The appeal process differs among states. In compassionate release cases, the state governor has specifically ordered a parole board to give certain inmates accelerated consideration for parole. For example, in , the Governor of Maryland signed an executive order requiring accelerated consideration for parole to inmates whose prison term is set to expire in four months, and who are not serving time for a sexual or violent offense.
Other states have adopted similar coronavirus-related compassionate release programs. In any case, a parole board considers a variety of evidence.
The physical and mental health of an inmate are always considered. Parole boards also review reports, recommendations, and statements of certain officials. This evidence that is reviewed consists of:.
If parole is granted, it is then monitored and restricted. These measures may include curfews, which require defendants to be at their residences at specific times. Some individuals may be required to be at their residence at all times.
Exceptions may be granted that allow defendants to travel to and from specific places and events, such as to their job, and for doctor and attorney appointments. Monitoring measures ensure that prisoners whose parole includes confinement to the home or specific geographic area, do not go outside their area of confinement. These measures can include:. The measures verify that a defendant who reports to a parole officer is who they claim to be.
Other monitoring measures apply to [prisoners paroled from drug or alcohol crimes. These prisoners may be subject to random drug and breathalyzer tests. If a defendant fails to comply with one or more conditions of parole, they have violated the terms of parole.
A parole violation may occur when a defendant commits certain crimes while on parole, or fails to meet with their parole officer as required. A parole violation may also occur when a defendant fails a drug or alcohol test, or fails to pay fines or restitution to victims for their monetary losses. Under such a program, a prisoner who has satisfactorily complied with prison disciplinary rules, and who has met other criteria, such as having shown remorse or evidence of rehabilitation, may be awarded a specific amount of days per year off a sentence.
As a term is served, days off accumulate, and are applied to a sentence. This application reduces the overall length of a sentence. This belief is inaccurate. Parole is a privilege, not a right. The privilege must be earned by meeting the criteria discussed above. One, but only one, of these criteria, is complying with prison disciplinary rules and regulations. Such compliance is expected in the first instance. Indeed, failure to comply with disciplinary rules and regulations can subject an inmate to loss of privileges, such as recreational activity rights.
In severe cases of disciplinary rule infractions, a defendant may be segregated from other parts of the prison population. People should not spend decades in prison without a meaningful chance of release. There exist vastly underused strategies that policy makers can employ to halt, and meaningfully reverse, our overreliance on incarceration.
We present eight of those strategies below. Too many state prisons hold too many individuals doing too much time. The goal of our eight strategies is to bring immediate relief to these individuals, by creating or expanding opportunities for their release.
However, to discuss such reforms, we first need to understand the basic mechanisms by which someone is released from prison. In general, when someone is convicted of a felony and sentenced, that person loses their liberty for a period of time. A portion of this period is typically served in a prison, and often a portion is served in the community under supervision, also known as parole. Figure 2. Where the release decision is made through a discretionary parole process see sidebar , regular parole hearings present further opportunities for release.
This graphic is not to scale and the ratios between the parts will vary by state and sentence type. Parole is very often available much later than this graphic implies or not at all. There are two basic types of release systems. Here we explain the two types. First, a note about vocabulary. This report does not focus on sentencing, which of course largely determines when and under what conditions individuals are eligible for or are released from prison. States have different systems for deciding when to release people from prison.
Most notably, some states primarily use discretionary parole , others primarily use mandatory release , and most states use a combination of the two. The main difference between the two systems is who decides when someone can be released the legislature, via statute; or the parole board, through vote of the members. But critically, people released under either type of supervision or even probation are equally subject to conditions of supervision, the violation of which can lead to re-incarceration until their sentence expires.
Most national efforts to discuss state parole try to classify each state as either using discretionary parole or mandatory release or as having determinate or indeterminate sentencing. The reality is more complicated. Most state parole systems consist of a patchwork of discretionary parole and mandatory release. Every state has at various points changed its sentencing laws with respect to certain crimes including rules about parole eligibility in response to a change in the political mood, or a recent and highly-publicized violent crime.
As a result, someone who commits a robbery or murder in one year may be eligible for parole after serving a fraction of a relatively short sentence.
