The Parole Board has failed in Protecting the Community

[chansena]

Need a bit of help with this one

[Professor Polonsky]

I'm assuming this belongs in the English board, and not rants and debates.

Are you necessarily arguing affirmative? I find negative a lot more interesting here.

Is there any evidence it has failed to protect the community, apart from a few anecdotal examples that make the headlines? Look at reoffending rates. They're rather low, and serving long sentences doesn't reduce the likelihood of offending (by specifically deterring that individual - of course, general deterrence ("if I do this I'll go to jail for a long time") is aided by them.)

Thing about the rationales for punishment. We want to deter, protect the community (by keeping dangerous people locked up) and rehabilitate. Some argue for retribution, but that's a questionable one. (There's also the slightly more complex rationale of 'just deserts' that might be worth looking at, but I'd argue that's more to do with general deterrence than anything else.)

Sentencing someone for longer than needed to satisfy those rationales is frowned upon. If you're going to argue that longer sentences are needed to protect te community, you can go the emotive way ("look at all those people who died due to a recidivist") but you'll run into trouble trying to present any data to back your contention.

[M_BONG]

The rates are actually quite high and here is an article with some well known cases http://www.theage.com.au/comment/parole-board-failures-a-matter-of-life-and-death-20130824-2sike.html

48.6 percent of unsupervised offenders will reoffend while only 43.6 percent of supervised offenders will reoffend. At 36 months after release, the estimated reoffending rate for the unsupervised group (70.3%) is still significantly higher than the reoffending rate for the supervised group (65.7%). http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/481-500/tandi485.html

You got me quite intrigued about going the negative way but the statistics show otherwise

Crime rates have actually been quite stable and are not on the rise.

But the rate of recidivism (reoffending) is unacceptably high - it's always the same group of people, particularly of indigenous, marginalised, alcoholic origins - and perhaps you can look at the role of the parole board in rehabilitating those who have been released.

I mean you could always argue, using the statistic you have just cited, that since it's always the same type of people going into jail (and the cycle repeating itself), you could perhaps look at how sentencing works in addressing all this. Another question you should look at is: Is the Parole Board being overworked? I mean, it's probably not their fault that the board only meet up once a month (or something like that) and only spend 15 minutes on each applicant -> does this lead to reoffending?  Perhaps it's more of an issue of funding and bureaucracy than the Parole Board failing in its duty per se?

I also have to agree with Professor Polonsky that crime is often hyped up by the media. Levels of crime have not risen (sometimes even falling) and, in my opinion, it is exactly this reason that people think it's getting worse (and leading to cries of things like the PB failing). Because crime (the most serious ones) are getting rarer, its occurrence begs for more attention than it would if crime occurred more often. So perhaps, you could zoom out, and argue that really the Parole Board hasn't failed, it's just that a few sensationalised cases (Jill Meagher etc) have created such perceptions. (again, you can argue the opposing side as well)

Other things you can look at (with regards to parole board)
*How the media chooses to victimise people. ("The ideal victim") -> How does this affect how the parole board operates?
*Broken Windows theory (i.e. fixing the environment in which criminal activity occurs)
* Principle of parsimony (what PP mentioned: how prison sentences should only be given at as a last resort, and only enough to address the crime -> should we be giving harsher sentences? Can this alleviate the shortcomings of the Parole Board?)
And I also like how you are thinking of exploring rehabilitation vs punishment - it's really interesting actually!

[Professor Polonsky]

The rates are actually quite high and here is an article with some well known cases http://www.theage.com.au/comment/parole-board-failures-a-matter-of-life-and-death-20130824-2sike.html

48.6 percent of unsupervised offenders will reoffend while only 43.6 percent of supervised offenders will reoffend. At 36 months after release, the estimated reoffending rate for the unsupervised group (70.3%) is still significantly higher than the reoffending rate for the supervised group (65.7%). http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/481-500/tandi485.html

You got me quite intrigued about going the negative way but the statistics show otherwise

Not at all.

The article cites anecdotal examples of recidivist murderers - an incredibly rare scenario. (Murder has an incredibly low reoffending rate.)

Then, the article cited does not differentiate between different crimes, and then the causes of the offending. Reoffending rates are high for many crimes (mostly drug-fuelled and -related ones) because a custodial punishment does not deal with their root causes. The topic itself however evokes violent crime (failed to protect the community) for which either reoffending rates are low, or a long-term custodial punishment is not the solution. The cycle of drug abuse -> theft -> release -> relapse -> theft is not solved by longer sentences.

(As a side note, without controlling for the many other variables at play, the differentiation between supervised and unsupervised release, while perhaps statistically significant, cannot be said to be causal.)

Further, sentences are expressed in Victoria in terms of a head sentence (or total effective sentence, TES) and then the non-parole period (NPP). At the conclusion of the NPP, the parole board can grant parole. Usually, the NPP is about 75% of the TES, meaning that even if parole is not granted, then they'll just be released straight into the community unsupervised at the conclusion of their TES, meaning they'll be more likely to reoffend.

Supervised release means parole being granted, and the prisoner serving the rest of their sentence supervised in the community. Making them serve their entire TES and then releasing them without any supervision is far more dangerous, which is why the parole board does grant it. (And as the article purported to show, but it's a shit one unfortunately.)