Parole Guidelines Score

Prior to national efforts to reform prison conditions and improve parole guidelines, criminal behavior was thought to have its roots in the psychosocial and environmental aspects of an offender's life. Parole was seen as a major adjunct to the rehabilitation philosophy that dominated American corrections from the 1930s through the 1960s. This rehabilitation-over-retribution ideal, known as the “medical model,” assumed that criminal behaviors could be corrected. Theoretically, every offender could be dealt with on an individual basis to determine the precise causes of his or her criminal behavior. Parole was granted to those deemed to have met the then-nascent correction standards.

The national purpose of revising parole guidelines was to facilitate and improve parole boards' decision-making processes. The use of accountability-driven guidelines aids in helping to make policies more transparent. As a result, predictions about population projections can more easily and efficiently be made and revised. These forecasts can then help to educate and improve the planning of other prison-capacity management policies, including those framing reforms and legislative mandates.

Discretion and Independence

Parole board members, while independent and allowed to deliberate outside their board's guidelines and individually interpret policy, cast their votes as a unified body. As do parole policies of most other states, Texas's parole guidelines grant individual interpretations, and board members exercise their discretion to vote collectively outside the guidelines when necessary. California parole board members individually interpret guidelines yet vote as a caucus on parole issues. Similarly, Georgia's State Board of Pardons and Paroles, Michigan's Parole and Commutation Board, and the New York State Division of Parole all grant unrestricted, individual discretion to their members, whose deliberations will be finalized as well as perceived as collective decisions under their boards' signatures.

An independent parole board is as vital and as necessary as an independent judiciary. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Swarthout v. Cooke, that a federal appeals court exceeded its power when it reversed a decision by the California Board of Parole hearings. Federal judges have no power to overturn state parole decisions, the Court said in a unanimous ruling that could affect, in the coming years, hundreds of cases in federal courts throughout the United States.

The U.S. Supreme Court made a unanimous ruling that federal judges have no power to overturn state parole decisions, reversing a decision by the California Board of Parole Hearings and thus ensuring the independence of parole boards.

(Environmental Protection Agency)