IACFP International News, Research, and Resources for Jan/Feb 2023

“Black applicants for parole may not only be seen as more 'criminal' than White applicants, but they may also be seen as less truly rehabilitated by those running the prisons, psychologists who assess them, and prosecutors. ‘Nearly half of the racial inequality [of parole application outcomes] is associated with parole commissioners’ reliance on prior professional assessments’ (p. 808). The problem is that 'highly subjective judgements, such as psychiatric reports and disciplinary infractions, become part of the official record…. Every file contains exercises of discretion [that are described] as ‘facts.’ If a prison guard believes someone is disrespectful and gives him a citation, that parole candidate ‘has’ [a citation]” (p. 809). This 'fact' then affects the prisoner’s freedom.”

• "Young and Pearlman’s (2021) finding of racial disparities in parole outcomes is inconsistent with the analysis of California’s Committee on the Revision of the Penal Code, also published in late 2021 (e.g., Black people with a recent disciplinary violation were more likely than White people to be granted parole).
• Grant Rates by Race and Ethnicity: The Board of Parole Hearings provided the California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code with outcome data for the 3,400 hearings held in Fiscal Year 2019-20. The data included each incarcerated person’s race and ethnicity, as well as information concerning the person’s recent disciplinary violations, if any. The study found the following:
  
  'Unlike the other parts of the criminal legal system, in the one-year sample of parole hearings discussed here . . . parole grant rates across racial groups showed little disparities: White people were granted parole at a rate of 36%, Black people at 34%, and Latinx people at 34% . . . The differences in grant rates changed slightly when examining who was granted parole by the number of [relatively recent] disciplinary violations they had at the time of their hearing. White people with no disciplinary violations were granted parole 43% of the time, Black people 47%, and Latinx people 45%. With one recent disciplinary violation, White people were granted parole 16% of the time, Black people 20%, and Latinx people 14%.
  
  The small disparities across these three groups are not statistically significantly different from zero. That is to say, the patterns observed for the time period analyzed are consistent with the hypothesis that there are no overall racial disparities for these three groups in grant rates for those who go through parole hearings.'
• Annual Report and Recommendations, Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, p. 61 (http://www.clrc.ca.gov/CRPC/Pub/Reports/CRPC_AR2021.pdf): Because the Committee found no differences in parole outcomes, there’s little reason to conclude that our risk assessments contribute to racial disparities that seemingly do not exist. Arguably, our structured professional judgment and non-algorithmic approach to risk assessment, because it does not contain proxy indicators of race (e.g., failure to complete high school) in the same way an actuarial instrument might and because Board psychologists do not administer risk assessments in an adversarial allegiance context, help to buffer against racial biases and other influences. While structured professional judgment does not eliminate the potential for examiner biases, each of our reports is reviewed by a supervising senior psychologist and this serves as an additional check-and-balance on the integrity of assessments.”