Second chances for people in prison, including parole, are crucial to ensuring public safety. Parole is a vital component of a well-functioning criminal justice system; it incentivizes good behavior, promotes rehabilitation, and safely reduces prison populations and the costs associated with incarceration. Importantly, parole reunites families, making households and communities whole. 

Parole can be a powerful tool to safely reduce prison populations, but its effectiveness heavily depends on how it’s administered. In the 35 jurisdictions¹ that have discretionary parole for most eligible people, the process is often opaque and does not produce the results we expect from a well-functioning system. Life-changing decisions are made behind closed doors by political appointees who rely heavily on static criteria about an individual’s past offense rather than the personal growth and change they’ve exhibited since their incarceration. In many instances, applicants may not even get the opportunity to present a meaningful case before the board. 

The way parole is currently implemented undermines both legislative intent and public expectations. Parole is meant to provide a meaningful path toward second chances, yet it’s becoming increasingly restrictive. Nationally, the number of people released on parole fell by 41% between 2019 and 2022. Parole boards are also holding fewer hearings – down 27% during the same period. Even when hearings do occur, release remains a long shot in many jurisdictions. Compared to 2019, only seven states saw an increase in their parole grant rate in 2023 or 2024 (the most recent data available), while 21 experienced a decrease. This decline in parole releases carries profound consequences: it’s estimated that over 210,000 people remain in prison past their parole eligibility date.

This policy brief examines parole policies and practices in Missouri, Mississippi, and New York – three states that help illustrate some of the factors contributing to the nationwide decline in parole use and provide recommendations for a path forward. Missouri has a unique opportunity to advance meaningful parole reform this session with the governor’s commitment to evaluate and amend existing parole rules. In Mississippi, recent legislation has expanded parole eligibility, but release outcomes continue to hinge on the board’s political will to implement the policy to reach its full impact. Meanwhile, advocates in New York are continuing their years-long effort to expand early release opportunities to elderly people and address the barriers that limit meaningful access to parole. Each state presents a distinct context but reflects common challenges with parole systems nationwide, highlighting why strengthening parole processes is essential to any serious effort to reduce incarceration and increase public safety.  

Parole Board Composition and Structure

The composition of parole boards and how they come to be are all factors that determine the fairness and effectiveness of the parole process. Board members’ professional backgrounds influence what factors they prioritize; their appointment structures can influence whose interests they serve; and their numbers can dictate how much attention they provide to each individual. 

Board Size and Appointment

The states examined here share commonalities in parole board structures. All of their board members must be appointed by their respective governors with the advice and consent of their senate bodies. Mississippi's Parole Board has five members who serve “at the will and pleasure of the Governor” for terms that last at least four years. Missouri's Parole Board has seven members who serve without term limits, and New York's Board of Parole can have up to 19 members serving six-year terms.

Although parole boards serve a technical function, they are driven by politics. Since board members are appointed and confirmed through an overtly political process, their incentives may align more with political considerations than individual assessments of rehabilitation. This dynamic can encourage denying parole because it’s the safest political option. In some states, it’s not uncommon for board members to receive letters from the governor, attorney general, or other elected officials discouraging release of an individual up for parole consideration, further entangling parole decisions with political pressure rather than an objective evaluation of an applicant.

Professional Background and Qualifications

Professional requirements for parole board members vary. In New York, parole commissioners must have either a college or graduate degree and at least five years of experience in a list of eligible fields, such as criminal justice, law enforcement, social work, or at least ten years of relevant professional experience in these fields without a degree. By contrast, Missouri has no educational requirements for Board members. Mississippi requires only that board members have a bachelor's degree or a high school diploma accompanied by four years of work experience. Mississippi law requires Board members to complete annual trainings that are developed based on guidance from correctional associations. Neither New York nor Missouri statutes require board members to complete training upon their initial appointment or to participate in ongoing annual training thereafter. Despite what seem to be broad eligibility criteria, parole boards tend to favor people with law enforcement or corrections backgrounds. These individuals may have little to no knowledge of how to evaluate successful behavioral change. In recent years, advocates in states such as West Virginia and Oklahoma have successfully advanced reforms to diversify parole boards by requiring a certain number of members have a background in social work or behavioral services.

Current Parole Eligibility and Outcomes

Eligibility rules determine who can seek parole and when. These thresholds vary dramatically across states and have shifted significantly over time, often in response to political pressures rather than evidence about what works to keep communities safe.

Mississippi has undergone dramatic shifts in parole eligibility over the past three decades. Before 1994, nearly everyone sentenced to prison in Mississippi was eligible for parole. However, in 1995, Mississippi joined many other states in abolishing parole. Over time, state lawmakers began reversing course in 2008 by restoring parole for nonviolent offenses, and then expanded eligibility to some people convicted of designated violent offenses in 2021. Currently, around two-thirds of people in Mississippi’s prison population are eligible for parole. The expansion of parole eligibility in 2021 represents a positive step for Mississippi, and data has shown it to be an outstanding success. Of those who became newly eligible, 97% did not return to prison on a new sentence within their first three years of release. 

