About This Page
This was compiled by the Prison Policy Initiative and MacArthur Justice Center’s National Parole Transformation Project. It is a reflection of dozens of conversations with parole advocates, incarcerated people, people who have been through the parole process, and family members of incarcerated people and people on parole. It is meant to be a “North Star” document – a statement of belief about what our parole systems should look like. Although reform may take many paths, we hope that all reform efforts will keep these principles in mind when crafting change.
For the purposes of this page, “parole” means a system of release from prison where a deciding body like a parole board assesses cases individually to make decisions about who will and will not be released.
Organization Sign-On:
We encourage organizations that are engaged in state-level parole reform work to sign on to Parole Principles. By signing on, you’re showing your organization’s support for our vision for parole reform and will incorporate these principles in your work when possible.
Every incarcerated person should have access to parole release systems.
Too often, parole systems are, in practice, reserved for a small percentage of incarcerated people. In some states, less than 10% of incarcerated people are eligible for the parole process. Parole should be available to all incarcerated people, since all incarcerated people have the ability to, grow, change, and be valuable members of their communities.
Example Policies:
Life without parole sentences should be abolished. Every person, regardless of their crime of conviction, should have access to the parole system during their incarceration.
Incarcerated people should be given access to parole systems as soon as possible, but in no case later than after serving 10 years of their sentence. Access to the parole system does not guarantee release, but sentencing systems should presume that both individuals and society transform over time.
When parole reforms are made, they should apply retroactively, so that people incarcerated at the time the reform is passed have access to the same opportunity for release as those who are incarcerated after reform.
When someone is eligible for parole, there should be an enforceable presumption of release, and parole boards should be required to use forward-looking, objective criteria to justify why release is inappropriate, rather than requiring incarcerated people to justify their fitness for parole.
A presumption that people should be paroled honors the reality: the vast majority of people up for parole do not pose a threat to the community. An effective parole system that wants people to succeed will start with the assumption that success is possible. Instead of asking people to justify their release, it should ask why not let that person go, then outline a plan that includes in-prison program participation and post-release community-based programming to help the potentially released person overcome barriers to release.
Example Policies:
States should codify in parole statutes that there is a presumption of release for people appearing before the parole board. Statutes should require that the parole board make specific findings about why a person denied parole is not eligible, and create actionable plans that an incarcerated person can follow to ensure their release in the future. If a person completes this plan, they should be released.
States should codify objective criteria that can be used to justify parole denial, and those criteria should have a direct, empirical relationship to a risk for future violence.
Parole boards should be required to adhere to consistent, clear guidelines about how to make parole release decisions. People denied parole should have the opportunity to challenge the basis on which their denial decision was made.
Even in states that currently have guidelines for parole boards to follow when making release decisions, the rate of adherence to those guidelines is often poor. Parole boards must be held accountable for following the law regarding how their decisions are to be made, and states should ensure that guidelines are codified in statute rather than merely administrative.
Example Policies:
Statutes should use language like “must” and “shall” when directing parole boards to use guidelines and rubrics. When statutes use permissive language, like listing the factors a parole board “may” consider, they risk being ignored by decision-makers.
Incarcerated people should be given the opportunity to challenge denials of parole in court, and courts should reverse those denials when it is clear that parole boards did not follow legally required guidelines.
There should be transparency in how statutory and administrative guidelines are being used to deny parole, and parole boards should be evaluated on whether they are applying those guidelines fairly.
Parole should be granted or denied based on forward-looking, objective factors within the control of the incarcerated person, and should focus exclusively on how a person has grown, changed, or been productive since being incarcerated, rather than the underlying crime of conviction.
Many parole boards focus primarily or exclusively on the crime of conviction in making their parole decisions. Doing so effectively creates a double punishment system, since sentencing judges already take the crime of conviction into account when setting a sentence in the first place. Parole should focus on the progress that a person has made while incarcerated, and their current potential to become successful members of society.
Example Policies
Parole boards should be prohibited from using the crime of conviction as the basis for denying parole. Instead, parole boards should be directed to focus on appropriate post-sentencing factors, like completion of programming and evidence of a current threat to the community.
No single factor should be a bar to release. A range of factors should be considered in every case to give a holistic view of someone’s growth and readiness for release. No single factor, such as the existence of disciplinary violations, should create an automatic denial of parole.
If risk assessments are used, they should not focus on the crime of conviction or other static factors; instead, they should focus on the person’s current risk of misconduct rather than the risk they may have posed at the time they were convicted.
