Human Rights Watch coded violation and charge types into categories. This data provided dates for initial incarceration and sentencing, allowing for a computation of the length of detention before sentencing.
Due to a lack of standardized data entry, we could not analyze the underlying conduct that led to incarceration.
Human Rights Watch also received data from the Pennsylvania Sentencing Commission regarding probation revocations between January and December However, we did not produce original analysis from this data given the quality of publicly-available analysis of this same data. The Georgia Department of Community Supervision informed us that they could not provide the individual-level data requested because they merged databases in , and the relevant data was not yet mature enough.
The Georgia Department of Corrections informed us that relevant laws did not require them to release the requested data. Human Rights Watch obtained information publicly available on Georgia county jail websites.
We worked with computer science and economics students at the University of Georgia to collect information from Georgia. Human Rights Watch was able to examine data scraped from jail rosters for nine Georgia counties during the course of five months of Summer and Fall June 1 — October To ascertain the types of charges that led to jail bookings, we removed all bookings that were not for new criminal charges or did not involve probation or parole violations, such as people serving jail sentences.
This analysis allowed us to determine what proportion of bookings involved probation and parole violations. The data analyses, focused on descriptive statistics, were completed in R. R code and data is on file with Human Rights Watch. We spent a month at the start of this project defining its scope and selecting states on which to focus, informed by phone interviews with practitioners and advocates, as well as extensive desk research.
We chose to highlight Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia because these states had high numbers and proportions of people incarcerated for supervision violations and racial disparities in their data. Each state also presented advocacy opportunities.
When first used as part of the criminal legal system, supervision was designed to divert people away from incarceration and help them reintegrate into their communities. Supervision became increasingly popular across the US as a tool of rehabilitation. Beginning in the s, supervision fundamentally changed.
Legislatures, court systems, and supervision agencies toughened conditions, lengthened supervision terms, increased monitoring, and heightened sanctions for violations. Additionally, states began imposing supervision in addition to—rather than instead of—prison or jail terms.
By the s, upwards of 20 states had either eliminated or dramatically reduced early release to parole. The use of supervision also skyrocketed. As incarceration in the United States grew nearly five-fold between and , from about , [57] to 2. As of , the last year for which national data on supervision is available, 4.
In Wisconsin, one in every 69 adults, or 66, people, were under supervision as of Numbers are particularly stark in some counties we studied. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one in 23 people is on supervision—the highest rate of any big city in the US.
Nationwide, most supervision sentences are imposed for low-level conduct. At the end of , one quarter of probation and parole terms were imposed for property crimes, another quarter were imposed for drug crimes—which, nationwide, are overwhelmingly for personal possession [69] —14 percent were imposed for public order offenses, and 22 percent were imposed for crimes considered violent. Supervision terms can be lengthy. Once people are released to parole, states often require them to serve the full remainder of their sentence under parole supervision—which can be significant.
Extended supervision terms can also be long. For instance, under Wisconsin law, whenever a judge sentences someone to prison, they must also impose a period of extended supervision that is at least 25 percent of the length of the prison term. Probation sentences can be even longer. Sixty-two percent of states cap probation terms for most offenses at five years, but at least five states—California, Georgia, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—place no ceiling on probation sentences.
Most states, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, allow for early termination of supervision in certain cases. Supervision disproportionately impacts Black and brown people and those with limited financial means. Nationwide as of , one in every 81 white people were under supervision, compared with one in every 23 Black people.
Disparities are even starker in some jurisdictions where Human Rights Watch conducted in-depth research. In Wisconsin in , the last year for which data is available, one in every eight Black men were on supervision—more than five times the rate for white men. People under supervision are also disproportionately low-income. Poverty in the United States intersects profoundly with race. Supervision is daunting. Nationwide, people under supervision must comply with an average of 10 to 20 conditions a day.
