History

of
Parole
ORIGIN OF PAROLE
Parole comes from the French word parole, referring to "word"
as in giving one's word of honor or promise. It has come to
mean an inmate's promise to conduct him or herself in a law-
abiding manner and according to certain rules in exchange for
release

The first documented official use of early release from prison in

the U.S. is credited to Samuel G. Howe in Boston on 1847, but
prior to that, as late as 1938, parole was simply a conditional
pardon.
EVOLUTION OF PAROLE
Parole has evolved in the different countries, in
one way or another as a system approach of
respective correction's principles. In China,
prisoners are often granted medical parole or
compassionate release, which releases them on
the grounds that they must receive medical
treatment which cannot be provided for in prison.
Occasionally, medical parole is used as a no-
publicity way of releasing an accidentally
imprisoned convict.
In New Zealand, inmates serving a short-term sentence of up to two years
are automatically released after serving half of their sentence, without a
parole hearing. Inmates serving sentences of more than two years are
normally seen by the New Zealand Parole Board after serving one-third of
the sentence, although the judge at sentencing can make an order for a
minimum non-parole period of up to two-thirds of the sentence.
 EARLY PAROLE STATUTES

Parole was first used in the United States in New York in 1876. By the turn of the
century, parole was prevalent in the states. In 1910 Congress established the U.S.
Parole Commission and gave it the responsibility of evaluating and setting the
release dates for federal prisoners.

Afterwards, several important Supreme Court decisions were handed down at the
end of the 1990 and beginning of the twenty-first century concerning parole. In
1998, in Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1,
118 S. Ct. 978, 140 L. Ed. 2d 43, 1998, the Supreme Court ruled against a man who
filed a petition for Habeas Corpus after his sentence had expired challenging
allegedly unconstitutional parole revocation procedures.
 SPREAD OF PAROLE
Indeterminate sentencing and parole spread
rapidly through the United States. In 1907, New
York became the first state to formally adopt all
the components of a parole system:
indeterminate sentences, a system for granting
release, post-release supervision and specific
criteria for parole violation. By 1927, only three
states, i.e., Florida, Mississippi and Virginia, were
without a parole system, and by 1942, all states
in the US and the federal government have had
such system of non-institutional correction.
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The fact that parole involves some incarceration suggests that the
average parolee has committed a more serious crime than the
average probationer and, hence, poses a greater risk to the
community. Therefore, primary goals of parole must include crime
deterrence and offender control. Given that most offenders will
eventually return to the community, a rival goal is reintegration, or the
facilitation of an offender's transition from incarceration to freedom.
FORERUNNERS
OF PAROLE
Alexander Maconochie, a Scottish geographer and
captain in the Royal Navy, introduced the modern
idea of parole when in 1840, he was appointed
superintendent of the British penal colonies in Norfolk
Island, Australia.

Maconochie developed a plan to prepare them for

eventual return to society that involved three grades.
The first two consisted of promotions earned through
good behavior, labor, and study. The third grade in
the system involved conditional liberty outside of
prison while obeying rules.
By 1865, American penal reformers were well aware of the
reforms achieve in the European prison systems, particularly in
the Irish system.
At the Cincinnati meeting of the National Prison Association in
1870, a paper by Crofton was read, and specific references to
the Irish system were incorporated into the Declaration of
Principles,
Zebulon Brockway, a Michigan penologist,
was given credit for implementing the first
parole system in the U.S. He proposed a
two-pronged strategy for managing prison
populations and preparing inmates for
release: indeterminate sentencing coupled
with parole supervision. He was given a
chance to put his proposal into practice in
1876 when he was appointed
superintendent at a new youth reformatory,
the Elmira Reformatory in New York.