Prediction of Parole Success in Wisconsin

Abstract

in the Board of Control were begun. And still later an attempt was made to ascertain what had happened in the State in the administration of executive clemency, and whether a prediction table could be constructed to aid the Governor in selecting applicants for clemency. Four studies covering these three subjects have now been completed. They were two studies on parole, one of parolees from the Wisconsin State Reformatory, one of those from the Wisconsin State Prison; one on probationers placed by the courts under the supervision of the State Bureau of Probation and Parole; and one on those granted executive clemency by the governors between 1930-38. Only the results of the two studies on parole are dealt with in this report. The first of these studies, that on the parolees from the Reformatory, is unique in a number of respects: (1) Instead of taking a group of parolees whose cases were closed 1930-1935 and treating them as a unit, we took the 629 released from supervision in 1933-1934, analyzed the factors associated with success and failure on parole, and then tested these factors for stability by a group of 763 closed in the years immediately preceding, and another of 236 closed in 1935. (2) Only those factors found stable in the three groups were used as a basis of prediction of success or failure on parole. (3) The methods used by Burgess on Illinois parolees and by the Gluecks on Massachusetts parolees were then applied to the Wisconsin group in order to see if the factors Burgess and the Gluecks found in their studies were valid when applied to the Wisconsin Reformatory group. What were the results? (1) It was found that some of the factors isolated as statistically significant in the original group of 629 were not at all statistically differential when applied to the other two groups. (2) Throughout the three groups only four factors remained constant in their significance-criminal history, work record, behavior in the institution and length of time on parole. (3) On applying the Burgess method to the three groups we found that the method gave no more consistent results when applied to the three groups in our study. The same was true of a modified Burgess method. Either of the cumulative tables, show-