U.S. BOARD OF PAROLE PREPARED STATEMENT Senator MCCLELLAN. The record will show at this point the prepared statement of George J. Reed, Chairman of the Board of Parole, concerning the budget request and House allowance of $975,000 for operating expenses in fiscal 1971. (The statement follows:) I am George J. Reed, Chairman of the Board of Parole. I am here to support the budget request of $975,000 for the Board of Parole. The $115,000 increase is requested for additional staff and expansion of the Board of Parole to carry out its recent reorganization. This increase consists of the following major items. 1. Uncontrollable increases___. $47, 000 These increases result from legislative actions relating to salary and benefit costs, per diem, and annualization of additional positions authorized for the current year. 2. Program increase_. $68, 000 This increase is needed to employ eight additional staff, three of whom will be Parole Hearing Examiners. Reorganization of the board A little over a year ago, when I returned as Chairman of the Board of Parole, I appointed a committee of Members to evaluate our procedures and to recommend changes which would tend to increase the parole success rate of the Board. This move had the support of the Attorney General. He has reviewed our efforts and supports the changes we are putting into effect. It might be well to first discuss the reorganization. For several years, the Board Members have been struggling under a workload which prevented them from reaching decisions on a timely basis. There was a considerable time gap between the time of a parole hearing with the inmate and the time he was advised as to whether he would be granted a parole. The Board experimented with smaller voting quorums in order to expedite their decision-making; but this was felt to be an expedient only and not to be continued as a regular practice. The variety of cases coming before the Board has increased tremendously over the past ten years. The passage by Congress of the indeterminate sentence laws required the Board to conduct an initial hearing for all prisoners committed under that statute. In 1959, as the Chairman of this Committee will recall, the Labor-Management Reporting and Di closure Act was passed. The board of Parole was deemed the appropriate agency to conduct administrative-type hearings with persons who had been convicted of certain crimes to determine whether they should be barred from union office for five years or whether a Certificate of Exemption should be issued. This type of hearing, of course, consumes a great deal of time, and the Board has devoted many hours to developing its procedure and in arriving at its decisions under this law. During more recent years, the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act has also been put into practice and the Board conducts initial hearings for all prisoners committed under that statute. During 1968, because of the lack of manpower to handle these many responsibilities, an experiment was conducted in which the telephone system was used to permit the Hearing Member and other Members to confer by telephone and to arrive at an immediate parole decision. This procedure was used to cut down on the recurring backlog of cases pending before the Board. The result was a reduction of the waiting time for the prisoner, but coincidentally there was a significant increase in the number of paroles granted. During the twelve-year period when I was on the Board prior to 1964, approximately 34 percent out of all prisoners who were eligible were granted parole. My term ended in January of 1965. The percent of parole grants in 1967 rose to 52.6 percent. There was a high of 56.2 percent in 1969. After my return a committee of Members appointed by me dealt at some length with the telephone system of arriving at parole decisions and it was agreed that the experiment should be terminated immediately. At that point we discontinued the practice and immediately launched into a study which has now resulted in the Board's complete reorganization. I have prepared for the Committee's benefit two charts, labeled Chart A and Chart B. A comparison of these charts will show that the rate of parole violations closely correlates with the increase in parole grants. In contrast, the first six months of the current fiscal year shows that there has been an 11.3 percent drop in the granting of adult parole. This means that during the first six months of this fiscal year the percentage of grants dropped to 44.9 percent as compared to 56.2 percent the previous year. Referring to the parole violation rate, I must explain that there is usually a period of about eighteen to twenty-four months before an increased parole rate is reflected in increased violations. In the tenyear period between 1954 and 1964 the average percentage of violations for adults was 16.1 percent. However, with the greatly increased number of grants which occurred between 1967 and 1968, the increase in violations jumped to 29.8 percent for adult offenders. We do not know what it will be in 1969 because we do not have our figures gathered. We would expect that the violation