While supervision in juvenile justice systems is beyond the scope of this report, it is important to note that, as of —the last year for which data is available—about , children were placed on juvenile probation in the United States. The way children on supervision are treated varies among states, but they are often subjected to a wide array of rules—sometimes more than 30—that would be difficult for any child to comply with. As a result, many children break the rules of their supervision, and substantial numbers of them end up incarcerated.
Children of color are disproportionately impacted. As of , children of color comprised 46 percent of the US population aged 10 to 17, [] but constituted 55 percent of all juvenile probation dispositions and 67 percent of all children confined for rule violations. Increasingly, some states are reforming their juvenile probation systems by reducing the use of probation and limiting punishments for violations.
Instead, these states reward positive behavior and invest in family and community-based supports. Rules in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania frequently prohibit people from drinking alcohol or entering bars—in some cases, even when their offenses did not involve drinking. Many conditions are vague. Many of the people we spoke with said these rules make them nervous to even leave their homes—especially in communities where many people have criminal records and police are a constant presence.
Will this lead to a revocation? Everyone where I live has a criminal background, so where am I supposed to go? Another common condition is completing certain types of programs, such as substance use treatment if the underlying offense is drug-related, or anger management programs if, for instance, someone was convicted of assault.
Programs can create their own barriers to rehabilitation. In many cases, for example, people must pay for these programs themselves.
Further, violating any rule of the program is itself a supervision violation. Program rules can be wide-ranging and harsh. Studies show that people who participate in programs through probation are more likely to have their supervision revoked than people who do not participate in these programs. Conditions often conflict with each other, for example, requiring people to hold down jobs while also requiring them to attend frequent meetings and treatment programs—typically held during standard work hours.
Typical supervision conditions also include expansive search provisions, requiring people to submit to searches at any time, in any place, and without a warrant. Supervision conditions generally require people to frequently report to an officer—monthly, biweekly, or even weekly. Many judges and supervision officers interviewed for this report said the conditions placed on people during supervision ensure people get needed services, such as job training, education, and treatment, that they believe will stop them from committing crimes.
Some judges and supervision officers recognize that, given the vast and often irrelevant conditions imposed, supervision frequently sets people up to fail. Supervision is expensive. Criminal convictions already carry fines, fees, and restitution costs that can easily total thousands of dollars. While these fees may appear small in isolation, they regularly total hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Court debt carries serious consequences. It also makes it harder to get to work—and thus pay off debt. Additionally, rather than keeping people on supervision for failing to pay, some courts transfer unpaid court debt to a civil judgment.
These barriers add to the already steep consequences people face as a result of criminal convictions, which can include further bars on the right to vote and the ability to obtain jobs, professional licenses, student loans, housing and other public assistance, along with potential immigration consequences.
Navigating supervision conditions requires financial security, stable housing, reliable transportation, and, often, access to quality healthcare and mental health services.
Supervision departments are supposed to connect people to these resources. Further, according to leading experts on supervision practices, many supervision departments prioritize enforcing conditions over providing resources.
While a few people we interviewed reported receiving some helpful programming, the vast majority of people we spoke to—along with supervision experts—said that supervision provided little support. Many people reported that, during required meetings, their supervision officers did little to inquire about how they were managing or offer any help.
Instead, the officers simply administered drug tests, monitored whether they were employed, and asked if they had been making their required payments. They have no resources, no nothing. Some people are able to find help and support outside of supervision through community-based organizations, often led by people who have been involved in the criminal legal system. Because courts often offer probation as an alternative to a sentence that involves incarceration, many people plead guilty to sentences carrying lengthy probation terms without fully understanding the risks involved.
Those detained pending trial face particularly strong pressure to plead to probation so that they can get out of jail. By March , Willie White, a middle-aged Black father of seven, had spent six months in a Lowndes County, Georgia, jail, in south central Georgia, waiting for his trial. Less than three months after White pled guilty, he was back in jail for failure to pay his court costs.
