a public defender

Have you ever been to a parole hearing? Or watched one? I happened to catch the CT Board of Pardons and Paroles conducting hearings at Carl Robinson on CT-N last week (they’re now broadcasting these hearings). Watching them unfold was very interesting and instructive.

The setup in simple: the inmates sits in from of the panel of three. A fourth member reads out the charges the inmate was convicted of and his sentences, then asks the inmate, a la a job interview, to explain why he thinks he should get parole. Then the board members question him about things that bother them.

And that’s what bothers me. The tone and tenor of the questioning was akin to a cross examination: some of the attitudes were hostile, there was a lot of disbelief about the inmate’s responses and, frankly, everyone knows the game.

The one that caught my eye was a domestic crime, where the inmate acknowledged flouting a protective order along with his “victim”, by living together during the pre-trial process. The board member wanted to know or why the protective order was issued in the first place, something the inmate didn’t seem to understand initially. This caused the board member to get rather frustrated and accusatory.

As far as I know, some of the board members are lawyers. They should have some experience dealing with clients, but I didn’t see that at all. And that’s the problem: yes, you’re evaluating inmates for suitability for release. Yes, you want to know whether they’ve “changed”. But what are these standards we’re holding them up to? Are they yours and mine? Is that unfair?

It’s safe to say that most of our clients did not come from the same backgrounds that we did; they didn’t have the same upbringing, the same opportunities. Yet, somehow, they’re supposed to meet our arbitrarily defined standards.

I understand that on some level there’s a bright-line rule for behavior in society – you do not commit crimes, you do not hurt other people, etc.

But we understand that and we’re taught (for the most part) how to follow those general rules and how not to run afoul of them. We all have had support structures to keep us in place – a moral compass if you will. But not all of our clients have.

Perhaps it would be better if the determination of suitability for release was not based on whether these inmates have crossed this threshold set by us, the rest of society, but on how far they’ve come from where they started.

It would be much easier for me to say that inmates should be measure against our bright-line rule if there were opportunities made available to them in prison that taught them how to behave in society. If we provide that support that we had, to them, then we have an adequate measure. If we have rehabilitated inmates or provided them the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves, then the comparision is valid.

Rehab in prisons is a sham, though – a mirage if you will. The spectre hangs over incarceration as the lipstick on a pig. That’s part of DOC’s motto, but for whatever reason – public sentiment, lack of political will or just lack of funding – it isn’t actually practiced. Seats in classes comprise a miniscule percentage of the prison population. Even if inmates want to change, do we provide them with adequate opportunity? Why, then, do we expect anything different?

How are we different from the environments they grew up in or the environments that caused them to bend toward the criminal? By putting them in prison, we’re telling them that what they did was wrong and we’ll let you out early if you change, go on the path to the right. But aside from pointing them in the general direction of “right”, do we do anything else? So if they get only halfway there, by sheer force of will, then is it fair to say you’re not far enough?

On the flip side, there are inmates that know the game: they know what to say, they know that even being on the waiting list for a class counts for something. They know how to act remorseful, how to pretend like they’ve changed. They do this because they know there is no other way; that there is actually very little chance that programs and support will be available.

So what’s the point of all this? I think the parole system (and the correctional system as a whole) will perform better if we take a more nuanced approach to evaluating individuals. We must look at where people come from and how far along they are, rather than whether they’ve met a bright-line test. If the alcoholic recognizes that he gets into trouble when he drinks, that should count as a lot in his favor, not against him because he can’t guarantee that he’ll never drink again.

We do this in our daily lives, with our friends and family. We empathize and we encourage and we support. But in the prison system, it’s us against them. That is a failing strategy. We can’t give people a quarter and then complain that they don’t have a dollar. Where’s it going to come from? Magic?