rate would continue to accelerate because of a larger number of marginal cases that have been released during the previous year. First reports indicate, however, that actually may be a decrease in the violation rate. This is more than we had hoped to experience this soon. Briefly, what we are trying to do is to have in the reorganization a procedure whereby we not only have an expeditious decision but one which has been weighed fully after an opportunity for conference and deliberation by the Members. The only way that we can possibly move toward that goal is through the development of Parole Hearing Examiners. We expect that the vast majority of the hearings in the institutions ultimately will be conducted by these Examiners. This will leave the Board sufficient time to adequately review their recommendations before making a final decision. An ever increasing number of prisoners whose parole or mandatory release has been revoked file writs in the courts against the Board, Decisions by the Board are final, There is no further appeal regarding the Board's discretion, but the Board's procedures are constantly subject to attack. For these reasons the Board is initiating a system for appellate en banc reviews of Division (adult or youth) decisions. The Board is also involved in bringing in a new scientific dimension to parole which will make use of the nation-wide Parole Uniform Reports system. This system was launched some six years ago and we now have over 115,000 cases in a computer at the University of California. We are now making arrangements to take advantage of that body of knowledge which has been gathered from all fifty of the states plus Puerto Rico and the Federal Board of Parole. We believe that, with more careful review and the addition of this new scientific data based on prior decisions, we will improve our decision-making and to a very large degree minimize the present disparity in sentencing. Our primary goal, of course, is to parole those who have reasonable probability of succeeding in the community after release. We do not wish to turn loose dangerous prisoners upon society. We believe that our recent reorganization will go a long way toward reaching that goal. Proposed Procedures The Board desires to complete, in 1971, its staff of proposed eight Parole Hearing Examiners to implement its program of having initial parole hearings conducted by Parole Hearing Examiners so that the Members will be available in Washington to confer and deliberate before arriving at parole decisions. The increased complexity of the Board's workload caused by several court decisions with concomitant changes in Board procedures (legal safeguard made necessary by court rulings) and the volume of the workload also requires additional clerical and stenographic assistance. Professional-level personnel presently do not have sufficient clerical support to process their work. The Board requests funds for three additional Parole Hearing Examiners (GS-14), two Clerk-Stenographers (GS-7), and three Clerk-Stenographers (GS-6). This will require an appropriation of $68,000 for the eight positions requested. This amount will permit salary payments and related benefits for eight months of the year. During 1971 the Board plans to have eight Parole Hearing Examiners travel from their Washington-based office to the various Bureau of Prisons institutions to conduct parole and other hearings with inmates. They will also travel to other localities throughout the United States to conduct local revocation hearings where the parolee denies parole violation and has an attorney or witnesses to appear in his behalf at the hearing. The Members, thus, will be able to make decisions in Washington without delay after reviewing the written summaries of each case which will be prepared by the Examiners. In this manner, careful screening will take place before any prisoner is paroled or before any parolee is revoked or reinstated to supervision. The public will receive a greater measure of protection as a result of the more thorough and careful study of the case preliminary to the Board entering a decision. The Members in Washington will conduct en banc appellate-type reviews where a parole was previously denied and where there is sufficient cause for reopening a case. Also, in exceptional cases, a determination will be made that a Member (rather than an Examiner) will conduct any hearings with a prisoner. One of the Secretaries (GS-7) will be assigned to the Board's legal counsel and will assist in preparing legal opinions for the Board and will process material to be supplied to the United States Attorneys as they defend the Board against writs. The other Secretary (GS-7) will be assigned to the Office of the Chairman of the Board to help in preparing an ever-mounting volume of work associated with the administrative and other responsibilities of the Chairman's office. The three Clerk-Stenographers (GS-6) will be assigned to the Examiners to be hired this year and to other professional staff who have no secretaries or clerical assistance. This concludes my statement. I shall be glad to answer any questions. 46-370 0-70-25 |