The Algoa Correctional Center in Jefferson City (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).
Missouri’s 19 prisons hold about 24,000 people. At some point, most will be released.
The question for crime victims, people behind bars and the families of both is when.
How that question gets answered is at the heart of a working group created by Gov. Mike Kehoe earlier this year to examine Missouri’s parole system to bring “clarity, transparency and accountability” to the process.
The deadline for the 15-member panel to complete its work is Oct. 1.
At the panel’s one and only public hearing June 13, Tony Helfrecht, the chairman of the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole, called the panel a “once-in-a-decade opportunity” that would overhaul supervision for paroled people with increased accountability “with the goal of safeguarding public safety while promoting successful reintegration, reintroduction and reducing recidivism.”
Helfrecht, who is leading the working group, and department Director Trevor Foley, who is vice-chair, declined a request for interviews until the report is complete. Six other members are corrections department employees or members of the state parole board, and five represent the judiciary and law enforcement.
Only two members were previously incarcerated.
Prisoner advocates worry the working group is stacked with Department of Corrections employees and law enforcement, and that will result in stricter rules and delayed releases.
“I have some serious concerns that the intent of the governor’s order is not going to be met and that this is going to be lip service when it’s such a wonderful opportunity to bring clarity to a process that provides release to so many people in Missouri,” said Amy Malinowski, co-director of the Missouri office of the MacArthur Justice Center, a non-profit that advocates on behalf of people involved in the criminal justice system.
One area advocates hope the group addresses is the parole board’s reinterpretation of the minimum time that must be served for some offenses. While state statute sets some minimums, such as for repeat offenders or particularly heinous crimes, the board has wide latitude in state law to set percentages of time for particular levels of crime, or to change them by rule or policy decisions.
The Division of Probation and Parole is part of the state corrections department but independent in many ways. It was sued in 2019 for the new way it has applied a policy — in place since 1985 — that incarcerated people must serve at least 15 years on any life sentence that is eligible for parole.
The change that prompted the ultimately unsuccessful court challenges pushed the parole dates for hundreds of incarcerated Missourians years — in some cases a decade — into the future.
Kent Gipson, a Kansas City attorney who represents several incarcerated people in appeals, said the change was unnecessary.
“If a guy’s shown he’s a worthy candidate for parole and he’s done 28 years, and he’s 50, or however old he probably is, what’s the point in keeping him another 15 years?” said Kent Gipson, Dunn’s attorney. “It’s stupid.”
The 2019 change was a topic of discussion at the working group’s brief June 13 public hearing, where only three people testified during the 25 minutes meeting. In addition to the questions about how eligibility is calculated, issues identified in testimony are:
Boilerplate language on forms delivering parole board decisions that give no details on the reasons for denials.
Lengthy delays between parole being granted at a hearing and the actual release. Current rules allow the hearings to be held four months prior to potential release, but until recently, those hearings were up to two years in advance of release.
Unwillingness of the parole board to use its discretion to convert consecutive sentences to concurrent sentences in eligible cases.
“When we give people a chance to reunite with their families and communities in a timely manner, we reinforce public safety,” Clifton Davis of the Missouri Justice Coalition told the working group. “We do not weaken it.”
There will be no more public hearings because the working group is under a tight deadline, Pojmann said. Instead, she said, written comments are being accepted.
Boilerplate language
When a person in a Missouri prison has a parole hearing, the board’s decision is delivered on a one-page form.
There are eight lines where an X indicates the decision, whether it is to deny and reschedule, set a release date or other action. At the bottom, there are 12 lines where reasons for the decision are given.
Many times, when parole is denied, the only reason provided is that “release at this time would depreciate the seriousness of the present offense…”
The parole board should give more details, especially to tell the incarcerated person what they should do to mitigate the concerns listed, said Courtney Everett, coordinator of the St. Louis University Prison Education Program.
Everett, along with Stacey Lannert, founder of Healing Sisters, is one of the two working group members who have served time in a Missouri prison. He was sentenced to 22 years for assault in 2004 and was released in 2021.
When time came for his parole hearing, he said it seemed formulaic. He was approaching his conditional release date, when he had to be released barring a reason to deny it.
