I. HIGHLIGHTS *

II. MISSION STATEMENT *

III. AGENCY OVERVIEW *

IV. BOARD RESPONSIBILITIES *

V. IOWA COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK *

VI. PRISON POPULATION *

VII. SIXTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT PROBATION PROJECT *

VIII. TIME SERVED PRIOR TO PAROLE *

IX. PAROLE REVOCATION *

X. VICTIM SERVICES *

APPENDICES *

II. MISSION STATEMENT

The Iowa Board of Parole consists of five members appointed by the Governor. The chairperson and vice-chair are full-time salaried members of the Board. Three members are on a per diem basis and all five members serve staggered, four-year terms.

Iowa law states that the membership of the Board must be of good character and judicious background, must include a member of a minority group, may include a person ordained or designated a regular leader of a religious community and who is knowledgeable in correctional procedures and issues, and must meet at least two of the following three requirements:

ELIZABETH ROBINSON-FORD, Chairwoman, Davenport. Robinson-Ford was appointed to the Board in November, 1994, and appointed Chairperson in October, 2001 after having previously served as Vice-Chairperson. She also serves on the Iowa Prisoner Minority Over-Representation Task Force. Robinson-Ford has worked for the City of Shreveport, Louisiana, as an Administrative Assistant and Records Specialist for the Police Department. She is a member of the Minority Chamber of Commerce, the Iowa Invests Mentor Program, the Juvenile Justice Committee, Big Sisters, and United Way. She has also been selected to serve on the Iowa Board for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning Council, and the Iowa Organization for Victim Assistance. She has a degree in Applied Sciences from Southern University at Shreveport and a degree in Business Administration/Accounting from Commercial Business College in Alexandria, Louisiana. She has continued her education in the criminal justice field. Chairperson Robinson-Ford retired as Administrative Assistant with the Scott County Decategorization Program in 1999.

CHARLES W. LARSON, Chairperson, Cedar Rapids. Larson retired from his position as Board Chairperson in September, 2001 to become U.S. District Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa. Larson was appointed to the Board of Parole in May, 1998, after serving as Iowa’s Drug Policy Coordinator since 1993. This was his second term with the Board of Parole. Larson also served for seven years as United States Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa. From 1979 to 1982 he served in Saudi Arabia as a consultant to the Kingdom’s Highway Patrol Project. From 1973 to 1979 he served as Iowa’s Commissioner of Public Safety. Larson retired as a colonel from the Active Army Reserves.

RICHARD S. BORDWELL, Vice Chairperson, Washington, Iowa. Bordwell was appointed to the Board of Parole in October, 2001. He has been in the private practice of law since 1972. He also served as a county attorney for 6 ½ years and as a judicial magistrate for five years. In 1969 he received a B.S. degree form Iowa State University and, three years later, a J.D. degree from the University of Iowa. Bordwell retired as a Major from the U.S. Army Reserve.

CURTIS S. JENKINS, West Des Moines. Jenkins was appointed to the Board of Parole by Governor Terry Branstad in 1997. He was reappointed by Governor Thomas J. Vilsack in 2001. Jenkins has BS from Southern Illinois University. He is the is a member of the Corinthian Baptist Church, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Des Moines Alumni, and the KAPSI Foundation. Jenkins served in the United States Air Force. His volunteer work includes Internal Audit Committee and Tax Return Preparation for the Corinthian Baptist Church. He serves on the Board of Directors of OSACS Women Center and the Corinthian Gardens Apartments.

KAREN KAPLAN MUELHAUPT, Des Moines. Governor Thomas Vilsack appointed Muelhaupt to the Board of Parole in 1999. She received her BA degree from Drake University in 1988. She worked for the Department of Corrections as a Pre-sentence investigator from 1975-1985. In 1985, she was hired as a rape counselor with Polk County Victim Services. She co-created one of the Nation’s first Homicide Crisis Response teams, and in 1997 was the recipient of the Presidential Crime Victims award. She retired in 1998. Muelhaupt is a licensed Social Worker.

ROGERS KIRK, JR., Davenport. Kirk was appointed to the Board in November, 1999. For the past four years he has been the Pastor of the Third Missionary Baptist Church of Davenport. Pastor Kirk is President of the Iowa Congress of Christian Education, Dean of the Eastern District Association, Instructor in the National Congress of Christian Education, and Instructor at the American Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also past-president of the NAACP Metro-Com Branch, Quad City Interfaith and serves on many state and local boards. Pastor Kirk attended Northeast Louisiana University and has served parishes in Monroe and Ruston, Louisiana.

