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Paper Abstract: Pros & cons. Goals, recidivism, violations, sentencing, public safety, costs. Paper Introduction: The purpose of this research is to examine the pros and cons of parole. The plan of the research will be to set forth a brief history of parole as an aspect of sentencing for crimes as well as the current sentencing strategies in place, and then to discuss the effectiveness of the strategy in general, the economics of parole, the phenomenon of overcrowding in prisons, the role of parole officers, and the climate of public opinion on the subject. Parole from prison appears to have developed as a means of social control and social engineering. Standard definitions of the term imply that parole is a mechanism for gradual reintroduction of a convicted and sentenced criminal into society as a fully productive member. It is described as "a pledge of good conduct given by a person convicted of crime as a condition Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Reader'sDigest, p. (199 , April 23). However, in the current period,parole is actually a source of prison entry; that is, parole violations ofone sort or another persistently require the readmission of convictedpersons into prison. From discipline to management:Strategies of control in parole supervision, 189 -199 . (1975, 1978). Abuse of beeper technology could also occur if nonoffenders or others weremade subject to electronic monitoring (Peck, 1988, passim). Growing up scared. Bidinotto cites six cases of paroled rapists whose sex-crime patterns accelerated into murder. That is, if a sentence isa range from not less than two and not more than five years, the paroleissue may arise within the limits of the extremes. Zinsmeister, Karl. That's our war on crime? For those arrested for drug felonies, the figure is 1 percent. The question of overcrowding is challenged by those suspicious ofparole and supported with evidence of particular crimes. 49-66). 6 1ff). Glaberson, William. The plan of the research will be to set forth a brief history ofparole as an aspect of sentencing for crimes as well as the currentsentencing strategies in place, and then to discuss the effectiveness ofthe strategy in general, the economics of parole, the phenomenon ofovercrowding in prisons, the role of parole officers, and the climate ofpublic opinion on the subject. Sentencing strategies currently include those that involve increasedincarceration and isolation of inmates from the whole of society, and thosethat involve a version of house arrest. Among people arrested for homicide, only 49 percent are sentenced to a year or more behind bars. This view supports the theory that crime owes much to societalpathology, and that criminals are sociological victims as much aspathological figures in society. The NewYorker, p. . Urban jails offer a strong example of why parole is felt to be oneanswer to efficient prison administration and one counterexample totraditional sentencing of appropriate adjudication of crimes. Parole. S.v. Simon believes "that the increasing pattern ofreturns to prison from parole represents a crisis in the capacity of paroleto provide a model of control with a plausible claim to maintaining publicsafety" (Simon, 199 , p. A voice in the night. The arguments both for and against a sentencing system that includesparole proceed from a common source, the problems created or aggravated bythe current prison system. 233, 238, et passim). It isdescribed as "a pledge of good conduct given by a person convicted of crimeas a condition of release from confinement in prison before the expirationof the term of confinement" (Parole, 1975, 1979). If indeterminate sentencing and the decline of the unskilled-laborindustrial base have produced the phenomenon of recidivism despite parole,then determinate sentencing, which also contains an element of socialcontrol, also involves the creation of certain social problems.Ironically, such get-tough sentencing policies as mandatory sentencing canbe seen to have the effect of aggravating deplorable prison conditionsbecause they aggravate overcrowding and all the qualities that go with it. 38-45. In 1989, 16, fewer Californians were robbed and 225, fewer burglaries were committed than would have been had these rates stayed at their 198 -81 peak, and 988 fewer citizens were murdered (Methvin, 1991, p. 41. They are also farcheaper" (The Talk of..." 1992, p. Standard definitions of the term implythat parole is a mechanism for gradual reintroduction of a convicted andsentenced criminal into society as a fully productive member. The role of prisons in aggravating, not rehabilitating, criminalbehavior is another reason that alternatives to