Factors Determining Parole from the Massachusetts Reformatory: The Report of the Director of Committee on Criminal Records and Statistics

Abstract

To the late Frank L. Randall, one of my predecessors, is due a large part of the credit for the attempt to establish parole in Massachusetts on a scientific basis. He also it was, who established a system of institution statistics, which he believed would have an important relation to parole and which, summed up in a history chart, would be of value to all officials ealing with the illmates of our penal institutions. Personal visits to institutions in eighteen states of the Union and a study of penal statistics in general have confirmed my belief that Massachusetts has as good a system as any. Nevertheless, the Massachusetts Department of Correction has been anxious to improve its system and test its reliability. W\e were glad, therefore, to have the collaboration of the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, and have worked with Professor Warner, whose analysis of our statistics, made at our request, has not only been of help to us, but must be of interest to all penologists. It was, of course, necessary for him to take cases all of which arose and were decided some years ago. As to the rather startling conclusions reached in the following article (that the facts gathered by the department do not bear on the success or failure on parole) it may be noticed(1) That the means for collecting and verifying data have been inadequate and have recently been much improved. (2) That through the Board's reliance on the superintendent's and psychiatrist's recommendations, they are indirectly relying on the inmate's history. And (3) That the mere decision of the Board to release or not to release is not the only occasion for gathering data. The assign-