eliminated parole. Obviously those who were convicted before parole was eliminated maintain their eligibility for parole. When they were convicted everyone’s assumption - judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, parole board, state legislature - was that because of Virginia’s system and practice they would serve only a portion of the sentence. Prosecutors recommended sentences knowing this. Defense counsel recommended their clients plea to sentences knowing this. Judges knew this when giving sentences to defendants. Everyone’s assumption was that someone sentenced to say 50 years would serve a portion that, say 20 years, before getting parole. So if a judge thought a guy should spend 20 years in jail you had sentence him to 50 knowing that he would be likely on parole in about 20-25 years.

Virginia eliminated parole because it was at the point it didn’t make sense sentence someone to a super long time with everyone knowing that it’s going to be a much shorter amount of time. Just sentence people to the time they should actually serve - much cleaner and more straight forward.

However we still have people in prison who were convicted prior to the elimination of parole. Since parole has been eliminated the parole board has release people at a much lower rate than they were before the change in law. Assumptions that someone given a 50 year sentence would actually be out in 15, 20, 25 or so have turned out to be wrong because the parole board is not releasing them.

We should be very careful about assuming someone who received a very long sentence many years ago should not be paroled, because the assumption at the time of conviction would’ve been that they would get parole and likely be out many years before this.


[Post edited by RML Hoos at 02/27/2021 09:44AM]