incarceration are deemedimportant. A voice recognition feature of such equipmentis the basis of that technology, which as of 1992 is in its earliest stageof development. Irby, Maura Mills. There is no evidence that the government's war on drugs is reducing drug use or drug trafficking in the poor black communities where both activities are so concentrated ("The Talk of..." 1992, p. The technology involves some specialized training ofparole officers, but in the scheme of complex administration of paroleebehavior, it is seen as a valuable tool (Bhargava, 1992, p. (1988, December). The murder occurred six weeksafter the parole. The AtlanticMonthly, pp. Indeed, Kurtz advocates serious consideration ofalternatives to incarceration, of which parole is one (Kurtz, 199 , pp. Metchik, Eric. Burka says that inTexas, many convicts deliberately choose to be sent to overcrowded prisonsin anticipation of easy parole, rather than accepting long probation or anyform of electronic monitoring (Burka, 1991, p. (1988, July). Governments currently spend seventeen times as much on incometransfers, education, and social aid as they do on law and order"(Zinsmeister, 199 , pp. Opponents of lenient parole policyhave found support in dollar figures of the 198 s. Questions of imperiled public safety are answered, sometimestragically, with every report of a crime committed by a paroled person.The term "career criminal" frequently appears in such reports.Rehabilitation, of which parole is presumed to be an aspect, has failed, asthe number of crimes committed by parolees shows. Pay now--or pay later. A study by Wagner sets forth two general methods used inmaking parole decisions, actuarial or clinical. . The argument in favor of parole includes anappeal to the overcrowded, inhuman conditions inside prisons and thedecreased likelihood that overcrowded inmates will be rehabilitated.Overcrowding of prisons is also symptomatic of a deeply flawed socialpolicy, according to this argument. Hedescribes Rikers Island, the principal place of detention, as a "penalcolony," which is a term that is a throwback to nonprogressive eras ofincarceration. One horror story of crimes committed by parolees is worse than theother. This concept has persons who would otherwise havebeen sent to prisons being fitted with anklets or bracelets equipped withelectronic radio transmitters that monitor movements within specified spacelimits. 97. [I]n Michigan . 196). Under the doctrine of mandatory sentencing, which sets heavy minimum prison sentences except in cases where those convicted provide useful information to the authorities, nonviolent first offenders often end up serving more time than prisoners with long criminal records, who typically have more information to trade. Actuarial and clinical decisionmaking inparole: Should we use our heads, the formula or both? 153 ). Bidinotto, Robert James. The former chartsrecidivism rates statistically, while the latter "relies upon the judgmentof individual decisionmakers who study each inmate's case to estimate hisor her future behavior and then deny or grant parole" (Wagner, 1992, p.2116). (1991). (199 , June). Divisions in the debate can be seen in this account of theimplications of mandatory-sentence laws: Congress has passed sixty mandatory-sentencing statutes: four of them have accounted for ninety-four per cent of the mandatory sentences imposed; and over ninety per cent of those sentences have been imposed for drug offenses. Such stories are plentiful andtypical of the parole-violation crime stories reported in the newspapers."Last year," writes one person of her personal experience, "our overcrowdedprisons released thousands of repeat offenders to rob, rape, and murderonce more. (1992, April 13). For rapists, the figure is just 29 percent. Metchikdistrusts the clinical model inasmuch as the pattern of parole decisions inthe US appear to be partly based on "retributive evaluations," or thetendency to include an element of punishment in the parole decision(Metchik, 1988, pp. Peck's perspective, however, cautions against beepers for tworeasons: First, beepers by themselves do not solve what Peck refers to as"fetid" prison conditions of the correctional system. In The New York Times, citedin "Crime & Punishment (U.S.A.)