Parole in Maine - what can we learn from public perceptions, media coverage, and parole outcomes in other states?

Maine was the first state to abolish parole in 1976 and remains one of 16 states that does not offer parole. A reform bill to reinstate parole was recently passed in the house and the senate in Maine (see the full article in The Maine Public. The state legislature announced in April the creation of a 13-member commission to study restoring parole, with a December 1 deadline to make its recommendations (WMTW)

This project comes at a critical decision point for Maine. Depending on interest, this project may consitute one or two projects depending on student interest:

Project 1:

This project will build on work conducted in Professor Amy Douglass' class (Psychology 218) in partnership with the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition (MPAC) which researched perceptions of parole for violent and non-violent crimes and looks at the effect of different justifications on individual’s perceptions.

There is an opportunity in this project to look at broad questions including:

• What are the publics attitudes towards parole for violent and non-violent crimes?
• Do common perceptions about recidivism (recommitting a crime) and desistance (the reduction in criminal behavior that occurs after a person reaches adulthood) emerge from the survey or through the literature search?

• How has reinstating parole and the reform bill been represented in three Maine newspapers (The Sun Journal, Bangor Daily News, and Portland Press Herald)? Do similar themes emerge when looking at the media coverage and perception of parole in the survey Psych 218 conducted? How might the way the issues is covered affect individual’s attitudes about parole?

Project 2:

Project 2 looks broadly at what can we learn about recividivism and desistance from other states and country’s justice systems parole outcomes, and what the outcomes of the parole reform bill might looks like in Maine in terms of people released.

• Who are prisoners in Maine? Can we use data visualizations and infographics to educate people about prisoners and prison’s in Maine? Who? Why? What? Where?
• What are parole outcomes in states with parole that are similar to Maine in terms of criminal justice system, rural/urban population and demographics?
• Do we see statistical evidence for desistance (the reduction in criminal behavior that occurs after a person reaches adulthood)? How common is recidivism (recommitting crimes)?
• If the reform bill is passed, what would this look like in Maine? How many individuals and who would be eligible for parole in numbers?

This project is in collaboration with the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition.

Resources

• Defining, Measuring, and Analyzing Desistance by Prof. Michael Roque
• Incareration Trends Interactive Map - Vera Institute
• Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform
• Out of Sight: The Growth of Jails in Rural America
• Divided Justice: Trends in Black and White Incarceration 1990-2013
• The New Dynamics of Mass Incarceration
• Mariame Kaba
• Black and pink

Data

US-wide Data

• The Vera Insitute Data on TidyTuesday

Maine Data

• The Bureau of Justice Statistics
• Maine Statistical Analysis Center
• Maine Department of Corrections Reports & Statistical Data page, monthly report and yearly report.

Attitudes towards parole

• Survey data on lyceum.