SD4 - Review of Virginia's Parole Process

  • Published: 1992
  • Author: Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission
  • Enabling Authority: Senate Joint Resolution 26 (Regular Session, 1990)

Executive Summary:
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) was directed by Senate Joint Resolution 26 of the 1990 General Assembly to study Virginia's parole process. The study mandate specifically instructed JLARC to determine the reasons for Virginia's reportedly low parole rate and to suggest changes to law or policy that may be desirable.

This report examines the activities of the Parole Board and the Department of Corrections (DOC) in administering the parole process. The report includes: an analysis of the national parole data that were used in ranking the State's parole rate; a review of Virginia's parole laws and those of ten other states; an analysis of the efficiency with which the parole process is implemented; and a review of the decision-making practices of the Parole Board.

Organization and Activities of the Virginia Parole Board

The Virginia Parole Board was established in 1942. Its mission is to establish parole policies which result in the earliest possible release of inmates who are deemed suitable for discretionary parole and whose release is compatible with the welfare of society. Currently the Board has five voting members, including a chairman who is responsible for managing and coordinating the activities of the agency.

To carry out the functions of discretionary parole, the Board employs a team of examiners who interview eligible inmates in the prisons and jails. Using the reports from these interviews, data from court records, and prison files, the Board decides whether eligible inmates are suitable candidates for parole. During the period from 1980 to 1989, the Board conducted over 89,000 parole reviews. During this same period, more than 30,000 inmates were granted discretionary parole.

Over the last five years, two factors have made the Board's task of managing this process increasingly difficult. First, a steady increase in the arrest and conviction rates for felons has resulted in a substantial increase in the State's prison population, and consequently an increase in the Board's caseload. Since 1985, the number of persons considered by the Board for early release has increased by 42 percent. This has placed a premium on ensuring the efficiency of the parole review process.

Second, because of the State's well-publicized problem with prison overcrowding, the parole system is being increasingly looked upon as a mechanism to ease the demand for additional institutional bedspace. Underpinning this view is the notion that the State's parole rate is unnecessarily low because of inconsistent and overly restrictive Board decision-making practices.

Assumptions about Virginia's Parole Rate Are Not Supported by the Data

In a 1989 study of Virginia's criminal justice system, the Commission on Prison and Jail Overcrowding (COPJO) concluded that the State's parole rate was below the national norm. However, several different analysis techniques used by JLARC staff to examine the national parole data raise questions about the usefulness of this original finding. When an alternative measure of parole is used, the State's rate is substantially higher than the national norm. This relatively high ranking can be attributed to the fact that Virginia is one of 18 states that has provisions for both mandatory and discretionary parole release.

If state parole figures are disaggregated according to whether the release was granted by the parole board or required by law, Virginia places near the bottom of the national rankings for discretionary releases. However, this finding does not justify the conclusion that Virginia's discretionary release rate is unnecessarily low.

Even when Virginia is compared to states, with similar sentencing and parole systems, disparities in release rates can be the result of a number of factors beyond the control of the Board. These include mandated emergency release policies in some states to alleviate prison overcrowding, mandatory minimum sentence requirements for parole-eligible inmates, variations across states in parole board jurisdictions for misdemeanor cases, and variations in the case review schedules of parole boards. Cross-state differences observed for many of these factors work against attempts to quantify their influence on parole rates.

Current Eligibility Laws Cause Inefficiencies In the Parole System

Virginia's parole eligibility laws are designed to provide inmates with credits towards their parole eligibility date which vary based on their number of prison commitments and institutional behavior. This departs from the criteria imposed by the Parole Board, which links the minimum amount of time that inmates are to serve in prison to the nature and circumstances of their crimes. As a result, many inmates are able to establish parole eligibility under the law before the Board is ready to grant them discretionary parole. In fact, inmates who were considered for parole in 1989 had typically served slightly less than 20 percent of their sentences when they first established eligibility for parole. Because persons who are denied parole are reconsidered annually, the Board repeatedly reviews some cases before the inmates are finally released.

