The whole parole board transparency and discretion angle at the beginning of the article is a red herring. You have to scroll 2/3 of the way through the article to get to the real culprit: the "touch on crime" movement in the 1980's and 1990's dramatically reduced the discretion of parole boards. See this NYT article from 1999: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/10/us/eliminating-parole-boar... ("Fifteen states so far have taken the politically popular step of abolishing parole boards, a vestige of what most Americans regard as a failed system of penal rehabilitation, and last week Gov. George E. Pataki of New York proposed to make his state the 16th.")
The factors mentioned in the article: lack of transparency, board discretion, politics, existed just as much in 1988 as in 1998. They can't be the explanation for why so few prisoners are granted parole. Arguably, transparency and the elimination of board discretion is the actual problem. When crime peaked in the 1990's, politicians pointed to those 35% and 31% figures and the ensuing public outrage led to a "war on parole."
> The movement to abolish parole began in the late 1970's after academic studies suggested that rehabilitative efforts in prison and early release on parole for good conduct had no measurable effect on reducing repeat offenses.
What's odd is that for all I read about prison (and having had a friend go through prison), there's basically 0 effort or programs in place at most prisons to do anything remotely resembling actual "rehabilitation". What "rehabilitative efforts" were tried that were deemed failures?
> politics, existed just as much in 1988 as in 1998
The nature of politics is to change over time. This is like saying politics existed just as much in 1999 as 2009, so the Tea Party must have existed back then. Politics has it's fashionable fads.
Hell, in 1988, MAD was a primary national policy for the US. In 1998, "what's MAD?" seemed to be more the norm.
So one case where someone released on parole commits another serious crime basically condemns thousands or tens of thousands more in prison to never be released. How do we get around this inability to balance Type I vs Type II errors? All those false negatives are very expensive - we pay for them with our taxes.
I'm ok with parole for first time offenders. But for relentless offenders, I'm against it. Parole should gradually go away as an option with the frequency and severity of one's crimes. And if they start playing by the rules, their right to parole should gradually return.
The worst relentless offenders shouldn't be living with everybody else when they get released. They should live in a penal colony of some kind. Or maybe they should go there instead of prison.
This is especially true for serial sex offenders, who aren't going to be able to live anywhere but under a bridge and who probably are going to keep offending. They need to be segregated, but don't necessarily need traditional imprisonment. One or two convictions does not put an offender into this category.
Prison is sort of a blunt instrument that we hammer people over the head with. Then we set them free amongst us and hope they'll be nice. A more normal, but segregated community might be a better place for some offenders and some parolees.
I think it's like so many things that involve politicians: the pendulum seems to swing to far to either side.
In 1981, murderers served about a third of their sentences — roughly 3 ½ years, on average — before they were paroled or had their sentences commuted.
If that's not a typo, it is astonishing to me. Release after less than 4 years for murder? In our society most people don't murder other people and that amount of time doesn't send the message that it's a seriously unacceptable thing to do.
So of course people were outraged by that sort of thing and now the pendulum has swung to the "life means life" and there is little to no consideration of prior record, behavior while incarcerated, or possible other extenuating circumstances.
Rather than parole, I guess I'd rather see more "reasonable" (try to get people to agree on that, though) sentences in the first place, with add-on time for bad behavior, rather than long sentences and a parole system. The whole concept of parole, and the administration and expense of implementing it, seems unnecessary. Sentence people based on the crime of which they are convicted, and take into account their past criminal history. If they misbehave in prison, add time. If they offend again after release, sentence more harshly. Why do we need parole?
> Sentence people based on the crime of which they are convicted, and take into account their past criminal history. If they misbehave in prison, add time.
That's essentially what we do in most states. The federal sentencing guidelines, for example, are a grid indexed by crime, criminal history, and aggravating factors.[1] Good time credit allows prisoners to work off 15% of their sentence.
And the net result of that has been inhumanly high sentences. Because voters thinking about situations in the abstract are much more comfortable with 5 and 10 year mandatory minimums, with 10 to 20 year mandatory minimums for repeat offenders, than judges and parole boards that have to look human beings in the eye.
[1] E.g. here is the federal sentencing guideline for robbery: http://www.ussc.gov/guidelines-manual/2011/2011-2b31; here is the sentencing table: http://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-manua.... Consider robbery with a gun, but nobody hurt, $15,000 taken. Base offense level of 20, +6 for gun, +1 for amount taken = 27. With no prior criminal history, you get a sentencing range of 6-7 years. Someone with a string of offenses can easily get up to 10 years.
In Norway, second degree (heat of passion) murder apparently gets you six years.
Ten years is (if he's extremely lucky) a tenth of a guy's life. Taking away a tenth (or twentieth, if parole is to be considered) of a guy's life for the second time he robs with a knife, gun, or bat, and injures no one -regardless of the extenuating circumstances- seems reasonable to you?
