Negotiating penal hybridity: Time–space boundary-work in parole decision making

Abstract

Drawn on qualitative findings from discretionary chairpersons of parole boards in Israel, the study aims to theorize parole decision making as time–space boundary-work. Parole decision-makers were found to act within a hybrid professional environment that requires them to process distinct, and possibly conflicting, penal values, competencies and orientations. In order to address their professional tensions, parole decision-makers constantly negotiate their time and space, and thereby their professional identity. First, the parole decision-makers perform temporal boundary-work—conceptualizing their work and identity through qualitative-expansive time. Second, they perform spatial boundary-work—conceptualizing their work and identity through either (a) judicial space or (b) therapeutic space. This time–space work is used both to span and demarcate their boundaries in relation to other penal actors and to increase their visibility and legitimacy.

Introduction

Despite being ‘supremely powerful institutions’ (Reitz and Rhine, 2020: 286), the work of parole boards is a ‘notoriously understudied’ area of criminal justice that tends to focus on ‘front-door’ practices of policing, trial and sentencing (Young, 2020: 938; see also Rhine et al., 2017; Ruhland, 2020). In recent years there has been growing scholarly interest in parole decision making, recognizing that ‘“endings” can be a rich area to explore’ (Maruna, 2011: 5). Criminologists have shown increasing interest in parole decision making including the work and professional identity of parole supervision officers (Lynch, 1998; Werth, 2012, 2017). However, how parole boards perceive, experience and conceptualize their professional identity has remained largely under-theorized, especially beyond the US context (for recent exceptions see Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Padfield, 2017). The aim of this article was to address this gap by mobilizing insights from organizational boundary-work scholarship (Gieryn, 1983; Lamont and Molnár, 2002) in order to theorize the professional identity of parole decision-makers.

This article drew on qualitative findings from interviews with discretionary chairpersons of parole boards in Israel. Parole decision-makers were found to act within a hybrid professional environment that requires them to process distinct, and possibly conflicting, penal values, competencies and orientations. In order to address their professional tensions, parole decision-makers constantly negotiate their time and space, and thereby their professional identity. First, they perform temporal work through conceptualizing time as qualitative-expansive rather than quantitative-narrow. Second, they perform spatial boundary-work through conceptualizing their carceral-related space, as either (a) a judicial space that is characterized by the symbols, rhetoric, authorities, tools and logics of court and their work as that of a judicial body, holding normative and review powers; or as (b) a therapeutic space that is characterized by the core communicative, symbolic and physical manifestations of a therapeutic encounter and they thus perceive their work as dialogic, respectful, emphatic and sensitive. This time–space boundary-work enables parole decision-makers to either span or demarcate their work with or from other actors, and thereby increase their visibility and legitimacy within and outside their field.

Theoretical background

The professional status of parole decision-makers

Discretionary parole boards are authorized with the power to release a prisoner before the end of an original sentence under licence (supervision) conditions (Padfield et al., 2013; Reitz and Rhine, 2020; Rhine et al., 2017). The purposes, discourses and tools of parole have changed constantly throughout its history, and between systems, including normalizing, individualized and risk-management models (Padfield et al., 2013; Simon, 1993). These purposes, discourses and tools were reframed over time to fit and preserve the longevity of whatever constituted current penal philosophy (Shah, 2017; Simon, 1993). Parole decision-makers come from varied professional backgrounds, including judges, psychiatrists, psychologists, correctional experts and community members (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Padfield, 2017; Page, 2011; Paparozzi and Caplan, 2009). Through their work, parole decision-makers constantly interact with multiple judicial and correctional actors that submit their recommendations to the parole board (Paparozzi and Caplan, 2009; Paparozzi and DeMichele, 2008). Such a multifaceted body of information from a variety of sources is assimilated and amalgamated through their decision making (Lynch, 1998; Paparozzi and Caplan, 2009).

Despite their powers, parole boards have been described as ‘exceedingly weak agencies’ in terms of professional and political status (Reitz and Rhine, 2020: 286). Parole boards were found to be characterized by ‘institutional vulnerability and personal job insecurity’ that pushed them towards a risk averse approach (Rhine et al., 2017: 286).

The organizational status of parole holds an ‘ambiguous space between the judiciary and executive’ (Fitzgerald et al., 2021: 2) and exists in a liminal position ‘betwixt and between’ prison and community (Greene and Dalke, 2021; Maruna, 2011; Riggs, 2015; Werth, 2012). The professional characteristics of parole decision-makers, ideologies and attitudes about their work, as well as their socio-cultural context, were found to affect their routine decision making and their relation with the prisoners (Lerman and Page, 2016; Lynch, 1998; Paparozzi and Caplan, 2009; Paparozzi and DeMichele, 2008; Shah, 2017).