A person committing the exact same crime the next year may be denied parole eligibility and have to serve a quarter century or the rest of his or her life in prison. Every state has gone through these spasms, and they contribute hugely to the lack of equal justice in sentencing and parole. Moreover, this population tends to be precisely the groups that the politically risk-averse parole boards are reluctant to release i.
Because the discretionary-mandatory distinction is not a clean one, it is more helpful to evaluate how well a state parole system works by looking at the big picture, including:. If not released on parole, the parole board continues to consider release at regular intervals until that person is granted parole or maxes out their sentence.
Of course, states vary in many ways, most critically in how they structure parole eligibility see sidebar above , and policymakers reading this report should anticipate tailoring our suggested reforms to their state systems. Each of the reforms laid out in this report could be effective independent of the others. However, we encourage states to use as many of the following tools as possible to shorten excessive sentences:. Presumptive parole is a system in which incarcerated individuals are released upon first becoming eligible for parole unless the parole board finds explicit reasons to not release them.
This approach flips the current parole approach on its head, so that release on parole is the expected outcome, rather than one that must be argued for. Under this framework, an incarcerated person who meets certain preset conditions will automatically be released at a predetermined date. Parole decisions are often tricky to predict or interpret. We explain the often faulty logic that informs parole decisions.
In most states, incarcerated people and by extension, their families are unsure what they must do in order to be granted parole.
Parole boards generally rely on a mix of objective data 9 and subjective judgment, but their decisions often lack predictability and transparency. One subjective factor that almost all parole boards weigh heavily - and which virtually all parole reformers say should not factor into release decisions - is the nature or seriousness of the crime of conviction.
The apparent randomness of parole decisions is not surprising: Rather than simply look for evidence that an incarcerated person will be a threat to public safety should they be released, parole board members often base their decisions on criteria so subjective it is unlikely any two people would agree on whether that criteria have been met.
For example:. How should parole boards decide whether to release someone? Currently, parole boards treat continued confinement as the default and must justify why someone should be released. Logically, parole should only be denied if the board can prove that the individual has exhibited specific behaviors that indicate a public safety risk repeated violent episodes in prison, refusal to participate in programming, aggressive correspondence with the victim, etc.
But parole board members - who are almost exclusively gubernatorial appointees - may lose their jobs for merely considering to release someone sentenced to life, 17 or for releasing someone who unexpectedly goes on to commit another crime. Figure 3. Not all states make their parole grant rates available, but the existing data - collected by the Robina Institute - shows a tremendous variation between states often resulting from the differences in state parole systems.
In a few states, the data is more complicated for other reasons. Washington State, for example, eliminated discretionary parole in July , leaving that option only to individuals who committed crimes before that date. An effective parole system that wants people to succeed will start with the assumption that success is possible.
Changing this presumption would also create powerful new incentives for the entire system. The Department of Corrections would have an incentive to create meaningful programs, and incarcerated people would have an incentive to enroll and successfully complete them.
Of course, those four state models have limitations that other states should be cautious about repeating:. Second-look sentencing provides a legal mechanism for judges to review and modify individual sentences. The most effective way to do this is described in the newly revised Model Penal Code, published by the American Law Institute. Figure 4. The reality is that people and societies change, as do views about punishment. Second-look provides the opportunity for judges to weigh the transformation of an incarcerated individual against the perceived retributive benefit to society of 15 years of incarceration.
Second-look is the only proposal in this report in which the judiciary would play a leading role, and that makes it particularly powerful tool in a reformist toolkit because polls show that people trust the judiciary much more than they trust the legislative or executive branches of government. States can award credit to incarcerated individuals for obeying prison rules or for participating in programs during their incarceration.
Figure 5. This schematic of time served shows how a good time system can make people eligible for release on parole sooner and how it can make the ultimate completion of their sentence shorter.
As this section describes, states vary greatly in how much good time they award and in what circumstances they award it. States are unnecessarily frugal in granting good time and irrationally quick to revoke it. Good time should be granted to all incarcerated individuals, regardless of conviction and independent of program participation. Prisons should refrain from revoking accrued good time except for the most serious of offenses, and after five years, any good time earned should be vested and immune from forfeiture.
As the name implies, good time is doled out in units of time. Good time systems vary between states, as the National Conference of State Legislatures has previously discussed. But in others, administrators are empowered by statute to award far more. Procedures will vary by state and incarcerated people may not automatically be awarded the statutorily authorized maximum. In Texas, for example, the statute authorizes up to 45 days per 30 served, but the more typical amount awarded is 30, with the full amount reserved for people with non-violent sentences assigned to work outside the fence or in close proximity to correctional officers.
