So it would work more for the disincentives, things such as visitation privileges, store privileges, those kinds of things would be affected. Critics of the parole system argue it s not often used as an incentive anyway, but, rather, a way to clear out crowded prisons. Parole board member Jim Wetherington says that is true to some extent. When Wetherington was the chief of police in Columbus, Georgia, he used to hate the fact that criminals were paroled. But now he says he understands it isn t just early release.
Parole rewards good behavior and also keeps the prisons from overflowing.
We try to keep violent offenders as long as we can, but because of the bed space problem that Georgia faces, some folks are going to have to be released. Abolishing parole has been tried before by 17 states since the 1970 s. In several it had unintended consequences. In Connecticut, for example, the state was forced to release people early after parole was ended, because the prison populations had exploded. The average time served by offenders dropped to only 13 percent of the original sentence, because of a need to make room for new offenders.