Parole Board Robert, the Chair

¶ … Parole Board

Robert, the chair of the parole board, is under pressure to relax the standards for parole because of the Governor's fears that if current overcrowding suits are successful, it will result in inmates being released under a federal process outside of the parole board's control. However, Robert is concerned that relaxing the current standards could result in the release of inmates more likely to re-offend than Robert feels is acceptable for a parole risk. The ethical dilemma appears to be whether Robert reduces the parole eligibility requirements, which would result in the release of more dangerous inmates than Robert feels is acceptable, or whether he does not reduce the parole eligibility requirements, which could result in the state losing control over parole requirements and the prison overcrowding scenario. The question is whether or not Robert should loosen the parole eligibility requirements.

Robert is motivated to try to keep the public as safe as possible from the risk posed by convicted criminals who have early release through parole. Therefore, he wants to make the decision that results in the greatest enhancement to public safety. Furthermore, if relaxing parole conditions results in an increased danger to the public, he may feel personal responsibility for that danger. On the other hand, if he does not relax conditions and the prisons stay as overcrowded as they currently are, then the state may lose control over the parole standards, which could result in an even greater risk to public safety. This occurred in 2009, when a federal court ordered California to reduce its prison population by one-third (Moore, 2009). However, Robert would not be personally responsible for lessening those standards. Therefore, even if the risk to the public were greater, Robert's sense of responsibility for it might actually be less. In this scenario, the reality is that either situation could result in the release of more dangerous offenders under the parole system, thereby increasing the risk to public safety.

However, this ethical dilemma is not as complicated as it seems when first considering the situation. Many times, ethical dilemmas appear to be a choice between two alternatives. However, rarely in the real world are there only two possible solutions to a problem. Instead, there are a wide variety of different possible solutions, which can help a person reach a desired result while still avoiding undesired side effects. In this situation, Robert wants to reduce the prison overcrowding while avoiding the release of criminals that he believes still pose a threat to society under the parole system. It has been presented as a choice between reducing parole requirements and risking losing control over the parole system to the federal government, which would also result in an increase in risk of release of violent prisoners.

As a chair of the parole board, Robert has some ability to impact prison overcrowding without changing the conditions for parole release. He could keep the conditions of parole release as they currently are, but make changes in another area to try to alleviate prison overcrowding. For example, when one looks at current prison overcrowding conditions, one sees that a number of people in prison are there because of parole violations. However, the severity of these parole violations may vary dramatically. For example, in North Carolina, "56% of new admissions to state prisons in 2009 were because of probation violations and 73% of those were because of technical violations like missing curfew or failing a drug screening" (Hunt, 2009). The problem is more dramatic in California, where "between 60,000 and 70,000 California parolees return to custody annually for violations. They may have failed a drug test, gone missing, or even committed a new crime for which they were not prosecuted" (Farrell, 2009). Robert could make changes to the types of parole violations that would result in a parolee being returned to incarceration, which would impact prison overcrowding, thereby reducing the threat that the pending lawsuit would be successful and that the federal government would be able to come in and take over parole conditions for the prison.

I believe that Robert's decision should be to refuse to loosen the requirements for parole. Instead, he should concentrate on developing a comprehensive plan to reduce the number of people who are returned to prison on non-violent parole violations. These violations may include things like positive drug tests or drug possession of amounts indicative of personal use, failure to report for parole meetings, and petty crimes like misdemeanors. Furthermore, the parole board could review people who had been returned to prison because of parole violations and release those who had been returned after one of those petty violations. This would result in a reduction in prison overcrowding without the increased risk of violent or dangerous offenders being released to society.