Parole boards should use only reliable sources of information to deny parole, and should not use mental health or substance use treatment records as a basis to deny parole. Using treatment records against people in parole hearings discourages people from seeking help and compromises treatment relationships. People’s continued claims of innocence for the crime of conviction should not be used as a reason to deny them parole, nor should people be compelled to agree that the conviction was fairly obtained. Wrongful convictions exist and are racially disparate. Coercing a false admission of guilt in exchange for freedom is deeply unethical, and could even undermine future wrongful conviction suits.
Governors should not have the ability to overrule grants of parole. Although clemency power exists for the executive branch to release individuals who are not granted parole, when the parole board uses its deliberative process to determine that someone should be released, that decision should not be overruled.
When a person is denied parole, they should be given specific, actionable changes that they can make to increase their chances of parole in a future hearing. Parole boards should then honor these efforts and grant parole when people have satisfied previously stated requirements.
Parole should be a process that honors and recognizes efforts and achievements in pursuit of growth during incarceration. If parole boards deny someone parole, they should have specific steps a person can take to secure their eligibility the next time they appear before the board. Those programming requirements should then be made available to incarcerated individuals.
Example Policies:
Relevant, high quality programming should be made maximally available to people inside so that they can appropriately fulfill requirements from the parole board.
People should not be denied for failing to participate in programs they did not have access to. Sometimes, programming is unavailable in correctional institutions due to staffing constraints, class size limits, or other factors. If a person is denied access to programming through no fault of their own, they should not be penalized in the parole process.
When a person is denied parole, they should be able to appear before the board again for reconsideration within a reasonable amount of time.
Parole boards should be setting realistic, actionable plans for people denied parole to earn their eligibility in the future. People should be frequently re-evaluated for parole to ensure that incarceration does not persist for longer than necessary.
Example Policies:
The wait between parole hearings after denial should be no longer than 1-2 years. This shorter time period gives time for incarcerated people to complete programming, but ensures that the parole process remains efficient and that people are given sufficient opportunity to have meaningful, frequent opportunities for release.
Systems should ensure that the length of delay if someone waives a parole hearing is not shorter than the time between hearings when parole is denied. Systems should avoid incentivizing people to waive or stipulate to facts at a parole hearing solely because they are likely to be reconsidered more quickly if they do so.
Parole boards should implement a process by which a person may petition for an earlier hearing or a review if they can show a change of circumstances that would demonstrate that incarceration is no longer necessary.
People who are up for parole and their loved ones and supporters should have the ability to attend parole hearings and speak to the parole board on their behalf.
Public access to parole hearings helps ensure that parole hearings are fair and follow legal standards. People up for parole should have the opportunity to have supporters and loved ones give information to the parole board about the person’s background and character, as well as about how they will be supported in their reentry.
Example Policies:
Parole hearings should be face-to-face, either in person or via videoconference, and afford applicants an opportunity to speak on their own behalf. They should be allowed to submit their own relevant documentation to the parole board in advance of parole hearings. People should be allowed to correct incorrect information on the record or offer relevant context.
Remote and written participation should be allowed for supporters who are unable to travel or attend hearing sessions in person. While in person access for supporters at parole hearings should be the default, remote participation ensures supporters who are unable to travel to rural prisons are still able to support their loved ones.
People should have access to counsel at parole hearings and be provided competent, effective, and free counsel that adheres to best practices for indigent defense if they cannot afford it. People should be provided with resources and support to prepare for their parole hearings.
Despite being rooted in executive administration, parole effectively functions as a quasi-legal process, requiring people to navigate opaque application and hearing rules with little guidance or representation. Access to legal counsel at parole hearings ensures the process adheres to the rules, that applicants are better prepared and have a better understanding of expectations, and that their cases are better presented.
Example Policies:
Legal counsel should be provided at least six months prior to the parole hearing and continue throughout the entire process, including any appeals. Legal counsel should be required to meet in person with applicants multiple times prior to the hearing.
Incarcerated people and their counsel should have an opportunity to review documents relevant to their parole application prior to the hearing. When incarcerated people do not have access to the evidence being used to make a decision, they do not have a meaningful opportunity to correct errors.
Incarcerated people should be provided with the necessary resources and support to prepare for parole hearings. This includes being assigned a case manager within six months of arrival at prison to ensure they know what programs they will need to participate in, when they will be eligible to apply for parole, and other information related to their release. People should know what to expect at parole hearings, how to address the board, and what questions may be asked.
