Thousands of California prisoners appear each year before the state Board of Parole Hearings seeking a chance at freedom, but a decline in the rate at which commissioners find inmates suitable for parole has prompted new questions about why success is becoming harder to achieve. The grant rate has fallen from 39% in 2018 to below 25% in 2025, according to CalMatters data reported through a partnership with The Associated Press. While California has expanded parole opportunities over the last decade, experts told CalMatters that no single factor fully explains the downward turn.
Parole commissioners must follow legal standards while weighing questions of rehabilitation, public safety and the lasting harms caused by the underlying crime. Victims and prosecutors attend most hearings to argue against release, and commissioners’ findings generally serve as the last buffer against a former criminal being released, aside from the governor’s veto power. The story said commissioners undergo extensive training and that recidivism among those released is less than 3%, with fewer than 1% returning for crimes involving violence against another person.
Over the same period, the system has seen changes in both volume and eligibility. The number of parole hearings increased from 5,226 in 2018 to 9,017 in 2022, before plateauing at about 8,000 in 2023 and remaining there. At the same time, California’s prison population dropped significantly, falling from 128,000 in 2018 to about 90,000 today.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has sought to shift its incarceration model toward release and re-entry. The state has expanded parole opportunities for people convicted of crimes committed during youth and for older prisoners, while incentivizing rehabilitative programming, substance abuse treatment, and higher education. The story said the system’s goal is to help offenders work productively toward personal growth and self-improvement, even as the suitability rate declines.
Several experts pointed to how the changing composition of parole candidates is affecting outcomes. Lilli Paratore, director of legal services for UnCommon Law, said the number of elderly parole-eligible people is rising “in a significant way,” reflecting changes in who is reaching parole eligibility. Paratore said that in 2013, only 19% of hearings involved people 60-plus, but now 32% of hearings are people who are 60-plus. “And of course that just mirrors the aging prison population,” Paratore said.
Paratore’s comments came as the story reported that about 19,000 prisoners are 55 or older, based on a state budget proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom released this month. As older prisoners continue to age, the story said their mental and physical health can deteriorate in ways that adversely impact their ability to present themselves to the parole board. Instead of improving with repeated attempts, repeated denials can leave candidates feeling “frustrated, confused and discouraged,” according to the report.
Other experts said the stakes can differ for younger offenders, particularly those without life sentences. The story said expanded opportunities allow some offenders who committed crimes while under age 26 to go before the board after 15 years, with a denial often resulting in another five or 10 years before the next chance. It also described a potential mismatch in preparedness: some younger people, it said, may view the first hearing as a bid for a reduced sentence rather than their only chance at freedom.
The story contrasted those circumstances with youthful offenders serving life sentences, noting that their first chance at parole typically comes after serving a minimum of either 20 years, or more usually 25 years. Because these sentences are open-ended, the report said lifers may have longer to mature and prepare in ways that non-lifers do not experience.
Sex crimes were also highlighted as a category in which hearings generate particularly high scrutiny and red flags related to psychological risk. Jennifer Shaffer, a former Executive Officer of the Board of Parole Hearings, said programming for people who commit sex crimes must be tailored to the specific underlying issue. “There’s so many different types of people who commit sex crimes for a large variety of reasons and successful programming for those folks has to be tailored to that specific issue,” Shaffer said.
Shaffer provided examples in her remarks, saying the differences could include people “who actually get physically turned on by torturing people,” which she contrasted with those who “have anger issues” and express them through sexually dominating someone. The story said commissioners may be less likely to clear sex offenders because it is harder for them to show the personal insight and transformation commissioners require to find they are no longer an “unreasonable risk to public safety.” Shaffer said that “as horrible as this sounds, they may have at some point equated pain with sexual arousal — and breaking that connection is really difficult and takes a lot of very intense programming.”
The report also described how commissioners may interpret a growing range of information in an inmate’s dossier. It said commissioners review a person’s entire file days before their hearing and are tasked with interpreting the facts through a public safety lens, including details such as visitor logs, write-ups and personal expenses. Paratore said that in recent years “the world of information the board is looking at is growing — even though that information isn’t necessarily related to violence risk,” and that commissioners have increasingly looked at issues such as “(unemployment) fraud and restitution avoidance,” as well as “medical records” and “confidential information more and more.”
“What they think they need to consider has just grown without any guardrails and resulting in more people being denied parole because the board does not know how to properly interpret that information. This is especially true of medical records,” Paratore said. The story connected that expanding information environment to California’s shift to technology monitoring, saying the state began providing free electronic tablets in 2021 that ensure phone calls and text messages are digitally monitored and searchable using artificial intelligence.
The report said the more detailed digital record can allow closer examination of how prisoners manage outside funds placed into institutional trust accounts and how they pay for canteen and other services. It described how, in the aftermath of COVID relief and a statewide rash of fraudulent unemployment claims, attention to trust-account activity raised concerns that also drew focus to other potential misconduct.
Restitution was among the most emphasized explanations for the decline. The story described how criminal courts can order restitution amounts and said restitution can include court fees and victims services fees. It reported that for people who owe restitution, 50% is deducted from wages or incoming money until the debt is paid. Using an example from the report, it said if a person works in the kitchen for $80 a month, they keep $40, and it described a similar effect on deposits from family and friends.
The report said prisoners sometimes try to preserve more spending money by directing deposits into other people’s accounts, including agreements among prisoners to share the burden at lower deduction rates. It said those under-the-table transactions can now leave more of a digital footprint, and that commissioners look for remorse and awareness of how the crime affected victims. The report said it can be viewed negatively when commissioners see evidence of restitution avoidance.
Vanessa Nelson-Sloane, director of Life Support Alliance, said the restitution issue was the only explanation she could think of for the declining grant rate. “The restitution issue is the only thing I can think of to really explain the decline in the grant rate,” she said, adding that she had not seen new laws recently that would affect the considerations and saying her experience with denied candidates consistently points to restitution. “I am so sure that this is it because that’s all I hear about from people who are getting denied — restitution, restitution, restitution.”
CalMatters data reporter Jeremia Kimelman contributed to the story, which was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.