Washington’s Criminal Justice System: How the Removal of Parole has Impacted our Prison System

In 1984 the Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) effectively eliminated parole in Washington State. This change was accomplished by establishing determinate sentencing, in which people convicted of crimes are given a set sentence instead of an indeterminate one with a maximum and minimum range that requires parole review after the minimum sentence is served. As the tough-on-crime movement grew, there was a call for “truth in sentencing.” This meant that a life sentence should be a life sentence, not just 20 years, where the minimum and maximum range was 20 to life under indeterminate sentencing. Many who backed the SRA said they were pushing for the abolition of parole due to inconsistencies and racial bias among judges and the parole board. Today, Washington’s Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board (ISRB), which served as the State’s parole board prior to 1984, reviews only three types of convictions: convictions before 1984, convictions for certain sex crimes committed since September 2001, and convictions where juveniles received adult sentencing. The abolition of parole has greatly harmed those impacted by the criminal justice system and must be reinstated for the betterment of Washington’s prison system.

Prior to 1984, Washington State had a system of parole in which people who were convicted of crimes could have their sentences reviewed after they had served the minimum period specified by their sentencing. In 1975, State lawmakers, prosecutors, and community members who were following a federal trend in sentencing reform began to question our system. Christopher T. Bayley, the King County Prosecuting Attorney at the time, was a large advocate for the SRA. Bayley’s family has long been part of the Bush community, and I was able to interview him.

In my interview with the 80-year-old former prosecutor, I found my research lacking some details on the origins of the shift to determinate sentencing. Bayley said the determinate sentencing method was originally inspired by Australian Criminologist Norval Morris and his book The Future of Imprisonment, in which he argues that there is no evidence that good behaviour in prison correlates to how someone will act out of prison. In Morris’ vision, there would be no parole board. In my interview with Bayley, he explained the purpose of the determinate sentencing model, saying that “the whole point of determinate sentencing is you’re punishing someone for something he or she did.” Ideally, someone should be sentenced an appropriate amount of time for the crime they committed and then be released and done with their time in prison. The former prosecutor did say he believes there should be a system in place to make sure people are not in prison for unreasonably long times. 

While I believe that Bayley and others who pushed for determinate sentencing felt they were making a more equitable system, over time, the results of the SRA and removal of parole have not been great. In fact, following the abolition of our parole board, the size of our State's prison system has increased drastically, and people who have been convicted have experienced much harsher sentences. An ACLU report found that “Since 1978, Washington’s imprisonment rate and the total incarceration rate have more than doubled.” I was fortunate to interview a family friend who spent over two decades in prison for a non-violent crime: Jim Chambers was sentenced to over 40 years for drug manufacturing. He shared some compelling insights about how the abolition of parole has harmed our State’s criminal justice system more than it has helped. 

“If there had been parole, I would have served at most 9 years, or a third of my sentence,” says Chambers in regards to his own case. Chambers got out on clemency—meaning mercy—which is when the governor lets you out of prison early. To receive clemency you have to have an extraordinary circumstance. A parole board doesn’t have that standard. Another challenge with clemency is that it is often politically motivated; if you have a community against your release, the governor would be less willing to go against that community and risk reelection. Clemency is also a long process. It took Jim over two years to get a clemency hearing, and that was only due to the prosecutor agreeing to expedite his case. The average clemency process is 2.5 years, so for most, they must endure their entire prison time due to the determinate sentencing model. 

Jim Chambers argues that “the determinate sentencing model gives no reason for a person to rehabilitate. A person is serving x amount of time regardless of how they behave in prison.” If you have a violent crime, you serve 90% of your sentence, if you have a nonviolent crime, you serve 67% of your sentence, and if you have weapon enhancements, you serve your entire sentence. Determinate sentencing does not give people a reason to be good or to change. 

Going back to the argument that good behavior in prison does not indicate how someone will act out of prison: while this could be true, over sentencing is a frequent issue in Washington’s criminal justice system. For example, Jim Chambers received a 467-month sentence as someone who had never been to jail and for a nonviolent crime. The ACLU found that “From 1986 though 2016, the violent crime rate fell by 31 percent. By contrast, the rate at which long and life sentences were imposed increased by 175 percent.” The reason that over-sentencing has increased so dramatically is because of how the determinate sentencing model works: Prosecutors have all of the discretion on how to charge people. They decide how you are charged, what your charge is, how and if they are going to offer you a plea bargain, and if they are going to add weapon enhancements to your charge; everything that happens in your case is decided by the prosecutor. Chambers says, “Prosecutors don’t look at you as an individual, they look at you as a sentence… The Prosecutor's job is to get a conviction.” Fewer than 5% of cases in Washington go to trial, which means that a majority of people convicted will take plea deals because they are scared of a trial penalty, that is, getting a higher sentence in their trial. Public defenders will start by offering their clients the prosecutor’s plea deal, hoping to avoid a lengthy trial. Public defenders are overworked, with large caseloads, and they often try to move through their cases as fast as possible. Chambers said, “Justice in Washington is what you can pay for. I know people who have paid a lot of money for lawyers and who have beaten all their cases.” 

One of the reasons parole was originally abolished was to avoid biases by the Parole Board. In the 1980s, the Parole Board would frequently let out white inmates on parole but not Black inmates. The difference today is that all of this information is public and easily accessible. A parole board could not discriminate against inmates so blatantly due to high public scrutiny. While determinate sentencing was meant to take out bias in the system, such bias is now seen in the hands of prosecutors. For example, a Black person who commits the same crime as a white person could have a vastly different sentence because of issues like over-policing and over conviction. Because Black teens are over-policed, that person could have more points on their record than the white person, even though those past crimes were likely small and invalid. More points equals longer sentencing. This is an example of how bias is built into the system. Prosecutors do not always take basic facts or mitigating circumstances into account when sentencing. 

It is clear there are many flaws in Washington State's criminal justice system, many of which stem from the establishment of determinate sentencing under the SRA. There are ways to fix this issue. For all cases, there should be a minimum date when a person’s case gets reviewed, either by a parole board or some other form of checks and balances. In 2022 it cost the state roughly $63,626 on average to have someone in prison. In that same year, the Department of Corrections spent $800 million on Washington’s prisons. With the cost of incarceration on the State budget and communities and families torn apart by the prison system, there need to be changes. In my interview with former prosecutor Christopher Bayley, he agreed there must be a system in place to review these cases so that people are not stuck in prison and that the State does not need to pay for people who should not be there. Washington’s criminal justice system needs course correction, and reimplementing a parole board or system of review would make a big difference.