Parole Systems

The original goal of this research was to examine parole systems in the United States and in other countries which require convicted persons to pay for the privilege of parole. The intended purpose of this examination was to provide a basis for a study of the parole system in Massachusetts. Salient facts discovered through a sober consideration of this concept, supplemented by a preliminary search of the literature, however, dictated a modification of the original research goal.

To require a convicted person to pay for the privilege of not being incarcerated would be similar in concept to the debtors' prisons of an age past. Under such a system, those persons with sufficient financial resources would be able to buy their way out of prison, while the economically unfortunate would be required to suffer confinement for the period judicially designated. Such a system would be patently unconstitutional in the United States (Ring, 1989), and, thus, no jurisdiction in this country operates a parole system on such a conceptual and philosophical basis as paying for the privilege of parole (Gary and Olson, 1989). As such a system would be patently unconstitutional in the United States, and as there is little likelihood that a constitutional amendment could be ratified to legalize a debtors' prisonlike system of parole in

1 2this country (Ring, 1989), it would have been pointless to search for, and, if found, review literature relevant to system

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ly mentioned in this examination, is the conversion of cost shifting program into a debtors' prisonlike program, wherein either: 1. Individuals were denied parole or probation if they are either: a. Unable to meet the financial obligations imposed under such programs; or b. Are unwilling to meet the financial obligations imposed under such programs; or 2. Individuals participating in cost shifting programs fail to meet prescribed payments, and are, then, placed in confinement as a consequence of not making the required payments. The second potentially serious abuse of cost shifting parole and probation cost programs involves the official perception of such fees. A precedence for this abuse may be found in automobile traffic fines. The purposes of automobile traffic fines are supposed to be the enhancement of public road safety, and the control of driving behaviors. In many, if not most, jurisdictions in the United States, however, traffic law enforcement has become a revenue driven system, wherein public safety becomes a secondary objective to revenue enhancement. Projected revenues from automobile traffic fines become a major budget item in such instances. It is entirely feasible that a

Category: Government - P