Parole boards have been perceived as failing to have the prisoners’ best interests in mind, and as lacking both appropriate penological expertise and a clear understanding of their professional duties and missions (Page, 2011; Paparozzi and DeMichele, 2008; Rhine et al., 2017). It follows that parole decision-makers have been depicted as struggling to negotiate their competing professional identities and aims (e.g. risk managers, rehabilitative/normalizing agents) in the face of shifting economic, political, structural and institutional pressures and demands (Lynch, 1998; Paparozzi and DeMichele, 2008; Ruhland, 2020; Turnbull and Hannah-Moffat, 2009; Werth, 2013, 2017).

Another professional challenge for parole professionals derives from the invisibility of parole (see Shah, 2017). The work of parole boards was described to be ‘secret or opaque’ in various western systems (Fitzgerald et al., 2021: 2) and the hearing to be decided discreetly behind the closed doors of prison rooms, therefore preventing the community and other penal actors from seeing, listening to or understanding the process (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Reitz and Rhine, 2020; Shah, 2017). The decision-makers of parole boards have lamented that public opinion misunderstands their work (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Paparozzi and Caplan, 2009) and have argued for increasing their visibility, transparency and independency through ‘judicializing’ parole procedures (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Padfield, 2017; Rhine et al., 2017).

The liminal space it occupies and the conflicting perceptions and invisibility of parole decision making raise the question of how parole decision-makers construct their professional identity and work with other penal actors. In its attempt to answer this question, the article will theorize parole decision making as time–space boundary-work.

Boundary-work in professional organizations

The concept of ‘boundary-work’ was originally coined with regard to the efforts of scientists to construct their professional identity vis-a-vis non-scientists. It is defined as ‘purposeful individual and collective effort to influence the social, symbolic, material or temporal boundaries’ (Langley et al., 2019: 704; see also Gieryn, 1983). Boundary-work may be discursive or practice-based and can be applied to multiple levels of analysis (individual, group, organizational) (Gieryn, 1983; Lamont and Molnár, 2002). Such work includes boundary-making and boundary-spanning.

Boundary-making has been described as the individual or collective effort to construct, distinguish and demarcate social or symbolic boundaries that affect fields, professions, activities, groups and organizations through attributing selected characteristics to their decision making, methods, tools, knowledge or values (Gieryn, 1983; Lamont and Molnár, 2002). The performance of such work aims to enlarge the material and symbolic resources of professionals, assert their uniqueness, reinforce their autonomy, preserve an established order of a shared set of beliefs and construct status distinctions. Studies have found that professionals use a repertoire of strategies and discourses to shape a relatively coherent and distinctive notion of their self-identity and legitimacy (Gieryn, 1983; Lamont and Molnár, 2002). That repertoire includes claiming exclusiveness of their knowledge and presenting their work as more goal-committed, competent, sophisticated, prestigious, skilful, moral, intelligent and ethical than the work of others (Gieryn, 1983; Lamont and Molnár, 2002).

Boundary-spanning—a particular type of boundary-work—aims to broker a ‘“fit” between organizations, missions, goals, objectives, tools, and tasks and brings together science, policy, and action into a total scheme’ (Pettus and Severson, 2006: 212). Boundary-spanning has been explained as reaching out to detect internal and external demands, secure needed resources and support in order to respond to these demands and build collaboration among stakeholders (Champenois and Etzkowitz, 2018; Lindberg et al., 2017). Spanning is focused on how knowledge is managed, transformed, translated, overlapped and coordinated across diverse organizational boundaries. Spanning work typically involves engaging in cross-system communication that expresses the needs, expectations and demands of one system using the terms of another and sharing or mediating information and trust between two distinct actors (Champenois and Etzkowitz, 2018; Lindberg et al., 2017).

Scholars have also found that boundary-work—whether boundary-making or boundary-spanning—may involve transformations of time and space to construct physical, symbolic, emotional or symbolic boundaries between social actors (Glimmerveen et al., 2020; Lamont and Molnár, 2002; Stjerne et al., 2019; Stephenson et al., 2020). Temporal understandings and norms may have opposing or competing interpretations by different professionals. To resolve these ‘temporal tensions’ and ensure project progression, professionals conducting temporal work may intersect with legal, social and political discourses to construct and navigate ‘timing norms’ (Stjerne et al., 2019: 349). This may include extending or shrinking temporal pace and synchronizing professional activities between past, present and future time (Glimmerveen et al., 2020; Stjerne et al., 2019). Studies have confirmed that space too is subject to different interpretations by professionals through spatial work that connects actors and institutional discourses, influences formal and informal work interactions, fosters the development of trust and embodies power relations (Stephenson et al., 2020). Space can be marked physically or abstractly by means of discourses and can acquire symbolic and emotional value as a negotiated phenomenon (Lefebvre, 1991).

Boundary-work techniques have been found to hold special importance for ‘hybrid organizations’ that ‘combine features derived from distinct organizational forms’ (Minkoff, 2002: 381; see also Champenois and Etzkowitz, 2018). Operating in multiple functional domains, hybrid organizations are subject to distinct environmental pressures, uncertainty and a legitimacy problem compared with organizations that operate within clearly defined professional boundaries. Finding ways to articulate a multidimensional but independent identity, such organizations combine tactics and ideologies, negotiate and blend boundaries, and tie together different elements, instruments, timeframes, logics, emotions and cultures (Champenois and Etzkowitz, 2018; Minkoff, 2002).

