Parole Officer in the United States

Catch and Release

PAROLE AS WE KNOW IT HAS FEW DEFENDERS. Beleaguered parole officers complain that heavy caseloads render meaningful supervision impossible, forcing them to make do with hectoring lectures and spot curfew checks. Their charges bridle at the intrusions while faulting the system for doing little to help them with the basics of life on the outside. And many policy makers and academics think parole supervision is a waste of money. There is no statistic for what parole costs the nation as a whole, but New York, the state where Elaine Bartlett lives, spends $250 million a year on it.

It’s hard to measure parole’s impact, since it’s the subject of few studies. (It’s not easy to set up a good control group of freed criminals.) But the available data offer little proof that ex-cons who are monitored by parole officers are less likely to commit a fresh crime than those who are not. Massachusetts, Florida, and Oklahoma, which each supervise fewer than half of the ex-offenders released from prison in the state, don’t have more recidivists than New York, California, or Oregon, which supervise nearly everyone.

In 1907, New York enacted the first parole statute (the word comes from the French parol, referring to word of mouth, or giving one’s word of honor). The practice fit with the progressive era’s faith in the possibility of reform and in dealing with criminals individually. By 1942, all the states and the federal government had passed parole laws. Politically speaking, the appeal was, and is, clear. Constrained by limited resources, prison officials and legislators often quietly release prisoners early to ease prison crowding and save money. Parole supervision is supposed to be the safety net—a way to reassure that dangerous criminals aren’t being left entirely to their own devices. Parolees aren’t free, the logic (and the law) goes. They’re serving out the remainder of their sentences on the outside, subject to whatever conditions the state sees fit to impose.

During the crime waves of the 1980s, politicians scored easy points by calling for more inmates to serve their full sentences. Some states abolished parole boards and their power to grant early release. But as sentences for drug dealing and other non-violent crimes increased, the elimination of early release threatened to drive prison costs skyward. In most states, the answer has been more parole supervision. In 1960, about 60 percent of American prisoners were monitored upon release. By 2002, 80 percent were.

Since the 1980s, the number of parolees nationally has more than tripled to 725,000. At the same time, many states started cracking down on parolees who violate conditions of their release—by breaking their curfew, failing to report their address, traveling out of state without permission, or failing a drug test. Twenty years ago, fewer than one in five prisoners were behind bars because their parole had been revoked; today, the number has risen to one in three. California, which has the highest rate of parole violators, sends almost 90,000 of its 118,000 parolees back to prison, at a cost of $900 million each year.

Yet there’s little evidence that parolees who break the rules—by coming home past midnight, skipping town, or even failing drug tests—are more likely than other ex-cons to sell drugs, rob a store, or do anything else illegal. That disconnect has persuaded some insiders to question the premise of supervision. As Martin F. Horn, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction and Probation and former director of the parole agency for the state, put it: “Supervision is a magician’s trick. Look up my sleeve: There’s nothing there.”

Once parole’s rules are in place, however, there are incentives to enforce them. If you’re a parole officer, it’s much less risky to haul a parolee who breaks the rules back to jail than to see his face or yours on the evening news. But revoking parole has costs: The price of a month in a New York cell is $2,400 per inmate, compared to $265 a month to supervise a parolee. As Michael Jacobson of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice likes to quip, “No government employee can spend money as quickly as a parole officer.” Horn thinks much of the money spent re-jailing parolees is misspent. “Sure, lock up the guys who commit new crimes,” he said. “But do you really want to spend the money to lock up the guy with hot urine for six months?”

In Horn’s view, the government is ill-suited to help parolees achieve the three goals that will keep them out of prison: finding a home, getting a job, and staying clean. Horn wants New York and other states to replace parole with vouchers that would allow ex-cons to pay for housing, job training, and drug treatment. “The government’s job should be to pay the bills,” he said. “If people fail, it’s on them, not on us.”

That libertarian position doesn’t sit well with Jeremy Travis, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. A liberal who believes in government responsibility, Travis wants to expand the system of supervision to cover every ex-inmate. “What about someone who comes out and needs help continuing his medication because he’s mentally ill?” he said. “What is the nature of the government’s responsibility to that person, and how does it square with concerns about public safety?”

In Travis’s altered universe, parole officers would work closely with their charges in the first days and weeks after release, and they’d have the time and resources to offer support as well as conduct surveillance. Ex-offenders wouldn’t be barred from receiving welfare and public housing, stripped of their parental rights, disenfranchised, and prevented from working as teachers or child-care workers, as they now are in many states. Those who did what was expected of them would earn their way off parole quickly. Those who broke the rules would cool their heels in jail for a few days.

Travis also thinks ex-offenders should be accountable not to an overworked parole officer in a small, dingy room, but in open court to the judge who sentenced them. A few states, including New York, have experimented with some form of re-entry courts. Judges help set the conditions of release and oversee a parolee’s progress. When he or she successfully completes the term of supervision, there is a moment of celebration. “The judge hands you a certificate,” Travis said. “Your family is there. You’re restored.” (…)

Parolees who get arrested in this office have usually violated some of parole’s key rules—failing a few drug tests, skipping appointments, repeatedly missing their curfew. They don’t often get locked up for refusing to answer a question. But they can be. Parole rule five states: “I will reply promptly, fully and truthfully to any inquiry of or communication by my Parole Officer or other representative of the Division of Parole.” Once in jail, parolees can wait 15 days for a hearing to determine their fate—whether they’ll return to the outside, stay in jail for a few months, or get sent upstate to finish the rest of their sentence in state prison.

By Emily Bazelon

Parole Officer in Juvenile Law

In this context, Parole Officer information is available through this American legal Encyclopedia.