Recommendation 3: Texas should implement parole guidelines to make room for violent, untreatable offenders.
Currently, the criminal justice system lacks the tools and programs outside of prison to meet the treatment needs of offenders who have been scheduled to be released from prison. As a result, offenders’ release dates are delayed, causing them to languish in prison while they contribute to the prison capacity crisis.
Texas policy-makers must:
- Texas must strengthen parole supervision by equipping parole departments with the resources to assist parolees, including with drug and alcohol treatment programs, and other re-entry programs.
- If the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles (TBPP) increases its parole rates of these low-risk, low-severity offenders from 27% to 31%, it can offset the need for new prison construction.
With the implementation of the following recommendations, the State can address the needs of parolees, which will ultimately lead to safer communities:
a. TBPP should match the guideline-recommended parole levels to actual release rates.
TBPP must evaluate cases according to risk level and avoid releasing high-risk offenders too early or low-risk offenders too late. Effective use of the guidelines would provide parole panels more time to evaluate remaining cases where a decision might be tougher to reach. Furthermore, following the guidelines would allow prisons to retain more high-risk offenders in custody, which would decrease pressure for additional prison capacity. To best ensure TBPP increases release rates in accordance with their own guidelines, policy-makers should modify them to create a presumption of parole for low-level offenders.
b. TBPP should create and maintain a presumptive parole roster.
Policy-makers should instruct TBPP to create a range in the parole guidelines that is presumptive for parole (unless some salient factors specified in legislation are not met). In other words, although TBPP should still have discretion to deny parole for offenders falling within the presumptive ranges of the guidelines, the general expectation should be that parole is granted for low-risk, low severity offenders.
Specifically, for lowest-level offenders (in Levels 6 and 7), parole officers should review each offender’s case and flag those that may require further review by the entire parole board. For instance, cases should be flagged if the offender has disciplinary problems, sex violations, gun involvement, or is a member of a gang; in addition, a case should be flagged if the offender physically injured a victim, if a victim or local official protests the parole, or if the offender will have housing or placement problems on release.
Unless a case is flagged for further scrutiny, the names of Level 6 and 7 offenders eligible for parole should be submitted to TBPP on a weekly or monthly basis with the presumption that these offenders will be released. These individuals should then be granted parole if any single board member votes in favor of release. Offenders whose cases were flagged should be further examined before parole is considered; later, those cases can also be approved with one vote from any board member.
One factor that TBPP claims is contributing to low parole release rates is the insufficient number of treatment and re-entry facilities that exist to place parolees, which essentially causes TBPP to act as a bottleneck for prisoners qualified for release. As such, we must untie the hands of TBPP members who want to fulfill their responsibility to the State.
The following programs should be implemented or expanded to provide the necessary resources for release:
a. Texas should implement personal responsibility initiatives.
Texas must expand personal responsibility programs that facilitate successful re-entry; this will reduce rates of recidivism and bolster parolee success. These include adult education programs, job placement programs, financial management programs, and housing assistance programs.
b. Texas should implement DWI prevention programs.
Instead of building any new medium-security facilities (which can cost taxpayers approximately $65million), Texas should use the money to fully strengthen existing in-patient and out-patient treatment programs that focus on treating alcohol addictions leading to habitual DWIs.
The State should also mandate the installation of ignition interlock devices as a condition of parole in personal vehicles of habitual DWI offenders. These devises prevent people from starting their cars when intoxicated. Note: Ignition interlock has not been proven effective for first-time DWI offenders.
a. Texas should reduce “time served” for offenders incarcerated because of technical probation revocations.
Parolees revoked for technical violations should become eligible for parole after either 1 year or after the length of the current computation, whichever time period is shorter.
b. Texas should increase the use of “Medical Special Needs” parole.
For parolees who are terminally ill and no longer a threat to society, the State should repeal the requirement that an offender must be within 6 months of death to be removed from prison, and instead use GPS tracking in conjunction with placement in a nursing facility or hospice to monitor parolees’ whereabouts.
c. Texas should improve communication strategies among supervision authorities.
Some families have multiple members under the supervision of different authorities. (For example, a father is on parole for substance abuse while his son or daughter is on probation.) As is often the case, the supervision authorities at these various departments do not communicate with each other, due in part to the absence of uniform data sets across agencies. Supervision authorities must be given incentives and provided with resources to share information, making their supervision strategies more effective and better assisting probationers or parolees released back into their communities.
Ultimately, creating gateways of communication between supervision authorities will allow supervisors to coordinate efforts with regards to families, in turn decreasing the likelihood that the individuals under supervision will re-offend. The goal of information sharing