Professional boundary-work has received little attention in the context of criminal justice actors. One of the few related studies explored the boundary-work of criminal justice policy-makers in connection with police forensic professionals and judicial professionals by constructing particular understandings of valid knowledge and how it should be produced (Machado and Granja, 2019). A more recent study examined the police unions’ boundary-making with the public media for sidestepping critical views of authorities and community activists (Duncan and Walby, 2021). Another study looked at penal sector volunteers’ work to distinguish between their ‘helper positions’ and the positions of other professionals through different discursive frames and rehabilitative ethos (Quinn, 2020). However, the boundary-work of parole boards, so far, remains unexplored. The case of parole seems especially attractive for such analysis since the parole board is located between the logics, discourses and powers of several ‘front-end’ and ‘back-end’ penal actors (Greene and Dalke, 2021; Padfield, 2017; Riggs, 2015). This study aims to fill this gap through the case of the discretionary parole board in Israel. As we shall see, the concepts of theoretical temporal and spatial boundary-work will serve as useful analytic tools for theorizing the professional identity and work of parole decision-makers (see also Young 2020). This analysis will elucidate how parole decision-makers both span and demarcate their professional boundaries in relation to other penal actors through such temporal and spatial constructions.

Context and methods

Context

From the 1990s, like several other western systems, Israel adopted a neoliberal penal policy (Efodi, 2014). This policy implemented an increased use of supervision laws for sex and violent offenders and electronic monitoring as a parole condition (Efodi, 2014; Rosenfeld and Noah, 2021; Shoham et al., 2015). In regard to sentencing, following a major legal reform in 2012, Israeli sentencing law adopted a retributive penal philosophy and promulgated proportionality as the main (‘guiding’) sentencing principle (Roberts and Gazal-Ayal, 2013). The law allowed a departure from the offence-based proportionate sentencing range for rehabilitation (as mitigation) and for public protection (as aggravation) and gave criminal history only limited weight (Roberts and Gazal-Ayal, 2013; von Hirsch, 2017).

The current study is part of a larger project on parole decision making that was conducted with the Israeli parole board (Dagan, 2021, 2022). The Israeli parole board panels consist of three voting members, including a chairperson (a professional judge) and two experts (e.g. criminologist, psychologist or social worker) (Parole Act, 2001: s. 32). The parole hearings take place in hearing rooms within the prison area in the presence of the prisoner and his or her counsel. From 2016, the work of parole boards has been managed under the judiciary branch (Judiciary, 2021). However, the Israeli Supreme Court has stressed that ‘the board is not a court’ (Cohen v Parole board [1979]: 475) and has expressed the need ‘to distinguish between the stages … sentencing alone and parole alone’ (Doe v Attorney General [2020]: para. 47) based on their different penal orientations: retribution versus risk and rehabilitation.

In 2020, a total of 150 judges (most of them retired) were authorized to chair the parole board panels, about 58% of whom were male and 42% of whom were female (Judiciary, 2021). The board panels conduct a total of approximately 18,000 hearings annually, and grant parole in about 40% of the cases (Rosenfeld and Noah, 2021). According to the law, the first parole point is at two-thirds of a more than one-year sentence (lifers are subject to different rules) (Parole Act, 2001: s. 3). There is no statutory presumption in favour of release. The parole board should consider whether or not the prisoner’s release is ‘appropriate’ and ‘would not risk the public safety’ (s. 3). The parole board’s authority is discretionary (Rosenfeld and Noah, 2021) and it may consider a great deal of information for its decision: the crime’s seriousness, criminal history, prison conduct, any prison treatment, a post-release plan and a victim impact statement (s. 9). Additional risk assessment reports are required in cases of sex and domestic violence offenders, and for offenders with mental-health issues (s. 12). These risk reports are based on static and dynamic factors that have been found to be statistically associated with recidivism (Assy and Menashe, 2016).

A parole hearing usually consists of more than one session and takes place over a period of time. In the hearing, prisoners have a right to argue (for themselves or through counsel) before the parole board (including responding last to the State’s arguments), express remorse and offer reasons to justify their parole. The parole board also often asks the prisoners for their attitude towards their crime, about their rehabilitation, post-release plans, work, housing and their licence conditions. The parole board specifies the reasons for its decision in a written decision that is subject to a (rare) administrative review (Efodi, 2014).

Sample and procedure

Parole chairpersons are usually the chief players in the parole process and are ultimately accountable for decision-making practice and the interactions with other authorities (Burkes et al., 2017). In this study, 20 parole board chairpersons in Israel were interviewed in 2020 about their decision-making process and their interactions and relationships with other penal actors. The interviewees were recruited through email, using convenience sampling. The interviewees were 16 men and four women, their average age was 71 years (range: 47–85). They had an average parole experience of six years and heard parole cases for all kinds of prisons and prisoners. All the interviewees were experienced judges. Although most of them were retired (17), a few (three) were also active judges at the time of this research. Almost all of them (19) had previous experience in sentencing. Ethical approval for research by the University’s institutional review board was obtained. Likewise, approval by the President of the Supreme Court of Israel, as required in judiciary-related research, was given. Informed consent was obtained from the interviewees. Confidentiality and anonymity were assured and pseudonyms were used in reporting the findings.