Unfortunately, even as the eligibility pool expanded, Mississippi began releasing fewer people on parole — even for those who had previously been eligible. Parole grant rates dropped from an average of 70% from January to June of 2021 to 57% in the same period of time in 2025, and the total number of hearings resulting in a parole grant declined 17%.²

New York allows parole consideration once individuals with indeterminate sentences (approximately 40% of the prison population) have served their court-imposed minimum term. This leaves many with no opportunity to come home, including those without parole-eligible sentences and those who will not reach parole eligibility until extreme old age. As of 2019, there were more than 1,100 people over the age of 55 who had served 15 years in prison and were still not eligible for release. From 2008 to 2021, the share of older New Yorkers age 50 and over in state prisons more than doubled, rising from 12% to 24% of the prison population. Older individuals are much less likely to commit a crime after release and often face significant health issues, making their continued incarceration both unnecessary and costly. 

New York has a low approval rate for parole, hovering below 40%. A 2019 survey of 409 individuals who had been denied parole conducted by the Correctional Association of New York found that 17% were still in prison five to 10 years past their parole eligibility date, and another 16% were 10 to 20 years past their eligibility. 

Almost everyone in prison is eligible for parole in Missouri. Missouri's eligibility framework involves a matrix that assigns a minimum percentage of time to be served based on offense category and criminal history. Generally, thresholds range from 15% to 33% for nonviolent offenses and up to 85% for designated dangerous felonies, with some exceptions. What makes Missouri's situation particularly striking is how many people remain incarcerated despite having reached eligibility: the Council of State Governments estimates that approximately half of the state's prison population had already passed their parole eligibility dates as of 2023.

Missouri has previously implemented successful, evidence-based reforms, such as the use of grid release decisions, which reduced the number of hearings held by the Parole Board by automatically approving people convicted of certain offenses for parole upon their eligibility date. Grid release contributed to a rise in the share of releases to parole from 62% in FY 2018 to over 70% in FY 2020-2021. From July 2019 to December 2021, an average of 28% of parole release decisions were due to grid releases. Importantly, this increase in the use of parole did not compromise public safety. Three-year overall recidivism rates for the FY 2020 and FY 2021 release cohorts either decreased slightly or remained virtually unchanged compared to FY 2018, and remained significantly lower than the recidivism rates among those released in FY 2015 and FY 2016. 

However, this positive momentum has recently reversed. The prison population has increased for four straight years (FY 2021 to FY 2025), driven in part by individuals aged 50 and over. During this same period, parole as a percentage of prison releases declined from 72% to 62%. Missouri has the opportunity to reverse this trend by adopting mandatory standards, instead of the largely discretionary system currently in place, that prioritize rehabilitation and release.

Systemic Barriers to Fair Parole

Recommendations

One of the challenges in reforming parole is that there are as many parole systems as there are states. While practices differ widely across the country, there are practices that would help ensure a fairer process for incarcerated individuals and their families everywhere. Ensuring people have a meaningful opportunity at release promotes rehabilitation and ultimately protects public safety. Research consistently shows that offering genuine, attainable pathways to parole release benefits not only incarcerated individuals but also correctional facilities and broader public safety. When a state restricts mechanisms of release or removes incentives for early release, it experiences drastic consequences in terms of institutional behavior. Early release opportunities, such as parole, are also widely popular among voters. Recent polling conducted by FWD.us found that 72% of likely voters support expanding parole to allow more people to be considered for release by a parole board. 

Studies show that policies restricting or reducing parole and earned time credit increase misconduct—violent misconduct, in particular—in prisons. For instance, after Florida enacted a "truth-in-sentencing" law that significantly reduced early release, people sentenced under the new regime had 91.1% greater odds of committing a prison infraction and 56.3% greater odds of committing a violent infraction. North Carolina saw similar results, with a 19.4% increase in disciplinary conviction rates following comparable legislation. 

The evidence points in one direction: meaningful release opportunities work. The following recommendations address the systemic shortcomings identified in our case studies and offer a path toward fairer, more effective parole systems.

Recommendations for a Fairer Parole Process

The tension between discretion and guidelines presents a genuine challenge for parole reform. Too much reliance on rigid guidelines or flawed risk assessments can produce unjust results; too little structure can enable arbitrary decision-making. The answer is not to eliminate discretion but to ensure it operates within meaningful guardrails that prioritize evidence of rehabilitation and provide clear standards that individuals can work to meet.

1. Increase Procedural Fairness and Transparency

a. Create Clear Standards with Real Accountability

A fair parole system should convey, with some certainty, what is required to receive parole and grant parole once those requirements are met.

