Maintaining parole board legitimacy in New Jersey: identifying and evaluating the utility of victim and non-victim input

Over the last forty years, victims have gained access to every stage of the criminal justice process including parole decision-making. In 44 states, victims are notified when their offenders are considered for parole release and may provide input requesting that it be granted or denied. Though many states’ parole boards are required to solicit input from registered victims, oftentimes the authorizing statutes do not provide instruction on how parole boards should use input. Relatedly, parole boards receive non-victim input from family and friends of victims and offenders. All input providers expect their input matters. However, research about the effects of input on release decisions has been mixed. Parole boards are therefore placed in a precarious position. Input may or may not align with their mandate to make objective release decisions considering offenders’ risk to public safety. Should parole boards’ decisions differ from input they risk legitimacy in the eyes of constituents, particularly, politically influential victims and their advocates. In order to maintain perceptions of procedural justice, and retain legitimacy, parole boards should identify the value of victim-and non-victim input and be transparent about their decision-making process. This dissertation research provides the foundation for that important work by expanding the literature about the contents of input through an exploratory analysis of a representative sample of input submitted to the New Jersey State Parole Board. The research draws on 198 unique pieces of victim and non-victim input submitted to the NJSPB on behalf of 75 offenders who received first-time parole consideration in 2004. A content analysis, guided by a grounded theory methodological approach, uncovered 12 common themes in input as well as divergent ways in which victim-interested and offender-interested input providers operationalized them. Conjunctive analysis revealed little variation in the relative importance of each theme to release decisions. Additionally, only a minority of input addressed factors that the NJSPB considers when making release decisions. Parole boards and policy makers may use these results to reconsider the way input is used in order to set and meet their constituents’ expectations which will in turn, sustain parole board legitimacy.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Heather Robyn Tubman-Carbon