By Matthew T. Mangino
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing cases on the issue of life without parole for juveniles. Commentator Matthew Mangino says that if recent trends are any indication, the court will restrict the use of life without parole for juveniles, but will not eliminate the practice.
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By Margaret Colgate Love
“Felon” is an ugly label that confirms the debased status that accompanies conviction, says former pardon attorney Margaret Love. It identifies a person as belonging to a class outside many protections of the law, someone who can be freely discriminated against, someone who exists at the margins of society.
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By JoAnne Page
In their State of the State speeches last month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced sweeping criminal justice proposals that, if implemented, will save taxpayers millions of dollars and significantly reduce crime--but only if they are done right, says the president of New York City's The Fortune Society.
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By William D. Burrell
Probation and parole agencies in the US...
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By William D. Burrell
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick announced this month his nominations to fill the four remaining vacancies on the Bay State’s parole board. If confirmed, they will join Patrick’s choice for parole board chairman: Joshua Wall, a former prosecutor.. Once these members are in place, the board can begin to rebuild from the rubble of the last few months.
For those who have not been following this issue, Gov. Patrick fired five board members, suspended several board staffers and imposed a moratorium on all parole releases in response to the December 26, 2010 murder of a police officer by parolee Dominic Cinelli,
His actions paralyzed the Massachusetts parole system and sent shock waves through parole boards and agencies across the country. While the commission of such a serious crime by a parolee certainly demands a quick response and thorough review of the actions of all involved, the public record suggests to me that the Massachusetts response was hasty, heavy handed and misdirected.
The eight-page investigative report issued on January 12, 2011 sums up the results of a cursory review of the case and the actions of those involved. I found nothing in the report that justified the governor’s actions. While there were shortcomings, none rose to the level of a “smoking gun.”
Many critics of the parole board questioned why an inmate serving a “life” sentence would ever be released from prison at all, much less on parole. This criticism is misdirected. The parole board was administering the sentencing and parole structure established in law by the legislature and governors of Massachusetts. As Northeastern University’s James Alan Fox wrote in January, the Massachusetts sentencing law specifically assigns to the parole board the responsibility for determining when to release certain life sentenced prisoners.
While “life” sentences that can be satisfied in just 15 years seem a bit incongruous to me, that is a matter for the legislature to address. If you don’t want life-sentenced offenders to get out of prison, change the sentencing law. Don’t fire the parole board for following the laws you now decide that don’t like.
Re-instituting the parole release process in this environment will be problematic. The underlying structure set by statute has not fundamentally changed, so parole board members may well find themselves in the same position in the future – being blamed for making decisions that, while they follow the law, result in the commission of a serious crime by a parolee.
As former Kansas Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholz has often said, it is a statistical certainty that someone released from prison on parole will do something horrible. The parole system should be structured and operated in such a way as to reduce the likelihood of that happening, and should be judged on its overall performance, not a single high-profile incident.
The four brave individuals who were selected from among 100 applicants to be nominated to the Massachusetts parole board have a tough job ahead of them. They have to learn the complexities of the parole process, get acclimated to an agency in crisis and develop working relationships with their fellow board members and staff.
This is a difficult job under the best of circumstances.
The four nominees and the new board chairman, Joshua Wall, have been criticized as lacking the background for the positions. Two are former prosecutors (one served as the board’s general counsel); one is a forensic psychologist; another is a victim advocate and the last is a former federal probation chief. This seems a fair representation of skills and experiences for parole board members.
The two remaining board members are also former prosecutors. This would seem to have the potential for a pro-law enforcement bias on the board with majority of members having a prosecutorial background. It is critical to remember that parole release decision-making is about assessing risk of re-offending and of crafting parole release plans that work to reduce risk once the inmate is released. These are skills not taught in law school nor learned in most legal jobs.
While some may say that it is easy to criticize the handling of the Massachusetts parole crisis, a recent example from Pennsylvania provides an alternative approach. In contrast to the Massachusetts case, the Pennsylvania situation was handled with deliberate speed, a reasoned response and appropriately focused investigation.
In September 2008, then Gov. Edward Rendel imposed a moratorium on parole releases in response the second killing that year of a Philadelphia police officer by a parolee. Rendel immediately commissioned an independent investigation by respected criminal justice professor John Goldkamp of Temple University. (Full disclosure: I was a consultant to that investigation and continue to work with the Pennsylvania board.)
