{"id":10508,"date":"2015-04-30T13:51:57","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T18:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=10508"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:07:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:07:23","slug":"parole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=10508","title":{"rendered":"Plotting a Prisoner’s Parole"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Bryan<\/a>
Bryan Davis (photo courtesy of UNC’s Graduate School)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When he was 15 years old, Shaun Hayden raped a young woman. He was charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison at the age of\u00a016.<\/p>\n

Almost 30 years later, the Supreme Court ruled that a felon convicted as a minor could not be sentenced to mandatory life in prison without a chance of parole. Using that ruling, Hayden filed a complaint in the federal court in the Eastern District of North Carolina. His lawsuit ended up on the desk of Mary Pollard, executive director of North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter we were appointed to represent Mr. Hayden, we had to learn a whole bunch about parole procedure in North Carolina,\u201d Pollard says. \u201cThere\u2019s a wealth of data on parole, but we needed someone with the expertise to dig through it and interpret what it\u00a0means.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enter Bryan Davis, a graduate student in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at UNC<\/span>-Chapel\u00a0Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started out pretty open ended\u2014what prisoners get parole and what prisoners don\u2019t? What\u2019s the likelihood of getting parole?\u201d Davis says. \u201cI began the project by trying to define the question really\u00a0clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what statistics is all about\u2014bringing clarity to seemingly random sets of numbers. It\u2019s true that there\u2019s an enormous amount of data about prisoners, on everything from their health to the crimes they committed to their behavior while in prison. But how do you make sense of it all?<\/p>\n

According to Davis, the first step is to narrow the data to only what\u2019s relevant. So he limited his data set to prisoners who were serving life sentences. The only way to get out of prison, if you have a life sentence, is through\u00a0parole.<\/p>\n

Davis went on to focus on men, and only men who were black or white, because there weren\u2019t enough women or people from other racial groups to get significant results. Eventually he narrowed his focus to about 2,400 prisoners in North\u00a0Carolina.<\/p>\n

Working with lawyers at NC<\/span> Prisoner Legal Services, Davis came up with a list of factors to include in the model. One major factor when it comes to granting parole is a convict\u2019s behavior while in prison. But how do you put a numerical value on\u00a0that?<\/p>\n

Davis found a way. \u201cThere\u2019s a long list of all the disciplinary infractions that occur in prison \u2013 it ranges from talking back to kidnapping another prisoner,\u201d he says. \u201cI came up with a system for weighing the seriousness of those infractions\u2014 \u2018one\u2019 was the least serious and \u2018three\u2019 was the most serious.\u201d \u00a0He then totaled the weighted infractions for each prisoner, and divided that by the number of years they\u2019d been in prison. The resulting number showed each prisoner\u2019s average behavior over the course of their whole sentence. And Davis gave it a fancy name: the infraction coefficient.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that was one measure\u2014basically a measure of how \u2018bad\u2019 each prisoner was,\u201d Davis says. The other major factors in his model included age, how long the prisoners had been incarcerated, and what type of crimes they\u00a0committed.<\/p>\n

There was one limitation: he couldn\u2019t take frequency of parole reviews into account. So Davis treated all parole cases as independent events. Some prisoners go up for parole review more frequently than others, he says. \u201cIdeally I would have a snapshot of every prisoner at every parole review to show how their circumstances\u00a0progressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what did the outcomes show? The nature of the crime was the most influential factor. According to Davis, prisoners who were serving time for sex crimes were much less likely to get parole than violent offenders. So a prisoner serving time for second-degree murder is much more likely to get parole than a prisoner serving a life sentence for sexually violating a\u00a0child.<\/p>\n

Davis also wanted to examine the role of race in determining parole outcomes. His calculations showed that black men were paroled about 15 percent less frequently than white men, but he couldn\u2019t confirm that race was a statistically significant factor, independent of the other factors like age or type of crime.<\/p>\n

Age appeared to have a subtle effect\u2014older prisoners were more likely to be granted parole, regardless of how long they had been in prison. \u201cIt\u2019s understandable in the context of their likelihood to reoffend,\u201d Davis says. \u201cOlder prisoners are physically weaker so they\u2019re considered less of a threat to\u00a0society.\u201d<\/p>\n

NC<\/span> Prisoner Legal Services submitted Davis\u2019s findings as part of Hayden\u2019s case. Eventually the court will rule on the constitutional adequacy of North Carolina\u2019s parole procedures for juvenile offenders\u2014but the case is still\u00a0pending.<\/p>\n

Pollard says she and her team are grateful for Davis\u2019s research. \u201cAs lawyers we\u2019re not trained to interpret large quantities of data, so we rely on specialists like him to do it for us,\u201d she says. \u201cHe also helps us explain it in court\u2014to juries\u2014in a way that lay people can\u00a0understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davis says he\u2019s interested in pursuing a career in data analysis as it relates to criminal justice. He enjoys the social implications of the work. \u201cWe need to take a magnifying glass to all the claims we make about the way things are,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat is good or bad for a community? So many claims are driven by talking heads. We need things to be a little more concrete\u2014we can do that by looking at\u00a0data.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Bryan Davis is a graduate student in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC<\/span>-Chapel Hill. His research won a 2015 Graduate Education Advancement Board Impact Award<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0valuable discoveries of direct benefit to North\u00a0Carolina.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mary Pollard is the executive director of North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Mary Lide Parker,<\/a><\/em> Endeavors <\/a>magazine<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re sentenced to life in prison, you might eventually be released through parole. But what are the chances a prisoner with a life sentence will actually get parole? A UNC researcher dug through years of data to find out. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10510,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,19,17,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carousel","category-diversity","category-natural-sciences-mathematics","category-social-sciences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47250,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10508\/revisions\/47250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}