Parole Never Made Sense to Us

The Urban Institute recently compared rates of recidivism among ex-convicts who were paroled with those among ex-convicts who were released with no strings attached:

The study found that the recidivism rate among prisoners released unconditionally was virtually the same as that among "mandatory parolees," or prisoners for whom parole is part of a fixed sentence: 62 percent of the former and 61 percent of the latter were re-arrested at least once within two years.

Link.