BackEnd Sentencing and Parole Revocation

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Back-End Sentencing and Parole Revocation

• Avi Bhati
• The Urban Institute
• November 4, 2006

Presented at the conference on Back-End
Sentencing and Technical Parole
Violations, Stanford, CA
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Adults on Parole in the United States
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From Prison to Parole

• Release Mechanism
• Discretionary
• Non-Discretionary
• Post-Release Supervision Status
• Supervised, with Conditions
• Unsupervised, without Conditions

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Prison Release Mechanism
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Parole Exit Mechanism

• Successful completion of supervision
• Revocation
• New Crime
• Technical Violation
• Result of Revocation
• New Crime, New Sentence Revoked Term
• Technical Violation, Revoked Term
• Re-release Mechanism
• Typically Mandatory / Unconditional

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Parole Exit Mechanism (Numbers)
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Parole Exit Mechanism (Percent)
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Distribution of Revocations Across States
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Prison Admission Types

• New Court Commitment (New Sentence)
• Revocation (Parole and Probation)
• New Crime
• Technical Violation
• Re-release Mechanism
• Conditional
• Unconditional

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Prison Admission Types (Numbers)
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Prison Admission Types (Percent)
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Post-Release Supervision

• Post-Release Supervision Purpose
• Connect to Support Services
• Surveillance
• Recent Decades Emphasis on Surveillance
• How does Surveillance help?
• Technical Violations / Broken Windows Theory
• Threat of Revocation / Specific Deterrence
• There is Limited or No Evidence that the
  Surveillance Model Increases Public Safety
• Surveillance Linked with Treatment More Promising

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Urban Institute StudySolomon, Kachnowski, and
Bhati (2005)

• Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994 (BJS)
• Coverage 15 States
• Outcome Re-arrest within 2 years of release
• Key Predictor Releases Mechanism
• Key Findings
• Little difference attributable to release
  mechanism
• Some groups (e.g., females) benefit more from
  being supervised
• Largest groups (e.g., males incarcerated for drug
  related crimes) do not benefit from supervision.
• Key Limitation Cross-state variation hard to
  reconcile

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Recent and Ongoing Work

• Improved Outcome Specific Deterrence, using
• Criminal History Based Offending Trajectory
• Post Release Offending Trajectory

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Recent and Ongoing Work (Cont.)

• Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994 (BJS)
• Coverage 13 States
• Outcome Deterred or not
• Key Predictor Release and Entry Mechanisms
• Key Findings
• Little Effect of Release Mechanism
• No Effects of Entry Mechanism
• No Interaction Effects among the two
• State Specific Models Findings are largely
  similar
• Offenders are not Deterred by Perceived Threat of
  Revocation nor by Experiencing it in the Past!

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Summary

• Increasing Number of People on Parole
• Successful completions only about 60
• Technical Violations substantial share of
  Revocations
• Surveillance Model Seems Inefficient and
  Ineffective
• Treatment Model More Promising
• Parole Release, Supervision, and Revocation
  Processes Need to be Re-Invented

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URBAN INSTITUTE Justice Policy Center
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