Clarence Key, Jr., Executive Director. Key has served the Board since November of 1999. Key has a BA degree in Criminal Justice from Simpson College and has worked in state government for over twenty years. Mr. Key has served as a probation officer for the 5th Judicial District Department of Correctional Services, as an Assistant for Corrections (Prison Ombudsman) for the Citizen's Aide Ombudsman, and as a Justice Systems Analyst for the Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning. Key also currently serves as an executive board member of the Des Moines Branch of the NAACP and has been president of the Iowa Corrections Association (1993-1994).

James C. Twedt, Senior Administrative Parole/Probation Judge

Jerry Menadue, Liaison Officer

Heather Hackbarth, Statistical Research Analyst

Karen Myers, Executive Officer

Lori Myers, Case Coordinator and Liaison Officer

Diane Jay, Victim Coordinator

Jo McGrane, Administrative Secretary

Carol Edmonston, Clerk

Michelle Carlson, Clerk Specialist

Paul Stageberg, Ph.D., Report Consultant

This project was supported by grant number 01C-1956, awarded by the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy (ODCP). Points of view in this document do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of either ODCP or the U.S. Department of Justice.

Inmate Reviews and Interviews. By law, the Board systematically reviews the status of each person committed to the custody of the Director of the Iowa Department of Corrections and considers the person’s prospects for parole or work release. The Board reviews at least annually the status of persons other than Class A felons, Class B felons serving time under the 85% law or felons serving mandatory minimum sentences. The Board also provides the person written notice of its parole or work release decision.

Not less than twenty days prior to conducting a hearing at which the Board interviews the person, the Board notifies the Department of Corrections regarding the interview schedule. The Department then makes the person available to the Board at the person’s institutional residence.

Risk Assessment. The Board has used offender risk assessment since March, 1981. Its use has enabled the Board to increase paroles while maintaining a high degree of public safety. An offender is rated on a scale from one to nine. In order to be granted parole, those receiving a parole risk score of one through six require three affirmative votes from the Board; a risk score of seven or eight requires four votes; and a risk score of nine requires all five votes.

Victim Notification. The Board notifies registered victims of violent crimes of upcoming interviews with identified offenders and of decisions made at those interviews. The victim or appointed counsel has the right to attend the interviews and testify. In addition, all written communications from victims become a permanent part of offenders’ files.

Parole. The Board is empowered to grant, rescind, and revoke parole, as well as discharge offenders from parole. The Board decides the conditions of parole, which may be added to by the supervising Judicial District

Work Release. The Board is empowered to grant or rescind work release. Work release periods are approximately six months, but may be adjusted through Board action.

Review of Parole and Work Release Programs. The Board is required to review parole and work release programs being instituted or considered nationwide and determine which programs may be useful for Iowa. Each year the Board also reviews current parole and work release programs and procedures used in the State of Iowa.

Release Studies. The Board is required to conduct studies of the parole and work release system as requested by the Governor and the General Assembly. The Board has fulfilled this responsibility in recent years by conducting recidivism studies of inmates released in FY1990, FY1996, and FY1998.

Review of Computer System. The Board is required to increase utilization of data processing and computerization to assist in the orderly operation of the parole and work release system.

The information contained in this section provides a statistical summary of the Board’s workload for FY2001. As the tables and charts on the following pages indicate, the Board conducted a total of 10,160 release deliberations. These deliberations resulted in the Board’s granting 3,000 paroles and 1,249 work releases. The majority of parole and work release grants were derived from case reviews rather than inmate interviews.

In FY2001 the Board continued taking particular care in paroling inmates convicted of crimes against persons. While 29.3 percent of the 9,076 deliberations involving felons resulted in paroles, only 10.3 percent of those involving felonies against persons resulted in paroles. Those convicted of crimes against persons were also less likely to be granted work release.

The Board attempted to respond to increasing pressure on the prison population in FY2001 by reducing average length of stay prior to a release decision. Because of its focus on preventing new violent crime, most of the reduction was seen among non-violent offenders.

Parole revocation hearings totaled 610 in FY2001, compared to 618 in FY2000. Of the total hearings, 536 resulted in revocation of parole. One hundred ninety-two of these (or 35.8 percent) were automatic revocations due to new convictions for felonies or aggravated misdemeanors. In addition, the Board conducted 363 work release revocation hearings, with 335 of these resulting in revocation.

