NCJ Number
77174
Date Published
1978
Length
568 pages
Annotation
This report describes the tasks and research performed to assist staff of the Division of Parole in developing decisionmaking guidelines for parole board use in making decisions about the minimum period of imprisonment (MPI) and parole release.
Abstract
The research tasks include measuring the board members' perceptions of offense seriousness and developing offense seriousness scales; conducting a simulated decisionmaking exercise to help develop a set of guidelines for MPI decisions; studying the board's past MPI and parole practices; studying the board's use of a trial set of MPI guidelines in 300 decisions; helping define data elements that could be used for monitoring the board's use of guidelines; and preparing an inmate manual in English and Spanish to explain the policies and procedures of the parole board. Each of these tasks is reported in a separate section which sets forth how the task was performed and the conclusions derived. The perceptions of offense seriousness measurement revealed that a fair degree of consensus exists among board members on the relative seriousness of most crimes. The sentencing simulation exercise revealed that there is a reasonable amount of consensus on the relative seriousness of different types of prior criminal record as well. However, the board members clearly disagreed on the appropriate length of an MPI. The MPI study confirmed the expectation that the length of the MPI increases as the seriousness of the offense increases. Data also indicated a reasonably strong relationship between the court-imposed maximum and the MPI set by the parole board. The parole release study, which considered time served prior to parole release, suggested a strong relationship between it, the MPI, and the maximum term. A regression analysis indicated that the MPI imposed in a case is by far the most influential factor related to the time served, with the maximum term imposed by the court in second place. Footnotes and tabular data are included. Bulky appendixes corresponding to the sections of the report contain study instruments and extensive documentation as well as study products, such as both language texts of the inmate manual. (Author abstract modified)