The interviews, which lasted approximately one-and-a-half hours, were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. A semi-structured interview guide was used to conduct each interview. These questions inquired, for example, about the role, functions and purposes of the parole board, the relations between the parole board and other actors and their processing of their knowledge. The researcher followed the interviewee’s lead and interrupted as little as possible to allow the interviewee to tell the narrative as he or she saw fit. The data collection continued gradually until a full understanding of the interviewees’ perspectives was achieved and there were no more emergent themes in the data. Thematic qualitative analysis was used to code and organize the data into patterns, commonalities and contradictions. After becoming familiar with the data, initial codes were generated through coding features of the data with a focus on the boundary-work of the interviewees. In the next step, themes were searched by gathering all the codes that were relevant to the potential theme. These themes were reviewed, and then finally defined and reported by the author (Braun and Clarke, 2020). To increase trustworthiness, the themes and supporting data were presented to two academics recognized as experts in the field of corrections who provided an external check as to whether the themes were sufficiently clear and comprehensive. These experts agreed regarding the themes (Nowell et al., 2017).

Findings

General observations

The interviewees described the aims of parole as varied. The primary aim is to ‘eliminate’ or ‘neutralize’ future risk by rehabilitating and re-integrating the prisoner. That aim also encompasses the goal of reducing prison misconduct and population; the withholding of parole is even used as punishment in serious cases. The interviewees described their location between prison walls as a source of professional tension. First, their carceral location leads to their being wrongly perceived as ‘a prison service board’ rather than as independent decision-makers (Saul). Second, their work is unseen and devalued by the public despite its importance as the ‘people don’t know that [importance]’ and ignore their ‘efforts and worries for the public’s safety’ (Samuel). Third, their invisibility also encourages a populist-emotive image of their work by the ‘drama- and rating-chasing’ media as that of a ‘public leniency board’ even though ‘they don’t have a clue what actually happens here’ (Gabriel).

The interviewees also described that through their decision making they are required to process large amounts of information that derive from various penal actors. They need to consider ‘all kinds of different opinions and recommendations’ of ‘psychiatrists, doctors, social workers, prison officers’ (Saul). From these data they create an ‘assemblage’ (Daniel) or ‘mosaic’ (Dina) and decide parole release. They described the ‘very difficult’ task of ‘balancing’ (Ruth) between different penal orientations that advanced past (e.g. sentencing court), present (e.g. prison correctional officers), near future (e.g. community correctional officers) and more distant future-oriented work (e.g. statistical risk experts). On the one hand, when denying parole based on a crime’s seriousness ‘there is a problem, why am I judging him for the past?’ (Joel). On the other hand, even when the correctional recommendation is ‘wonderful’ they ‘can’t ignore the sentencing determinations’ (Roni). That they must consider factors from different temporal and penal orientations raises a ‘dilemma’ for the interviewees (Dina) and requires ‘swinging’ between these orientations (Roni). Upon this complicated ground, the interviewees perform temporal and spatial boundary-work with other actors.

Temporal boundary-work in parole decision making

Constructing parole as qualitative time

Through their narratives, the interviewees portray the time of parole as qualitative rather than quantitative. The interviewees stated that through the parole process, the prisoners should go through an ‘experience’ (Zack) by which they capture the ‘opportunity’ (Roni), ‘chance’ (Gad) and ‘possibility’ they are given by the parole board (Zack). They frame the act of release in temporal qualitative terms, as an exceptional moment in which the parole board will, when the right time arrives, bestow upon the prisoner a ‘gift’ (Noam) or ‘prize’ (Dina). The licence period also constructs a qualitative-liminal ‘transitional time’ of ‘test’ and ‘journey’ that the parolees should undergo when re-integrating back into the community (Dina). Constructing the time of parole as qualitative, the interviewees rejected the notion that the mere passage of time justifies parole. Instead, the interviewees specified that as the prisoner makes his way out of prison, ‘the passage of time isn’t important … the question is what he made [of] prison, not how much time he served’ (Adi).

Correspondingly, when deciding parole, the interviewees described their parole assessment as temporally open, elastic and fluid. Their temporal look combined ‘past, present and future’ (Rina) to capture the right moment of becoming a ‘new man’ (Saul). Also, since ‘it’s hard to point [to] the beginning point of such transformation’ (Daniel), their work cannot be bound by strict temporal limits. When negotiating their work, they constantly move between past, present and future. This process is neither simple nor linear and does not clearly differentiate between periods of time, but rather consists of a ‘combination between past, present and future’ (Nina). Located at the far end of the penal continuum, they described themselves as ‘look[ing] forward and backward’ (Saul).

