A Review of Selected Parole, Restitution, and Timely Release Issues of the Department of Corrections and State Parole Board
Executive Summary
Introduction
The PEER Committee received a request from a legislator who wanted to know whether timely parole hearings are provided for offenders who are eligible for parole and whether offenders’ court-ordered restitution payments are remitted in a timely manner.
Shortly thereafter, the Committee received a request from another legislator who wanted to know whether offenders are released from incarceration in accordance with their discharge dates and what costs the state incurs if offenders are incarcerated beyond their discharge dates.
PEER sought to answer the following questions in this review:
Conclusions
Do the State Parole Board and the Department of Corrections ensure that offenders who are eligible for parole receive timely parole hearings?
Current procedures utilized by the two agencies that share responsibility for developing the monthly parole docket--the Parole Board and the Department of Corrections--do not ensure that all offenders who are eligible for parole receive timely hearings before the Parole Board. This potentially could result in additional costs to the state of holding such persons in custody beyond the time at which they could have been released on parole.
The Parole Board staff compiles the monthly docket for parole hearings from two reports that are generated by Offender Trak, MDOC’s offender management system. The monthly docket may not include the names of some offenders who are parole-eligible because some offenders may be credited with earned time or time served prior to conviction after the Offender Trak reports are generated on the first working day of the month. To help correct this problem, the Parole Board staff maintains a supplementary document of the names of parole-eligible offenders that is called the “add-on” list and moves names from that list to the monthly docket. However, the names of offenders on the add-on list are not added to the top of the next month’s docket. As a result, some offenders do not receive timely parole hearings.
From four randomly selected dates in 2014, PEER identified seventeen offenders who became eligible for parole after Parole Board staff had generated the docket for that month. These offenders did not receive a hearing during the month of their eligibility. Also, as of July 2014, these seventeen offenders had not had the opportunity to appear in a hearing before the Parole Board and may not appear on the board’s docket for several months due to the number of offenders that predate them.
If eleven of the seventeen parole-eligible offenders (64%)1 in PEER’s random sample had received timely parole hearings and had been granted parole just one month earlier, MDOC could have avoided $5,263 in unnecessary incarceration costs. Regarding the backlog of 1,250 parole-eligible offenders who have not yet had parole hearings,2 PEER estimates that for each month that MDOC houses 800 (64%) of these offenders beyond the date on which they were placed on the Parole Board staff’s add-on list, the department incurs $382,800 in unnecessary incarceration costs.
Does the Department of Corrections release offenders in a timely manner and in accordance with state law and departmental policy?
MDOC calculates a tentative discharge date3 for each offender that may create an expectation of a certain release date for the offender and his or her family, but some offenders may be incarcerated beyond their tentative discharge dates. This could occur due to legitimate reasons such as the amount of time needed to confirm release eligibility, the lack of an approved residence address, a rule violation report issued to the offender, or the offender’s failure to complete court-ordered programs (such as alcohol and drug counseling).
The MDOC Records Division calculates offenders’ time to be served based on multiple factors (e.g., type of crime committed, length of sentence). State law and MDOC policies provide for offenders’ time to be reduced with good behavior and/or participation in certain programs (e.g., the trusty program, alcohol and drug counseling). As a result, MDOC calculates multiple discharge dates for each offender, all of which--except the maximum discharge date--serve only as estimates of the date by which an offender may be discharged if certain administrative and inmate eligibility conditions are met.
In PEER’s sample, every offender with a maximum or tentative discharge date was released on that date, but not all offenders were released by their ERS or parole eligibility dates.4 Although MDOC has reasonable justification (e. g., public safety) to hold some offenders beyond their parole and ERS dates, some offenders in the sample were not released because they were not granted parole hearings during the month that they became eligible and thus were held in MDOC custody beyond their parole eligibility dates. PEER found no instance in the sample wherein MDOC policy or the legal rights of inmates were violated regarding the date of discharge.
Does the Department of Corrections ensure that victims who are owed court-ordered restitution receive timely payments?
According to MDOC policy and staff, victims who are owed court-ordered restitution have last priority in receiving recompense from a resident of a restitution center because MDOC’s practice is to disburse funds from residents’ accounts to their personal living expenses first, then to court-ordered costs and fees. Only after a resident amasses the total amount of court-ordered restitution that is owed in his or her account or leaves the restitution center does the victim receive restitution.
The MDOC Restitution Center Program provides an alternative to incarceration for minimal risk offenders by facilitating their transition to the community. The program is designed to provide a structured environment in which services and opportunities are provided that encourage residents to take responsibility for their actions and work for businesses in the community to pay for their personal expenses and for court-ordered costs, fees, and restitution.
Restitution centers are responsible for collecting and verifying residents’ wages and monies weekly. Restitution centers request all disbursements, including court-ordered restitution, from residents’ accounts from the Central Accounting Office. That office disburses restitution payments to the circuit clerk’s office of the county wherein the offender was convicted. Generally, the Central Accounting Office applies funds to residents’ court costs first, followed by fees and court-ordered restitution.
As a direct result of MDOC policy, crime victims have last priority in receiving court-ordered restitution because the costs of a resident’s personal responsibilities must be paid first, as well as any court-ordered costs and fees. Only after a resident amasses the total amount of court-ordered restitution that he owes or leaves the restitution center does the victim receive any restitution. As a result, a victim could theoretically wait up to five years to receive all or part of the restitution owed.
Public policy favors imposing restitution as part of a sentence to require an offender to compensate the victim for damages and injury. Thus, the state should ensure that the victim is recompensed fully and prior to any other responsibilities of the offender. Full and primary restitution to the victim is an appropriate outcome, as it is consistent with the penological and rehabilitational aims of restitution.
MDOC’s policy regarding the management of the department’s restitution program is inconsistent with this public policy rationale, because the program gives priority to an offender’s personal responsibility issues--e. g., room and board at the restitution center--ahead of an offender’s responsibility to pay court-ordered restitution to compensate victims of their crimes.
Recommendations
1 Between January 2013 and April 2014, the Parole Board granted parole to 64% of the offenders who appeared before it in hearings. PEER used this percentage to estimate costs of holding parole-eligible offenders beyond their discharge date.
2 According to MDOC, the number of offenders that appeared on the Parole Board’s add-on list in May (1,250) might not reflect the number of offenders that, based on a long-term historical analysis, could be expected to appear on the list. MDOC asserts that a large number of offenders became parole-eligible and were thus included in the board’s add-on list as a result of an Attorney General’s opinion issued in August 23, 2013, that provided that offenders who were convicted of non-residential burglary or burglary of an unoccupied dwelling were eligible for parole.
3 The tentative discharge date is the maximum release date less any meritorious earned time, trusty earned time, or executive time.
4 Earned release supervision (ERS) is an early release from incarceration component that is also known to be a result of the Truth-in-Sentencing law (MISS. CODE ANN. Section 47-5-138 [1972]). Participation is contingent on good behavior and work ethic. ERS is the maximum release date less 15% of earned time allowance and any meritorious earned time (MET), trusty earned time (TET), or executive time and is only applicable to some offenders (CODE Section 47-5-138). The parole eligibility date is the date on which an inmate becomes eligible for release by parole, which is generally 25% of the total sentence less any meritorious earned time or trusty earned time (CODE Section 47-7-3). The date is determined by the laws in effect on the date the offense was committed, offender’s age upon first commitment, number of prior incarcerations, prior probation or parole failures, the severity and the violence of the offense committed, employment history, whether the offender served in the United States Armed Forces and has an honorable discharge, and other criteria deemed appropriate by the State Parole Board.