Cell Phones and “Excessive Contact”: The Contradictory Imperatives Facing California’s Parole-Eligible Lifers

Abstract

A growing literature emphasizes that U.S. correctional systems have remained committed to rehabilitative goals despite their turn toward incapacitation and punishment. Although past research has documented this commitment in prisons and parole supervision agencies, less is understood about how it is manifested in the discretionary parole release process. This article explores whether and how parole boards encourage people serving parole-eligible life sentences (“lifers”) to maintain ties to friends and family outside of prison, and the results of such encouragement. Interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and parole-hearing transcripts reveal that California’s parole board encourages such rehabilitative ties through comments at parole hearings and through its parole-eligibility criteria. But to sustain these relationships, some lifers engage in misconduct to bypass restrictive prison policies by using contraband cell phones or engaging in physical contact with visitors that is deemed “excessive.” When detected, these disciplinary infractions become a stated cause of parole denials.