Parole board

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A parole board is a panel of people who decide whether an offender should be released from prison on parole after serving at least a minimum portion of their sentence as prescribed by the sentencing judge. Parole boards are used in many jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and New Zealand. A related concept is the board of pardons and paroles, which may deal with pardons and commutations as well as paroles.

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A parole board consists of people qualified to make judgements about the suitability of a prisoner for return to free society. Members may be judges, psychiatrists, or criminologists, although some jurisdictions do not have written qualifications for parole board members and allow community members to serve as them. A universal requirement is that board candidates be of good moral fiber.

Canada

New Zealand

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom parole board members are also drawn from a wider circle of professions. The boards typically make a judgement about whether a prisoner will affect public safety if released, but do not form an opinion about whether the initial sentencing was appropriate. The boards are non-departmental public bodies respectively of the UK government (Parole Board for England and Wales), the Scottish Government (Parole Board for Scotland), and the Northern Ireland Executive (Parole Commissioners for Northern Ireland).

United States

There are 52 parole boards in operation in the United States. Some states require all members to possess a four year degree, while others do not. Additionally, some states require at least one member to be an ex-convict, and some require corrections experience, but there are no nation-wide parole board qualifications. [1] Each state has a different requirement for parole board appointment.

On the federal level, there is no longer parole except for certain military and foreign crimes. [2] [3] The United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines (enacted in 1987) discontinued parole for those convicted of federal crimes for offenses committed after November 1, 1987. Instead of parole the legislation provided that judges may specify as part of sentencing, a period of supervised release to be served after the prison sentence. [4] Prisoners may also receive time off their sentences for "good behavior". However, this truth in sentencing legislation also requires federal prisoners to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The United States Parole Commission remains the parole board for those who committed a federal offense before November 1, 1987, as well as those who committed a District of Columbia Code offense before August 5, 2000, a Uniform Code of Military Justice offense and are parole-eligible, and persons who are serving prison terms imposed by foreign countries and have been transferred to the United States to serve their sentence. [3]

Every U.S. state also has a parole board. The autonomy of the board from the state governor also varies; in some states the boards are more powerful than in others. In some states the board is an independent agency while in others it is a body of the department of corrections. In 44 states, the parole members are chosen by the governor. Parole boards throughout the states often act on the governor's influence and reportedly feel the need to do so to ensure job security. [1] However, fourteen states have eliminated or severely restricted access to parole, turning instead to "determinate sentencing" which specifies the exact length of sentence, subject still, in most cases, to time off the sentence for good behaviour. [5]

Nine states in the United States have boards of pardons and paroles that exclusively grants all state pardons. Alabama (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Connecticut (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Georgia (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Idaho (Commission of Pardons and Paroles), Minnesota (Board of Pardons), Nebraska (Board of Pardons), Nevada (Board of Pardon commissioners, South Carolina (Board of Probation, Parole and Pardon), and Utah (Board of Pardons and Paroles) are the states in the United States with such boards.

Mississippi's state constitution includes a unique provision that any inmate seeking a pardon from that state's governor must, at least thirty days before making the request, publish a legal notice of their request for a pardon in a newspaper located in or near the county where the inmate seeking the pardon was convicted and sentenced. [6] In addition Mississippi courts have held that a pardon when given does not erase the criminal record. [7]

Determinate sentencing has also severely reduced the power of many parole boards. Often, consideration of the opinion of the victim or victims or their family is taken into account in the board's final determination (see victims' rights). Compared to the states still using indeterminate sentencing and relying more heavily on parole, those using determinate sentencing contributed less to the higher incarceration rates from 1980-2009. [8]

Parole boards have often been looked at as a contributor towards mass incarceration and as an area needing great reform. Significant research has not yet been made into the interconnection of parole and other sectors such as media and politics, but many call for a separation between the sectors and a sweeping de-politicization of the appointment process. [9] Additionally, many have looked towards increasing qualifications for parole board members to be comparable with those of judges. [8] Alongside the heightening of standards, a general call of an increase in comprehensive training, transparency, and accountability of parole boards has been widely called for, as many current parole board members have never set foot in a prison, and an increase of training often results in a rise of fair and just hearings. [1]

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A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parole</span> Provisional release of a prisoner who agrees to certain conditions

Parole is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or else they may be rearrested and returned to prison.

Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration.

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In England and Wales, life imprisonment is a sentence that lasts until the death of the prisoner, although in most cases the prisoner will be eligible for early release after a minimum term set by the judge. In exceptional cases a judge may impose a "whole life order", meaning that the offender is never considered for parole, although they may still be released on compassionate grounds at the discretion of the Home Secretary. Whole life orders are usually imposed for aggravated murder, and can only be imposed where the offender was at least 21 years old at the time of the offence being committed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tennessee Department of Correction</span> Government agency in Tennessee, United States

The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) is a Cabinet-level agency within the Tennessee state government responsible for the oversight of more than 20,000 convicted offenders in Tennessee's fourteen prisons, three of which are privately managed by CoreCivic. The department is headed by the Tennessee Commissioner of Correction, who is currently Frank Strada. TDOC facilities' medical and mental health services are provided by Corizon. Juvenile offenders not sentenced as adults are supervised by the independent Tennessee Department of Children's Services, while inmates granted parole or sentenced to probation are overseen by the Department of Correction (TDOC)/Department of Parole. The agency is fully accredited by the American Correctional Association. The department has its headquarters on the sixth floor of the Rachel Jackson Building in Nashville.

In the common law legal system, an expungement proceeding is a type of lawsuit in which an individual who has been arrested for or convicted of a crime seeks that the records of that earlier process be sealed or destroyed, making the records nonexistent or unavailable to the general public. If successful, the records are said to be "expunged". Black's Law Dictionary defines "expungement of record" as the "Process by which record of criminal conviction is destroyed or sealed from the state or Federal repository." While expungement deals with an underlying criminal record, it is a civil action in which the subject is the petitioner or plaintiff asking a court to declare that the records be expunged.

The United States Parole Commission is the parole board responsible for granting or denying parole to, and supervising the parole releases of, incarcerated individuals who fall under its jurisdiction. It is part of the United States Department of Justice.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Billy Sinclair</span>

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References

  1. 1 2 3 SCHWARTZAPFEL, BETH (2015). "Parole Boards: Problems and Promise". Federal Sentencing Reporter. 28 (2): 79–84. doi:10.1525/fsr.2015.28.2.79. ISSN   1053-9867. JSTOR   26376951.
  2. ↑ "United States Parole Commission" (PDF). United States Department of Justice. February 2012.
  3. 1 2 "History of the Federal Parole System" (PDF). United States Parole Commission. May 2003. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 July 2009. Retrieved 17 June 2018.
  4. ↑ "Supervised Release Law and Legal Definition". US Legal.
  5. ↑ Schwartzapfel, Beth (11 July 2015). "How parole boards keep prisoners in the dark and behind bars". The Washington Post .
  6. ↑ "Mississippi Restoration of Rights, Pardon, Expungement & Sealing". Restoration of Rights Project.
  7. ↑ Elliott, Jack Jr. (27 February 2015). "Mississippi justices: Pardon doesn't wipe record clean". The Clarion-Ledger . Jackson, Mississippi.
  8. 1 2 Reitz, Kevin R.; Rhine, Edward E. (2020-01-13). "Parole Release and Supervision: Critical Drivers of American Prison Policy". Annual Review of Criminology. 3 (1): 281–298. doi: 10.1146/annurev-criminol-011419-041416 . ISSN   2572-4568.
  9. ↑ SCHOENFELD, HEATHER (2016). "A Research Agenda on Reform: Penal Policy and Politics across the States". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 664: 155–174. doi:10.1177/0002716215601850. ISSN   0002-7162. JSTOR   24756113.
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