprisingly ordinary, and the approach taken in review meetings is very 21st-century: unemotional, quite formal, in many ways quite depersonalised (certainly on behalf of the board members, but also on the part of the applicants, who seem quite well trained to answer according to the expected script). Sadly, several of those who we see winning their freedom soon ended up back inside. But leaving people to rot is surely not the best option either.
