“Back‐end Sentencing” and Reimprisonment: Individual, Organizational, and Community Predictors of Parole Sanctioning Decisions*

Abstract

An understudied contributor to the massive growth of American incarceration is an increase in the practice of reimprisoning parolees through parole board revocations—now referred to as “back‐end sentencing.” To conduct the analyses outlined in this article, we use data from the California Parole Study to analyze the effects of three clusters of factors (parolees' characteristics, organizational pressures, and community conditions) on these sentences. Our analyses are informed by theories that have been used to explain “front‐end” (court) sentences, which center on the focal concerns of social‐control agents, labeling, and racial threat. Our results indicate that status characteristics—race/ethnicity and gender—affect the likelihood that criminal parole violators are reimprisoned. Moreover, certain “pivotal categories” of parolees—registered sex offenders and those who have committed “serious” or “violent” offenses—are much more likely to be returned to prison than others. Organizational pressure (prison crowding) also affects the likelihood of reimprisonment. Communities' political punitiveness affects the likelihood that technical violators are reimprisoned and that serious or violent offenders are reimprisoned for criminal violations. In this article, we use these findings to consider ways that mass incarceration is driven by both top‐down policies as well as bottom‐up organizational and community forces.

Mapping the shadow carceral state: Toward an institutionally capacious approach to punishment

“…In 1980, parole revocations represented 18 percent of US prison admissions; by 2000, 34 percent of all prison admissions were triggered by parole violations (Travis, 2005; see also Clear, 2007;Lin et al, 2010). The legal construction of violation hearings as administrative rather than criminal matters has thus had a dramatic impact on the nature and scope of the carceral state.…”

The Diversity of Decarceration: Examining First-Year County Realignment Spending in California

“…With regard to system capacity, Ulmer and Johnson (2004) found that higher local jail capacity is related to the likelihood of incarceration. Similarly, Lin et al (2010) found that in California, prison reception center occupancy rates are negatively related to the likelihood of parole revocation.…”

Custodial Parole Sanctions and Earnings after Release from Prison

“…Based on our knowledge of parole supervision in Michigan, we believe that variation is being driven by three factors: (a) parole officer (supervisor) discretion in formally writing up a parolee for a violation and in determining a recommended sanction (see also Lin, Grattet, and Petersilia [2010]; Steen et al [2013]), (b) geographic and temporal variation in the availability of different forms of sanctions for parole violations, and (c) geographic and temporal variability in law enforcement capacity to detect unlawful or technical violation behavior among parolees. Our modeling strategy assumes that these sources of variation are independent of an individual parolee’s earnings in one quarter versus another, conditional on the controls in the model.…”

“…Moreover, facilities and programs intended to divert technical violators from prison may expand once created, and the availability of such facilities and programs can then create additional demand for them, sweeping into the widening net individuals who would have previously received non-custodial sanctions. 4 Prior studies of the parole revocation process suggest there is a considerable role for discretion by parole officers in the application of sanctions (Steen et al 2013) and considerable contextual variation across parole jurisdictions in the use of parole revocation (Lin, Grattet, and Petersilia 2010). …”

“… 3 An often-cited example of an intermediate sanction that leads to net-widening is intensive probation supervision, which is intended to divert people from prison by providing a community-based alternative with more stringent conditions than traditional probation (Petersilia 1999) but ends up increasing technical violations and incarceration compared to routine supervision (Lin, Grattet, and Petersilia 2010). …”