." Reader's Digest, pp. 28). Just checking in.' Business Week, p. DissertationAbstracts International, vol. Telephonicmonitoring of prescribed check-in calls on the part of parolees is anotherform of electronic tracking. A typical inmate getting out of lockup these days has spent seventeen months there. Simon, Jonathan S. The responseof the criminal justice system to prison overcrowding: Recidivism patternsamong four successive parolee cohorts. Expense, squalid conditions and what they imply about the societythat sanctions them, and the ineffectiveness of imprisonment at promotingrehabilitation all point to the benefits of parole as a valid aspect ofsentencing strategy. Parole decisionmaking: Acomparative analysis, International Journal of Offender Therapy andComparative Criminology, 32, pp. Zinsmeisterasserts that more prison facilities and stricter sentences, not parole as afunction of social desperation or criminal-advocacy litigation, are theanswers to problems of public safety created by premature prisoner release:"[I]t nonetheless seems clear that the government priorities have recentlybeen unduly skewed away from directly defensive responses to personalviolence. 53-8. Figures produced by the Bureau of Justice Statistics show that only 18 percent of people arrested for violent felonies are convicted and sentenced to at least a year in prison. Burka, Paul. What was therein the man's background that would have suggested to us that he was amurderer?" (Glaberson, 1992, p. Another aspect of the overall picture became (and remains) that ofovercrowded prisons. Parole is simply a meansto a criminal's end. 61. Second, beepersprovide sentencing authorities with a means of potential supervision ofoffenders who might otherwise have been released on unsupervised probation. Inhumane conditions on one hand and cost on the other are keycomponents of this area of argument. 6 1-62 . 26-8. The talk of the town: Notes and comment. Kurtz, Harry. 49-66.----------------------- 12 But parole success can only be measured after the fact, and thequestion of parole is controversial. Further, poor prison conditionsdiscourage rather than encourage rehabilitation and the possibility that anoffender may reform and reintegrate into the society as a whole. 61). One concern in developing parolestrategies is therefore the sentencing strategy and the ability to predictparole success. 57). The success of parole,meanwhile, is measured by the degree to which the released prisonerconforms to the good-behavior model once reintroduced into society. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI. 'Hi, this is fast-fingersLouie. 233-7. . It's no wonder, then, that four out of five state-prison inmates today are repeat offenders. The arguments against parole, despite overcrowdedprison conditions, go directly to the impact of releasing convictedcriminals into a vulnerable society. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. Kleiman, the $6 million the state saved cost Illinois crime victims $3 4 million, directly or indirectly. The murder victim was killed by a habitual felon who had beensentenced to 15 years for rape but had been released 15 months laterbecause of overcrowding in Texas prisons. (1992, November). Inmate population nearly quadrupled, from 22,6 to 87,3 , while the murder rate declined 24 percent, rape 29 percent and burglary 37 percent. Law and Society Review, 25: pp. Freed to rape again.Reader's Digest, pp. 27. So it's hardly surprising that state prisons are jammed to the rafters with drug offenders . (199 ). Kelly and EklandOlson cite the pressure on criminal justicesystems to increase parole rates as a result of litigation arising fromovercrowded prisons that are felt to be instances of cruel and unusualpunishment. Why free criminals to kill?Reader's Digest, pp. Jail city. Parole from prison appears to have developed as a means of socialcontrol and social engineering. To save money in the early 198 s, Illinois released 21, prisoners an average of three months early. The fact of parolederives from sentences of indeterminate length. During the 198 s, Californians voted $3.7 billion to build prisons. DissertationAbstracts International, vol. (1991, October). Jailhouse mock. Texas Monthly, 19, p.196. Glaberson reports the criminal history of a man who had beenparoled in 1989 for armed robbery, arrested in 1991 for kidnapping, paroledin April 1992, and then arrested in August of 1992 for six murders: "DavidErnst, a spokesman for the State Division of Parole, said White [thecriminal] had not set off any alarms in the parole system. Wagner, D.D. The difficulty, according to Simon, beganin the 195 s, with the decline of an industrial base that gaveopportunities to unskilled laborers. In a critique and study of the current administration of parolestrategies in the state of California, Simon notes that the original ideabehind the concept, which originated in the late 19th century, remainedstable until about the 195 s, and shifted thereafter, was to use parole asa means of reducing prison populations and providing a point of reentry ofconvicted persons into social mainstream. (1992, March 9). 