Redemption or forfeiture? Understanding diversity in Australians’ attitudes to parole
| Author | Arie Freiberg,Lorana Bartels,Robin Fitzgerald |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895818800738 |
| Published date | 01 April 2020 |
| Date | 01 April 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818800738
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2020, Vol. 20(2) 169 –186
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895818800738
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Redemption or forfeiture?
Understanding diversity in
Australians’ attitudes to parole
Robin Fitzgerald
University of Queensland, Australia
Arie Freiberg
Monash University, Australia
Lorana Bartels
University of Canberra, Australia; University of Tasmania, Australia
Abstract
Recent Australian reforms to parole following high-profile violations are premised on a purported
public desire for greater restrictions on the use of parole. These changes reflect the tendency
of legislatures to presume that the public is largely punitive and invoke a ‘forfeiture’ of rights
rationale that weakens support for offender rehabilitation. We consider whether restricting
parole is based on a sound reading of public views. Drawing on a national study of public opinion
on parole in Australia, we use a latent variable approach to look for distinct patterns in attitudes
to parole and re-entry. We also examine what factors explain these patterns. The results support
the conclusion that appealing to a public belief in offenders’ ability to change may be the most
effective way to increase public confidence in parole systems.
Keywords
Forfeiture, latent class analysis, parole, public opinion, redeemability
Introduction
How should a community react when a sex offender on parole rapes and murders an inno-
cent victim? Such issues are particularly fraught when the community believes that the
offences may not have been committed had the offender not been released into the
Corresponding author:
Robin Fitzgerald, School of Social Science, University of Queensland, Michie Building (09) Level 3,
Queensland 4072, Australia.
Email: robin.fitzgerald@uq.edu.au
800738CRJ0010.1177/1748895818800738Criminology & Criminal JusticeFitzgerald et al.
research-article2018
Article
170 Criminology & Criminal Justice 20(2)
community. It is perhaps understandable that the community is concerned about crime
and that members of the public may be angry when an offender betrays the trust of a court
or parole board by causing further harm. If only the offender had not ‘walked free’, the
victim might still be alive, may not have been injured or had their possessions stolen.
Conditional release schemes such as parole are under attack in Australia as a result of
a number of high-profile offences committed by parolees (Freiberg et al., 2018), while
the United Kingdom (UK) has recently been dealing with the fallout of the decision to
grant parole to the ‘black cab rapist’, John Worboys (BBC News, 2018). These incidents
and ensuing reforms are reflective of larger changes in criminal justice systems gener-
ally, including disillusionment with rehabilitative ideals and practices, a greater focus on
retributive rationales for punishment and the ascendancy of risk or actuarial models of
justice. They also manifest apparent public anger towards, and decreasing tolerance of,
parole violations, accompanied by a desire to extinguish second chances for offenders
who may breach the conditions of their release from custody.
The presumed public ‘desire and call for harsh treatment of offenders’ (Callinan,
2013: 19) has been referred to in Australian parole system inquiries, by governments
claiming that the public is ‘fed up with the soft law and order approach’ (Wilson, 2013)
and in media reports suggesting that a ‘scared public’ (Koubaridis, 2014) is unwilling to
tolerate parole release. At least two assumptions about public opinion are implicit in
these kinds of statements: first, that the public opposes parole, perceiving it as the ‘soft’
or even ‘dangerous’ option, and second, that ‘the public’ is relatively uniform in its nega-
tive views of parole.
However, some recent evidence shows that the Australian public’s view of parole and
re-entry is more varied than general statements about public opinion on these matters
would suggest (Fitzgerald et al., 2016). This variability is also evident in Australian stud-
ies of public views about sentencing (Mackenzie et al., 2012; Warner et al., 2016).
Moreover, there is evidence that, despite government moves towards more punitive crimi-
nal justice responses, the Australian public is generally supportive of rehabilitative meas-
ures and the potential for even the most serious offenders to reform (O’Sullivan et al.,
2017; Reich, 2017). Internationally, evidence suggests that members of the public often
hold seemingly contradictory views about punishment (O’Hear and Wheelock, 2015).
The present study has two objectives. The first is to better understand the nature of and
possible variation in attitudes towards parole and re-entry. The second is to examine
whether fundamental beliefs about crime and punishment influence one’s chances of
holding particular views about parole and re-entry over and above typical individual char-
acteristics associated with attitudes towards crime and punishment. To do this, we use
latent class analysis (LCA; Lanza and Rhoades, 2013) to produce a typology of views on
parole and re-entry. We begin the article by reviewing the arguments that public attitudes
to parole, and criminal justice generally, might be expected to be heterogeneous. Following
this, we explore a set of beliefs that might explain individuals’ chances of holding particu-
lar views on parole and re-entry. We then turn to the methods and results, before providing
our observations and conclusions. Drawing on our survey data, our observations demon-
strate that the Australian public is not ‘indiscriminately punitive’; rather, there are signifi-
cant differences among subgroups of the population that can be explained in part by two
key beliefs which we characterize as ‘forfeiture’ and ‘redemption’.
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