FALSE HOPE

eleased to care in the community. The Department of Corrections, having considered the medical
and related eligibility criteria for medical-based parole, should be the final decision-maker;
4. Create qualification requirements for the parole board so that these entities can be professional
and credible bodies. Boards should include a diverse set of voices, including individuals who have
been through the prison system; individuals with experience on all sides of the criminal justice
system, including as correctional staff, law enforcement, and defense attorneys; psychologists and
psychiatrists; and social workers;
5. Provide parole boards with sufficient staff to properly consider each parole applicant’s file and to
provide an individualized review.
To improve fairness within parole proceedings, states should:
1. Provide in-person hearings at which the parole applicant is represented by counsel irrespective of
the prisoner’s ability to pay;
2. Create binding guidelines that the parole board must adhere to. These guidelines should:
a. Be publically available and explained to the parole applicant;
b. Not include the severity of the offense, or similar factors considered and taken into account
by the sentencing court, as an independent factor. The seriousness of the offense should not
be considered except to the extent that it should already be considered in the risk assessment
and/or parole eligibility date;
c. Focus on the individual’s post-conviction conduct, their change over the years, and their
participation in available prison programming;
3. Provide information about the parole process to parole applicants and provide programming prior
to the initial parole review so that prisoners know how to prepare their parole application; additional
assistance should be provided to individuals with disabilities and younger prisoners to prepare for
and navigate this process;
4. For people who were young at the time of their offense: Implement binding specific guidelines
and procedures that incorporate the Miller factors and require the parole board to consider the
individual’s youth at the time of the offense and subsequent development;
5. Require that the parole board allow parole applicants access to the information, redacted where
necessary to protect sources, that it is reviewing to make its decisions, and provide individuals and
their advocates with an opportunity to contest or correct information therein;
6. If parole is denied:
a. Provide the parole applicant with an opportunity to be reviewed again at regular intervals to
measure their progress. In New York, for example, parole applicants are reviewed within two
years of a prior denial;
b. Give the parole applicant written notice outlining the reasons for denial and programming or
goals to complete before the next review that addresses the board’s concerns;
c. Require that the decision be reviewable by an independent decision-maker in the administrative
review and also be subject to judicial review.
To improve the transparency of the parole system, state parole systems should:
1. Provide parole applicants with a copy of the parole board’s guidelines and factors used in the release
decision-making process;
2. Maintain public data on the number of cases considered, denied, and granted that include the offense
type and reason for denial. This information should be used to examine trends in their decisions.
Periodic audits of these decisions should be conducted to ensure their fairness and quality;
3. Take care in their use of risk assessment tools and ensure that these instruments are open to scrutiny
and study where used. The ACLU remains concerned with the use, design, and implementation of
risk assessment instruments, particularly in light of their lack of transparency and absent long-term
studies on their effect on racial or other impermissible disparities. For jurisdictions that continue to
use these tools:
a. The risk assessment instrument should be open to public scrutiny so that the public, parole
applicant, and advocates know what questions are asked and how responses are weighted, as
well as who conducts the assessment and how;
b. Decisions using a risk assessment instrument should be tracked so that the legislature and the
public can assess how these instruments are used, their accuracy, and whether these tools are
replicating or creating racial disparities in who is or is not released;
c. The tools utilized should be validated on the population to whom they are applied.
To improve prospects for reentry and rehabilitation, states should:
1. Ensure that young offenders are not held in adult prisons because the range of services in those
facilities is limited, and youth safety and development are consequently stymied;
2. Provide access for all prisoners, including those serving long sentences, to rehabilitative programming,
including educational and vocational programs as well as mental health counseling. These programs
should be made available as soon as possible in order to accelerate the rehabilitative process and
should be available to prisoners before they first become eligible for parole;
3. Provide prisoners with individualized plans at the beginning of their incarceration with education
and treatment goals and programming, as well as timely access to those programs, so that individuals
have participated in rehabilitative programming prior to their eligibility for release;
4. Ensure that prisoners are not excluded from prison programming and reentry services, necessary for
their rehabilitation and preparation for release, on the basis of a mental disability;
5. Provide reentry programming before prisoners come up for parole review.
12 AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FALSE HOPE: HOW PAROLE SYSTEMS FAIL YOUTH SERVING EXTREME SENTENCES
13