California's youth offender law aimed to get more people out on parole. It hasn’t
When a prisoner who committed a serious crime as a youth seeks parole, California law requires the parole board to give “great weight” to their age and mental development, and to grant release unless they clearly pose a danger to the public. But records for the past decade indicate the law has had little or no effect on parole rates.
The Board of Parole Hearings, appointed by the governor, approves release of about one-third of the inmates it considers, those sentenced to long prison terms or to indeterminate terms of up to life in prison. Despite the state law on youth offenders, defined as those who were sentenced as adults for crimes committed when they were 25 or younger, their parole-approval rates have been similar to those for older offenders since the law took effect in 2014.
For example, the board granted parole to 35% of the prisoners whose cases it heard in 2023, and to 38% of the youth offenders, according to state prison officials. Between 2018 and 2022, the approval rates ranged from 28% to 39% for all cases and from 34% to 40% for youth offenders.
Those figures do not include thousands of prisoners who were eligible for parole consideration but decided they were unlikely to win release and waived their right to a hearing. And fears that parolees are dangerous appear to be overblown: According to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, among 5,248 California inmates who were freed on parole between 2011 and 2019, only 23, or 0.5%, were convicted of a felony against another person in the three years after their release.
The law’s purpose “was to recognize that young people are categorically less culpable given their under-developed brains and corresponding maturity and impulsivity levels,” said Jonas Specter, legal services coordinator for UnCommon Law, an Oakland nonprofit that provides legal aid and counseling to those seeking parole. “In practice, unfortunately, youth offender parole hearings differ little from regular parole hearings and are not resulting in higher grant rates.”
The board is part of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which runs the prisons. Lawyers appearing before the board have said its orientation has historically been pro-law enforcement.
Among its 21 commissioners, three are former prosecutors, six are former prison guards and two have held other positions in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Eleven members were appointed by Gov. Gavin Newson and 10 by Gov. Jerry Brown.
Hearings are conducted before a single commissioner and an appointed deputy, and the full board generally reviews only cases in which the two disagree.
One of attorney Avi Frey’s clients was convicted of murder in Southern California at age 16, more than 30 years ago, and sentenced as an adult to life with the possibility of parole. The board granted parole at his first hearing in 2019, but Newsom overruled the decision, Frey said, on the grounds that the inmate lacked “insight” — he could not recall details of a crime he had committed while on drugs — and needed to do more to “control his triggers emotionally.”
The man, who Frey said had a strong record of rehabilitation in prison, went back before the board in 2022. He was then denied parole by different commissioners based on confidential evidence that they refused to disclose, said Frey, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.