Study Finds Parole Hearings and Grants Continue to Fall
by Chuck Sharman
In the “tough-on-crime” years that closed out the last century, parole was eliminated in many states, as well as the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). But as the U.S. Supreme Court noted most recently in Swarthout v. Cooke, 562 U.S. 216 (2011), there is no constitutional right to parole or a parole hearing. That has left a patchwork of 35 state prison systems with some form of discretionary parole, according to the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), and still other states and the BOP have prisoners sentenced before parole ended.
Given the increasing costs of caging over 1.2 million prisoners, there are growing calls for decarceration from both ends of the political spectrum. Parole remains the most available solution to accomplish this in those systems where it survives. Yet the number of parole grants continues to fall, according to an October 2025 analysis by the PPI. In the 25 states that kept aggregate data, the total number of hearings declined from 2019 to 2024 by an enormous number—68,000 fewer hearings.
PPI found that the number of parole grants has been steadily declining, too. In 2023 and 2024, only three states granted parole to two-thirds or more of those who were eligible: Utah (67%), North Dakota (71%) and Wyoming (76%). On the other hand, there were three states that granted less than one in five: California (19%), Maryland (13%) and South Carolina (4%). Four more did little better: Alabama (20%), Louisiana (20%), Tennessee (22%) and Oklahoma (23%).
This goes a long way toward explaining why the Council of State Governments reports that 200,000 prisoners in the U.S. have a parole eligibility date that has already passed. The drop-off in parole hearings and grants also does not track with the overall prison population, which is rising, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, June 2024, p.21.]
A big part of the problem is political; no one wants to parole a prisoner who goes on to commit another crime. But the standards by which rehabilitation is judged are “exceedingly vague,” PPI found. In 24 of the 35 states with parole, the board must find “a reasonable probability” that an applicant will not violate the law and “fulfill the obligations” of a law-abiding citizen.
Most boards put heavy emphasis on “static” factors, including the applicant’s criminal history, the severity of the crime of conviction, as well as input from victims and prosecutors, along with the results of “risk assessment” tools. Grants are also held up by waits for programming beyond a prisoner’s control. But good conduct is often discounted in hearings, even as misconduct is magnified. When California denied parole to Lyle and Erik Menendez in August 2025, their use of contraband cellphones was cited, not their explanations that they were mainly calling their wives while serving life terms for killing their parents in 1989.
Parole board composition is typically a political process, too, with little regard for expertise. In 34 of the 35 systems that PPI analyzed, the governor appoints board members, and in nine of those the legislature has no secondary oversight. In the others, the state senate typically must ratify the governor’s board nominees. Michigan is the outlier, giving authority to appoint Parole Board members to the Director of its Department of Corrections (DOC). He or she is limited only in how many DOC staffers can stack the board—no more than six of the 10 slots. In the few states requiring board members to have experience in sociology, psychology or social work, the effectiveness is undermined by “conflat[ing] these credentials with law enforcement experience,” PPI found.
Some states have larger boards; California’s has 21 members. In states with smaller boards, like Alabama’s three-member Board of Pardons and Paroles, there are significantly higher backlogs of parole applications and lower rates of grants. No state has any requirement for its board to include formerly incarcerated people.
Alabama prisoners are barred from parole hearings, but most states with parole allow prisoners to face the board. The hearing is often conducted virtually, not in-person, potentially disadvantaging the prisoner who doesn’t film well. Seven states also prohibit prisoners from having legal representation at parole hearings. See: Parole in Perspective—A Deep Dive Into Discretionary Parole Systems, PPI (Oct. 2025).
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