97). (1992). The issuestrikes a chord in the attitudes of both those who favor and those whooppose parole. Methvin, Eugene H. Peck, K. What kind of society are we hoping to create by this policy of wholesale incarceration? The purpose of this research is to examine the pros and cons ofparole. 1 1-1 2. References Bhargava, Sunita W. conviction for possession of less than a pound and a half of cocaine results, even for a nonviolent first offender, in a mandatory sentence of life without parole. Cavanaugh and Mark A.R. Parole officers as well asparolees have reportedly responded positively to electronic devices thatkeep track of parolees, the former because the devices are seen ascrimeprevention devices and administrative shortcuts, the latter becausethe devices lengthen the string of freedom after release ("A Voice in theNight," 199 , p. (1991, June). This led to increased recidivism on one hand, andevidently less reliable ability to predict successful parole conduct on theother. In that climate, paroled persons whoreturned to society could not necessarily be expected to find a productiveplace in society. Mandatory sentencing has come intovogue for a number of crimes, chiefly for drug-related offenses. 57). That is 45 percent of the average original court-ordered sentence. What will these millions of people, most of them unskilled, uneducated, and brutalized by imprisonment, be prepared to do when they emerge after ten or fifteen or twenty years? Kurtz citesthe 2 , -member inmate population of the New York City jail system, whereviolence is a way of life and where the system does nothing to prevent ordeter crime in general or rehabilitate prisoners in particular. Wagner concludes that the clinical model is virtually identical tothe actuarial model in predicting return to prison, at least for men; healso finds that neither model is easily applied to women. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI. In addition, violent offenders gain early release from overcrowded prisons to make room for those sentenced to mandatory minimums. The average sentence served for murder today is six and a half years; for possession of seven hundred marijuana plants the federal mandatory minimum is eight years, with no possibility of parole ("The Talk of the Town..." 1992, p. According to Peck, the would-be prisoners themselves prefermonitoring to incarceration, and professional probation officers considerthe electronic monitors a cost-effective alternative to overcrowded prisonconditions. The Progressive, 52,pp. If they hadn't, my husband would still be alive" (Irby, 1991,p. Kelly, William R., and Ekland-Olson, Sheldon. (1991, June). 57-62. In this view,the administrative benefits of technology are a sham. 27). In other words, there is relatively little chance that criminals will go to jail even if arrested, and when they do go, they usually spend less than a year and a half in confinement. Time, 27, p. Kelly and Ekland-Olson's principal focus is on the Texasprison system, but they indicate that the rise in the probability ofrecidivism, particularly since the early 198 s, that is true of Texas canbe generalized to other states (Kelly & Ekland-Olson, 1991, p. 53- 6. 1 2). Electronic monitoring, the alternative to incarceration cited above,has also been cited as an argument against lenient parole. (199 , August 27). These people are making crime a career, in which occasional short prison terms are just a cost of doing business (Zinsmeister, 199 , p. 41). While incarceration is both expensiveand ineffective, one source says, "there is evidence that alternatives toimprisonment--'intermediate sanctions,' which include fines, sentences tocommunity service, and various levels of probation and restriction--are atleast as effective as imprisonment in reducing crime. Indeed, there is some evidence of a shift in thefocus of the literature from the behavior of the paroled persons and towardthe institutional factors (e.g., overcrowding) influencing paroledecisions. 52- 4. James Austin of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency calculates that the early releases produced 23 homicides, 32 rapes, 262 arsons, 681 robberies, 2472 burglaries, 2571 assaults and more than 8 other crimes. 65). New York, pp. . Almost half of them are serving at least their fourth sentence. (1991, June). Searching for alternatives to traditional punishment sentencing andparole strategies alike, authorities in some states have engaged in whathas been described as high-tech house arrest. High-tech house arrest. 28). 38-4 ). The proposed solutions citedinclude getting tough on first offenders, tougher on repeaters, andtracking of all convicted sex offenders (Bidinotto, 1991, p. According to Harvard researchers David P. 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