On occasion the Board may rescind a grant of parole or work release due to inmate misbehavior, failure to follow through in development of a parole or work release plan, or at an inmate’s request. In FY2001 there were 233 parole rescissions, with 40 of these resulting from inmate refusal of parole. There were also 92 work release rescissions, with 43 of these due to inmate refusal.

Reviews of applications for restoration of citizenship totaled 487, with 320 (65.7 percent) recommended to the Governor. Both these figures were down from FY2000, although the change may be artificial due to a change in record keeping.

The Board reviewed 29 appeals from inmates requesting reconsideration of prior decisions resulting from revocation hearings. Also, the number of offenders receiving simultaneous parole and discharge totaled 236. These offenders are typically within 30 days of the end of their sentences, have had no recent disciplinary reports, are usually misdemeanants with low risk assessment scores, and are not serving sentences for felony sex offenses. The Board has concluded that the short period remaining until expiration of sentence is insufficient for parole officers to verify parole plans or commence supervision.

While figures suggest a decrease in executive clemency applications in FY2001, a change in record keeping may have resulted in some of the drop.

The research division completed 2,940 offender risk assessments in FY2001, a 21 percent increase from FY2000. As shown in the appendix, the Board makes consistent use of these assessments in determining whether to approve or deny parole or place inmates on work release.

Also, the victim coordinator reviewed 702 victim requests and mailed 2,330 notices to registered victims. Both these figures were up from FY2000 (564 requests and 2,102 notices). Registration requests have more than doubled since FY96. The total number of registered victims at the end of FY2001 was 2,300, compared to 1,988 in FY2000.

The table and graphs on the following pages show the workload of the Board and staff members for FY 2001

As is suggested in the chart above, expiration of sentence has played an increasing role as a means of exit from Iowa’s prison population. This is due primarily to the Board’s belief that there are certain types of offenders from whom the public must be protected as long as possible. While the Board supports the concept of supervision after release from prison, it is thought that maintaining some offenders as long as possible in a secure environment will contribute to public safety. To illustrate the variation among offender types in release practices, Table 4 is presented below:

Readers interested in an expanded version of this table are urged to consult Appendix 6, which lists paroles, expirations, and expiration percentages, by offense.

Due to the provisions of Iowa Code chapter 914, a person convicted of a criminal offense has the right to make application for executive clemency to the Governor of Iowa. The Governor requests that the Board of Parole make a recommendation regarding these applications. Requests for restoration of citizenship may also be submitted directly to the Iowa Board of Parole within sixty days of discharge from supervision. All applications for commutation, pardons, special restoration of citizenship (firearms), restoration of citizenship (after Board's sixty day time frame) must be submitted to the Governor’s office, which then forwards the applications on to the Board for review. Table 5 shows activity in this area for FY2001. Note that a number of applications may be pending at any given time, so the total number of applications shown in the table may not equal the number of approvals plus denials.

On July 14, 1994, the Board began to make use of the new Iowa Communications Network (ICN) to manage the State’s prison population more effectively and efficiently.

The ICN is a statewide two-way full motion fiber optic communication network that uses modern technology to connect points throughout all of Iowa’s ninety-nine counties. This network facilitates a variety of Board functions including parole interviews, registered victim input, and parole revocation hearings. Further, the ICN has allowed criminal justice students and the public to observe actual interviews of inmates being considered for parole or work release.

Iowa is the first state in the Nation to use its fiber optics system for monthly parole interviews. Since its initial use of the system in July of 1994, the Board experienced few difficulties with the ICN; the benefits (i.e., cost effectiveness, reduced travel time, and ease of use) have generated positive reactions from the Board, the media, the public, and other states. Inmates and family members have also expressed support for participation in the interview process via the ICN.

With the completion of its own classroom in October, 1995, the Board greatly increased its use of the ICN in the parole process. The Board no longer needs to prepare volumes of inmate files for transport to an ICN classroom; files are reviewed from the Board’s conference room. Thus, transportation and security concerns regarding inmate files have been greatly reduced.

Prior to ICN, victims desiring input were required to travel to a distant institution, were subjected to a rigorous security check, and were possibly seated in the same room as the inmate’s family and friends. With the creation of the Board’s TeleVictim Program, a registered victim is notified of the intended release hearing and is directed to an ICN site near the victim’s home. The victim travels to the local site, provides input, and returns home. The process often requires a few minutes instead of many hours under the old process. Further, the ICN separates victims from inmates, families, and friends and helps defuse potentially tense situations. The incorporation of the registered victim input process via the ICN continues to be a model for parole board interaction with registered victims.