After initial reviews of the parole process by Goldkamp and his team, parole was restored for non-violent offenders in October 2008 and then for violent offenders, albeit under new guidelines in December 2008. Goldkamp continued his investigation for 18 months and issued a 106 page report. The report found that the parole process and its administration by the board and staff was sound, and consistent with contemporary standards and best practices in the field. Recommendations were made for improvement, many of which have been implemented and others are in process.
The police officer shootings, the subsequent moratorium and the independent investigation took a toll on the Pennsylvania board. The parole rate dropped and prison population climbed. While the rate has largely returned to pre-moratorium levels, the stress on all aspects of the corrections and parole system is undeniable.
While it is impossible to predict the future for Massachusetts parole, I fear that it will be a long time before parole rates for the state prisons and county jails return to “normal”. All of the board members will know that each of their votes will be scrutinized. Should something go wrong and a parolee commits a heinous crime, they know who will be blamed. This cannot do anything but make them extremely risk-averse. The result will be increased pressure on correctional facilities and staff, increased costs----and it will keep otherwise good parole candidates behind bars.
The lesson to be learned from these two states is that while there must be a swift response to parolee crimes, it can be done in a way that strengthens the parole system, rather than eviscerating it and making a tough job even harder to do.
William D. Burrell is an independent corrections management consultant specializing in community corrections and evidence-based practices. From 2003 to 2007, he was a member of the faculty in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University in Philadelphia. Prior to joining the Temple faculty, Bill served for nineteen years as chief of adult probation services for the New Jersey state court system. Bill is chairman of the Editorial Committee for Perspectives, the journal of the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA) and serves on APPA’s Board of Directors. He has consulted, and developed and delivered training for probation and parole agencies at the federal, state and county level.
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By William D. Burrell
In the aftermath of the fatal shooting on December 26, 2011 of a police officer by parolee Dominic Cinelli, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick essentially fired his parole board and its executive leadership, and suspended three parole supervision staff with intent to terminate them as well. Patrick declared that he and the public had lost confidence in parole and that change was needed. Subsequently, all parole releases from the state’s prisons and county jails were suspended indefinitely.
This was a heavy-handed response to a tragic shooting, and it will have serious repercussions for the Massachusetts correctional system, and for public safety, for some time to come. While it is hard to argue that there are not things that need to be improved in the state’s parole system, the approach taken is likely to make reform more difficult, and create additional problems.
As long as the moratorium is in place, inmate populations in the prisons and jails will go up—increasing costs and pressures on an already overcrowded system. The parole board will eventually be reconstituted with new members, but recruiting new members could be difficult, because candidates will know that their tenure could abruptly be cut short by another high-profile failure. For those courageous individuals who choose to accept an appointment to the board, there will be a learning curve during which time the board will be less than fully productive. This will delay paroles, further exacerbating crowding. The courts may become involved if inmates’ consideration for parole is delayed too long.
It is reasonable to assume that even when the new board members get up to speed, they will be more conservative and risk-averse in their decision-making. This will no doubt reduce the rate at which inmates are released, further increasing the population pressures.
This more conservative approach to parole release will result in inmates serving more of their terms. For those inmates with a history of violence, it is likely to result in their “maxing out,” or being released after serving their full term with no supervision. Experience tells us that an inmate released directly to the community with no supervision, monitoring, or assistance poses a greater risk to community safety than one released on supervised parole.
The parole staff who supervise offenders in the community are also likely to modify their behavior as a result of the governor’s actions. Parole agents will be more likely to charge parolees with violations of their supervision conditions and move to revoke parole. Given that the primary shortcoming of the parole supervision noted in the investigation was failure to make collateral contacts, I fully expect that field agents will keep their parolees on a very short leash and will be reluctant to take any risks that could later be criticized. This will result in increased numbers of parolees who are returned to prison or jail—again, further increasing population pressures.
These outcomes could have been avoided. When I review the information available about Cinelli, including the parole board’s actions and the parole supervision provided, I can’t help but think a different and more measured response would have been more effective at achieving the needed changes and reducing the collateral damages.
