NCJ Number
85214
Date Published
1981
Length
28 pages
Annotation
This examination of parole decisionmaking considers individual board members' decisions from their ideological perspectives and the structuring of knowledge about the offender to fit a working theory of crime and punishment.
Abstract
In parole decisionmaking, there are two competing ideologies of punishment which inform the use of discretion: the positivist conception of the criminal sanction as treatment to reform the offender and the neoclassical view of the criminal sanction as retribution according to the severity of the crime committed. While board members will make decisions according to these ideological perspectives, with the positivist focusing on manifestations of the offender having gained insight and changed behavior and the neoclassicist determining if enough time has been served to match the severity of the crime, persons within the same ideological perspective will view the data from different perspectives as well. Whatever the outcome of a board member's decision, it is determined by structuring the data available on the offender. This structuring consists of (1) simplifying the information to make it manageable, (2) presumptions about offenders in general and particular types of offenders, (3) characterizations of particular offenders through information categories given priority, and (4) organizing the data to contribute to a logically consistent view of the offender. A particular case of parole decisionmaking is examined to illustrate the decisionmaking concepts discussed. Twenty notes and 23 references are provided.