Fairness for Prisoners' Families
Group
campaigns to open parole files State parole board files considered "confidential state secrets" should be opened to shed light on decisions made to grant inmates early release from prison , an Atlanta-based human rights group says. The Southern Center for Human Rights will announce its "Operation Open Book" campaign at 1 p.m. today, an hour before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles will consider the adoption of an early release policy. Parole files are closed to public inspection under Georgia law; even prison inmates and their attorneys are not allowed to view most of the documents within them. The parole board can declassify a parole file, but does not routinely do so. Such secrecy can leave prison inmates and their families in the dark about when they might make parole, their advocates say. "There is ... absolutely no transparency or accountability within the parole decision-making process, due to both the lack of a meaningful appeals procedure and the state secret status of parole files," states a letter from the group's attorneys to the parole board's attorney. Parole board spokeswoman Scheree Lipscomb said the files need to be secret because they often contain information from thousands of individuals who have "shared confidences about inmates" considered for parole. "Those individuals include law enforcement officials, family members and neighbors and we at no time want to break those confidences," Lipscomb said. "We want to protect those that speak with us openly and candidly. Without that input the process will not ferret out the best candidates for parole." Sara Totonchi, public policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights, said many inmates and their relatives are not sure why they have not been paroled and have no idea how the decisions are made. "Family after family has called the ... parole board, desperate for any information at all on ... their loved ones' parole status, only to be told that 'It's being processed,' or 'It's under investigation,' or given other assurances that everything is under control," Totonchi said. But the files sometimes contain errors and inmates and their lawyers have no way of disputing those mistakes that the parole board may be relying on to make its decisions, she said. Lipscomb noted that parole files contain some information that is open to public inspection, such as case files from local prosecutors' offices. Parole files also include information on an inmate's behavior in prison, rehabilitative courses the inmate may have taken, personal information about the inmate and risk assessments used to determine an inmate's probability for success if released. The parole board meets today at 2 p.m. to consider new guidelines for inmates convicted of certain serious felonies. Earlier this year, the board scrapped a policy requiring inmates to serve 90 percent of their sentences for those crimes after a judge found it had been unlawfully implemented. The board's new policy still classifies those crimes, including aggravated assault, robbery, child molestation and burglary of an occupied residence, as among the most serious. But inmates considered good release risks may now be eligible for parole after serving just 65 percent of the sentence.
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