My first suggestion would be to avoid condemning the entire system based on one case. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 79 percent of Massachusetts parolees completed parole successfully in 2009, compared with a national rate of 51 per cent. Gov. Patrick was quoted as saying that “despite lapses, supervised parole is overwhelmingly successful in Massachusetts.” The current case was characterized by Gov. Patrick as a “terrible aberration.” This doesn’t sound like a system in need of wholesale housecleaning.
We also need to look at the board’s performance related to this case. Cinelli served more than 30 years in prison for a series of armed robberies. He was denied parole by the board at his first eligibility. When released, he was over 50 years old, an age at which most offenders are done with their life of crime. Much was made of the fact that the board was not using a risk-assessment instrument at the time when this case was heard, and this is a legitimate issue. Critics noted that Cinelli would have scored as high risk. The risk score, however does not automatically preclude an offender from being released. These risk assessments are not individual predictions; rather they are probability statements for groups of similar offenders. It is one piece of information that parole boards use.
Risk assessment also helps to inform the post-release supervision, higher risk offenders typically receive more intensive supervision. It is also useful to note that Cinelli was released in 2008 and committed the shooting in the waning days of December 2010. He was in the community under parole supervision for at least two years. Research and experience tells us that the vast majority of recidivism on parole or probation occurs in the first six to 12 months of supervision. By 18 to 24 months, the risk of re-offending has dropped significantly.
Most of the available information suggests that the release of this offender was appropriate, and that most signs pointed toward a successful period on parole. In a tragic example of how the parole process is less than perfect, Cinelli was caught during an armed robbery, shot a police officer, and was killed himself in the exchange of gunfire
When considering the Massachusetts experience with parole, it is important to remember that even the smartest and most experienced parole board, using the latest technology and having all of the relevant information before them, will release offenders who subsequently commit horrible crimes. Our ability to accurately predict human behavior is limited. Despite that essential, if troubling, fact, we must recognize that parole boards perform a critically important function that contributes to public safety and to the wise use of public resources. Our confidence in the parole system should not be eroded by what experience suggests is an aberration.
William D. Burrell is an independent corrections management consultant specializing in community corrections and evidence-based practices. From 2003 to 2007, he was a member of the faculty in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University in Philadelphia. Prior to joining the Temple faculty, Bill served for nineteen years as chief of adult probation services for the New Jersey state court system. Bill is chairman of the Editorial Committee for Perspectives, the journal of the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA) and serves on APPA’s Board of Directors. He has consulted, and developed and delivered training for probation and parole agencies at the federal, state and county level.
Read full entry »A new public opinion survey on crime and sentencing issues gives policymakers some breathing room on moves to reduce prison populations during this time of budget crises in states. Most registered voters believe that about one fifth of inmates could be released and not pose a threat to public safety, said the survey sponsored by the Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project.
The survey found vast majorities (nearly 90%) favoring the concept of fewer low-risk and non-violent offenders behind bars to keep more violent offenders imprisoned, and to reinvest any money saved in probation and parole improvements. About 2/3 of Democrats and about half of Republicans "strongly" favor" such changes, meaning that they have reasonably strong bipartisan backing.
Daniel Franklin of the Benenson Strategy Group, which did the survey with Public Opinion Strategies, said that most Americans see crime policy "through a personal rather than political lens." At the same time, both Franklin and Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies said that politicians in general still would be wise not to be portrayed as "soft on crime."
The survey, of 1,200 registered voters across the U.S. taken last March, found that the citizenry may not be so harsh on crime as some political candidates may believe. Only 37 percent, for example, believe that anyone who sells drugs should be sent to prison on a first offense; the number jumps to 43 percent for burglaries in unoccupied homes and for offenses committed by people on probation and parole (63 percent automatic prison for probationers or parolees possessing drugs with the intent to sell, for example.)
The public is more favorable to cutting spending prisons than on some other key governmental functions. Asked in which areas cuts are not acceptable, 71 percent named schools but only 27 percent identified prisons. The survey showed strong support for the "justice reinvestment" concept of using money saved from cutting back on prison expenditures for probation and parole programs, 86 percent finding the idea "convincing."
Despite the fact that national crime report totals have been dropping since the mid-1990s, people surveyed believe violent crime inceased nearly 30 percent last year, about the same number as 2001.
