Parole Officer Decision-Making Before Parole Revocation: Why Context Is Key When Delivering Correctional Services

• DOI: 10.1177/08874034211035494
• Published date: 01 April 2022
• Date: 01 April 2022
• Author: Michael Ostermann,Jordan M. Hyatt
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034211035494

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2022, Vol. 33(3) 273 –297

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/08874034211035494

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Article

Parole Officer Decision-

Making Before Parole

Revocation: Why Context

Is Key When Delivering

Correctional Services

Michael Ostermann1 and Jordan M. Hyatt2

Abstract

Back-end sentencing is the discretionary, administrative process through which

individuals on parole are returned to prison for violating the requirements of their

supervised release. Parole officers play a crucial role in this process as they are the

witnesses to the rule-breaking behaviors of people on parole supervision and ultimately

must initiate the back-end sentencing process. This study explores predictors of

parole officer decision-making when determining whether to consider a person for

revocation or to gear programmatic community-based resources toward them in an

attempt to decrease the likelihood of their eventual revocation. Our results indicate

that if people released to parole are front-loaded programmatic resources as a part

of their release conditions from prison, the odds that parole officers subsequently

gear community-based programs toward them decreases by approximately 60%.

Other factors such as demographics, actuarial risk levels, and criminal history were

not significantly predictive of officer decision-making in this context.

Keywords

parole, revocation, community supervision, back-end sentencing, corrections

The revocation of community supervision is a major driver of prison admission rates

across the United States. According to the most recent data of Bureau of Justice

Statistics, in 2018, approximately 30% of admissions to state prisons and 10% of those

1Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA

2Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael Ostermann, Rutgers University, 123 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102, USA.

Email: osterma2@scj.rutgers.edu

1035494CJPXXX10.1177/08874034211035494Criminal Justice Policy ReviewOstermann and Hyatt

research-article2021

274 Criminal Justice Policy Review 33(3)

to federal prisons were for post-custody supervision violations (Carson, 2020). These

violations included the commission of new crimes by individuals on parole or proba-

tion, violations of the rules and regulations of supervised release, or both. With

approximately 878,000 people being supervised on parole and 3,540,000 on probation

by yearend 2018 (Maruschak & Minton, 2020), the potential return of people under

community-based supervision back to carceral settings presents a significant chal-

lenge for corrections officials and public policymakers alike.

Technical parole revocations typically occur when an individual has violated the

general and/or special conditions of their release but has not committed or been

charged with a new criminal offense.1 These triggering infractions can include but are

not limited to missing appointments with treatment providers and/or parole officers,

changing residences without informing the parole officer, failing drug tests, failing to

complete assigned programs, and/or breaking curfews. Technical parole revocation

decisions are quasi-judicial in that they are often adjudicated by parole boards and so

are administrative decisions rather than judicial determinations of criminal guilt. Steen

and colleagues (2012) have likened this decision-making process to one that is pre-

dominantly driven by managerial, rather than moral or safety, concerns. Where judi-

cial adjudication is a constitutionally governed process of weighing evidence,

considering adversarial perspectives, and determining proportionate and effective

social responses, administrative decision-making emphasizes the ongoing manage-

ment and operation of a system (p. 75). Thus, policymakers interested in impacting

either prison admission numbers or offending rates for people on parole are better

positioned to meaningfully impact the administrative decision-making practices of

parole boards when compared to the limited prospects for constraining judicial discre-

tion (Greene, 2003; Steen et al., 2012).

Within the criminological literature, the practice of sending individuals to prison

for violations of the terms of their parole supervision has been referred to as back-end

sentencing (Travis, 2007). However, surprisingly little scholarly energy has been dedi-

cated to the study of the series of decisions that comprise the back-end sentencing

process. Studies have typically focused on the decision-making practices of hearing

officers and/or parole board panel members, those that ultimately decide whether to

remand the supervised person back to an incarcerated setting, and individual-level

correlates of revocation (e.g., Grattet et al., 2008; Steen & Opsal, 2007). For example,

Lin and colleagues’ (2010) study of parole revocation decisions rendered in California

explored the individual, organizational, and community predictors of parole board

decision makers for criminal, technical, and absconding violation cases. Largely

absent from the existing line of inquiry that was specifically developed to explore the

back-end sentencing process is an explicit consideration of the actions (and potential

inaction) of parole officers who must first, before any possible board action, decide to

initiate the back-end sentencing process. Much of the existing empirical work focuses

on predictors of the issuance of parole violations, which communicate that paroled

people are engaging in undesirable behaviors that may lead to revocation and potential

back-end sentencing. Analyses that explicitly focus upon, and attempt to disentangle,

officer behaviors before initiating revocation proceedings should receive greater