Early Release Programs

History

Early release is not applicable to all forms of punishment; a flogging in the town square, for example, does not lend itself to the possibility of emancipation before completion. Until the birth of the penitentiary at the dawn of the nineteenth century, most sanctions could be modified only by a lessening of severity or total reprieve.

During the same time that prisons were taking shape in America, Governor Philip King began a practice in Australia—then a penal colony of the British Empire—that would prove to be the forerunner of early release. English convicts were transported to New South Wales, on the east coast of the colony, as a form of punishment. They served considerable time and were forced to do hard labor for the duration of their sentence. King, who was governor from 1800 to 1806, granted to convicts who showed the ability to support themselves something called a “ticket-of-leave,” essentially an early form of parole. “Gentlemen offenders” who arrived at the colony with means or letters of introduction also received this special dispensation. Men with a ticket-of-leave were free to make their own way in New South Wales before completing their sentence. They were, in effect, released early.

Later in the century, Ralph Darling, governor of New South Wales from 1826 to 1831, sought to reinstate the eroded punitive character of the penal colony; once a feared and awful place, it had developed a reputation as an excellent place for a man to make his way. Under Darling, tickets-of-leave became a reward available only to those who had served at least a minimum sentence and then had been evaluated as deserving. This approach required a method for keeping abreast of convict behavior. Darling assigned numbers to each convict; record-keeping became systematized and integral to running the colony. Good behavior and lots of hard work were now the prerequisites for early release.

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