Montana Legislature sets sights on Parole Board's possible role in prison overcrowding

Examining whether board may be too stringent on granting or revoking parole for felons within Montana correctional system

HELENA — Montana’s parole board, which decides the fate of hundreds of state prison inmates each year, will be getting a hard look from the Legislature on its possible role in overcrowding Montana’s prison cells.

Beginning next month, a legislative panel kicks off a yearlong study of the board, examining whether the board may be too stringent on granting or revoking parole for felons within the Montana correctional system.

“We’re keeping so many people in prison for so long, nonviolent offenders, at tremendous cost to the taxpayer,” said Sen. Terry Murphy, R-Caldwell, the author of the bill leading to the study. “It just came to some of us that we really need to find out why that is.”

The study will be conducted by the Law and Justice Interim Committee, which has heard hours of testimony from families criticizing the board, accusing it of denying parole for their loved ones for no good reason.

Mike McKee, a retired financial adviser from Hamilton and chairman of the parole board since 2009, said last week that much of that testimony was “misinformation and half-truths being presented as facts.”  Read more...

Fewer Americans Behind Bars, BJS Reports

For the third straight year, fewer Americans were under "correctional supervision"--a catch-all description that includes prisons, jails, probation, and parole--in 2011.

That was the major finding of a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report released today.  Read more...

Prison rehab tied to parole decisions

Parole board decisions can have a huge impact on whether or not prisoners are motivated to rehabilitate, according to a study co-authored by SFU economics professor Steeve Mongrain.

Mongrain and his colleagues argue that parole boards need to consider the length of prisoners’ original sentences as well as their behaviour in prison when granting early parole and determining eligibility for parole review.  Read more...

Pennsylvania eyes overhaul of parole process

Halfway houses a focus of program

HARRISBURG -- State officials are working to streamline parole interviews and focus halfway house rehabilitation on their parolees as they implement a law designed to save millions of dollars in corrections spending.

Efficiency measures and program overhauls in the state's penitentiary system are expected to save $253 million over five years, according to numbers from the Senate Republican Caucus.  Read more...

Brown case highlights reluctance to parole longtime offenders

Eroy Brown, whose acquittal on murder charges involving the deaths of a prison warden and a farm manager in the 1980s shook the Lone Star corrections system to its roots, is coming up for parole again.

Brown is serving 90 years as a habitual criminal for robbing a Waco convenience store of $12 and some candy bars. The graying, almost 60-year-old is serving time in a South Carolina prison because a federal judge thought his safety could not be guaranteed in a Texas lockup. If he's granted parole, he would be sent to a pre-release program in California. Read more...

The Role of Parole in Texas: Achieving Public Safety & Efficiency

Introduction

Texas recently earned national acclaim for avoiding what was expected to be a catastrophic prison overcrowding crisis. In 2005, in anticipation of overcrowding, the Legislative Budget Board recommended building more than 17,000 new prison beds. Texas did not build the beds, however, and it still managed to reduce crime throughout the state. Part of the credit for this impressive accomplishment must go to the state’s parole system. In 2009, out of 76,607 parole-eligible cases considered, 23,182 Texas inmates were placed on some kind of parole supervision. More importantly, the number of parolees revoked to prison has sharply declined from 11,311 in 2004 to 6,678 in 2010, reflecting a drop in both new crimes and technical violations serious enough to warrant revocation.  Read more...

What realignment means for California corrections

Gov. Jerry Brown's ambitious plan for balancing his state's budget includes moving parole services to county control and dismantling the DJJ

The current buzzword in California government fiscal circles is “Realignment.” This is what Governor Brown wants to do to many state services. Chief among these, at least for CorrectionsOne readers, is the idea of turning parole services over the county governments, along with a theoretically adequate funding level for these services. An important secondary consideration is the complete dismantling of DJJ (Division of Juvenile Justice) and turning it over to local control also.  Read more...

Supreme Court says state prisoners have no constitutional right to parole

In reversing the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for the third time in a week, the justices say the appeals court was wrong to second-guess the California parole board and the state courts for denying parole to a man convicted of attempted murder.

Reporting from Washington — Unanimously reversing the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for the third time in a week, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that state prisoners have no constitutional right to be paroled.

The decision rebuked the San Francisco-based appeals court for ordering the parole of several inmates who had been convicted of murder or attempted murder.

All three of the opinions overturned in the past week were written by veteran liberal Judge Stephen Reinhardt from Los Angeles.  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...

Schwarzenegger veto of killer's parole overturned

The state parole board has approved Michael McDonald's release three times and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed it each time, saying the convicted murderer showed a "lack of insight" into his crime because he still insisted he was innocent.

But a state appeals court says that neither the governor nor the board can insist on a confession before paroling a prisoner who, based on the evidence, is not dangerous.  Read More...

Prison populations shouldn't trump justice

Violent offenders should not be considered for parole every year.

WEST Virginia's regional jails and prisons are overcrowded, and many state officials don't want to spend scarce money building more cells.

So the administration offered, and the Legislature passed, a bill backers said was intended to accelerate parole hearings for nonviolent offenders.  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...

Serious Flaws in IL Prisoner Release Program

Criminal justice expert David Erickson released his review of the Illinois Department of Corrections’ Meritorious Good Time Push program Friday, reporting a number of serious flaws in the program, which was terminated in December 2009, and offering detailed recommendations to reform the prison system’s parole procedures.

After an accelerated prisoner release plan last year was found to include some prisoners who had committed violent crimes, Governor Pat Quinn suspended, then terminated the program. He named Erickson, a retired criminal trial judge and Appellate Court Justice, to head a three-person panel to review all Department of Corrections’ Meritorious Good Time (MGT) programs and make recommendations on how the programs should be overhauled.  Read More...

Parole program shifts resources to serious offenders

Police are closely monitoring a new group of parolees on Morgan Hill's streets who can't be carted off to jail as easily as traditional parolees.

The new state parole program that allows certain criminals to be unsupervised when they get out of prison - known as non-revocable parole - is supposed to let authorities keep a closer eye on violent felons, but local police say the policy will result in more violence, drug trafficking and theft.

"It's completely predictable," Morgan Hill police chief Bruce Cumming said. "These people, when they get out of prison they go back to doing exactly what they went to prison for. They go back to their same neighborhood, same crowd, back to drugs, back to robbing people and breaking into houses and stealing cars."  Read More...

Software Predicts Criminal Behavior

New crime prediction software being rolled out in the nation's capital should reduce not only the murder rate, but the rate of many other crimes as well.

Developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the software is already used in Baltimore and Philadelphia to predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder and to be murdered.

In his latest version, the one being implemented in D.C., Berk goes even further, identifying the individuals most likely to commit crimes other than murder.  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...