One thousand, four hundred thirty-three parole and probation revocation hearings have been conducted via the ICN since July of 1994. Prior to the creation of the ICN, parole revocation hearings required travel to counties where the alleged parole violation occurred, which could involve as many as four hours of travel one-way. With the advent of ICN, the parole judge travels to a nearby ICN classroom, conducts the hearings, determines violations and appropriate sanctions, and proceeds to the next case. Probation revocation cases are handled as part of the pilot project in the Sixth Judicial District. Of the 510 ICN hearings conducted in FY2001, 235 were probation revocation hearings. Further information on these will be found in the chapter on the Sixth Judicial District pilot program.

The existence of the ICN permitted the Board of Parole to establish its TeleJustice 2000 Education Project in May of 1998 in cooperation with the Heartland Area Education Association. The three main objectives of this project are the following:

This project places high school students in the live parole interview sessions of the Parole Board via the ICN. Students view inmates making pleas for freedom and the Board’s reactions as they occur. At the conclusion of sessions the students can question the Board or the students’ in-class attorney volunteers. This process enables the students also learn about the characteristics of incarcerated offenders in Iowa and the behaviors that resulted in their imprisonment. Since May of 1998 the Board has hosted over 85 high school classes in this project. Use of the ICN for this purpose has been met with enthusiasm among students, teachers, and local media.

The Board has also utilized the ICN for a number of special projects, including statewide meetings of registered victims and training of parole and probation officers and local public defenders.

The Board’s TeleJustice 2000 Video Project is a program that has resulted in the installation of current video technology in selected Iowa courthouses (Linn County, Polk County, Scott County and Sioux County) along with the Polk County Jail and Interim Jail.

At the present time, the TeleJustice Courtroom is used primarily for Parole and Probation Revocation Hearings. During FY2001 Senior Administrative Parole and Probation Judge James C. Twedt has conducted approximately 204 hearings from his Boone Field Office to Video Courtroom 1B in Cedar Rapids. This process allows Judge Twedt to avoid the lengthy round trip to and from Cedar Rapids.

Note: hours were calculated as mileage divided by 50. Mileage for Board meetings and revocations were calculated as the distance between Des Moines and the institution in which hearings were held. Mileage for victims and families was developed by identifying victims and families who attended ICN hearings, locating their place of residence, and calculating the distance between there and the site of the hearing.

The Board plans continued use of such technological advances as the ICN as it strives to protect the public from serious crime.

This section is included because, while boards of parole have some control over output from prisons, they have little control over input to prisons. Although boards of parole may have some impact on the nature of the prison population through paroling activity (e.g., through either hastening or delaying release of certain types of prisoners), by and large the prison population is a "given" with which a board must work.

Table 8 shows the make-up of Iowa’s prison population on June 30, 2001, dividing the population into offense classes and persons/non-persons groups. The largest portion of the population is serving time for Class C and Class D felonies (ten-year and five-year maximums) that are not against persons. The only other category of offense accounting for more than ten percent of the population is Class B felonies against persons (principally robbery in the first degree).

Table 9, on page 26, presents data on the length of sentences of inmates in residence on June 30 going back to 1990. The table shows increases in each category, but the largest growth among sentences of five years to less than ten years. This may be due to a combination a factors: a greater likelihood on the part of judges to incarcerate Class D felons; a higher rate of failure among Class D felony probationers (these data don’t distinguish between direct court commitments and probation revocations); or an increasing length-of-stay for this group.

Table 9 also shows that, since FY1991, Iowa’s prison population has risen 99.7 percent, or slightly under ten percent per year. Most recently, Iowa’s prison population grew at 6.0 percent in FY2001 after a 5.7 percent increase the previous year. Nationally, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports that, although prison populations increased only 1.3 percent between 1999 and 2000, the average increase in state prison populations was 6.0 percent each year from 1990 to 2000 (Beck, 2001). While prison populations have risen steadily throughout the Nation since 1990, Iowa’s increase has eclipsed the national average; according to the BJS, Iowa’s increase from 1990 to 2000 was the Nation’s eleventh highest.

In terms of sentence length, Iowa has seen its largest increase in those serving sentences for Class D felonies (with maximum indeterminate terms of up to five years). The largest group of sentences in the prison population is Class C felonies, with a maximum term of up to ten years, although this group has seen below-average increases during the past. Many of these Class C felons have been convicted of controlled substance crimes.