The Warden

William is the warden of a century-old correctional facility. His operating budget has been cut, which has resulted in him being unable to pay his correctional officers for overtime work or hire any additional or replacement employees. At the same time, he has experienced a dramatic increase in population of his prison, because of an aggressive arrest and prosecute campaign. The result is a facility that is overcrowded, which creates a dangerous situation for the workers and for the employees. William could help alleviate some of the overcrowding by using an off-site work release program. The problem with this program is that it does not have a risk assessment or screening process; therefore, his choices about which inmates to divert to this off-site work program would be based on guess work. William is scheduled to meet with the union representatives for the security officers working at his prison, to describe the steps he intends to take to ensure the safety of the officers working in the prison.

If William enacts the work-release program, he will immediately improve the safety of his facility. The danger in the facility is largely due to overcrowding. First, in an overcrowded prison, the officer to inmate ratio changes, so that each correctional officer is responsible for a larger number of inmates. This puts an immediate burden on correctional officers and makes it more difficult for them to control their environment. Furthermore, in most prisons the officer to prisoner ratio is the result of careful studies of how many officers are needed to control specific types of prisoners in specific environments. Changing this ratio increases the risk to officers. However, it is not only the change in the officer to inmate ratio that impacts safety. Instead, one has to look at how overcrowding changes the actual physical conditions of the prison, as well. When prisons are overcrowded, prisoners no longer reside only in cells. Instead, they may be diverted to "unconventional housing such as gymnasiums or sleeping on floors," which can make it difficult for prison staff to supervise them (WFSB Staff, 2011). Prison overcrowding also increases danger to inmates and correctional officers for the following reasons: reduced ability to classify inmates and house them appropriately; increased risk of the spread of disease; reduced access to mental health care; reduced access to recreational and exercise facilities; reduced access to visitation and telephones; lack of sufficient equipment and facilities to handle the population; inadequate emergency response teams; and an increased risk of assaults by inmates on officers and on other inmates (TASA Group, 2012). Any one of these problems presents a risk to the prison population, but the real risk comes from the problems interacting with one another. For example, an increased risk of spread of disease would lead to sick officers, which can contribute to understaffing issues, making it more difficult for officers to properly contain fights. Inmate-on-officer assaults may pose the greatest risk: in fiscal year 2010, there were 1,700 assaults by prisoners on staff in federal prisons (Davidson, 2012). Clearly, overcrowding poses a danger to prison staff and inmates, and enacting the work-release program would help mitigate some of those dangers.

Of course, implementing the work-release program comes with its own drawbacks, including additional risk to the community, as a whole. Because William does not have the resources to appropriately screen prisoners who are considered for the work-release program, there is a very big risk that some of these inmates will cause problems on the outside of the prison. This could subject people in the outside population to a greater risk of crime victimization.

However, I believe that William's ethical choice is clear; he should implement the work-release program. As the prison warden, his primary responsibility has to be the safety of the people inside the prison environment. He knows that the current overcrowding poses a high risk of danger to his employees and to the inmates. Moreover, if he allows the problem to continue unabated, he is likely to lose some of his staff members and the hiring freeze means that he will be unable to replace any staff members who choose to leave their jobs. This means that even a small amount of delay could tremendously exacerbate the negative conditions within the prison. While implementing the work-release program may lead to an increased risk to people outside of the prison environment that risk is at least theoretical, while the risks associated with overcrowded prisons are concrete. Moreover, William could attempt to develop and implement risk assessment and screening processes for the work release program. For example, he could ask for input from the correctional officers, who have had experience with the inmates, about who poses the least risk if transferred to a work-release program.

The District Attorney

Martha campaigned for her position as district attorney as a tough-on-crime candidate, critical of plea bargains and reduced prison citizens. Her tough-on-crime approach has been echoed by the mayor and the police chief, who have launched an aggressive arrest campaign. However, Martha's review of the cases reveals that many of them are not supported by probable cause. Despite the lack of probable cause, Martha is convinced that the targeted arrestees are involved in the city's drug culture. She has to decide how to direct her staff to handle these prosecutions.

