‘People do awful things’: the Parole Board’s Rob McKeon on life among murderers, rapists and career criminals

Were you to find yourself sitting opposite McKeon, with him in charge of your future, you’d probably find him rigorous and fair, his emotions switched off, but not cold; a direct gaze, but a calming manner. Does McKeon ever lie awake at night and wonder, weeks later, if he made the wrong call? No, he says, when we speak over video call; he’s at home in his study, a room from which even now, post-pandemic, he conducts remote hearings. At the end of a hearing, which can last several hours, “I will be fairly certain as to what I think the right decision is.” Sometimes he has to sleep on it.