The survey offered some advice for criminal justice reformers on the terms they use for offenders who are out of prison. "Mandatory supervision" was by far the most popular. "Alternatives to incarceration" and "intensive supervision" scored somewhat lower. Even lower than that were "community corrections" and "intermediate sanctions." Focus groups indicated that many equate community corrections with community service, which struck many as a "light" punishment. The pollsters' conclusion: "Using unfamiliar technical language could backfire."
"Rehabilitation" didn't come out very well as a main purpose of prison, getting only 25 percent of the vote compared with 31 percent for protecing society and 20 percent for punishment. Rehab scored 40 percent in a similar survey in 2001, although "justice to victims" was not included as a choice then. When added this time around, it got 10 percent of the votes.
McInturff, who has done surveys for Republicans, said a general conclusion of the survey was that Americans want a criminal justice system where offenders are held accountable but that they also are aware of shrinking state budgets and believe that prison populations can be reduced responsibly. A summary of the survey can be found at http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/initiatives_detail.aspx?initiativeID=60775
Read full entry »In my last post, I raised the following question: How do we address the growing population of incarcerated individuals with mental illness?
One approach gaining popularity around the country is the idea of “specialized caseloads” for parole officers. Practically, what this means is that parolees with mental illness are assigned to parole officers who have received training on how to best manage this population and carry a reduced caseload.
One of my recent cases is a perfect example of how this can work:
Mr. M was a 47 year old man referred to me by his parole officer. He had been convicted years before of a bank robbery, and his prior terms of release had been unsuccessful, usually related to his use of cocaine and failure to take his prescribed medication. Within months of release, he relapsed and became psychotic, manic and disorganized. Standard parole officer responses of threats and ultimately of movement toward revocation ensued.
During the initial months of my treatment with him, he adhered to his medication regimen, participated in therapy sessions, engaged in 12 step meetings, and lived in a halfway house for people committed to recovery. After two years or so, he came to an appointment speaking rapidly and loudly, and he was somewhat disorganized. Despite these symptoms, he adamantly denied using cocaine or other drugs, insisted that he had been taking all of his medications as prescribed, and agreed to take any tests I asked him to take. However, he steadfastly refused to consider being admitted into the hospital even for a short period of stabilization.
I contacted his PO who spoke with Mr. M via speaker phone. The PO reinforced my recommendation that he agree to go into a hospital, but he continued to refuse. His PO asked him why he would not agree, expressing his concern with Mr. M that if he remained unstable and refused to hospitalize himself, the PO would be left with a decision about pursuing revocation. Mr. M then said: “Today is the 28th of the month. My check comes on the 3rd. If you live where I live and you ain’t home when your check comes, it won’t be there when you get back.”
After a bit more discussion, Mr. M agreed to enter a “day hospital,” which is a program where people attend intensive treatment during the day but return home every evening. Designed as a short term intervention, together we decided that this would be a reasonable compromise for Mr. M, allowing him to access more intensive evaluation and treatment while not removing him from his home setting. He attended the day hospital for three weeks, his medications were adjusted, and he returned to outpatient care and to his parole without further incident.
This plan worked because the PO and I had devised an agreement that problem behaviors should be seen first as requiring a therapeutic response, and only when therapeutic efforts failed to resolve the situation should enforcement actions be considered. This PO was a “mental health specialist” in his agency, carrying a reduced caseload of parolees, all of whom had mental health problems. His smaller caseload allowed him to do the needed case management that permitted his parolees to access care and minimized their returns to incarceration.
Examples of jurisdictions that provide specialized approaches to probationers or parolees with mental illness include the United States Probation Office, the Cook County Mental Health Unit, the New York State Division of Parole, and the Project Renewal Parole Support and Treatment Program.
Why don’t all probation and parole offices have specialized caseloads? Given the prevalence of mental health issues among the parolee and probationer population, this seems to be an obvious solution. Is it really that much more expensive than recurrent incarcerations?
Erik Roskes is a forensic psychiatrist and currently the Director of Forensic Services at the Springfield Hospital Center in Maryland. The opinions expressed are those of the author only, and do not represent those of any of Dr. Roskes’ employers or consultees, including the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He can be found a http://mysite.verizon.net/eroskes.
Read full entry »Efforts by probation and parole officers to improve their public image took a big hit with the 18-year abduction of Jaycee Lee Dugard in California and the critical report issued in early November by an inspector general in California.