This qualitative temporality allows the interviewees to accommodate both past-looking and future-looking demands. For example, the interviewees can repair, re-order and ‘correct’ past harms and address future needs through the prisoner’s remorse: ‘he needs to regret the past, that is the beginning of the repentance, and afterwards commit for the future’ (Isaac). Similarly, victim compensation is important ‘to return things to their past … the wheel can never go back, but the victim feels that the prisoner comes and amends his actions’ (Sam). Thus, remorse and victim compensation were described as non-linear and temporally fluid.

(a) Boundary-spanning through qualitative time

In performing their temporal work, and utilizing time as qualitative-expansive, the interviewees are able to span their work with that of other actors, particularly the sentencing court and correctional officers. Through such work they synchronize the past-looking time of the sentencing court with the future-looking time of correctional officers and incorporate both into their decision making. First, the interviewees’ adoption of qualitative time allows them to synchronize the retributive concepts of the sentencing court to the sphere of parole. For example, the interviewees reinterpret the past-looking retributive concept of ‘paying a debt to society’ as a rehabilitative rather than retributive value and connect it to post-sentencing reform: ‘paying his debt to society happened when I was convinced that the prisoner is undergoing a true rehabilitative process’ (Zack). Similarly, rather than using a punitive conceptualization, they reframe the retributive concept of ‘desert’ as a reward for rehabilitative efforts: ‘desert, reward and punishment, is that a prisoner who [is] paroled feels that there is a reward for his rehabilitation’ (Roni).

The interviewees also accommodate sentencing proportionality trends into their parole work. For instance, they justify parole in cases of extreme pains of imprisonment: ‘If imprisonment is for retribution, according to the new sentencing law, so special suffering in prison goes inside [that]’ (Isaac). In this way, though sentencing is temporally behind them, the interviewees harness sentencing’s past-looking logic to rationalize their own present and future-looking decision making.

Second, the interviewees’ qualitative temporality is also used to span the related work of correctional officers. This includes re-ordering the work of rehabilitation in prison and community. For example, in common cases of short sentences (less than one year), no prison rehabilitation programmes are possible, and the interviewees explained that they ‘cannot require the prison therapists to accommodate their treatment to the length of the sentences’ (Adi). To address this problem, the interviewees change the order of things. Instead of relying on prison rehabilitation to justify parole, they use the future mandated rehabilitation/supervision or reports of past-rehabilitation during the sentencing (e.g. pre-sentencing report) to fill this void. All this rehabilitative work was described as belonging to the ‘extension’ of the ‘rehabilitative continuum’ (Ruth) that can be negotiated when considering parole. By so doing, the interviewees sophistically synchronize their qualitative and fluid time with other temporal discourses.

(b) Boundary-making through qualitative time

The interviewees also use their qualitative-expansive time to demarcate their work from other actors. Unlike the court, which ‘cannot change [any part of] of the sentence after it was imposed’ (Sam), the qualitative time of the interviewees is ever-changing. The interviewees contrasted the different temporal orientations of parole and sentencing:

The board’s great advantage is that the court deals with the past and the board with the future … A judge, even the best, if he doesn’t have mystical abilities, can’t know the future … In the board, in contrast, you know more about the man, and you need to look into the future. (Saul)

Thus, there is a temporal distinction between the limited knowledge of sentencing and wider perspective of parole.

This temporal distinction carries several important boundary-related meanings. First, since the length of the sentence is ‘related to the time of trial’ the ‘time of prison is another period’ (Gad). Second, the interviewees demarcate their work from the temporal orientations of statistical risk experts. Such experts are overly bound by past events when assessing risk, and therefore neglect the prisoner’s dynamic factors, the possibility of change and ‘miss many character traits … that can be updated’ (Eli). As qualitative conceptions of time are used for boundary-work, the interviewees described how they use space for boundary-spanning and boundary-making.

Spatial boundary-work in parole decision making

Constructing parole as a therapeutic space

Half of the interviewees described how they negotiate their work with other actors through conceptualizing the parole board as a broadly defined ‘therapeutic space’, and their professional identity as largely therapeutic (Lahad, 2001: 63).

The therapeutic-narrative of this half of the interviewees rejects the parole board as court-like. These interviewees argued that the ‘parole board is not a court’ (Gad), ‘what happened in court is not my business’ (Zack) and even stressed the importance of a parole decision-maker’s ‘disconnecting himself’ from being a judge as parole decision making is ‘a process that one needs to undergo with himself’, and one that many parole chairpersons do not undergo (Or). Instead of seeing the parole hearing as court, these interviewees construct the parole hearing as a therapeutic ‘space of compassion and mercy’ where one can ‘see the rehabilitation with his own eyes’ (Saul). Parole decision making, several argued, is ‘a matter of heart’ and through the hearing they convey to the prisoner ‘sensitivity’, ‘full respect’, ‘care’ and ‘empathy’. This may be communicated through their voice tone: ‘my tone was containing, relaxed, not resistant’ (Adi). They also express care for the prisoners’ physical conditions (e.g. air conditioning); to secure the prisoners’ privacy they ask the prisoner’s permission to disclose their name on the parole decision.