The judge imposed a five-day jail term, and then released White to continue serving his probation term. Scared, White stopped reporting, he said. Then in October , as White was riding his bicycle, Lowndes County police arrested him for possessing marijuana and a pill capsule that White says contained a lawful substance. When we met White in the Lowndes County jail in December , he had already been held for nearly three months. Nobody should be going to prison for that, nobody.
This boy just keeps going back to jail, back to jail, back to jail. He missed Christmas, he missed the holidays, [he] miss[ed] all of that. A wide range of conduct, such as failing to report to supervision officers when required, failing to inform them that you have moved, or failure to be truthful, can lead to incarceration.
But since root causes of the violations, discussed in Section VI, often go unaddressed, many people continue to engage in the same behavior, ultimately leading to incarceration.
Enforcement practices can vary widely among supervision officers, both between and even within supervision departments. For instance, some officers disregard low-level violations, while others initiate sanctions for any misstep. Changing residences without permission was the single largest condition that led to state parole violation proceedings in Pennsylvania from to , accounting for about one third of all violations.
In Wisconsin from to , drug use was by far the most common violation leading to sanctions up to and including incarceration—accounting for one out of every five violations during that period, or 27, violations. We analyzed the sanctions that resulted from different violations. Sanctions included additional conditions; electronic monitoring; jail sanctions of one to four days, five to 59 days, or 60 days or more; and revocation. The Georgia Department of Community Supervision told Human Rights Watch that it could not provide data regarding incarceration for supervision violations.
The data we obtained covered a period from June 1 to October 31, It indicated the number of people booked into jails for probation or parole violations, but not the specific supervision conditions allegedly violated. The data revealed that, when people were booked into jail for both supervision violations and new offense charges at the same time, those new offense charges were largely for public order conduct 21 percent , drug possession 15 percent , theft or property conduct 13 percent , traffic breaches 12 percent and assaultive conduct 11 percent.
In addition to the violation types revealed through the data analysis above, we documented numerous cases of violations for failure to pay, failure to report, and personal drug use. Attorneys in Georgia—where officials said they could not provide Human Rights Watch with data we requested on conduct triggering supervision violations [] —said that failure to pay violations are particularly prevalent there.
Sometimes, judges ultimately refuse to revoke probation for failure to pay, believing it is unfair, former Georgia public defender Falen Cox said. Valerie Todd had an extremely difficult childhood, but by age 40 she had overcome enormous obstacles. Her mother struggled with heroin use. We had gun racks in our house, my mom was a drug dealer; my grandma, like my mother, was born in the house of corrections. So it was a big cycle. By age 10, Todd said, she began using alcohol and drugs to manage her emotional pain.
Todd was released early from prison to parole, and she got her life together. She completed parole in —though she still had to serve 10 more years on probation—began teaching in the prison where she had served her sentence, published a book, [] and started working for Mothers in Charge, a violence prevention organization. Supervision officers often warn people that failure to comply with their rules of release can lead to jail.
In fact, in many cases, supervision officers know exactly where the people under their supervision live and work, and even arrest them at those locations. In Pennsylvania, nearly 20 percent of all state parole rule violations between and resulted from failing to report; [] in Wisconsin, failure to report and absconding constituted 14 percent of all rule violations during those years.
When he was released from the Manitowac jail around June , May was told his probation officer would arrange transport to a treatment program in Milwaukee, he said. Confused and overwhelmed, he explained, he never reported. He got back on track, working jobs at a temp service and as a prep cook, he explained. Then in August , police arrested May for having a backpack with some marijuana and a BB gun inside, he said. He denied the backpack was his and said he was in the process of returning it to a friend.
We also spoke with Jasmine Jackson. In , a Philadelphia court sentenced Jackson to two-to-four years of prison followed by six years of probation for a robbery committed when she was 16 years old. Jackson said that she served three years of her sentence in prison then and one year on parole in a halfway house.
She returned home in , and at that point, she told us, she thought her obligation to the state was over. For about six years, everything went well, Jackson said. Then, in September , someone called the police while she and her then-partner were arguing.