The chart on the following page also presents this information, but eliminates sentences of less than two years and the unknown category to make interpretation easier. This shows even more clearly the dramatic rise in those serving sentences of five years to less than ten years (principally Class D felons). At least a portion of this rise has been due to the creation of a new offense, Burglary-3^rd degree (a Class D felony), in 1992. With the creation of this offense there has been a large decrease in the number of Burglary-2^nd convictions, reducing the rise in Class C felony convictions and contributing to the rise in Class D convictions.

The other point that is evident in the bar graph is the increase in inmates serving sentences of twenty to less than fifty years in the past three years. These offenses would primarily be Class B felonies. While the number of those serving sentences of less than ten years has dropped since FY98, there has been an increase of more than 300 inmates serving twenty to less than 50 years, accounting for about half of the population’s increase over that period.

To further provide an idea of the nature changes in the prison population, Table 10 is presented below, showing changes in the number of broad offender types in prison admissions between FY91 and FY2001. The largest changes over the period shown on the table have been seen in drug offenses (+279 percent), OWI/traffic (+197 percent), assault (+160 percent), weapons offenses (+96.4%), other miscellaneous offenses (+121 percent), and forgery/fraud (+92.2 percent). All three of the offenses showing the largest increases involved significant numbers of offenders, but only one of the three – drug offenses – also showed an increase between FY2000 and FY2001.

Only one group of offenses – murder/manslaughter -- showed decreased admissions during the ten-year period, although four showed decreases between FY2000 and FY2001. Murder/manslaughter involves only a small number of admissions each year, and such small numbers are susceptible to large yearly fluctuation

The next three tables deal with the changing demography of the prison population over the past decade, showing race, current age, and number of prison commitments. In terms of racial groups, there has been a considerable change during the period, particularly so for Hispanics, figures for whom weren’t even tabulated separately at the beginning of the decade.

Note that while the percentage increase for African Americans outstripped that for whites, there has been little change in their raw number of inmates since FY98; while whites showed an increase of 479 during that period, the black increase was only 65. Nevertheless, African Americans continue to be over-represented in Iowa’s prison population.

A final comment on Table 11 concerns Asian Americans who, although they still don’t constitute a large portion of the prison population, have seen a dramatic increase since FY1991. Further analysis should be done on this group to determine if the change over the decade is simply a function of small numbers or, instead, a real trend.

Table 12 illustrates the gradual aging of Iowa’s prison population. Either as a function of longer average sentences or because of later "burn-out" of criminal careers, Iowa’s prison population. After showing a median age of 29 at the beginning of the decade, the prison population showed a median of 32 at the end of FY2001. This, combined with Table 13 on prison sentences, suggests that the prison population has become older and more hardened.

Finally, Table 13 shows inmate prison sentences, including the current sentence. While the table shows that most inmates were serving their first prison sentence, it also shows that the more inmates have been returning to Iowa’s prisons after having been there before. While in FY91 fully 77 percent of the inmates on June 30 had not previously served an Iowa prison sentence, by the end of FY2001 that figure had dropped to 71.3 after a decade-long slide. Note, also, that the largest percentage increases were among inmates with three or more prison sentences.

Another source of change in the population is shown in Table 14, which presents data on the yearend population, persons serving life sentences, and persons serving mandatory minimum sentences. This table is somewhat surprising in regards to "lifers," as, while there have been steady increases in persons serving life sentences, over the last ten years their percentage change has been less than that of the population as a whole (perhaps due to a general drop in homicide). Due in part to legislative action, the number of those serving mandatory minimum terms, however, has risen faster than the population as a whole, with most of the increase occurring since FY93. The drop in mandatory minimums between 1999 and 2000 is apparently attributable to a change in record-keeping rather than a change in the nature of the prison population itself.

Table 15 shows a broader picture of changes in the prison population, examining the inmate population by the type of commission offense on June 30. It shows that, between FY1991 and FY2001, the increase in inmates committed for persons offenses clearly outstripped that for non-persons offenses. Note that between 1991 and 1998 there either were more non-persons offenders in the population than persons offenders or the difference between the two was slight. Since 1998, however, a change has occurred, with at least 400 more persons offenders imprisoned.

Beginning in FY93, the population also includes a breakdown of those committed for "chemical offenses," which include drug and alcohol offenses. Since that time the percentage increase in chemical offenses is much greater than for either persons or non-persons offenses, and the raw increase in chemical offenses almost equals that for persons offenses.

This information is also presented graphically below.