Parole Boards should be diverse in their backgrounds, and should include community-based practitioners trained in psychology and rehabilitation, trauma experts, people who are formerly incarcerated, and other experts with the ability to fairly and objectively evaluate candidates for parole. People with backgrounds in law enforcement and corrections should not be the majority of parole board members.
Parole boards are routinely asked to make determinations as to someone’s mental and emotional readiness to reenter society as well as to consider relevant background information such as childhood trauma, mental health history, and substance use support needs, yet regularly lack anyone with expertise in these matters.
Example Policies:
Parole boards and, in particular, juvenile lifer review boards should include members trained in adolescent development, youth brain development, or another relevant field. Many people commit the crimes for which they are seeking parole before their brains are fully developed. Parole Boards need to have an in-depth understanding of how brain development influences human behavior and changes over time.
Require at least one board member to be certified in social work, behavioral psychology, or to be a mental health professional. Mental health and behavioral health concerns, particularly those related to trauma, are often relevant to parole board considerations, both because of mental health factors that played into the crime of conviction and because of mental health concerns that incarcerated people may have during incarceration.
Require at least one member to be directly impacted with personal experience of the parole process. People with lived experience have a unique ability to contribute to a fair parole system.
No parole board member should be appointed if they express unwillingness to follow the law in terms of presumptive parole/prioritizing rehabilitation over the crime of conviction.
Appointments should be bipartisan and reflect the diversity of the population. People with law enforcement and correctional backgrounds should not be a majority of the people on parole boards.
Parole Boards should be fully staffed to be able to handle caseloads with appropriate care.
Parole Boards should be required to release information publicly about their decisions, including grant rates, the reasons for denial of parole, length of setbacks, and demographic and charge information of people who appear before the parole board.
A lack of public transparency around parole board decisions makes it impossible to hold parole boards accountable for failing to adhere to parole decision guidelines and presumptive parole policies or to ensure fundamental fairness in parole decisions.
Example Policies:
Parole board reports should be issued either annually or biannually and reflect the decisions of the board as well as individual board members’ votes.
Deviations from parole guidelines or failure to follow presumptive parole requirements should be documented and fully explained.
Non-decisions should be considered unsuccessful applications for parole when calculating grant rates.
Imposition of conditions, including supervision fees, should be an individualized process that begins with the presumption of no conditions and allows for the removal of conditions that are no longer serving a purpose.
Many states have long lists of mandatory conditions that are applied to every person under supervision. These conditions — for example, drug testing for everyone regardless of individual history of substance abuse—impose additional obstacles to individuals’ re-entry into their communities. Conditions often include a requirement to pay supervision fees without considering an individual’s ability to pay fees.
Example Policies:
Start with a presumption of zero or few conditions. Limit mandatory conditions for all people under supervision to only 1-2, such as not being convicted of a new criminal offense while being supervised, and conduct an assessment of each person to be supervised to determine which additional conditions, if any, should be imposed. This should include a presumption that every person does not have the ability to pay supervision fees during the period of supervision as they work to establish and maintain employment and reintegration into their communities. The imposition of fees should occur only for those with a demonstrated ability to pay and after a grace period to allow a recently released person to establish a form of income.
Limit the total number of conditions that can be imposed. A cap on the total number of conditions a board can impose on an individual prevents a ballooning effect and forces the paroling authority to tailor the conditions only to meet the most pressing needs of the person to be supervised.
Create a consistent, objective mechanism for the removal of conditions. A system should set clear guidelines and a streamlined process for the removal or modification of conditions. This could include automatic removal (i.e. an automatic reduction in reporting frequency after 6 months of incident free reporting) or a clear process driven by the person under supervision (i.e. a system for requesting a removal of conditions where the person can demonstrate achievement of something specific, like completion of vocational training or a degree program)
People on supervision should have a variety of options for how to check in that allow for minimal disruptions to the re-entry process.
In-person reporting is often incredibly onerous and provides no additional benefit. Instead, it disrupts the re-entry process by taking people away from jobs, medical treatment, and caregiving obligations. This is especially true in rural and suburban areas where offices may be located far from where people live, and there may be limited or no public transportation options.
Example Policies:
Presumptions and caps
Begin with the presumption that check ins will be virtual, and only require in person check ins under specific circumstances. Limit the total number of check-ins per year.
