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From the archives:

"When They Get Out" (June 1999)
How prisons, established to fight crime, produce crime. By Sasha Abramsky

The number of Americans on parole has risen along with the U.S. prison population, swelling from 197,000 in 1980 to 774,000 in 2003. But is conditional release, with the supervision it entails, worth the trouble and expense? This question was addressed in a recent Urban Institute report, which compared rates of recidivism among ex-convicts who were paroled with those among ex-convicts who were released with no strings attached. The study found that the recidivism rate among prisoners released unconditionally was virtually the same as that among "mandatory parolees," or prisoners for whom parole is part of a fixed sentence: 62 percent of the former and 61 percent of the latter were re-arrested at least once within two years. "Discretionary parolees," or prisoners released early after being vetted by a parole board, might be expected to do considerably better than others, having met various criteria before release. But they fared just slightly better: 54 percent were re-arrested within two years. Overall, parole is most effective in reducing recidivism rates among female prisoners, prisoners with few prior arrests, and those arrested for technical offenses or for violating public order. Among the largest category of released prisoners—males who have committed property, drug, or violent crimes—"the public safety impact of supervision is … nonexistent," the authors write, adding that the current parole system "serves little purpose apart from providing false comfort."

—"Does Parole Work?: Analyzing the Impact of Postprison Supervision on Rearrest Outcomes," Urban Institute