Additional data are available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and from the Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning (CJJP) with which to compare Iowa and the Nation. Iowa’s 2001 Inmate Profile shows that Iowa’s prison population in 2001 consisted of 42 percent violent offenders, 25 percent property offenders, 24 percent drug offenders, and eight percent public order offenders. In 1999 (the last year for which figures are available) sentenced prisoners nationally consisted of 48 percent violent offenders, 21 percent property offenders, 21 percent drug offenders, and 10 percent public order offenders (Beck, 2001). This suggests that violent offenders are under-represented and drug and property offenders slightly over-represented in the Iowa prison system compared to prison systems in other states. This over-representation may be characteristic of Midwestern states, however, as they typically report low rates of violent crime and mid-range rates of property crime.

National figures also differ from Iowa’s in the types of offenses resulting in population increases. Nationally, fully 51 percent of the increase in prison population between 1990 and 1999 consisted of violent offenders, with drug offenders accounting for 20 percent, property offenders 14 percent, and public-order offenders 15 percent. In Iowa, however, most of the increase has been due to chemical (drug and alcohol) offenders, whose numbers have more than doubled since 1993.

While direct court commitments reached their highest level in FY2000, both probation and parole revocation admissions continued rising in FY2001, resulting in a record number of commitments that year. While direct court commitments have gradually risen over the period, the increase in probation revocations and suspensions has occurred primarily since 1993, more than doubling since then, as the probation revocation decreases in FY99 and FY2000 were not continued in FY2001. The high ratio of probation revocation admissions means that a significant portion of the prison population has already had opportunities to avoid incarceration by serving periods of probation in the community, but that they have failed. This is one of the factors leading to increased caution on the part of the Board in granting parole.

The FY2001 increase in probation revocations has significance also because increases in probation revocations have recently been one of the driving forces behind Iowa’s increasing prison population. Between FY91 and FY98, probation revocations had increased from 578 to 1,694 (or 193 percent). During the same period direct court commitments increased from 2,891 to 4,735 (or 64 percent). In FY92 parole revocations and suspensions and probation revocations were nearly equal. Since then, however, probation revocations and suspensions have reached a level almost four times that of parole revocations and suspensions. In FY2001 probation revocations outnumbered parole revocations by nearly 3:1.

Source: Department of Corrections E-1 Reports.

Iowa’s trend in parole revocations runs contrary to the national trend. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, parole violators constituted 34 percent of all national prison admissions in 1996, and while 70 percent of parole terminations in 1984 were termed "successful," in 1996 this percentage had been reduced to less than half. Iowa, on the other hand, has not shown an increase in parole revocations, and only 28.4 percent of those released to parole supervision in FY1996 were revoked from supervision.

The next graph shows end-of-year prison population, total admissions, total releases, and parole releases. More than previous tables and charts, this one shows increasing caution on the part of the Board in protecting the public. As shown previously in the Workload section, through FY2001 paroles have accounted for a smaller portion of overall releases in recent years, as the Board has allowed more inmates to expire sentences rather than granting them parole. This is consistent with public safety concerns, as Iowa research has previously shown that some high-risk inmates are best incapacitated for as long a period as possible to ensure public safety. The net result of this approach is that, through FY2001, the number of paroles granted has varied little since 1986, when there were 1,216 paroles out of a total prison population of 2,722. That year, slightly more than half the releases from prison were via parole. Since that time, with the advent of additional release opportunities such as work release, paroles as a percentage of all releases have dropped. This trend continued in FY2001. See page 14 for further illustration of this trend. Note that figures for this chart come from Department of Corrections E-1 reports; due to delays in release, rescissions, and other factors, the number of paroles in this chart do not necessarily agree with figures presented elsewhere in this report.

Source: Department of Corrections E-1 Reports.

A final description of the prison population is provided in Table 16, which shows the distribution of risk levels in the prison population. This may be compared with tables pertaining to risk levels and parole decision-making later in the report. The table shows that, of the included groups of offenders, those serving time for Class A felonies show the lowest statistical risk. Those serving time for "other felonies" shows the highest average risk, probably due to the concentration of habitual criminals in that class. Note also that the misdemeanants tend to have higher risk scores than the felons. These findings are not particularly surprising, given that the risk score is based upon offense seriousness and the duration and intensity of the prior criminal history. Class A felons may be sent to prison based upon the severity of a single offense, and thus many may have low risk scores. Habitual criminals nearly always have lengthy criminal histories beyond the three felony convictions required for conviction as an habitual criminal. Misdemeanants are usually incarcerated only with lengthy criminal histories or failure to cooperate on probation.