PAROLE REVOCATION

Board changes standards to be less rigid

New board regulations taking effect this week aim to reduce the number of parolees sent back to prison — a reaction to the jump in revocations seen after a Fayetteville man was murdered in 2013.

Forrest Abrams, 18, of Fayetteville was kidnapped and murdered May 10, 2013, by a parolee released from the Pulaski County Jail just 32 hours earlier. Darrell Dennis, a repeat offender now serving a life term for the murder, had been charged with at least 10 new felonies after his 2008 parole from prison before he kidnapped Abrams. He was never scheduled for a hearing to revoke his parole until after his arrest in the murder.

The state parole board set a new standard within months of the killing in response to the public outcry: Any parolee accused of violating the terms of his parole would be automatically scheduled for a hearing on whether to revoke parole.

Most of the parolees scheduled for a hearing chose instead to sign a waiver and go back to prison, said both Solomon Graves, director of the State Parole Board, and Kris Eglin, a parole and probation officer for the board’s Northwest Arkansas region of Benton, Madison and Washington counties.

The result was the new standard was even more likely to revoke a parole than intended, they said. The Parole Board estimates fewer than two in five inmates risked a hearing under the 2013 standard, Graves said. Eglin said he had no certain figures but wouldn’t be surprised if the number was even higher.

The number of parolees going back to prison skyrocketed — crowding into county jails all over the state when the prisons were full. Parole Board records show the number of people out on parole in Area 1 — the Benton-Madison-Washington county area — dropped from 2,363 on June 30, 2013, to 2,154 a year later — an 8.8 percent drop in one year.

“That was when the wheels fell off,” said Sheriff Tim Helder of Washington County. “That’s when you had people sleeping on the floor of the jail.”

By Sept. 30 of this year, county jails across the state were holding 1,958 of the state’s 18,549 inmates, state figures show.

“There’s a lot of warrants that these sheriffs and police chiefs can’t serve because there is no place to put” the people they arrest, Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association President John Montgomery, of Baxter County, told lawmakers on that day.

The new Parole Board regulations took effect Thursday. Now, a hearing will not be scheduled until there has been a conviction or some other finding a parole violation happened — except in cases involving allegations of violence.

Allegations involving violence still lead to an automatic revocation hearing, Graves said.

Graves and Eglin cited several possible reasons under the 2013 standard for a parolee’s decision to pass on a hearing that may have kept him free.

Parolees are often facing criminal charges in whatever act triggered the parole hearing, Graves said. Any evidence or testimony in a parole hearing could be used later in a criminal trial, he said. It was a risk many parolees didn’t want to take, he said.

Even if a parolee had good prospects of remaining free, parole officers couldn’t advise the parolee to take the chance, Eglin said.

“By law, we’re supposed to tell them their options, and those options are to have a hearing or to sign a waiver of a hearing that revokes their parole,” he said. “We can’t recommend one over the other.”

A hearing judge also has the power to order a parolee to serve all of his remaining sentence — to go back to prison and be ineligible for further parole. That rarely happens but the possibility is chilling, Eglin said.

Parole judges also don’t have to determine a parolee definitely committed the violation to revoke parole. Paroles can be revoked on a preponderance of the evidence, Graves and Eglin said.

“When faced with something like that, a parolee talks to his friends who’ve been through the same process,” Eglin said. “Those friends and the jailbird lawyers [ex-inmates who profess to be experts in the law] are going to tell him that if you sign the waiver, you’re going to be eligible for parole again in six months.”

Parolees could request an attorney, but there’s no guarantee one will be appointed as in criminal cases, Graves said. Parole is a privilege, not a right, so there’s no constitutional right to legal counsel.

Sometimes, paroles were revoked on charges later dropped, Eglin said.

“Imagine somebody going back to prison because he got in an argument with his wife, they both started yelling, the neighbors complained and the police were called,” Eglin said. “Imagine what it would be like to know that you could go to prison for any number of things, at any time.”

No one wants a repeat of a tragedy like Abrams’ murder, Graves and others interviewed said. But a proposal from the Arkansas Department of Correction for 1,000 new prison beds would have cost $100 million. The Legislature rejected that proposal earlier this year.

Also, uncertainty parolees face on whether their paroles will be revoked makes holding jobs and getting back to a normal life an even bigger challenge, Helder and others said.

“People are coming back, and local employers really have no incentive to hire a felon,” Helder said. “They can’t get hired, and if they don’t get a job, a big percentage of them are going to revert right back. We have got to help people get on their feet.” Graves agreed. “There are some people who should never leave prison. We know that,” he said. “But on the average, about 80 percent or thereabout at some point are going to be released from prison. The vast majority will return to their community.”

The problem of revocation of paroles isn’t caused by overzealous parole officials, said former inmates recently released from prison.

“My parole officer was my biggest fan, doing everything she could to help me succeed, said Angie Whitehorn, 41, of Springdale, who went on parole in August.

The problem was inflexible standards, said Joe Bruton of Fayetteville, a prisoner re-entry coach for Goodwill Industries.

“It’s crazy,” he said. “I know of one case where a prisoner had a heart condition and had to go to his specialist doctor every month. He had no job, and he had to pay his doctor something. He faced a revocation hearing because he hadn’t been able to pay his fines. Of course he wasn’t. Fortunately, we were able to go to the hearing, and he wasn’t revoked. Still, it required a hearing.”