Texas says rise in paroles gives state bragging rights

Officials say reforms are 'smart on crime' and save money.

Texas continues a steady march away from its Old West image of being tough on crime to one that state leaders now call "smart on crime" and even fiscally "right on crime."

Nothing makes that more apparent than the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole's newly released bragging rights: More prisoners were paroled this past fiscal year than any other year in the past decade, and fewer parolees are being sent back.  Read more...

Senate vote spares Parole Board

DOVER -- The Delaware Senate pardoned the Board of Parole from an immediate death sentence late Tuesday, even though the operating budget senators will consider today does not include direct funding for the panel.

House Bill 35 failed to get the minimum of eleven votes needed for passage, going down in defeat on a 9-10 vote. Sens. Harris McDowell and Liane Sorenson did not vote.  Read more...

NH bill would let parole board decide on release

State parole board officials should have the power to keep inmates behind bars longer, reversing part of last year's prison reform law that said violators could be recommitted for a maximum of 90 days, witnesses told a Senate committee Thursday.

While there was some agreement on changing the recommitment limit, witnesses did not agree whether to change the mandatory release of all inmates nine months before they complete their sentences to they can be placed under intense supervision.  Read more...

Patrick pushes probation takeover: Sees Parole Board merger, then cuts

Governor Deval Patrick, unable to resolve a power struggle with House and Senate leaders, pressed ahead yesterday with a plan to merge the troubled state Probation Department and the embattled Parole Board, put them under his control, and slash their budgets.

In doing so, Patrick was acting on his long-stated goal of combining the agencies and seizing control, which he said would lead to better monitoring of prisoners before and after their release.  Read more...

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signs order to abolish state Parole Board

Topeka — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback announced Friday that a veteran warden will run a state corrections system beset by overcrowding and still facing questions about the past management of its women’s prison.

Brownback appointed Ray Roberts as his corrections secretary, saying Roberts emerged as the top candidate even after a nationwide search. Roberts has been the warden at the state’s maximum-security prison for men in El Dorado since 2003, and his career in corrections spans 35 years.  Read more...

Former Melbourne fugitive Paula Carroll's friends cheer parole board's decision

Woman, 56, gets parole in 1975 crime, but escape charge may negate victory

Since Paula Carroll was arrested in April after being a fugitive for more than 34 years, agony has beset her family and her friends.

Crowded into a hearing room early Wednesday at the Florida Parole Commission’s headquarters, however, 20 of them cried out in joy. Hands were clapped. Hearts were held.
 
The commission had just invoked a rare tactic to reduce Carroll’s five-year sentence to parole. It was a moment of levity — one of few since an unidentified person tipped off authorities about the Melbourne resident’s whereabouts. Read More...

Crime Victims To Probation-Parole Officials: Pay More Attention To Us

Crime victims urged probation and parole officials today to pay more attention to their cases and issues. The unusual appeal came near the conclusion of the 35th annual American Probation and Parole Association training institute, held this year in Washington, D.C. Andrea Conte, wife of Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, said that crime victims sometimes have viewed probation and parole agents as enemies, more sympathetic to offenders than to victims; she urged more attention to issues like restitution by offenders to their victims. Conte founded an anticrime group called You Have the Power--Know How to Use It. She was the victim of a pistol-whipping by a would-be kidnapper 20 years ago. Susan Russell, a vicim services consultant in Vermont who was kidnapped, raped, and nearly killed 18 years ago, complained that the state had given her misleading and inaccurate information about the offender.

Pat Tuthill, whose daughter Peyton was raped, tortured, and murdered by a probationer who transferred from another state to Denver in 1999, made a plea for victims and their families to get more information about convicts' whereabouts and status. "Offenders have many rights, victims have few," she told the meeting. Victims advocates acknowledge that most offenders eventually will be released from custody or supervision; the victims ask that they be notified every important step along the way, including about the conduct and treatment of offenders who are in prison. The general theme of the program was that victims are getting more respect in the criminal justice system, but there is a long way to go. Other victim advocates who spoke included Mary Dodd of Nevada, Rick Fiori of Maryland, Elizabeth Page of Texas, and Carroll Ann Ellis of Virginia. Listening were senior officials of the Justice Department's Office of Justice Programs. Moderator was Anne Seymour of Justice Solutions in Washington, D.C.

Family uses killer's letters to keep him behind bars

Billy Ray White vowed 20 years ago that when he got out of prison, he would track down the relatives of the man he'd murdered and subject them to gruesome deaths.

In a handwritten letter to J.D. Hall's daughter, the convicted killer promised to carve her up like a turkey and make her head into a flower pot. In another letter to Hall's son, he said he would put him through a meat grinder and force his relatives to eat him.

"You can run but you can't hide. You can go to the police, but they can't protect you. You can change your name, address, or even move, but I will always find you," he wrote in a letter postmarked May 15, 1989, to Hall's widow. "They can't keep me in here for the rest of my life."  Read More...

Inside the Parole Board: how freedom is granted or denied for prisoners

Unprecedented access opens door to the often publicly criticised, but little understood, workings of the Parole Board

A Parole Board hearing starts early and with little fanfare. There are no grand, oak-lined courtrooms or spacious chambers. Instead, in a cramped room in the bowels of a modern, unprepossessing building just beyond the shadow of parliament, panel members grab paper cups of powdered coffee and converse about the comparative quality of the beverages served in prisons. Then, firmly shutting the door on the outside world, the panel squeeze around a table dominated by teetering piles of prison, probation and psychiatric reports and victim statements, and begin their work.  Read more...