Sooner or later? Parole and public safety.

Parole and Public Safety

Nothing seems to capture more public attention than news that yet another federal inmate has reoffended while at large on some form of early release. Sometimes it seems that we read new revaluations daily, abut this violent criminal, or that sexual offender, who has been given a break, only to reoffend in a dastardly fashion, bringing the whole parole and early-release system under closer scrutiny. Sometimes it seems that the only thing which bumps one of these stories off the front page is a new, more outrageous crime committed by a new, more-high profile criminal, leading to an even louder public outcry.

Lost all too often in the outcry, however, is any real detail and understanding of what the early-release system is intended to accomplish, and the fact that for every spectacular failure there are hundreds of success stories the public never gets to hear about. For every dramatic error, the system plays a positive role and succeeds in countless more situations, which never make the headlines and never become the focus of public attention. And as is the case so often in contentious and controversial areas of criminal justice, responses to the mistakes often lead to over-reaction on the part of the authorities.

Fundamental to any real understanding of what is involved in the failures is recognition of the essentially impossible task the system has set for itself. In our criminal justice and penal systems, we recognize that to house someone in a penitentiary or jail for many months or years leads to their institutionalization. We recognize that inmates are not realistically likely to be able to successfully walk out the door of the prison one day, and back into society at large. Realizing we do not like the idea of releasing hard-core inmates directly from prison into the mainstream community, parole and statutory release are intended to permit the gradual re-integration of incarcerated persons back into the real world.

Parole is a licence to be at large which can only be granted by the National Parole Board to those inmates who have shown substantial progress in addressing the needs and problems which led them to offend in the first place. It is by no means a guaranteed or sure thing: in fact, the Board turns down many more requests for parole than it ever grants. The Board is sensitive to the public's concerns about criminals who seem to go unpunished for their offences. It attempts to balance the public's right and need for security against future re-offending, and the interests of the individual inmate which might well be harmed and prejudiced by further time in custody. Inmates who have served one-third of their sentences may seek full parole from the Board, but whether they get it or not depends heavily upon the reasons they are in jail, and what they have done to address those problems since being incarcerated. Inmates who have only six months left before their full parole eligibility date may also seek day parole from the Board. This is a more narrow, restrictive form of parole usually only granted for particular purposes and with specific, rehabilitative objectives in mind.

Inmates who do not obtain parole and who remain in custody at the two-thirds date of their sentence are currently entitled by law to be released upon statutory release. This is essentially a mandatory form of early release, but it is similar to parole in that the offender will remain under the supervision of a parole officer, and subject to various constraints and restrictions upon his/her behaviour. Even a relatively minor breach of any such condition may land the offender back in custody for the remainder of the original sentence.

Statutory release is not a guaranteed thing. If the Correction Service and the National Parole Board have reasonable grounds to believe that the individual will commit another serious crime while on statutory release, the inmate may be detained for the remainder of his sentence to protect the public that much longer.

Persons serving indefinite or life sentence -- most often for convictions of murder -- are not able to seek statutory release, because they do not have a two thirds date. Their eligibility to seek parole depends upon the law which governs their sentence. In the case of persons convicted of first-degree murder, they may not seek parole until they have served 25 years of their sentence of incarceration. Persons convicted of second-degree murder may seek parole after a period of years set by the sentencing court. In either case, however, the date in question is the eligibility date, and not, as the press and media so often imply, the date upon which the offender will be released. The eligibility date simply determines the day upon which the offender may first ask the Parole Board to consider releasing him or her. After this date, the offender's release will depend upon the Board's assessment of the risk presented by the offender, and the progress of the offender in addressing his or her needs and problems.

The main difficulty faced by any system of early release, however, lies in the impossible task of predicting future human behaviour. The Parole Board usually has before it, when considering whether to let an inmate out on parole or to order an inmate to serve his or her full sentence behind bars, various reports and summaries of the progress and work in addressing the underlying problems that the inmate has accomplished during his or her term of imprisonment to date. Based upon efforts by the inmate to address these concerns, as well as various statistical reviews and assessments of the person's background, present and past characteristics, and expected needs and conduct, the Board attempts to forecast which of the offenders appearing before it may pose a greater threat to other members of society, and which may present less risk of harm.

The problem is that nothing short of a mythical crystal ball will ever offer guarantees about a human being's future conduct. We cannot even say, honestly, about ourselves, how we definitely would act in certain situations, until those situations, with all of their stress factors and potential flashpoints, actually arise and we find ourselves in the middle of the muddle! Even with the best mental health experts, social workers, counsellors, and other professionals whose job it is to study the behaviour of other people, the parole authorities are not in a very much stronger position to forecast future behaviour by any particular inmate, than any of the rest of us would be.

The choice faced by Parliament and our government leaders, then, is to either lock up more and more people for longer and longer periods of time -- on the basis that because they have offended in some way in the past, they present an unacceptable risk to innocent persons in the future -- or to take a chance and ease incarcerated convicted criminals back into society on a gradual basis, with supervision and support plus the threat of a return to prison if they mess up. It is hoped this will accomplish their successful reintegration into the community as law-respecting and law-abiding citizens.

Public interest being what it is, the few spectacular failures and mistakes of the system will always attract more attention than the system's many quiet success stories. But the facts of the situation are quite different from the impressions left by media reports about those crimes which have been committed by parolees. According to a recently published book which reviews the federal correctional system generally, at any one time approximately 10,000 offenders are on parole in Canada. A 1994 report suggested that of this number between 110 and 160 parolees are charged in any particular year with committing a further violent offence. An even smaller number of convicted murderers on parole reoffend, often because murderers have very limited criminal history or habits prior to the killing which led to their imprisonment in the first place.

The book, Kevin Marron's The Slammer: The Crisis in Canada's Prison System (1996, Doubleday, Toronto), is highly recommended to anyone interested in understanding the inner workings, problems, and challenges of Canada's federal correctional system.

Our system of early release may not be perfect, but it has valid and worthwhile penalogical objectives, and for the most part, is successful. Much as we are repulsed by the failures of the system, and much as we grieve when another innocent victim falls at the hand of a criminal who has been granted early release privileges, we must wonder whether the success stories and the goals of the system are worth sacrificing, when the end result would not lead to any more security and safety for society's vulnerable members.