| Abstrakt: |
Parole prediction, an estimate of the probability of violation or nonviolation of parole by an offender on the basis of ex perience tables, was put into practical operation in 1933 in Illinois. Since the early days of prediction, many refinements of the technique have been suggested and many issues raised and discussed—for instance, the weighting of predictive factors, the comparative importance of dynamic versus static factors, evalua tion of the changing attitudes of the inmates in the course of the correctional process, inconsistency of predictions based on different populations of parolees, the need for continually ad justing the experience tables, attempts to develop an index of predictive efficiency, and the continued search for the most meaningful predictive factors. The perennial central problem is the comparative merit of experience tables versus the case study in deciding on the parole of an individual offender. The con clusion that parole cannot forgo the advantages to be gained from the development and judicious use of experience tables seems to be warranted. |