Multiple options. Allow check ins via phone, app, or video in lieu of appearing in person at the parole office.
Flexible scheduling. Adjust the timing of check-ins to accommodate travel capacity; disability; and work, school, and caregiving schedules.
Collaborative scheduling. Limit parole officers’ ability to demand spontaneous reporting and instead require an agreed schedule of check ins.
Supervision should not be indefinite; no person should be on supervision for the rest of their life after parole release.
In many states, people released to parole continue to be supervised for the remainder of their sentence. This includes people paroled from life sentences and those with decades remaining. This subjects people to many years of unnecessary supervision, keeping them permanently trapped in a system with no appreciable benefits to them or public safety.
Example Policies:
Cap the length of supervision in proportion to the original sentence. Supervision can be imposed in increments proportional to the original sentence, with those with life sentences receiving the longest period of supervision. Those terms of supervision should be no longer than 5 years for anyone.
Establish an objective system for early termination of parole supervision. There should be a clearly defined process, based on objective factors within the control of the person on supervision, both for a downgrade to a lower level of supervision and for early termination of supervision. Termination should result in satisfaction of the sentence and actual discharge, not just a change in supervision status. This process should include the ability to earn good time credit for time spent on supervision without violations.
Parole boards must ensure the due process rights of people facing revocation are protected, including the right to counsel and other safeguards to ensure fair hearings.
Revocation hearings mirror criminal proceedings: a person is alleged to have broken a law, goes before a representative of the state to be adjudicated, and is at risk of being imprisoned as a result. And yet revocation hearings often lack many of the same protections that exist in criminal proceedings. This makes it easy for the state to return thousands of people to prison each year, even with very limited evidence of a violation and/or significant mitigating evidence.
Example Policies:
Counsel for all. Every person facing revocation should have the opportunity to be appointed competent counsel that is independent of the parole board. In most cases, state public defense systems are best positioned to provide this counsel, and should be adequately resourced to do so.
Access to information and resources to prepare and present a defense. People facing revocation and their attorneys should have access to their complete parole files, including any reports of alleged violations, sufficiently in advance of the hearing to allow for meaningful review. Parole board should establish systems that ensure people facing revocations can summon and present witnesses and documentary evidence at their hearings.
Standards for evidence presented at hearings. No person should be revoked solely based on a written police or parole violation report without corroborating evidence such as photos, video, or witness testimony during the revocation hearing. The person on parole or their attorney should have the right to confront any testimony made against them.
Implement a presumption that people will be released pending their final revocation hearings. Just as in criminal proceedings, people who are held in custody after their arrest and before their revocation hearings are at a disadvantage when it comes to preparing a defense. There should be a presumption that people facing revocation are released pending their final revocation hearing, absent a finding of dangerousness to a specific person or risk of flight.
People on supervision should not be returned to prison solely for non-criminal conduct.
Thousands of people are returned to prison each year for non-criminal conduct adjudicated at hearings with very few or no due process rights. These so-called technical violations of the conditions of supervision should not be the basis of revoking an individual’s sentence and sending them back to prison.
Example Policies:
No revocations for technical violations. Those with the authority to file violation reports should only be allowed to do so for people convicted of new crimes, long term absconders, and people with repeated and persistent violations of conditions.
No violation for unadjudicated alleged criminal conduct. Postpone the filing of violation reports until after the adjudication of any new criminal charges. Where there is no conviction, no violation report should be filed.
Problem solving instead of punishment. Implement a coaching model for parole officers, where they are trained to look for root causes of non-compliance and work towards solving those rather than imposing punishment. Require documentation of attempts at problem solving before a violation report can be filed.
The amount of time that can be revoked should be capped and proportionate to the seriousness of the violation.
It is currently common for people to have their entire remaining sentence revoked for minor violations. For example, someone paroled on a life sentence who is 35 can have their parole revoked and serve the remainder of their sentence– ie.decades– for non-criminal conduct, like missing appointments for failing to update an address. This results in lengthy imprisonment for minor conduct.
Example Policies:
Caps on time revoked. A revoking authority can revoke no more than 2 years, no matter how much time remains on a person’s term of supervision.
Proportionate revocations of time. In cases where revocation is based on new criminal convictions, the amount of time to be revoked cannot exceed the punishment imposed for the new conviction.
Credit for time spent on parole
In cases where parole is revoked, individuals should receive credit towards their sentence for the time spent on parole.