Parole and prisoner release: Exploring rationalities across time and place

Abstract

This special issue focusses on prisoner release and parole in different European contexts. The starting point for looking at this topic was our involvement in the European Society of Criminology’s Working Group on Community Sanctions and Measures and the COST Action on Offender Supervision in Europe,1 which explored the expanding use of community sanctions and measures across a number of European countries. These networks and subsequent publications (see e.g. Boone and Maguire, 2017; McNeill and Beyens, 2013; Robinson and McNeill, 2016), have drawn attention to what was a previously relatively neglected aspect of penality – sanctions imposed and served in the community. Part of the reason that community sanctions and measures have received less attention is because penological scholarship has tended to focus more closely on the prison, particularly in light of increases in prison populations and the attendant issues that arise from this (e.g. questions regarding utility, effectiveness and concerns regarding human rights, to name just a few). Of course, community sanctions and measures also encompass the requirements and conditions that are imposed upon people when they are released from prison. Therefore, a rise in prison numbers also leads to an expanded population of people subsequently made subject to supervision in the community, and this symbiotic relationship (or in some instances a feedback loop), is further evidenced by the return of people to prison for breaching the conditions of their release. Jonathan Simon’s (1993) book Poor Discipline: Parole and the Social Control of the Underclass 1890–1990, exploring the history of parole in California over the course of a century has been another important starting point. In this influential work, Simon (1993) traces the changing rationalities and techniques deployed to justify and govern prisoner release over time and critically relates these to the wider political economy, the changing role of the state and the increased salience directed towards governance through crime. Simon argues that given its juncture at the nexus between prison and the community, the study of parole provides a unique vantage point from which to explore wider penality. We have therefore asked the contributors to the special issue to consider these wider themes in their analysis. Any explorations of the processes of prisoner release and parole needs to first define what we mean by these terms. The word ‘parole’ has entered common parlance, but its precise meaning and its use in comparative analysis and academic literature varies (Padfield et al., 2012; van Zyl Smit and Corda, 2017). ‘Parole’ is typically taken to mean the decision made regarding the point at which a prisoner is released prior to their maximum sentence and becomes subject to some form of conditionality. In some instances, the ‘decision’ to release a prisoner is ‘automatic’, while in others it is ‘discretionary’. 895825 EJP0010.1177/2066220319895825European Journal of ProbationEditorial 2019