States should establish clear, measurable, and attainable criteria for parole release. When boards depart from these criteria, they should be required to provide detailed, individualized explanations – subject to meaningful review by an independent body. 

b. Adopt Presumptive Parole and Grid Release Mechanisms

States can also ensure that standards are applied consistently by adopting release mechanisms like grid release and presumptive parole.³ Presumptive parole or grid release allows individuals to be released if specific evidence-based criteria are met, such as eligibility based on offense, engagement in rehabilitative programs, and demonstrated readiness for reintegration into the community.

As shown in Missouri, opportunities for automatic release upon meeting certain standards do not endanger the public. Mississippi has a similar presumptive parole system in law that has never been implemented. Other states, including Oklahoma and South Dakota, have also effectively used these systems to ensure individuals who are ready and safe to be released are not held unnecessarily past their parole eligibility dates, and parole board time is spent on more difficult cases. 

c. Increase Transparency and Accountability

It is also important to have a transparent system in place. Parole systems with broad confidentiality provisions, such as in Missouri and Mississippi, limit external accountability.  Neither state's hearings are open to the public, and neither do they publish their parole decisions or reasons for parole denials. There is no check on bias or arbitrary decision-making. Currently, only 15 states with discretionary parole publish individual parole decisions online, including New York. Four states – Massachusetts, Montana, Rhode Island, and Utah– also publish the reason for parole denial.

Parole hearings should be open to people of the incarcerated person’s choosing, including lawyers and members of the public who can demonstrate community ties and speak to release plans. States should require disclosure of all information the Board relies upon in making decisions, providing incarcerated individuals the opportunity to review and respond to adverse information during the process. This transparency serves multiple purposes: it allows individuals to understand what steps might improve their chances in future hearings, it enables external oversight of Board decision-making, and it builds public confidence that release decisions are made fairly and consistently.

2. Reform Decision-Making Criteria

a. Center Decision on Rehabilitation and Current Risk

Parole boards should be required to give primary weight to evidence of rehabilitation. One of the biggest impediments to parole release currently is parole boards’ overemphasis on static, non-changing factors, particularly the crime of conviction. That is also the one factor that incarcerated individuals cannot alter.

Parole boards should instead be required to evaluate evidence of rehabilitation – factors like program completion, educational achievement, institutional conduct, and reentry planning. These are the considerations that were not in existence at the time of the original criminal adjudication. They reflect the work that the person has put into personal transformation. Prioritizing anything else essentially elevates the opinion of the parole board over that of the sentencing judge, the legislature that established parole eligibility, and ultimately the public who elected those legislators.

3. Ensure a Meaningful Hearing Process

a. Require In-Person Hearings

States should guarantee in-person hearings for all parole-eligible individuals, outside of grid or presumptive release, with adequate time for incarcerated individuals to speak on their rehabilitation and readiness for reentry. While virtual hearings offer logistical advantages, they should be the exception, not the rule, given their documented shortcomings and lack of personal connection. 

b. Allow Legal Counsel at Hearings

All states should allow incarcerated individuals to have access to a lawyer or representative of their choice during their parole hearing. This access would allow incarcerated people to respond effectively to the parole board’s concerns and make a compelling case for their release. 

c. Mandate Representation of Board Members with a Background in Social Work or Behavioral Health

A national analysis of parole boards in 2023 found that nearly half of board members have a background in law enforcement, as a lawyer, or as a judge, compared to just 11% who have a background in social work. The states examined currently have no requirements reserving a certain number of parole seats for individuals with non-law enforcement backgrounds. Although New York lists qualifying professional experiences for appointment to the Board, including expertise in social work, psychology, or sociology, it does not mandate representation from these fields. States should diversify their parole boards by requiring a minimum number of members to have experience in behavioral health and social work to ensure balanced perspectives and a fuller consideration of rehabilitation and reentry.  

Conclusion

The stories highlighted in this brief illustrate the critical need for reforms to our parole systems. The promise of parole as a vital component of public safety and criminal justice reform is being undermined in states across the political spectrum. Across these three distinct jurisdictions, the process has devolved into an obscure, highly discretionary, and punitive system that disregards demonstrated growth and readiness for release and undermines a fair and meaningful hearing experience.

The path toward a fairer, more effective parole system is clear. By adopting explicit, measurable standards with guardrails and prioritizing rehabilitation over the unchangeable facts of the past, states can provide meaningful opportunities for release without compromising public safety. Furthermore, increasing transparency and accountability by opening hearings and disclosing decision rationale is essential to ensure consistency and prevent bias, as well as build public trust.

Across the country, tens of thousands of people’s fates are in the hands of parole boards, and thousands more will become parole eligible with each passing year. The recommendations laid out in this brief are just some interventions that honor the legislative intent of parole and create a criminal justice system that delivers on the promise of second chances, making communities safer and families whole.