Understanding parole recommendations : the contribution of parole officers

Measuring Parole Officer Competencies to Advance Core Correctional Practice

“…The SPDMF has been empirically validated (i.e., has been shown to yield increased accuracy over current decisions) in Canada, and has since been implemented by the PBC (Gobeil, 2012;Serin, Gobeil & Sutton, 2009;Serin et al, 2013a,b). To date, the vast majority of the research examining the impact of the SPDMF on the quality of parole decision-making has taken place within a Canadian context, but international interest is growing (Serin et al, 2013b).…”

Toward a "Just, Peaceful and Safe Society:" How Risk Factors and Criminogenic Needs Align with Parole Decisions

“…A Canadian dissertation looking at mental health conceptualizations in PBC decision letters found that BMs consistently discuss mental health alongside risk assessment information (Stewart, 2016). Additionally, PBC receives recommendation decisions from CSC parole officers through an Assessment for Decision document (Gobeil, 2012), an approach that has drawn criticism (see Zinger, 2012).…”

“…After accounting for potential confounds, these analyses focused on how static and dynamic risk factors were related to the number and types of special conditions individuals received on different release types. Also, given previous research (Gobeil, 2012;Pardoel, 2013), it was expected that adding institutional factors like CSC recommendation would contribute a significant amount of variance to all release-type models. Just how much variance was explained, however, was substantial.…”

“…Several reasons may contribute to high concordance between BMs and probation officers (POs), like the fact that they review much of the same information and that POs draft the initial outline for decision letters in their Assessment for Decision, which likely saves BMs considerable time (Gobeil, 2012). Although BMs do a comprehensive independent review, BMs may trust that POs have a strong base knowledge of the individual applying for parole due to POs' potential encounters with the individual over time (Gobeil, 2012;Zinger, 2012).…”

“…Several reasons may contribute to high concordance between BMs and probation officers (POs), like the fact that they review much of the same information and that POs draft the initial outline for decision letters in their Assessment for Decision, which likely saves BMs considerable time (Gobeil, 2012). Although BMs do a comprehensive independent review, BMs may trust that POs have a strong base knowledge of the individual applying for parole due to POs' potential encounters with the individual over time (Gobeil, 2012;Zinger, 2012). Another likely reason CSC recommendations carry weight in parole decision models could be due to unmeasured variables in the study (e.g., recent institutional history, reintegration plans, mental health, treatment completion, whether DPs were continuations, whether detention reviews were initial or subsequent reviews, and most notably, prior revocations and successful completions).…”