RECOMMENDATION 10
Prioritize professionalized assessments of rehabilitation and current danger to public safety in parole decision-making
Thirty-four states use parole to determine the release dates for most people admitted to prison, including those admitted with long sentences.1 In these states, judges sentence people to an indeterminate period of time, limited by a minimum and maximum duration set in statute, and then parole boards use their discretion and authority to decide at what point within those parameters an individual is suitable for release.2
Historically, the institution of parole has been associated with leniency and “early” release.3 It was this reputation, along with concerns that parole boards’ release decisions were often arbitrary, that led 16 states along with the federal system and Washington, D.C. to abolish parole during the last quarter of the 20th century.4 Despite these associations, parole has always functioned as a way not simply to release people, but also to deny release and increase the length of prison sentences. In fact, as the nation expanded the overall use of incarceration—and long sentences specifically over the past four decades—states with parole saw the fastest growth in their prison populations and now constitute the majority of states with the highest rate of imprisonment.5
The power of parole boards to increase time served by denying release can have substantial impacts on people serving long sentences. In research for the Task Force, the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice found that people serving long sentences for serious and violent crimes were often mandated to serve higher percentages of their judicial sentence before becoming eligible for parole than people serving shorter sentences.6 Research also shows that these individuals are typically denied parole more frequently when compared to people serving shorter sentences for less serious crimes.7
In the decades since parole came under attack for its arbitrariness and other factors, parole boards have worked to shift away from “clinical judgment” and toward using risk assessments to guide decision-making. They have also increased the transparency of their policies and practices.8 No state has abolished parole in the past 20 years, and some non-paroling states are exploring reinstating parole specifically for people serving long sentences. For example, Illinois has revived parole for individuals who were convicted for certain serious and violent crimes before they turned 21.9
Despite improvements to the parole system and efforts to target some people serving long sentences for parole eligibility, several aspects of parole board operations continue to stir concerns. In particular, the laws that establish parole boards often fail to create provisions to protect against the tendency for release decisions to be based solely on the nature of a person’s commitment offense, thus denying people serving long sentences meaningful opportunities to be considered for release. And while risk assessment tools provide a more accurate analysis of the risk of reoffending than the judgment of board members, research has shown these instruments can also exacerbate racial and other disparities if they are not rigorously validated.10
Parole and other factors that vary by state, such as the allocation of sentence credit discounts, impact an individual's time served more than the judicial sentence. States with identical average sentence length can have different average time served based on the degree of indeterminacy of sentences and back-end factors. For example, Oregon and Texas both had an average sentence length of 4.4 years in 2016, yet the average time served in Texas (2.1 years), a state with a high degree of indeterminacy, was lower than in Oregon (3.5 years), a state with a low degree of indeterminacy.
Given the power that parole boards have to determine total time served for people serving long sentences, the Task Force recommends that legislatures in paroling states examine the laws that establish criteria for board membership, specify training requirements to ensure that board members are equipped to base release decisions on best practices and science, and require that parole decision-making processes are transparent and fair.
Recommendation
Paroling states should ensure that parole board members have the expertise, training, and evidence-based processes needed to make release decisions that are transparent, independent, fair, and guided by assessments of present danger to public safety, evidence of rehabilitation, and prospects for post-release success.
Implementation Steps
1
State legislatures in paroling states should ensure that the law establishing their parole board provides for essential elements of meaningful hearings, including the following:
- The appointment of qualified members with relevant expertise and professional experiences
- The capacity for parole board members to make independent decisions
- Procedural rights for parole-eligible incarcerated people that allow them to prepare and present evidence of their rehabilitation at their earliest eligibility for release
- Clear and transparent guidelines and rules for the presentation of facts and evidence, as well as decisions11
2
Parole boards should offer victims and survivors opportunities to learn about how the person who committed harm against them spent their time in prison (e.g., prison-based program completion and evidence of rehabilitation), provide new and relevant information, and make officials aware of present safety concerns related to a possible release.
3
Parole board members should receive regular in-service training on research findings related to parole-eligible people serving long sentences, including the age-crime curve, and desistance.
4
State legislatures in paroling states should require parole boards to use a validated instrument to assess the risk and criminogenic needs of parole-eligible people serving long sentences and incorporate the results in their decision-making.
- Determinations of risk should refer to assessments from actuarial instruments that are transparent, open to public scrutiny, and have been validated for predictive accuracy and responsivity, including race and gender, prior to use.
- Where such a transparent and validated assessment instrument is not available for use, authorities should develop one12
5
Parole boards should collect, maintain, and publish annual data reports on the number of people serving long sentences who were considered for parole, documenting:
- The number of people serving long sentences who were either granted or denied parole, categorized by demographic information including race, gender, age, and length of sentence
- The percent of people serving long sentences who had been previously denied parole at their first, second, and subsequent hearings
- The reasons for denial (e.g., severity of offense, present danger to public safety, lack of evidence of rehabilitation, victim opposed/supported, etc.)
- Three-year post-release recidivism rates for people granted parole, broken down by sentence length and time served until first release
- Factors associated with positive and negative post-release outcomes
- Demographic data including race, gender, age, and other factors
