Why parole boards must not be swayed by public opinion

Law360 Canada (April 1, 2026, 10:55 AM EDT) --

John L. Hill

As Easter approaches, we are reminded of a crowd’s shouts to “Give us Barabbas.” The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, believed Jesus was innocent but capitulated to the pressure of the crowd to prevent a riot. Should public pressure influence the justice system? On March 27, Global News reminded us of a situation that unfolded in British Columbia in 2021 and is now recurring in 2026.

A phone call over the school intercom interrupted an ordinary August day in 1982. Shelley Boden headed to the office, worried she might be in trouble. Instead, she entered a moment that would split her life into two parts: before and after.

Six members of her family — George and Edith Bentley, and Bob and Jackie Johnson and their daughters Janet and Karen — were murdered while camping near Wells Gray Provincial Park. The perpetrator, David Shearing, later known as David Ennis, not only killed the adults but also abducted the two girls. He held them for nearly a week, sexually assaulted and tortured them, then killed them before burning all six bodies in the family car.

More than 40 years later, the violence persists. It has just taken a different form.

Every five years, the family is drawn back into that summer. They gather statements. They revisit details no one should have to remember, let alone repeat. They organize petitions. They speak to the media. They relive the memory. And each time, they are told that the system is functioning as intended.

That phrase, “as intended,” is where the tension lies.

Because from the family’s perspective, the system feels like a revolving door of grief. When Ennis applies for parole, they mobilize. In 2021, more than 100,000 people signed a petition urging the Parole Board of Canada to deny his release. The board denied parole, citing ongoing risk, troubling fantasies and lack of rehabilitation. The family felt relief, but only temporarily. As one supporter put it, “the war goes on.”

Now, in 2026 and facing another parole review, the family fears not only the possibility of release but also the potential for silence. A paper review, without an in-person hearing, means they might not even get the chance to speak before decision-makers.

Their anguish is real. Their fear is real. Their anger is justified. But it is precisely in cases like this, which evoke the deepest moral outrage, that the role of the parole board must remain insulated from public pressure.

It’s not that the public is wrong to feel outrage, but because the strength of that outrage cannot determine justice.

The case for independence starts with a straightforward but tough truth: the criminal justice system is not built to measure suffering. It cannot recover what was lost in 1982. It cannot heal generational trauma. It cannot make Shelley Boden’s walk home from school any less lonely, nor undo the decades of grief that have followed.

What it can do, and what it is structured to do, is assess risk. The parole board’s mandate is not to punish again, nor to validate public anger. It is not its job to respond to petitions, however large. Its task is narrower and, in some ways, more difficult: to determine whether an individual, at a specific point in time, poses an undue risk to society.

This is why the board denied parole in 2021. It was not due to the petitions but because of evidence: ongoing deviant fantasies, lack of rehabilitation and absence of a stable support system.

Those are measurable factors. They can be tested, challenged and reviewed.

Public pressure, on the other hand, follows a different logic. It is cumulative, emotional and often absolute. A petition with 100,000 signatures doesn’t ask, “Is the risk manageable?” It asks, either explicitly or implicitly, “Should this person ever be released?”

That is a fundamentally different question.

If the parole board were to yield to that pressure, even in a case as horrific as this, it would set a precedent that extends far beyond one offender. It would mean that release decisions could hinge on how much attention a case receives, how effectively a campaign is organized or how strongly the public reacts.

In such a system, two offenders with identical risk profiles could face different outcomes solely because of public visibility. One case receives attention; the other remains unnoticed. One garners 100,000 signatures; the other none.

Justice, then, becomes uneven not because of law, but because of attention.

There is also an increased risk. When public pressure becomes the deciding factor, parole stops being a structured legal process and starts to resemble a referendum on moral outrage. That change undermines not only fairness but also credibility. Decisions risk being viewed not as reasoned judgments but as reactions to loud noise.

Ironically, this would weaken the very safety concerns the family raises. If the system loses its grounding in evidence-based risk assessment, it becomes less capable of identifying who is truly dangerous and why.

None of this diminishes the family’s voice. Victim impact statements, participation in hearings and the ability to express ongoing harm are crucial parts of the process. They ensure that the human cost of crime is never made intangible.

But a voice is not the same as a veto. The parole board must listen, but it cannot simply follow.

There is a tragic symmetry in this case. The family insists they will not stay silent: “We cannot keep quiet,” Shelley Boden says. And they are right not to. Their perseverance is an act of memory, of love, of resistance against forgetting.

Yet the justice system, in its own way, must stay silent. It is silent in the sense of being unaffected by the level of public demand, consistent in its reliance on evidence rather than emotion.

That quiet is not indifference. It is discipline.

Because if the system begins to decide cases based on how loudly people speak, it will eventually fail not only offenders, but victims as well. It will promise certainty where none exists, and deliver inconsistency where fairness is required.

The story of this family is one of enduring pain, carried across generations. Nothing about an independent parole board lessens that pain.

But allowing public pressure to determine outcomes would not heal it either. It would only change the nature of the system — from one that strives, however imperfectly, to measure risk into one that mirrors outrage.

And outrage, however justified, is not a standard that can safely govern justice.

John L. Hill practised and taught prison law until his retirement. He holds a JD from Queen’s and an LLM in constitutional law from Osgoode Hall. He is also the author of Pine Box Parole: Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest to End Solitary Confinement (Durvile & UpRoute Books) and The Rest of the (True Crime) Story (AOS Publishing). Contact him at johnlornehill@hotmail.com.

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