It turns out that, after Jackson finished serving her state parole, she was supposed to serve the six years of county probation she was sentenced to when she was a teenager. No one ever told her to report to probation, and she did not realize she had to serve more supervision after completing parole, she said. After being arrested on the probation warrant, Jackson spent three weeks in jail waiting for her revocation hearing, after which the judge revoked her probation and re-sentenced her to two years of probation.
She lost her job as a result of the arrest and incarceration, and later, after obtaining another job, she lost that too because she had to continually leave work early to report to her probation officer, she said. In January , Jackson was arrested for misdemeanor drug possession, which triggered another probation violation. She was sentenced to another year of probation, to be served alongside her other probation term. All they did is hinder me. There is a growing global movement decriminalize the possession of drugs for personal use.
Human Rights Watch and the ACLU support this movement as a matter of human rights, because criminalizing personal choices like drug use, in the absence of harm to others, is per se disproportionate and inconsistent with the right to privacy and basic principles of autonomy that underlie all rights.
Moreover, research indicates that frequent drug testing—a common supervision condition—does not reduce drug use. Nevertheless, personal drug use remains a leading driver of incarceration for supervision violations.
In Pennsylvania, 17 percent of all state parole rule violations from to resulted from drug possession. If these arrests while on supervision are consistent with national arrest data, then the overwhelming majority of such arrests are for nothing more than possessing drugs for personal use.
Though Black and white people use drugs at similar rates, arrests for drug crimes are more likely to happen in predominantly poor areas composed of people of color—who are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement.
In some jurisdictions we examined closely for this report, disparities for marijuana arrests are particularly glaring. In Wisconsin from to , Black people were much more likely than white people to face supervision violations for possessing or using drugs. Human Rights Watch calculated a race-specific rate for the number of people with drug-related violations per 10, people in Wisconsin. For violations stemming from drug possession offenses, the rate for Black people is 3. When comparing the race proportions of the Wisconsin population with those charged with drug use violations or drug possession offenses, the disparities are just as glaring.
In Wisconsin, the proportion of Native Americans sanctioned for drug use violations is over eight times higher than their proportion of the state population; for Black people, it is more than twice their proportion of the population.
Given national survey data showing that people of all races and ethnicities use drugs including marijuana at similar rates, [] these racial disparities in supervision violations point to a disproportionate impact on Black people and Native Americans that amounts to prohibited racial discrimination under international human rights law. Wayne Murphy, 60 years old, is still serving the year probation sentence he was given in Wisconsin for a sexual assault committed in I had no presents or money.
Being there would have sent me into a deep depression. A few days later, on December 29, , Murphy spoke with his probation officer and explained why he went to a different house, and clarified that no drugs or alcohol—which would violate his supervision conditions—were involved.
She pursued revocation and lodged a detainer, requiring Murphy to be incarcerated. Murphy spent 36 days in jail waiting for a hearing, and then was sentenced to serve another four days behind bars for the violation, he said. Supervision officers typically have vast discretion to address violations of probation and parole. If a supervision officer pursues revocation, they can lodge a detainer, meaning the individual facing revocation will be detained pending revocation proceedings—which, as discussed below, could be weeks or months.
Basic rights in the US criminal legal system do not apply in revocation proceedings. Further, while criminal charges must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, most states only require supervision violations to be proven by a preponderance of the evidence—meaning more likely than not.
Given the lower standards in revocation proceedings, people can—and, in our focus jurisdictions, frequently do [] —face revocation of their supervision for committing new offenses even when they are acquitted of those charges, or the judge dismisses them, in criminal court.
Angel Ortiz, a year-old Latino man, grew up in a poor North Philadelphia neighborhood. In , soon after his 18 th birthday, Ortiz was arrested on charges of drug possession with intent to distribute and criminal conspiracy.