Defendant Phillip Garrido, a sex offender, was visited periodically by a parole officer, but it took nearly two decades to catch on to the fact that he had abducted the then-11-year-old Dugard and later fathered two children with her.
Granted that it was a parole officer who finally discovered the scheme this summer, why did it take so long?
Experts say that parole officers should be making spot checks on their clients periodically, including thorough searches of their living conditions. Some places use polygraphs, although it is not clear that submitting Garrido to a polygraph exam would have uncovered his scheme.
Veteran parole officers know that sex offenders typically are “manipulative and secretive,” says Bill Burrell, former director of adult probation in New Jersey, who now trains officials. “They don’t want people looking around” to find violations of their release conditions. Agents appear to have done only superficial checking on Garrido, Burrell says, adding, “They should have done more aggressive searches of the property.”
Another longtime parole official, who declined to be identified, called the California case a “major screw-up.” Said this official: “One of the main reasons to do home visits is to ensure there is nothing out of the ordinary occurring at the residence. The fact that they did not see the tent [where the young women were living] is unbelievable. Thorough examination of the residence looking for signs of wrongful activities specific to the offender's criminal history is vital.”
Crime policy in the U.S. often has been made on the basis of extreme cases. Burrell worries that the Dugard-Garrido case will lead to longer prison terms for sex offenders. Instead, he says, it should serve as a good case study for parole officers to uncover rare frauds like Garrido’s.
The case also should be a cautionary tale for those who might overrely on GPS devices. Through a GPS system, “we knew where [Garrido] was,” Burrell says. The problem was that officials didn’t know what he was really doing.
Probation and parole experts hope that California officials will go public with a complete explanation of what happened—and didn’t—in their monitoring of Garrido. The initial signs are not promising. At a mid-September court appearance, a prosecutor said there might not be a trial for 18 months. State officials wouldn’t give details of his parole supervision and wouldn’t even disclose to the Sacramento Bee the official policy on how often they should have inspected the premises.
This refusal to discuss the case will not help public understanding of the challenges faced by probation and parole officers, who are on the front lines of tracking millions of convicted Americans.
Read full entry »As the flagging economy forces states to tighten their belts, prisons are one of the many big budget categories being scrutinized. This already has produced a flurry of news stories about “early releases.” A typical example was a Salt Lake Tribune story this week that said “up to 500 prisoners could hit the streets early” if the legislature doesn’t expand a prison. The Tribune can’t be blamed for using that phrase because the state corrections director said it in legislative testimony.
The risk of comparisons to a former president who wondered what the definition of “is” is, what exactly is an “early” release? Most states have mechanisms to shorten prison stays for good behavior; slight alterations in that policy, for instance freeing a convict a few months before he or she otherwise would have been out, don’t amount to a wholesale shift in sentencing practices. In Utah, a prison official said most so-called early releases would involve inmates who are up for parole soon or are nonviolent offenders.
The implication of “early” is “premature.” It’s true that some inmates have been freed after serving only a seemingly small fraction of their stated sentences, like 12 years of a 20-year term. When one of them commits another crime, attention will focus on whether the release was premature. Without knowing details of the convict’s case and the state’s overall record on releases and recidivism, it may be difficult to determine.
My advice to journalists is to avoid the term “early release” and stick to the facts. If a state is changing its policy to release inmates before they might have been freed years earlier, what is the basis for that change? Richard Jerome of the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project says that “if a state determines that an inmate is at low-risk for reoffending, has participated in programs that reduce recidivism and has paid his price to society and should be released, that is not an ‘early’ release but an appropriate release. This is essentially what parole boards do." If states are not taking those or other precautions and are chopping large chunks of time off sentences, report that too, but compare it with what was happening in the past. Time served overall has increased in recent years—the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics has figures on the subject—so what is happening now may be a mid-course correction. A headline “Prison Terms Shortened” is fine; the term “early” can be a loaded one.
The biggest news reporting challenge may come in California, where courts are on the verge of forcing the state to release tens of thousands of inmates. Rather than merely labeling this an “early release,” journalists should explore both in California and elsewhere exactly how states are deciding whom to release. Some 700,000 inmates were getting out nationally every year even before the expected wave of new releases, so smart reporting would explore what is and isn’t being done to help inmates re-enter society.