During the parole hearings, they try to help the prisoners feel ‘comfortable’, ‘calm’ and to overcome their ‘embarrassment’ (Isaac), and encourage them ‘to speak freely’ and ‘to talk openly’ (Saul). They also described the parole hearing as an intimate space in which they learn a great deal about, and become intimately connected with, the prisoners. Owing to their sense of closeness to the prisoner, they can then ‘look in his eyes’, see his ‘trauma’, listen to his ‘story’ (Isaac) and try to ‘get into the depth of his soul’ (Saul). They also strive to develop the prisoner’s trust in their work and to reach the prisoner’s ‘core’ identity during the parole hearing:

I try to peel from this man all the shells and get to his core, like you peel an orange, and get to the core … you need to talk with him and you understand his diagnosis … I create with him a positive interaction. (Isaac)

In line with reaching the prisoner’s inner core, throughout the hearing they observe ‘the prisoner’s body language, how he sits, how he behaves [in relation] to his environment’ (Ami), capture the prisoner as ‘a whole, with heart, emotion, brain and mind’ and ‘learn a lot from his tear and smile’ (Samuel). Likewise, at the hearing they express interest in the prisoner’s ‘childhood experiences’ (Eli). Such communication also includes expressions of care and empathy towards the prisoner:

You should pay attention to the human side, not only [to] formality, so you are asking him: so, what’s with your fiancé? Did you set a date for a wedding? The man before you melts, enjoys, saying: he cares for me … you need to be a little social worker. (Or)

This informal, caring and therapy-oriented construction of parole work is also demonstrated by the interviewees’ willingness to exceed the functions of neutral arbiters. Some interviewees related instances in which they attempted to ‘persuade’ prison correctional officials to establish another rehabilitation programme for an uncooperative prisoner (Seth) or used their ‘creativity’ (Adi) to phone correctional therapists outside prisons in order to overcome bureaucratic challenges in favour of the prisoner (e.g. get a recommendation sooner).

In conceptualizing the parole board as a therapeutic space, the interviewees identified personal communication with the prisoner as key to the parole’s success: ‘the attitude [of the parole decision-maker] is more important than the bottom-line of the decision … the success depends on the connection with the prisoner’ (Or). The interviewees also described how they question the prisoners about their progress and challenges and motivate them to continue along the path of progress. Such personal positive communication with the prisoners allows the interviewees to ‘open’ the prisoners, find their ‘inner insight’, remove their ‘resistance’ and ‘denial’, and allow for ‘personality change’ and ‘personal transformation’. It is therapeutically important that their communication engages the prisoner himself. The communication should cut through the ‘lawyers’ games’ and may even take place ‘above the head’(Saul) of the prisoner’s counsel to ensure that the prisoner’s voice is what the parole board hears.

(a) Boundary-spanning through therapeutic space

The therapeutic space and other characteristics that are associated with a therapist’s identity allow these interviewees to connect their work with the work, tools and knowledge of rehabilitative actors (e.g. pre-sentence probation report, prison social worker report). For example, the interviewees described how they ‘guide’ community correctional officers during the licence period to increase the rehabilitative success (Roni): it is essential to promote ‘the cooperation of the correctional officials outside’ because the parole board releases the prisoner ‘from door to door’ (Roni)—directly from the parole board to the community hostel. The interviewees also constructed the parolee’s status as belonging simultaneously to both the carceral and the community: ‘he walks outside … but the prison walls are still around him’ (Saul). The prisoner’s agency is liminal and ‘broken’:

‘He is like a man that broke his leg and removed his cast and needs stilts, a walker … and now needs supervision, work, electronic monitoring, individual and group therapy, urine samples’. (Dina)

This narrative portrays releasing the prisoner as only the part of the process; further physical/occupational therapy is needed. The success of parole supervision is a function of the collaboration between their work (e.g. deciding licence conditions) and the community supervision work that implements their vision.

(b) Boundary-making through therapeutic space

The therapeutic narrative is used not only to span the work of other actors and professions, but also to demarcate their work from that of other actors. First, the interviewees construct sentencing judges as distant from the field. They described their conception of the parole board as a ‘different space’, a ‘place of treatment’ and a ‘place of healing’ (Seth) in contrast both to the ‘punitive’ sentencing court and the ‘survival space’ of prison (Saul). The sentencing judges ‘live in an ivory tower’ and are ‘outsiders’ to the ‘real’ life of prison (Saul). Such judges fail to ‘see the people’ and adjudicate ‘only by the book’ (Daniel). These judges lack the ‘perspective’ that comes with ‘dealing with the crème de la crème of the criminals, only prisoners, all the time’ (Or). In contrast, the interviewees try to ‘dialogue’ with the prisoner, a process that appears in ‘no book’ and cannot normally be made in court (Saul).