We don't try to rehabilitate people in US prisons, or treat them like humans with problems. All we know how to do is lock people away in hopes of either breaking them or at least just keeping them far away from us. It's our only tool.
Then of course we are shocked and dismayed when somebody, even after such a long sentence, re-offends. So what if they have learned no life skills in prison except how to use violence, and have no job prospects. Better lock 'em up longer next time. That'll teach them!
Rather than say "injures no one - regardless of the extenuating circumstances", you could say "injures no one - through sheer dumb luck". If you point a gun at someone, it could easily enough go off without your planning it.
I do agree that removing the possibility of parole is a bad idea.
Firearms don't "go off" unless you pull the trigger. They also don't "go off" if you drop them; Federal standards and rigorous testing to the same ensure that.
As long as you practice appropriate trigger discipline [0], your firearm is no more dangerous than a club.
Quite. And one can always count on nervous 19-year-olds to practice appropriate trigger discipline.
As for dropping them, the .45 pistol the military still used 30 years ago, could do that. But no doubt they are all off the street, or at least the discriminating felon won't carry them.
Not just taxes--there are over two million Americans currently incarcerated, the vast majority of which are working age nonviolent offenders. That's the entire labor force of e.g. Ireland being housed and fed at public expense when they could be making (with proper training) a useful contribution to society.
There is big money in prison systems. I remember a lot of people I knew getting locked up and going to Rikers. The stories they tell and I knew a lot of legal aid secretary's who see these cases comes across the desk and I want to cry.
No representation for the poor, they just lock you up and you get swallowed into the system and if you are lucky enough to see daylight they throw you back down the hole again. I mean it's horror movie scary how the prison system and parole boards in New York function. Whatever you do in life don't ever put yourself into the position of getting thrown in jail.
In 1997 Ohio (the state where I'm currently residing) passed Senate Bill 2, which largely eliminated the parole board, and introduced something called "Flat Time."
In the past, the judges had a bit of leeway (based on the statue) that they could set as a minimum time, and then the parole board would release you, on parole, for a period of one or two years, based on your institutional behavior. Senate Bill 2 eliminated all of that -- if you were sentenced to two years, you were going to do every bit of two years. Judges still had the options of "Shock" parole (boot camp) and "Super Shock" parole (judicial release), but, even in the mid-to-late 2000's, they got rid of the boot camp option, and now the only decision that will let you out early is the judge pulling you out of prison and back to the county for a Judicial Release...which moves you from the state's probation/parole roster back to that counties probation roster.
As crime increases, the stressors grow on the probation department, so they are less likely to release someone via the judicial release framework, so you see 90-95% of guys do every day of their time. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (and the internal joke there amongst a lot of the staff joke that they need to drop the word "Rehabilitation" from their name) has cut funding, and staffing, to most (if not all) of the good prison programs (When I volunteered at ODRC in the mid to late 90's, you could learn Novell Netware administration, some Unix administration, and some basic C programming if you worked in a library: they removed that option around 2003 and never brought it back, and replaced those inmate workers with paid staff positions. In 2009, they eliminated those staff positions and moved back to the paper method of managing library records (with card catalogues and borrower cards)). Prisoners have nothing to do, so they socialize with other prisoners, and they organize prison gangs, learn how to become better or more effective criminals, and leave prison more enamored to go back out and do more crime.
A great example of this is the Heartless Felons gang in Ohio -- they started in the youth prisons in the state around 2004/2005, and, now they are in every prison in Ohio and in most of the major cities.
Unfortunately, I really think that the solution isn't more prisons or more programs, it's reforming the way that we sentence and punish people. As a society, we need to be able to differentiate between the people who as a society, we are truly afraid of (and send them to prison for intensive rehabilitation) and people we are just mad at (and send them to therapy, community based work programs, and community based correctional facilities -- keeping them in the towns where their families live so that their children don't become the next group of Heartless Felons.
Before "sentencing reform" in the 1980's and 1990's, the average prisoner served about 40% of their sentence. In the 1990's, states eliminated or greatly limited parole board discretion to release prisoners. For example, in 1988 prisoners in Texas served on average 35% of their sentences: http://www.lbb.state.tx.us/Public_Safety_Criminal_Justice/Re... (page 4). In 1998 it was 75%. In Florida in 1991 it was 31%: http://www.dc.state.fl.us/secretary/press/2001/timeserved.ht.... By 2001 it was 83%.
The factors mentioned in the article: lack of transparency, board discretion, politics, existed just as much in 1988 as in 1998. They can't be the explanation for why so few prisoners are granted parole. Arguably, transparency and the elimination of board discretion is the actual problem. When crime peaked in the 1990's, politicians pointed to those 35% and 31% figures and the ensuing public outrage led to a "war on parole."