While many states will retain the option of imposing long sentences, their sentencing structures should presume that both individuals and society transform over time. This proposal uses the same year timeline as proposed by the Model Penal Code for Second Look Sentencing discussed above.
States will vary in how they structure sentences and how parole eligibility is calculated, but states should ensure that people are not serving more than 15 years without being considered for parole. Figure 6. Schematic graphic showing how states can shorten excessive prison sentences by making all incarcerated people eligible for parole at the year mark.
Sentences are determined based on the laws in place at the time the crime was committed. Unfortunately, when sentencing reform is achieved, it almost always applies only to future convictions. This means people currently incarcerated experience unequal justice and fail to benefit from progressive reform.
Our statutes should be kept current with our most evolved understanding of justice, and our ongoing punishments like incarceration should always be consistent with that progress, regardless of when the sentence was originally imposed. Congress recognized that this law was based on irrational science and resulted in disproportionate arrests for people of color and changed it in , but the reform was for new drug crimes only.
People sentenced under the old law were forced to continue to serve sentences that were now considered unjust. Delaware passed a justice reform package in that not only reformed three- strikes laws but allowed those convicted on three-strikes statutes to apply for a modification of their sentences.
Delaware took the common-sense step of making its reforms retroactive, but far too few legislatures do. Historically, when sentencing reforms do grant relief to individuals already serving lengthy sentences, it is more often the result of a judicial order. Courts make their decisions retroactive either by requiring states to change their laws, or by having the states erect frameworks for incarcerated people to apply for resentencing.
Parole supervision should focus on strengthening ties between individuals on parole and their communities. Parole revocations for technical violations are a problem in most states, but 10 states in particular were responsible for a majority of such revocations in Figure 7.
These ten states accounted for over two-thirds of all returns to incarceration for technical violations of parole conditions in , according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics BJS. See an alternate view of how much parole revocations for technical violations cost these states annually. States should stop putting parolees behind bars for behaviors that, were the individual not on parole, would not warrant prison time.
If a parole condition is itself a law violation, it can be dealt with by the criminal justice system. My husband is in jail waiting indictment from grand jury for murder. What can I do? My son was sentenced and just wanted to know where I go to see if he would qualify for house arrest because of this corona virus going everywhere?
If there is something I could do please let me know or if you can help I can give you his id number. Thanks Diane Waymoth. My brother has been in prison for 18 years for robbery, is it possible he could get out on early release do to this coronavirus situation? I am terminally ill, my son is in prison, I need help, is there any program that could help get early release to care for me?
Thank you J. Hageberg [email protected]. My son is housed at the Marion Correctional were their are a estimated number of inmate and staff that have the virus. He had been locked up for over 19 years, and have at least 10 more to do. I would like to know what he might be eligible for to get a early release due to this virus.
It been very hard not seeing him in the pass few month which I was during my visit every month. Can you tell me what I can do, or who I can write to. My son, Traver P. He has worked very hard to accomplish the degrees. He also has been tutoring other inmates to reach the guidelines for their GED. I feel that he is a great candidate for early release. He has been incarcerated since July of He has done 9 years of his 12 year sentence.
He is due for parole on August 4, I need to know what other steps to take. I have sent letters to Illinois Gov. Pritzker and to the Illinois Prison Project for help. Please Help? Hi I wanted to find out how I can get my husband back in court for possible resentencing. He has served more than half his time. And right now is serving enhancement time. What can be done? A friend of ours got 80 to 8 10 to 21 months for his first time in trouble whT cN I do in North Carolina.
I never knew that a compassionate release is based on a terminal illness or something similar for an early release from prison.
My brother is in prison right now and he has been told that his cancer is back. I wonder if this counts as a compassionate release and if he gets to be freed now. My husband was sentenced to 25 years for drugs in and all his motions have been denied what should we do?
What is going on? A variety of things, it seems. The Law Office of Brandon Sample has assembled this detailed analysis of the First Step Act to help the public understand the ins…. We are a week into and there is much buzz about what lies ahead in the year from the courts, Congress, and the U.
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