Second, the Attorney General’s (AG) counsels, representing the State, were described as important but also as lacking therapeutic orientation. Such AG counsels are overly pessimistic regarding rehabilitation and overly risk-oriented in order to avoid professional harm: ‘They almost always resist release … I don’t get that … maybe, to be rude, they wish to cover their asses’ (Adi). In contrast, the interviewees’ therapeutic orientation is part of their optimistic belief in the human ability to change, a belief mandatory for a parole professional.

Third, these interviewees emphasized how their human-based holistic assessment contrasts with statistical risk experts’ work. Such risk experts are ‘computer clerks’ that produce ‘robotic’ risk scores (Joel), lack a ‘humane attitude’ and ‘don’t see the prisoner’ (Saul). Instead, as ‘no two drops of water are alike, no two cases are alike’ (Nina). These interviewees valued their own therapeutic individual assessments to decide parole.

Constructing parole as a judicial space

The other half of the interviewees, however, described how they negotiate their work with other actors through conceptualizing the parole board as a ‘judicial space’ (Mulcahy, 2007). The interviewees defined the judicial space broadly, in terms of symbolic, normative, substantive and procedural elements and their professional identity and powers as largely judicial.

These interviewees described the parole board as ‘half-equal to court’ (Dina) or equated the two: ‘a parole board is a court’ (Rina). Their work is ‘sort-of like-judging’ and ‘like a trial’ (Gad) and even ‘more judicial than a criminal court itself’ (Saul). The impact of their decision is ‘like a guillotine’ (Saul) and is ‘almost like a sentence that you imposed as a judge’ (Rina). Beyond emphasizing the substantive similarities between the board’s and court’s decisions, the interviewees also described the likeness between their symbolic procedural aspects. They wear, for example, court-dress during the hearing and are called ‘your honour’ by the prisoner. The prisoners ‘stand when they [the interviewees] enter the hearing room’ (Isaac) and, as in court, the AG counsel sits to the board’s right and the prisoner’s counsel and the prisoner sit to the left. The board, they argued, is ‘the only board’ that is sentencing-like, the hearing process opens with the parties’ arguments, concludes with the prisoner (or their counsel) speaking last and culminates with a thorough written decision, akin to a judicial decision: ‘I’m a judge, I can’t scribble a line-and-a-half and just say, “this is a decision”’ (Roni). One interviewee described that before the hearing she tells the other parole members (non-judges) that ‘the board is a court … to make them feel responsible’ (Dina).

The judicial process was discussed by way of its tools, actual and metaphorical. For instance, interviewees expressed a need to adopt a criminal procedure and rules of evidence and to transfer the hearing to real courtrooms to more fully reflect the judicial nature of their work. The interviewees also construct the parole board as judicial space through the values, metaphors, emotions or techniques with which they describe their work: ‘judicial experience’, ‘judicial mind’, ‘judicial emotions’, ‘sense of justice’. They described their processes with judicial rhetoric such as ‘balancing’, ‘distinguishing’, ‘legal interpretation’, ‘proportionality’ and ‘rights’. This intersection of the parole board’s conceptual and actual decision-making processes with those of the judiciary is used for boundary-work.

(a) Boundary-spanning through judicial space

The courtroom atmosphere and the judicial tools and logics allow the interviewees to span their parole work with judicial materials, such as case law, indictments, sentencing remarks, determinations (e.g. culpability level) and the sentencing testimony of the prisoners. Perceiving themselves as acting within judicial space and with judicial authority, the interviewees push the AG’s counsels and the correctional officers to agree to parole through their ‘mediation’ and use their authority to persuade the prisoners themselves to accept the full meaning of the parole terms. The parole board at times spans and straddles the judiciary even more directly. The interviewees described the sentencing court’s remarks as the starting point for the parole determination, as ‘giving the basis, the description of the man; it’s his character framing’ (Saul). The interviewees’ judicial background (Joel) enable them to comfortably utilize and negotiate the judicial tools and logic. The judicial narrative is given special importance in justifying the denial of parole on the punitive grounds of retribution, general deterrence or to preserve public confidence in criminal justice in serious cases. In such cases, they can ‘put [themselves] in the place of the judge’ (Saul) without being an ‘appeal-like’ forum over the sentencing court’s determinations (Joel). Rather, they see their function as largely judicial.

(b) Boundary-making through judicial space

The judicial narrative simultaneously allows the parole board to demarcate its work from others actors, especially correctional actors. The interviewees do so through emphasizing their judicial powers—inherent to their judicial identity and space—as a normative and review authority.

First, they negotiate the meaning of several parole factors as carrying both instrumental and normative value. Parole factors such as crime severity, criminal history, victim compensation, remorse and even prison conduct hold normative-moral significance and are considered as part of the question of whether parole is ‘appropriate’ or ‘deserved’. Such assessment allows them to accept/deny parole in some cases despite contrary opinions of correctional officers. For example, even if the correctional officials assess a prisoner as low-risk, granting him parole still ‘is not appropriate regardless of his risk’ (Roni) if that prisoner fails to compensate the victim. Similarly, in cases of negative prison conduct ‘the prisoner’s release is not appropriate even if he doesn’t pose risk according to [the] risk assessment’ (Samuel). Conversely, in ‘doubtful cases’, despite a negative correctional assessment, they can grant parole based on their ‘judicial courage’ as they feel that parole is ‘deserved’ (Isaac).