In October , while still on probation, Ortiz was convicted of drug possession and sentenced to five to six months in jail. Since then, Philadelphia police have arrested Ortiz multiple times, Ortiz said. On four occasions, he told us, courts dismissed the charges—in some cases because evidence was obtained unlawfully, he said.
When we met Ortiz in October , he was still serving the same probation term imposed two decades ago and had three years and nine months more to go. He told us that he has a steady job at a sanitation company and feels like things are finally coming together. In many jurisdictions, including most of Wisconsin and parts of Georgia and Pennsylvania, people participate in their revocation hearings remotely via videoconference from the jail where they are detained. Videoconferencing creates additional obstacles to contesting revocation.
Lawyers must choose between appearing in the courtroom—where they can speak clearly with the judge and question witnesses—or in the jail with their client, where they can confidentially review strategies and clarify facts.
Compared with defendants in criminal proceedings, people facing supervision revocation have limited access to attorneys. In essence, the US Supreme Court has said that courts only need to appoint lawyers for revocation proceedings if someone has claims of innocence, strong mitigating factors, or the case is complicated. Rules and regulations in many states, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, nevertheless provide a right to counsel in all revocation proceedings.
Yet in the Lowndes County misdemeanor court, access to counsel appears non-existent. Unlike many jurisdictions, which appoint counsel once a revocation petition is filed, in Lowndes County the court waits until the first court appearance—which, as discussed later in this section, often comes after months in detention—to appoint a lawyer. Lowndes County Judge John Edwards told us that he appoints lawyers for anyone facing revocation who wants one. At their first appearance, people facing revocation speak with the solicitor-general—a prosecutor.
This inherent delay incentivizes people to proceed immediately without a lawyer. Even when courts appoint counsel, it may come too late. As described later in this section, supervision officers in Georgia and Wisconsin routinely approach people in jail, sometimes before a lawyer has been appointed, with inducements to forgo their hearing rights.
Accordingly, people often make fundamental decisions about their cases without talking to a lawyer. Detainers override any other pre-trial release determination. This means that even if someone on supervision is arrested for a criminal offense and a judge authorizes their release, the person will remain in jail until at least their first revocation proceeding due to the detainer. In some states, authorities, recognizing there is a problem, have attempted to create alternative systems that reduce the time people spend in custody awaiting their revocation hearings.
However, even with these systems, people end up getting arrested and held in custody for significant amounts of time, resulting in job loss and other disruptions. Likewise, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, certain people on probation and parole are released more quickly from jail through administrative disposition hearings. Detention pending revocation proceedings is widespread across the United States.
These kinds of holds are routine. In , Wisconsin supervision officers ordered nearly 45, holds. Some court officials we spoke to said detainers were justified to protect the public. In many cases, the conduct for which people are detained pending revocation proceedings, such as missing meetings or using drugs, does not raise inherent safety or flight concerns. Even people accused of serious criminal conduct do not necessarily pose a flight risk, and, where those concerns are present, courts will likely detain people pending criminal proceedings in any case, making supervision detainers unnecessary.
People accused of supervision violations may spend anywhere from a few days, to a couple of weeks, to months or even years in jail pending revocation proceedings. In Pennsylvania, there can be a substantial difference in total duration of confinement between people charged with probation rule violations and those charged with probation violations for new offenses: our analysis of data provided by Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, reveals that the former are incarcerated for a median of 23 days pending sentencing while the latter are locked up for a median of 57 days pending sentencing.
Lengths of detention pending an initial hearing in Pennsylvania vary across the state. According to a Philadelphia Inquirer analysis, while Philadelphia County generally holds preliminary revocation hearings discussed below in this section within ten days of detention, [] people in nearby Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and Dauphin County, which contains Harrisburg, regularly wait up to 90 days for their first hearing. According to data provided to Human Rights Watch by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Wisconsin detained people pending investigation into alleged supervision violations for between five and 59 days more than 14, times between and Attorneys who regularly represent people facing revocation in Georgia told us that, in Chatham County, of which Savannah is a part, people wait between 45 and 90 days for a hearing.
