PAROLE

A Vanishing Concept

Earlier this month the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) issued a report—titled “Parole in Perspective”—that revealed that parole grant rates have decreased in every state with a discretionary parole system between 2019 and 2024. In addition to the significant decline in parole grant rates, parole boards have granted fewer actual hearings and have increased the set-off time for another hearing following a denial.

For example, California last year granted parole to roughly 20 percent of the applicants while South Carolina had a grant rate of a measly 4 percent.

The only states—seven in total—had increased parole grant rates during the past five years, and the PPI attributed this to the smaller inmate populations in those states such as Wyoming and North Dakota.

This latest PPI report is consistent with a 2023 report by the group—“No Release: Parole Grant Rates Have Plummeted in Most States Since Pandemic”—that found of the 27 state discretionary parole systems it examined, the average number of parole grant rates declined by 41 percent with Alabama and Alaska seeing an actual decline of nearly 66 percent.

Why the dramatic drop in parole grants since 2019?

The PPI offered these reasons:

One, parole boards are understaffed and under-resourced, resulting in fewer hearings and rushed decisions.

Two, decision-making is highly discretionary and politically influenced, often favoring denial over risk.

Three, processes lack transparency and racial disparities persist, with non-white less likely to be approved.

Four, some states have eliminated or severely restricted discretionary parole altogether, replacing it with determinate sentencing models.

Parole is an official promise of reward upon fulfillment of individual rehabilitation. Judges impose sentences on first and sometimes repeat offenders (depending upon the nature of the offense) with the instruction: “if you keep your nose clean and take part in rehabilitation programs, you will be released after one-third of your sentence.”

Once in the prison system, classification, education, substance abuse counselors, mental health therapists, and social workers hold parole out as the carrot reward in exchange for “good behavior.”

There is not a single prison system in this nation that could control an inmate population if it chose to engage in bad (especially) violent behavior.

PPI reports that between 700,000 to 800,000 inmates in the U.S. are eligible for parole. The Sentencing Project recently said 97,000 of the parole eligible inmates are serving life sentences. And the Council of State Governments this year reported that at least 210,000 of those inmates have been kept incarcerated beyond their parole release date.

That’s a lot of pissed off inmates, and their roiling discontent and anger is intensified when someone like George Santos has his prison sentence commuted after serving just 84 days and then informing the public he was “traumatized” by the experience. Political insurrectionists, corrupt politicians, white collar criminals, and those with “insider political connections” (most of all of whom are white) are released while non-violent, petty people of color drug offenders are not even granted hearings.

Parole has always been, and always will be, a false-promise as long as it remains mired in its historical systemic racism.