Parole Decision-Making: Weighing the Risk to the Public

• NCJ Number: 186884
• Author(s): Roger Hood; Stephen Shute
• Date Published: 2000
• Length: 4 pages
• Sale Source: Great Britain Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom
• Note: Research Findings No. 114

Annotation

The report discusses findings from a study of parole cases showing how the Parole Board of England and Wales makes decisions and the impact on the parole rate.

Abstract

The new system of parole introduced by the Criminal Justice Act of 1991 requires the system to consider primarily the risk to the public of a further offense being committed at a time when the prisoner would otherwise be in prison and to balance this against the benefits of early release, under supervision, where rehabilitation might lessen the risk of re-offending. Key findings from the study are: (1) members of Parole Board panels rarely disagreed with each other and their decisions were highly predictable, with their written reasons for granting or refusing parole placing great emphasis on risk factors and whether the prisoner had addressed his or her offending behavior; (2) under the new system of parole, the proportion of prisoners who were paroled at some point in their sentence has dropped by about a third, from 70 percent to 48 percent; (3) 87 percent of those paroled had conditions attached to their license, whereas before the new system, conditions were attached in half as many cases; (4) half of the prisoners in the sample of cases studied had a low risk of reconviction for a serious offense during the parole period, yet only half of them were granted parole; (5) when asked to estimate the risk of reconviction, Parole Board members often estimated the risk to be much higher than the actual risk of reconviction; (6) probation officers’ recommendations had a very strong influence on a prisoner’s chance of being paroled; and (7) the parole rate could be substantially increased without increasing the proportion of prisoners who would be reconvicted of a serious offense on parole. The Parole Review Committee expected that by moving the eligibility date forward from one-third to a half of the sentence, and by providing supervision for all prisoners whether paroled or not, a higher, not a lower, proportion of prisoners would be granted parole. These findings question whether the right balance between the risk to the public and the liberty afforded the prisoner has been found. References