The Case for Parole Reform for Violent Offenders

Joseph Dole writes about why parole reform for violent offenders is essential to reducing mass incarceration while maintaining public safety.

The Purpose of Parole

The main goal of any parole system should be to ensure that people are not kept incarcerated past the point when they cease posing a threat to society. This ensures both the safety of society and that limited resources are not wasted on over-incapacitation. Having incarcerated so many millions of our fellow citizens for so long, we now have reams of data showing who is most or least likely to commit a new crime if released from prison. Unfortunately, the facts are often drowned out by rhetoric and stigma.

The facts are that:

1. people in prison for violent crimes, and people who have served long prison terms, are often among the safest people to release; and

2. the only way to address the problem of mass incarceration is to reduce sentences for violent crimes and release people whom statistics show are unlikely to commit another crime.

Rethinking the Causes of Mass Incarceration

With her book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander kicked off a lively debate about the causes of mass incarceration and how to address the problem. While The New Jim Crow was an incredibly important contribution to exposing the racist criminal laws of our country—and has been the main catalyst for sentencing reforms concerning drug crimes—it has also come under criticism for being too narrow.

Contrary to some earlier assumptions, incarcerating people for drug crimes has not been the primary driver of mass incarceration. More recent research has shown that incarceration for violent crimes—especially for extraordinarily long periods of time—has played a much larger role.

John Pfaff notes in his book Locked In that “over half of all state inmates are in prison for violent crimes, and the incarceration of people who have been convicted of violent offenses explains almost two-thirds of the growth in prison populations since 1990.” Similarly, almost all the people who actually serve long sentences have been convicted of serious violent crimes.

In her book Caught, Marie Gottschalk reached a similar conclusion:

“The reality is that tougher sentences across the board for both serious crimes and petty offenses initially fueled the prison buildup. But the contribution of violent offenders to the prison population now significantly dwarfs the contribution of drug offenders… Ending the war on drugs… will not necessarily end mass incarceration in the United States.”

Both Pfaff and Gottschalk agree with findings from the Urban Institute, which concluded that “we can’t tackle mass incarceration without addressing long prison terms”—which inevitably means addressing sentences for violent crimes.

Don’t miss Joseph Dole’s story: Is Life Without Parole Worse Than A Death Sentence?

Why Long Sentences Often Fail

Bringing back a parole system for all incarcerated people—including those convicted of violent crimes—and applying it retroactively is not only humane but can be done safely while making a serious dent in mass incarceration. It would also save states a significant amount of money.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Illinois currently spends more than $800 million per year incarcerating people convicted of violent offenses. This is partly because, in the late 1990s, Illinois passed its own Truth-in-Sentencing law without examining what it would cost. The state thereby legislated itself into roughly $250 million in additional annual liabilities.

Those who study the issue closely find that extremely long prison sentences for violent crimes bring extraordinarily high costs with little public-safety benefit once someone has been incarcerated past the point that they pose a threat to society. As Gottschalk notes, people are often “serving savagely long sentences for violent offenses even though they no longer pose serious threats to public safety.”

Aging Out of Crime

Due to decades of tough-on-crime rhetoric, many Americans believe people incarcerated for violent crimes pose a serious threat of committing further violence if released. Yet research shows the opposite.

Pfaff notes that “our current approach to punishing those convicted of violence is almost entirely blind to mountains of sophisticated research about violent behavior.” That research includes a well-established finding: the crime someone commits today is often a poor predictor of what they will do years later.

Gottschalk explains that many people sent to prison for violent offenses are not violent years later. Despite strong prison conduct records, evidence of rehabilitation through education and programs, and research showing that people tend to age out of crime, the public perception often remains that they are permanently dangerous.

Pfaff describes violence not as a permanent identity but as a stage that many people pass through. Someone who acts violently at eighteen may be dramatically different by thirty-five.

In short, aggression changes over time. Long sentences often keep people incarcerated long after the risk has declined.

Many violent crimes are committed by young people whose brains are still developing. Once brain maturation and psychosocial development occur—generally around ages 25 to 30—people become less likely to act impulsively or violently. Crime declines even further after age 40 and especially after age 50.

What Recidivism Data Shows

One of the most stigmatized groups is people convicted of murder. Yet studies consistently show they have some of the lowest recidivism rates.

The Justice Policy Institute reported in 2016 that people whose most serious crime was homicide show the lowest recidivism rates of any group released from prison.

For example:

• In Maryland, more than 100 people released after a court decision were reviewed four years later by NPR; none had been convicted of a new felony.

• In California, researchers found that among 860 people paroled for murder since 1995, only five had returned to prison for new felonies—none for life-term crimes.

• In New York, multiple reviews showed that only about 2–3% of people released after serving time for murder were returned to prison for new crimes.

No other group released from prison has such low recidivism rates.

The Cost of an Aging Prison Population

Because of extremely long sentencing laws, the number of elderly people in prison has grown rapidly. This phenomenon has been called the “graying” of prisons.

From 2007 to 2010, the number of incarcerated people aged 65 or older grew far faster than the overall prison population. Caring for elderly prisoners is expensive—often costing three times as much as caring for younger incarcerated people.

For this reason, at least fifteen states and the District of Columbia have implemented forms of geriatric release or medical parole.

A Path Toward Reform

Illinois currently lacks a meaningful mechanism to release elderly or infirm people from prison except through clemency, which is rarely granted and often influenced by politics.

For all of these reasons, any new parole system should give special consideration to:

• people who have served at least ten years in prison, and

• elderly prisoners who statistically pose little risk.

A reformed parole system should allow release consideration for anyone who reaches age 50 or has served at least fifteen consecutive years.

The goal is not to eliminate accountability, but to stop arbitrarily labeling people as permanently irredeemable.

It is time to align our policies with both international human-rights principles and Illinois’s own constitutional goal of returning people to “useful citizenship.”

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Don’t miss Joseph Dole’s story: Is Life Without Parole Worse Than A Death Sentence?

The post The Case for Parole Reform for Violent Offenders first appeared on Prison Writers.