Parole
Alexander Maconochie, a Scottish geographer and captain in the Royal Navy, introduced the modern idea of parole when, in 1840, he was appointed superintendent of the British penal colonies in Norfolk Island, Australia.
[3] Prisoners served indeterminate sentences from which they could be released early if they showed evidence of rehabilitation[4] through participation in a graded classification system based on a unit of exchange called a mark.
[5] In an instance of multiple discovery, in 1846, Arnould Bonneville de Marsangy proposed the idea of parole (which he termed "preparatory liberations") to the Civil Tribunal at Reims.
[11][12] On May 27, 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that extending parole ineligibility beyond the statutorily mandated 25 years was unconstitutional for being "cruel and unusual" punishment.
[14][15] The Chinese legal code has no explicit provision for exile, but often dissidents are released on the grounds that they need to be treated for a medical condition in another country, and with the understanding that they will be reincarcerated if they return to China.
To manage prison populations and rehabilitate those incarcerated, he instituted a two-part strategy that consisted of indeterminate sentences and parole releases.
In some jurisdictions in the United States, courts may specify in a sentence how much time must be served before a prisoner is eligible for parole.
[30] On the federal level, Congress abolished parole in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 (Pub.
Federal prisoners may, however, earn a maximum of 54 days good time credit per year against their sentence (18 U.S.C.A.
Other factors may enter into the decision to grant or deny parole, most commonly the establishment of a permanent residence and immediate, gainful employment or some other clearly visible means of self-support upon release (such as Social Security if the prisoner is old enough to qualify).
[34] During elections, politicians whose administrations parole any large number of prisoners (or, perhaps, one notorious criminal) are typically attacked by their opponents as being "soft on crime".
Said states implemented a dramatic decrease of parole releases, which inevitably resulted in longer sentences for more prisoners.
[29] Starting in the 1980s, parole was revisited as a method once again to manage prison populations and as financial motivation to prevent further budget straining.
[37] The Great Recession of 2008 coupled with the Twin Towers attack on September 11, 2001 contributed to the public emphasis on the war on terror and eventually led to a trend of lowering incarceration.
[37] The decision for granting parole has been criticized for neglecting the due process of prisoners on a case-by-case basis.
[39] Most agree that, as was originally intended, the parole system puts a necessary focus on rehabilitation, despite its current problems which are widely debated.
The conditions of parole themselves are often attacked as well, critiqued for being overwhelmingly criminogenic and perpetuating mass surveillance and a permanent state of imprisonment that does little to ensure a smooth reentry into society.
[29] The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stated in 2005 that about 45% of parolees completed their sentences successfully, while 38% were returned to prison, and 11% absconded.
Despite the decline in jurisdictions with a functioning parole system, the average annual growth of parolees was an increase of about 1.6% per year between 1995 and 2002.
Mandatory supervision tends to involve stipulations that are more lenient than those of parole, and in some cases place no obligations at all on the individual being released.
In US immigration law, the term parole has two meanings related to allowing persons to enter or leave the United States without the normally required documentation.
According to a review of the academic literature by economist Jennifer Doleac, reductions in parole supervision was one of the most cost-effective ways to improve the reintegration and rehabilitation of the formerly-incarcerated.
[41][42] Parole is "the agreement of persons who have been taken prisoner by an enemy that they will not again take up arms against those who captured them, either for a limited time or during the continuance of the war.
"[44] The practice of paroling enemy troops began thousands of years ago, at least as early as the time of Carthage.
Hugo Grotius, an early international lawyer, favorably discussed prisoner of war parole.
[48] In the United States, current policy prohibits US military personnel who are prisoners of war from accepting parole.