Total detention periods can be particularly long for people facing both revocation and new criminal charges at the same time. A JFA Institute analysis of the Dane County, Wisconsin, jail, which contains Madison, revealed that people locked up on detainers spent an average of 44 days in jail, while those incarcerated on detainers and new charges spent an average of 97 days in jail.
Public defenders explained that these individuals are stuck in a catch But admitting to the violation, and potentially getting out of jail, puts them in a poor position to challenge the criminal case. Resolving the criminal case first, however, generally takes longer, meaning more time in jail. The result is often months in detention as lawyers try to coordinate a joint resolution of the revocation and criminal proceedings.
For instance, when we met Darius Hill pseudonym at the Chatham County, Georgia, jail in December , he had already been incarcerated for over ten months. When we spoke to Hill, his next court hearing was not for another three months. Court and supervision officials generally blamed lengthy detention on overburdened court calendars and under-resourced staff, and expressed concern about these lengthy detention periods.
Once detained, people have little opportunity to seek release. We found this to be the case in our focus states. For example, of the nearly 9, preliminary state parole violation hearings scheduled in Pennsylvania between and , 78 percent were waived, according to data provided to Human Rights Watch by the Pennsylvania Department of Probation and Parole PBPP.
Multiple factors contribute to the low number of preliminary hearings. For instance, in Wisconsin and Georgia, if an individual admits that they violated their supervision conditions, whether by breaking a rule or committing a new crime, they do not have the right to a preliminary hearing. Officials justify the policies described above on the grounds that, if someone admits to violating their supervision rules or a court finds probable cause of a crime, probable cause is established for the alleged violations.
Yet preliminary hearings serve also to determine whether—regardless of probable cause—there is sufficient justification to hold the individual pending a final revocation hearing rather than allow them to be out of custody during this period.
Such policies leave individuals in the position of having no formal mechanism to challenge their sometimes months or more of incarceration before their final revocation hearing.
Further, lengthy detention often pushes people to waive their preliminary hearing rights. Public defenders told us that, after spending weeks or months in jail, many people waive their right to a preliminary hearing in exchange for either a shorter sentence or release with time served.
Preliminary hearings are also tough to win, especially if the person is incarcerated, in part because there is little opportunity obtain evidence and factfinders often defer to the supervision officer. However, while use of probation bonds in the state is increasing somewhat, it remains the exception, Georgia public defenders said. In , the Lowndes County, Georgia, state court, which oversees misdemeanor probation, hired a release services coordinator to reduce pre-revocation detention.
The coordinator visits the jail to determine who is locked up on a detainer, and expeditiously schedules their hearing. Detention causes profound harm to the individual in confinement, their family, and their community.
Even a few days in jail can mean stigma; lost jobs; missed time and estranged relations with loved ones; disrupted access to health care, education, services, and public benefits; loss of child custody or visitation; harm to children and others for whom the detained person is a caregiver; housing instability; harms to mental health; and exposure to violence, abuse and illness behind bars.
People facing violation proceedings are also often detained in jails and prisons in overcrowded conditions, with inadequate health care. This is particularly problematic given high rates of underlying chronic disease among incarcerated people and an older population in prison especially susceptible to severe disease and death. Some of these conditions can rise to the level of being cruel and inhumane. But people are confined in a building within the building—one that allows no direct sunlight.
While MSDF is classified as a medium-security facility, conditions largely mirror maximum-security prisons. And MSDF is overcrowded. We also documented inhumane conditions at George W. Hill have made similar claims, as well as allegations of violence by officers, including in lawsuits. At times more than 50 people are housed in the cell. Since , 15 people held at George W. Hill have died, at least three of them from suicide.
In the states where we conducted research, few people contest revocation. In Pennsylvania between and , more than 12, final state parole revocation hearings were scheduled. Yet people waived those hearings in 78 percent of the cases. Jail itself is a coercive environment. Away from loved ones, at risk of losing jobs and housing, and subject to dangerous conditions, people face immense pressure to get out as quickly as possible.