“They really didn’t ask me questions,” he said. “It was like, ‘Where are you going, who are you going to live with?’ It was like 10 minutes. I didn’t say anything. But at the same time, these are the people who control whether a person is being released from prison. And sometimes you don’t know what they’re thinking.”
When denying parole, Malinowski said, the board should be required to give concrete, detailed reasons.
“The board should be required to explain the basis for their decision, cite the evidence they relied upon, and then explain what that person can do to better prepare themselves for release,” she said. “It’s not individualized other than the offender’s name and number changing on the form.”
The working group should mandate the change, Davis told them at the hearing.
“When individuals meet all conditions and have clear plans for success, they deserve more than a form letter,” he said. “They deserve a response that recognizes who they are.”
Parole particulars
How much time any person eligible for parole spends behind bars is determined in part by the classification of their offense in statute, as well their history of felony sentences. The harshest punishment, and the only one where no release is possible, is for first-degree murder.
Determining an individual’s earliest parole date is a calculation based partly in statute and partly in regulation. Basic eligibility is determined by the rules.
The minimum wait for parole eligibility is 15% of a sentence for the lowest-level felonies.
The percentage escalates as the classification of felony goes up the scale. For any felony that is a sexual or violent offense, or involves abuse of a child, regardless of classification, regulations require 33% of the sentence be served before parole eligibility.
Statutes set minimum time before parole eligibility for anyone previously placed in the custody of the department. That can be up to 80% of their sentence, depending on the number of previous terms in prison.
There are 25 offenses where the person sentenced to prison must serve 85% of their time before what is called conditional release. All prisoners have a conditional release period of up to five years at the end of their sentence where they are supervised until their term is completed.
The parole board does have some discretion, though advocates say it rarely exercises that discretion. It’s a scenario the working group was urged to address in its report to the governor.
One area in particular that was highlighted to the working group is the board’s ability to convert consecutive life without parole sentences for crimes committed by juveniles into concurrent sentences.
Missouri law allows the parole board to consider paroling people who committed offenses with long terms as juveniles when they have served 15 years. But the board rarely uses its discretion, Davis said.
“This isn’t about giving people a free pass,” he said. “It’s about recognizing that the law has already provided a mechanism to evaluate whether continuing consecutive time still serves the purpose of justice.”
The board also rarely uses its power to grant medical paroles for people near the end of their lives.
The MacArthur Justice Center sued the department to secure the release of Walter Hunter, who was serving multiple life sentences and was dying of liver cancer. The effort was unsuccessful and he died in 2017 at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking.
“I remember visiting with him, and he was in a wheelchair and was jaundiced and very swollen belly,” Malinowski said in an interview with The Independent. “And I got to know his sister very well, and all that he wanted was to be able to die with her.”
Transparency
The working group is limited in what it can do because its directive is to examine the regulations governing the parole process, Pojmann said, not sentencing statutes or any other law.
But there are steps that could increase transparency and assure the public that each case is being considered on its merits, Malinowski said.
“They’re just too closed to provide any sort of comfort to the public that they’re doing their job well, making reasonable and evidence-based decisions and giving people a fair shot,” Malinowski said.
Some states televise their parole hearings, Everett said. That helps maintain a serious attitude and brings clarity to the individual issues the board must consider.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a more transparent system is the anonymity the current process gives to decision-makers, he said.
“A lot of times, they’re looking for reasons to keep people incarcerated, to protect their own interest, their own conscience, or, sometimes, to protect their own careers.” Everett said. “Because if you’re the public official that lets somebody out of prison, you’re less likely to get voted in.”
One goal, Boone County Circuit Judge Brouck Jacobs, a member of the working group, said in an interview with The Independent, should be more certainty for crime victims, defendants and the public when a sentence is handed down.
Only someone familiar with the rules and laws governing parole would be able to estimate how factors such as the severity of the crime, the person’s history of incarceration and the age of the offender determine a release date. It should be clear to everyone in the courtroom what a sentence means, Jacobs said.
“They think somebody’s got seven years for breaking into their home, a burglary,” Jacobs said, “and then I think they’re shocked and chagrined when the person’s out in a year-and-a-half.”
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