Recommendation (1): The General Assembly may wish to amend section 53.1-151 of the Code of Virginia to eliminate the use of the felony term indicator to determine discretionary parole eligibility for inmates. In addition. the General Assembly may wish to amend section 53.1-198 of the Code of Virginia to eliminate the application of good-conduct allowance credits to discretionary parole eligibility for inmates. The combination of the felony term indicator and good conduct allowances should be replaced with a system that calculates discretionary parole eligibility for each inmate based on the proportion of the court-imposed sentence that has been typically served by inmates according to the type of crime committed. In mandatory parole release cases, good-conduct allowance credits would continue to be used to reduce the time served.

Recommendation (2): If the General ·Assembly chooses to adopt a time-served standard for purposes of establishing parole eligibility, the Parole Board and the Department of Criminal Justice Services should work together to develop the standard. This standard should be reviewed by the agencies at five-year intervals to ensure that the norms in both sentencing and parole decision-making practices are reflected.

Recommendation (3): If the General Assembly chooses to adopt the time-served standard, the Parole Board should work with the Department of Corrections to automate the calculation of the standard.

Inconsistencies in the Good-Time System Adversely Affect Early Release

The good-time system, which was revised in 1981, now provides inmates with an opportunity to advance their parole eligibility dates by conforming to the rules of the institution and by participating in programs designed to assist them with rehabilitation. This system typically accounts for seven to 44 percent of the credits that inmates earn toward their discretionary parole eligibility date, depending on their number of commitments to DOC. For mandatory release, inmates can use this system to reduce their time in prison by up to one-half of the court-imposed sentence.

The policies DOC initially put in place to administer this system fostered inconsistent and subjective staff evaluations of inmate progress. These policies have since been revised, and they appear to address most of the problems that plagued initial implementation of the new system in State prisons and field units. However, concern remains among DOC staff in the prisons and field units that the lack of treatment programs undermines the effectiveness of the good conduct allowance (GCA) system.

In addition, there are still problems with the implementation of good time in local jails. The methods and procedures used to evaluate inmate behavior and allocate State good time vary considerably across jails. Moreover, because of DOC policy regarding inmate transfers, State felons with sentences of greater than eight years who are housed in jails cannot earn more than one-half to two-thirds of the amount of good time that inmates in State prisons earn. Recent DOC policy issuances either do not address or are too vague to eliminate these problems.

Recommendation (4): The State Parole Board should work with the Department of Corrections and the Department of Criminal Justice Services to determine the extent to which any lack of treatment programs in State correctional facilities has an adverse effect on the early release of eligible inmates. To address any deficiencies which may be identified, the Parole Board and the Department of Corrections should identify the types of programs needed and the resources required to provide them.

Recommendation (5): The Department of Corrections should ensure that all State custody inmates housed in local jails and awaiting transfer to State correctional facilities receive a GCA class assignment within 90 days of their incarceration.

Recommendation (6): The Department of Corrections should require that all State felons housed in local jail facilities be evaluated annually for GCA purposes. In addition, the Department should ensure that local jail personnel conducting these evaluations attain a working knowledge of DOC policies regarding GCA evaluations.

Expanding Caseloads and Coordination Problems Slow the Review Process

Each year, the five-member Board and its staff must review and decide cases for more than 11,000 inmates. Recent changes by the Parole Board to its system for scheduling parole reviews has increased the efficiency of this process. However, because of these changes, some of the counselors for the inmates being considered for parole no longer participate in the interview process. Without a policy from DOC requiring the counselors to be present at the hearings, their consistent input in the parole process cannot be ensured.

In an attempt to reduce the time that inmates must wait for notice of parole decisions, the Board requires that each case be decided within 30 days after the inmate is interviewed by a parole examiner. However, due to its increasing workload and the inability of DOC to provide the Board with timely access to key inmate files, this objective is not being met for a third of all cases. This is a particular problem for inmates in the jails. In many cases the Parole Board does not receive prompt notification of these inmates' discretionary parole eligibility dates. As a result, some of these inmates must wait until their mandatory release date to leave the system.

Once inmates are granted parole, it is the responsibility of DOC's Parole Release Unit to ensure that these inmates are released in a timely manner. Coordination problems between this unit and the Board have slowed the release process for more than one quarter of the inmates who are granted discretionary parole. By administering the parole process more efficiently, critically needed bedspace could be made available sooner for incoming inmates.

Recommendation (7): To ensure that the input of institutional counselors is adequately incorporated in the parole review process, the Department of Corrections should establish a policy requiring all counselors to attend the parole hearings for each inmate under their supervision.