If Martha directs her staff to dismiss weak cases or seek plea bargains, then she risks upsetting the voters who put her in office. She ran on a strong anti-crime platform, in which she was critical of people who offered plea bargains and were not aggressive in their prosecution of criminals. Furthermore, Martha may place the community at risk. Most of the arrestees have significant contacts with crime in her city. It is not a stretch to imagine that their incarceration would have a positive impact on crime rates in the city. Making the city safer was not only one of Martha's campaign promises, but also a logical desire for one who has chosen to pursue prosecution as a career.

On the other hand, if Martha directs her staff to take these cases to trial, she faces another set of problems. First, without probable cause, many of these cases may be dismissed early in the trial procedure. If the defendants were arrested without probable cause, then a competent defense attorney should be able to reveal that lack of probable cause during trial and get an acquittal for those defendants. This might actually result in an increase in danger to the public, because the police force would be viewed as incompetent, and future arrests and prosecutions might be tainted by the stain of a number of dismissals due to lack of probable cause. In addition, trials are very expensive. If Martha does not feel as if she has a chance of winning a significant proportion of these trials, then it is a waste of resources for her to insist that the cases go to the trial stage.

However, the problem is not simply due to the risk of what dismissals would mean to the community as a whole or to the fiscal bottom-line of the government. The risk also has to take into account what prosecution would mean for each individual defendant. In the United States, there are a number of rules that protect criminal defendants from an over-reaching by the government. "The Fourth Amendment makes probable cause the key term in the arrest process. The police need probable cause to make an arrest, whether they are asking a judge to issue an arrest warrant or justifying an arrest after it has been made" (Berman, 2012). However, many criminal defendants cannot afford competent legal counsel and appointed counsel is often overworked, underpaid, understaffed, and undertrained, leading them to miss critical constitutional issues, like the ones these defendants are experiencing. For Martha to continue with the prosecution of these individuals, or, worse, to push for her staff to attempt to get plea bargains from these individuals so that they will be convicted, would be to profit from the violation of these arrestees' constitutional rights.

For Martha, this really is not an ethical dilemma. She has a duty to the public, but her duty to the public is clearly defined by the professional rules and ethical guidelines for prosecutors. The exact wording of these ethical guidelines may vary from state to state, but the essence of them can be found in the American Bar Association's standards for prosecutors. Under standard 3-1.2(c), "the duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict" (American Bar Association, 2012). Moreover, under standard 3-1.2(d) "it is an important function of the prosecutor to seek to reform and improve the administration of criminal justice. When inadequacies or injustices in the substantive or procedural law come to the prosecutor's attention, he or she should stimulate efforts for remedial action" (American Bar Association, 2012). The Constitution is the law of the land, and there can be no justice when the Constitution has been violated.

Therefore, Martha has a duty to direct her staff to dismiss those cases where the police lacked probable cause for arrest. Moreover, she has a duty to approach the police chief and the mayor to talk to them about substantive reforms in the city's current arrest policies, including training officers on when probable cause exists. If they fail to respond positively to her efforts, then she has a duty to make their policies public and seek reform of those policies. While this will almost certainly result in Martha losing her next election, the reality is that she chose to run for a job with a deeply instilled moral and ethical obligation that she seek justice. She has no alternative.

The Officer

Linda, a police officer, detains a man because she believes he is acting like a drug lookout. The man has no identification, but produces what appears to be crack cocaine and $400 in cash from his pocket. Recently, Linda's sergeant has chastised officers for bringing in petty drug cases and clogging up the system. Furthermore, her fellow officers have been complaining about a lack of support from other officers because they are prosecuting minor arrests instead of helping with calls. However, in order to identify the suspect, Linda needs to arrest him and charge him, so that he can be identified from his fingerprints. At this time, Linda gets a call from her dispatcher asking her to serve as backup for a burglary in process. Linda can tell the dispatcher that she is unavailable, arrest the man, and head to the police station for processing, or she can let the suspect go and serve as backup for the burglary in process.