Second Chances Resource Library

With “Grading the States: the State Compassionate Release Report Card Project,” FAMM issues a report card for every state compassionate release program in the nation. FAMM graded the programs on elements we consider essential to ensuring that the programs benefit those who need them: medically vulnerable, aging, and terminally ill incarcerated people whose continued imprisonment no longer serves the interests of justice.

Knowing that a program fails to live up to its promise is the first step to improvement, but knowing how and why it fails is the essential next step. Our report cards aim to provide that information. We did not grade on a curve. Still, we were surprised to find that the majority of states flunk compassionate release. We offer the report cards not to shame failing states but to help concerned stakeholders understand the practical barriers to compassionate release. We hope these report cards spur people to ask and answer the questions that will trigger reform.

FAMM’s Compassionate Release Report Cards look at how well states provide compassionate release to medically vulnerable, aging, and terminally ill incarcerated people. They grade each state program on key measures such as eligibility criteria, procedures, release planning, and data collection/public reporting. Florida’s two compassionate release programs, “Conditional Medical Release” and “Medical Furlough” both received grades of F, and Florida’s overall grade is also F.

This is a statement from the sponsors of a New Mexico bill, SB43, which would to ban life without parole for juveniles and create early parole for those serving long adult sentences for crimes committed as children.

A fact sheet that presents a New Mexico bill that would end life without parole for children and provide youth sentenced as adults a second chance.

This is a letter written by George Davis, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, in support of a New Mexico bill to ban life without parole for juveniles and create early parole for those serving long adult sentences for crimes committed as children.

This is a letter written by New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies in support of a New Mexico bill that would ban life without parole for juveniles and create early parole for those serving long adult sentences for crimes committed as children.

This statement was written by survivors and family members of youth violence in support of a New Mexico bill to ban life without parole for juveniles and create early parole for those serving long adult sentences for crimes committed as children.

This is a fact sheet on New Mexico Senate Bill 247 which would ban life without parole for juveniles and create early parole for those serving long adult sentences for crimes committed as children.

In an effort to empirically explore and identify potential areas of reform that might exist in the Oregon Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision (the Board) release process hearings and decision-making process, the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic at Lewis & Clark Law School (CJRC) launched a project funded by Arnold Ventures in November of 2020. This project aimed to understand how incarcerated potential parolees (petitioners) and parolees in the community are impacted by the Board’s process using a large-scale mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) research study. Moreover, the purpose of the study is also to examine how the Board’s decisions and processes may be related to certain outcomes (e.g., initial release and supervision failure). Where possible, special attention is given to differences in race/ethnicity of the parolee and subsequent outcomes of decisions and supervisions. 

The key research goals of this study were to (1) determine if there are any patterns in Board decisions to release an eligible person to parole supervision, (2) determine if there are any differences across cases brought before the Board, (3) identify how the hearing and decision-making process impact eligible parties/parolees, and (4) examine the degree to which release decisions are accurate in determining a parolee’s likelihood to reoffend. Below are summaries of each goal and a brief overview of the takeaway messages from each section. 

One in seven people in prison in the US is serving a life sentence, and most of these people will eventually be eligible for discretionary parole release. Yet parole hearings are notoriously understudied. With only a handful of exceptions, few researchers have considered the ways in which race shapes decision-makers’ perception of parole candidates. We use a data set created from over seven hundred California lifer parole hearing transcripts to examine the factors that predict parole commissioners’ decisions. We find significant racial disparities in outcomes, with Black parole candidates less likely to receive parole grants than white parole candidates, and test two possible indirect mechanisms. First, we find that racial disparity is unassociated with differences in rehabilitative efforts of Black versus white parole candidates, suggesting that differential levels of self-rehabilitation are not responsible for the disparity. Second, we test the hypothesis that racial disparity owes to commissioners’ reliance on other professionals’ determinations: psychological assessments, behavioral judgments, and prosecutors’ recommendations. We find that reliance on these evaluations accounts for a significant portion of the observed racial disparity. These results suggest that inclusion of professional assessments is not race-neutral and may create a veneer of objectivity that masks racial inequality.