Recommendation (8): The Department of Corrections should ensure that pre- and post-sentence investigative reports are prepared in a timely fashion as required by law, and the Department should ensure that the reports are automated at least six months prior to inmates' parole eligibility dates. In addition, the Department should take the necessary steps to ensure that the Parole Board is promptly notified of the pending discretionary parole eligibility dates for inmates in the local jails.

Recommendation (9): The General Assembly may wish to shift to the Parole Board, those resources in the Department of Corrections' Parole Release Unit which are devoted to parole support functions.

Recommendation (10): When possible, the Parole Board should schedule all hearings six months prior to the inmate's parole eligibility date to allow sufficient time to plan for the release of all inmates who are granted discretionary parole.

Organization of DOC Parole Supervision and Support Units Needs Review

In addition to the Parole Release Unit, the Parole Board receives support services from two other casework divisions within DOC - the Post Release Unit and Interstate Compact. Further, parole supervision services for inmates released on both mandatory and discretionary parole are provided by DOC through local probation and parole field offices.

The Post Release Unit coordinates the Board's warrants process for persons who are experiencing difficulty with parole supervision. The Interstate Compact Unit manages the casework of all persons on probation or parole in Virginia who wish to live in another state and those in other states who express the desire to live in the Commonwealth.

These divisions were removed from the direct supervision of the Parole Board in 1984 when the Board was established as a separate agency. With the present organizational arrangement, the Parole Board develops policies for these units but has no operational authority to ensure that its policies are properly implemented.

This has raised a number of questions about the operational efficiency of this realignment. In its study of this issue in 1987, the Department of Information Technology (Management Consulting Division) recommended that DOC's three parole support units - parole release, post-release, and interstate compact - be placed organizationally with the Parole Board. In addition, the study cited the "logical and close working relationships" between the Parole Board, the courts, and probation and parole staff as one reason for a study of the alignment, management, and supervision of probation and parole services.

Recommendation (11): The Secretary of Public Safety should examine the current organizational placement of post-release, interstate compact, and probation and parole functions within the Department of Corrections for possible transfer to the Parole Board. The Secretary should report the findings and recommendations from this assessment to the State Crime Commission prior to the 1993 session of the General Assembly.

Guidelines Could Improve Parole Decision-making

The methods used by the Parole Board's five members to decide which inmates will be released have received considerable attention in recent years. Current agency policy identifies the factors that should be considered by both the examiners and members when reviewing a case, but is silent on the issue of how these factors should be applied. This absence of policy to guide the use of discretion has produced inconsistencies in both the ways that parole examiners view cases and the ways that Board members decide them.

This appears to be a particular problem with regard to the assessment of inmate risk. In order to address these problems, the Board has proposed that a structured guidelines system, which will incorporate an assessment of inmate risk, be implemented in 1992. This system will likely alter some of the Board's parole decisions as members are forced to rethink their views about the risk to society associated with paroling some inmates. For example, JLARC staff analysis shows that 37 percent of the inmates who were denied parole in 1989 would have been considered medium-low (seven percent) to low risk (30 percent) using the Board's newly developed assessment tool. With this same instrument, 41 percent of the inmates granted parole in that year were later classified as either medium-high (26 percent) or high risk (15 percent).

Nonetheless, a review of the files suggested that the Parole Board was justified in making some decisions that appeared counter to the inmates' calculated risk of recidivating. Therefore, the Parole Board should maintain its current discretionary authority in order to respond to such cases. However, the Board should develop decision-making policies which include guidelines to ensure that its discretion is consistently applied.

Recommendation (12): The General Assembly may wish to consider requiring the Parole Board to adopt a structured instrument for use in determining an inmate's risk and a set of policies governing the use of this tool.

Community Resources Not Sufficient to Impact Parole Rate

One way in which the parole rate could be increased is through an allocation of more resources for community treatment of parolees considered to be high risk. Rather than deny some inmates parole, the Board presently has the option to release them on the condition that they be placed in a residential treatment facility.

However, most private treatment facilities either do not accept or are beyond the financial reach of most inmates. The State presently provides $129,000 annually for the purchase of treatment services for parolees. At this funding level, the State is only able to secure about 125 beds in .residential treatment facilities at a given time. This, according to the Board, is not sufficient to accommodate the planned increases in the number of persons that will be granted parole to these facilities.

