What the Courts, the Prisons, the Employer and the Public Should Know of the Released Prisoner

Abstract

In the United States the Federal Government and each of the forty-eight states-making forty-nine in all-has its own code of laws. Fifty years ago there was little or no cooperation between the courts and prisons. That was the period of the treatment of convicts enmasse, the time of definite sentences. That was before the time of the individualizing of punishment; before much use had been made of the indeterminate sentence law; before many reformatories had been established or reformatory methods were applied to state prisons. Then prisoners were released at the prison door at the expiration of sentence-in some states less commutation or good time--with no one to get them employment or act as friend and supervisor. In a few prisons that may be true today. In most jurisdictions progress is being made in the individualization of offenders. Probation and parole are being more widely used. Probation is applied in most of the states of the Union. We should distinguish between probation and parole. Parole means the conditional release of a prisoner from an institution. Probation means the conditional release of an offender who has not been sent to an institution. In either case proper supervision by capable parole or probation officers is essential. Parole is not an act of clemency, as some seem to think. It