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The Foundations of Parole in California

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Sheldon L. Messinger ,
John E. Berecochea ,
David Rauma  and
Richard A. Berk
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Abstract

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Parole was introduced in California, and used for over a decade, primarily to relieve governors of part of the burden of exercising clemency to reduce the excessive sentences of selected state prisoners. Later, when parole was additionally used to relieve prison crowding, processes were initiated that eventually led to the adoption of a rehabilitative justification for parole. We outline these events and their background and briefly consider their implications for the study of penal reforms.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , 1985 , pp. 69 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

This paper is based on research supported by grants from the National Institute of Justice and the Law and Social Sciences Program, National Science Foundation. We wish to thank: David L. Snyder and Joseph P. Samora, California State Archives, and Marie Vida Ryan and Dona Good, California Department of Corrections, for help in locating primary records; and Francis A. Allen, Thomas G. Blomberg, Stanley Cohen, Gilbert Geis, Richard O. Lempert, and Stanton Wheeler for editorial suggestions.

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