Back-End Sentencing and Parole Revocation

Abstract

Back-end sentencing refers to the practice of sending formerly incarcerated people back to prison for parole violations. The concept was popularized by Jeremy Travis in his book But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry (2005) to sensitize researchers and policymakers to the overlooked contribution of parole violations and revocations to the increased use of incarceration during the 1980s to early 2000s. European scholars have used the term “back-door” sentences to refer to the same idea. Although revocation results in an action that is analogous to a sentence, procedures employed in revocation hearings operate under a lower standard of evidence—a “preponderance of the evidence”—and have fewer opportunities for representation and appeal than sentences given out in criminal courts. In California, where back-end sentencing had become routine by 1995, nearly half of all entries into prison annually were the result of parole board revocations rather criminal convictions. A portion of the violations that resulted in reincarceration were “technical violations,” which include noncriminal violations of a parolee’s terms of supervision, such as traveling more than 50 miles from their residence, not showing up for appointments, or associating with gang members or criminal peers. Commentators emphasized the ways that the back-end sentencing traps individuals in a “revolving door” between prison and the community supervision phases of punishment, “churning” back and forth between the two. Some research explicitly employs the term “back-end sentencing” whereas other scholarship relevant to the topic focuses on how parole systems deal with parole violators via the revocation process.