Recommendation (13): The General Assembly may wish to require the Parole Board, in conjunction with the Department of Corrections, to determine what level of community resources would be necessary to accommodate the Board's future plans to release more inmates to residential treatment programs.

The Parole Board's Risk Assessment Instrument Can Be Improved

A key element of the Parole Board's structured guidelines system presently under study is a component to predict inmate risk. This instrument is specifically designed to aid Parole Board decision-making by identifying which candidates for parole have the highest risk of recidivating.

There are several shortcomings in the methodology that was used to develop this risk prediction instrument. In identifying the factors to predict risk, the methodology relies heavily on two bivariate statistical techniques - cross-tabulation and correlation analysis. One limitation of these methods is that they are not capable of identifying redundant measures of the same phenomenon. When redundant measures are treated separately as predictors of risk, they will artificially raise or lower the inmate's risk score.

In addition, the procedures used to assign weights to the various factors identified as important predictors of inmate risk appear to be based on an interpretation of the relative strength between each factor and recidivism. Weights assigned using this interpretation are subjective and will not always accurately represent the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. Both of these problems can be reduced by using multivariate analysis to identify the key predictors of the risk an inmate poses for committing another felony if paroled.

Recommendation (14): The Parole Board should refine the instrument used to predict risk by conducting a multivariate analysis of the impact of certain inmate characteristics on the likelihood of committing new felonies.

Measuring the Parole Board's Effectiveness

Ultimately, the Parole Board must be evaluated according to its success in achieving the agency's stated goal of paroling only those offenders "whose release is compatible with the welfare of society and the offender." The Parole Board's performance in this regard is best evaluated through an examination of the rate at which persons released on discretionary parole receive new felony convictions because of continued criminal activity. However, the Parole Board does not systematically collect data on recidivism.

Recommendation (15): The General Assembly may wish to mandate a study of recidivism among persons released on discretionary parole to determine the magnitude of the problem, the factors contributing to the problem, and possible strategies for lowering recidivism among persons released at the discretion of the Parole Board. This study could incorporate a review of the adequacy of community services to support persons released.

Options to Ensure Long-Term Efficiency of Parole System

The results presented in this study point to a number of inefficiencies in the discretionary parole review process. Hampered by steadily expanding caseloads, the Parole Board is finding it increasingly difficult to hear and decide cases in a timely fashion. This report has proposed a number of changes to parole laws and policies that are designed to diminish the workload of the five-member Board by reducing the likelihood that annual reconsiderations of parole cases would be necessary. However, if the persistent rise in the number of new felony commitments to DOC does not subside. the changes recommended may not be sufficient to ensure the long-term efficiency of the parole process.

The State has three options that it could consider to ensure that further increases in the State's prison population do not prevent the timely disposition of future parole cases. The first is a presumptive parole system that would allow the Board to use a risk prediction instrument to make a parole decision shortly after an inmate was incarcerated. Once this decision was made, the Board could establish a presumptive release date using a time served standard based on the proportion of the court-imposed sentence that other inmates have typically served for committing the same crime.

The presumptive nature of this system would eliminate the need for the Board to reconsider annually the cases of inmates denied parole, thereby significantly reducing the Board's annual workload. In addition, because decisions would be made early in an inmate's sentence, sufficient time would be allowed to plan for the inmate's release.

The second alternative for alleviating the problem of the Parole Board's burgeoning caseload is to give the Board the option of setting off the future reviews of inmates denied parole on their first date of eligibility. This would decrease the Board's overall caseload by reducing the proportion of its cases that had to be reconsidered in any given year.

The third option that should be explored to improve the efficiency of the parole process is the expansion of the Parole Board. While this would not have a direct impact on the total number of cases that must be considered in a year, as would the previous options, it would decrease the number of cases each Board member was required to hear. This would prevent backlogs in the review process and allow Board members more time to review cases.

Recommendation (16): To ensure that future increases in the State's prison population do not hamper the efficiency of the discretionary parole review process, the Secretary of Public Safety should study the following options: (1) adoption of a presumptive parole process, (2) delaying the reconsideration of cases for inmates who are initially denied parole, and (3) expansion of the Parole Board. The Secretary should report the findings of the review with recommendations to the Virginia State Crime Commission prior to the 1992 Session of the General Assembly.