Robin Fitzgerald,Arie Freiberg,Shannon Dodd,Lorana Bartels,Parole on Probation: Parole Decision-Making,Public Opinion and Public Confidence

Parole boards make pivotal decisions in criminal justice systems around the world. Tasked with deciding on whether an incarcerated person should be released conditionally from prison, parole board members must carefully assess a person's preparedness for release and weigh it against considerations of public safety. In several jurisdictions, however, parole boards have come under more intense public scrutiny in recent years. A few high-profile cases, whereby the released person engaged in further criminal activities in the community, have received widespread public attention and have discredited the work that parole boards do. With cases like these, the public is quick to judge the board as a failing institution. In Parole on Probation: Parole Decision-Making, Public Opinion and Public Confidence, Fitzgerald, Freiberg, Dodd, and Bartels engage in an unprecedented and in-depth examination of how parole boards themselves perceive public attitudes. In light of displays of growing public mistrust, they also discuss the usefulness of various strategies that boards can employ to build more public confidence in parole.

A particular strength of this book lies in the cross-national nature of the conducted research. The authors selected four countries—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Scotland—and a total of twelve different jurisdictions within these countries. The countries were chosen based on similarities in the history of their legal and parole systems, with all of them mandating parole boards with deciding on the early release of incarcerated persons from prison. To gain a detailed understanding of how parole board members and parole staff perceive their work and the extent to which public attitudes influence their decision-making, the authors conducted 80 semi-structured interviews, with roughly two-thirds of the interviewees being parole board representatives from Australia and the remaining one-third being split between the other three countries.

The book is scattered with powerful interview narratives, which as a whole provide fascinating insight into the delicate day-to-day work of parole boards in the four studied countries. After briefly introducing the study and offering a concise history of the institution of parole in Chapter 1, the authors describe how the research participants felt about the composition and decision-making processes within their board in Chapter 2. They also list legal and extra-legal factors the boards typically base their decisions on. While offense-related factors were frequently weighed against rehabilitative markers, some interview participants also shared that extra-legal circumstances—personal emotions and stress—played into the decision-making process. Here it was noteworthy that each research participant was assigned a three-digit number and that number was linked to the published narratives. This not only allowed for the anonymity of answers given, but it also lets the reader focus fully on the common themes surfacing from all interviews rather than from the various jurisdictions.

In Chapter 3, the authors then demonstrate that research participants overwhelmingly felt that the public knows very little about what parole board decision-making entails. Or, that the public were misinformed about the role of parole boards in their wider criminal justice systems. When the public had an opinion, it was perceived as negative, based on generalizations stemming from the few notorious parole “failures” that were picked up and dissected by the media. Despite this sentiment, parole board representatives were not found to believe that the negativity influenced their work. In a time of increased public scrutiny of parole, this finding stood out, yet the authors did not discuss it in more detail. While a decision-maker certainly strives for objectivity, there could, however, be more subtle indicators, such as higher rates of parole denials in cases that have received negative media attention that could suggest that subconsciously public opinion informed the decision. In her study on the Manson family parole board experiences in California, for example, Aviram (2020) showcases the fear of public backlash and how it has framed these high-profile cases for several decades.

The authors then show in Chapter 4 that research participants saw benefits in employing strategies to build public confidence. To discuss the opportunities that criminal justice actors have for engaging with the public, the authors apply Loader's (2011) categorization of strategic engagement models. Fitzgerald et al. identify the use of two approaches, which Loader terms the cognitive deficit model (feed a misinformed public better information) and insulation model (work behind closed doors, protecting organizations from the public), in many jurisdictions. However, they concur with Loader to argue that these approaches make parole boards vulnerable to negative public attitudes. While the cognitive deficit model simplistically assumes that parole boards themselves have perfect information about the work they do, the insulation model holds that decision-making can take place in a vacuum, which seems unrealistic in today's interconnected societies.

In the final Chapters 4 and 5, Fitzgerald et al. discuss several potential strategies, such as offering insight into the workings of parole boards through an official website, the appointment of a communications officer, the use of social media platforms, or the organization of public engagement events. In conclusion, the authors side with Loader's (2011) suggestion to utilize a re-direction approach—aimed at involving the public more deliberately in the parole board decision-making process through different strategic means. The analysis and in-depth discussion of how parole boards might engage with the publics makes this book an important read for criminal justice professionals who are tasked with making critical decisions at different points in the criminal justice system and have been confronted with negative public attitudes. With that, however, the book could have benefited from a more detailed review of the scholarly literature examining public confidence in criminal justice actors in general rather than parole boards alone.

Parole on Probation offers readers an inside look into how parole boards perceive the work they do in different countries around the world. The book also presents readers with tangible suggestions for how parole boards—or similarly situated institutions mandated with making delicate public safety decisions—can bridge the divide between the public and criminal justice actors. Further research on this topic is urgently needed in other locations, like the United States, where parole board members tend to operate in highly politicized environments and—as a direct result of mass incarceration—are also tasked with making critical parole decisions on a daily basis.