In Wisconsin and parts of Georgia, supervision officers also blatantly pressure people to waive their rights. Supervision officers in these jurisdictions routinely approach people while they are incarcerated, without an attorney present—in some cases before counsel has even been appointed and other times before they have had the chance to speak with their lawyer.
Coercive pleas are not unique to the supervision violation process. Throughout the criminal legal system, prosecutors leverage pre-trial detention and the threat of severe sentences to induce pleas. In Wisconsin, supervision officers mandate confessions. When someone is detained pending revocation, a supervision officer approaches them—in jail, without a lawyer present—and requests a statement describing what happened. White is adamant that the pill was not Flakka, but a lawful sex enhancement pill.
White spent two months in jail waiting for a hearing. You lose your job, you lose your family, you lose your house, you lose everything. To catch you when you fall and ever let you down you say that we're forever our love will never end I've tried to come up but it's drowning me to know you'll never feel my soul It's trapped between true love and being alone when my eyes are closed the greatest story told i woke and my dreams are shattered here on the floor Tell me baby Why oh why tell me why not me Why oh why we were meant to be Baby I know I could be all you need Why oh why oh why.
El Perdon. Let Me Be Your Lover. Takin' Back My Love. Tiakola Etincelle Maradona. It's not a right. Although some criminal statutes carry a right to an eventual parole hearing, typical laws don't absolutely guarantee parole itself.
Authorities retain the discretion to deny parole to prisoners they deem dangerous. Often, a parole board that denies parole to a prisoner sets another parole hearing at some later point, sometimes after several years.
State law can provide that some kinds of convictions make prisoners ineligible for parole or eligible only after a very long prison sentence. Indeed, life without parole, regularly referred to as "LWOP," is a common alternative sentence to the death penalty.
Many prisoners do, however, become eligible for parole. Commonly, after a parole board finds that a prisoner is eligible, the inmate appears at a parole hearing. If granted parole, the parolee is released and lives free in society but under the continued supervision of the prison authority.
Parole decisions can involve multiple steps—for instance, review by a panel from the parole board and then review by the whole board. In a few states, the state governor gets to review the parole decision and might have the option to reverse at least some parole grants. Often, the prison authority primarily supervises the parolee through mandatory visits with a parole officer. State parole services usually a branch of the department of corrections may provide transitional services tailored to the parolee's needs, such as shelter in a halfway house or intensive mental health counseling.
Once out on parole, a parolee enjoys the privilege of relative freedom in return for abiding by certain conditions. Some common parole conditions are that the parolee:.
Under a typical parole system, the parolee is assigned a parole officer and must meet with that officer periodically. The parole officer may also make unannounced visits to the parolee's home to check that the parolee is truly abiding by the relevant conditions.
Unannounced visits let the officer observe whether, for example, there is evidence of parole violations like drug use. To violate parole is to fail to live up to its conditions. The violation could be a bad act like committing a new crime or a failure to act like not getting the parole officer's permission to leave the county or state before going out of town. Violating parole by committing a crime can often land parolees back in prison or in jail. Some of the more minor or technical violations, such as prohibited alcohol use, could result in parole authorities imposing stricter or additional conditions rather than immediately commencing back-to-prison revocation proceedings.
For instance, a parole officer might refer the parolee to substance abuse counseling including, for example, AA meetings and require proof of attendance. If the parolee fails to comply with the requirement, or if the parole violation was serious enough, the authorities may begin revocation proceedings. At a typical hearing, the decision-maker, whether a judge, the parole board, or part of the parole board, will consider the nature and circumstances of the violation.
Parole violation proceedings can involve multiple steps, such as a hearing before a parole officer and then before the board itself. The decision-maker determines whether to send the parolee back into custody. Depending on the rules of the jurisdiction, the prisoner may spend weeks, months, years, or the remainder of the original sentence back behind bars.
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