Parole Commission 2009 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Parole Commission is implementing, as an interim rule, an administrative remedy for those parole-eligible District of Columbia prisoners who contend that the Commission's use of the parole guidelines at 28 CFR 2.80(b) through (m) have significantly increased the risk of their punishment in violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution. Under the remedial plan, the Commission will schedule new parole hearings for those prisoners who meet the plan's eligibility criteria, unless the Commission grants the applicant a parole effective date after a pre-hearing assessment on the record. In conducting the new consideration, the Commission will apply the parole guidelines of the former District of Columbia Board of Parole that were promulgated in March 1985 and published in May 1987. The Commission is amending Sec. 2.80 by replacing paragraph (o), which describes a procedure no longer employed by the Commission, with the remedial plan.

The U.S. Parole Commission is promulgating interim rules to implement the District of Columbia Equitable Street Time Credit Amendment Act of 2008. This Act modifies parole laws for District of Columbia offenders by allowing the Parole Commission to terminate the supervision and legal custody of a parolee before the expiration of the parolee's sentence. The Act also modifies the requirement that the parolee lose credit for all time spent on parole when the Commission revokes a parolee's release for violating parole conditions. With these modifications, parole laws for DC offenders are more consistent with similar parole laws governing U.S. Code parole eligible offenders. The Commission is also making a number of conforming amendments to regulations that refer to the functions that are the subject of the new DC law, and editing regulations on the same subjects for U.S. Code parolees to make the regulations simpler and more understandable.