Second, they construct their work as a review authority over other actors’ work. Their asserted role as a review authority is a manifestation of their judicial responsibility and their role as an objective ‘quasi-judicial body’ is a manifestation of their neutrality: ‘The board is a body that reviews clinical authorities’ decisions … it’s a quasi-appeal of the clinical bodies’ decisions’ (Daniel). As part of this review-authority narrative, their judicial responsibility is to ‘investigate’ the deeper ‘truth’ behind the correctional officials’ opinions (Isaac), to ‘ask for clarifications’ (Or) and ‘explanations’ and to ‘raise doubts’ (Daniel). Such review authority is used to demarcate the interviewees’ work from that of several actors. First, the correctional community officers, as ‘too lenient’ and even ‘naive’ (Noam), need review by a ‘judicial conscience’ that is sensitive to issues of public safety (Roni). Second, correctional prison officers, described as over-emphasizing the discipline and security interests of the prison regime, require the parole board’s ‘objective’ review. The interviewees remain neutral despite their prison-based location and disconnect themselves from prison work: ‘we are not a branch of prison service, not even a little’ (Roni).

Third, intelligence officers’ work requires a careful review to mitigate ‘power imbalance’ between the officers and the prisoner. This may include investigating their credibility actively: ‘I invite[d] him to the board and told him: “get into details, what’s your source?”’ (Saul). In a similar way, the General Secret Service’s opinions, submitted for terror-related prisoners require a careful review, as they are overly based on ‘suspicions’ and ‘rumours’ (Gad). Thus, where the interviewees interpret their work as spanning the work of the judiciary, they simultaneously demarcate that work from that of the risk, correctional and intelligence professions.

Discussion

This study found that the work of parole decision-makers may remain distinct from or traverse various and possibly conflicting values (e.g. retributivism, risk, rehabilitation), competencies (e.g. discipline, risk, rehabilitation, security), temporalities (e.g. past, present and future) and spaces (e.g. prison, community). In order to address their hybrid professional environment, and the uncertainty and legitimacy pressures derived from it (Minkoff, 2002), parole decision-makers constantly negotiate their time and space and, by doing so, expand their boundary-making tool-kit (e.g. Duncan and Walby, 2021; Quinn, 2020; Young, 2020). The study found three primary conceptualizations of this work: one regarding time and two regarding space.

Parole decision-makers negotiate the time of parole. Such temporal work captures their work as an ‘all knowing storyteller’ who is located at the end of the penal continuum and moves back and forth constantly between past, present and future penal time. There is no flow that moves simply and inexorably towards the future end of the original sentence. Such temporal work constructs the temporal gaze of parole decision-makers as qualitative and expansive; they operate as decision-makers who aim to capture ‘moments’ rather than ‘seconds’ (Crawford, 2015). The parolees, in turn, should undergo a transformative experience, rather than simply ‘doing time’ in a ‘clock-work’-like and incremental manner. The expansive temporality fits the work of parole boards in other contexts (Turnbull and Hannah-Moffat, 2009) and includes ‘looking forward by looking back’ in a way that brings to mind restorative justice temporality (Crawford, 2015). Further, as we saw, through this temporal work, parole decision-makers are able to span, translate and synchronize ‘front-end’ (e.g. sentencing court) and ‘back-end’ actors (e.g. community correctional officials) by re-ordering the sequence of the penal ‘clocks’ and to translate retributive or rehabilitative conceptions into parole ‘language’. In other words, the parole decision-makers develop ‘temporal commons’ (Stjerne et al., 2019: 349) with these other actors. By doing so, they communicate their legitimacy in several penal areas and intend to increase their professional visibility within and outside of their field (see Champenois and Etzkowitz, 2018; Lindberg et al., 2017). At the same time, this temporal work allows parole decision-makers to demarcate their work from the sentencing court and statistical risk experts, which they view as overly past-oriented. Thus, they preserve their identity as distinct penal professionals (Gieryn, 1983).

In addition to temporal work, the interviewees also perform spatial work and accordingly construct their professional identity. They blame their carceral space for their poor public value and biased public image, an experience that is integrated with other parole contexts (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Shah, 2017). The space of parole says ‘hands off’: it is decided within the prison walls, rarely published and any substantive legal oversight over their work is exceptional (see Pettus and Severson, 2006). Parole spatial work, however, intends to express ‘hands out’: it reaches across the parole boundaries to create relationships with other penal actors both at the ‘front end’ and the ‘back end’ and by doing so seems to increase its visibility and legitimacy (Gieryn, 1983).

The interviewees offer a bifurcated—largely conflicting—spatial narrative that constructs the parole board as spanning and straddling either a therapeutic space or a judicial space and, accordingly, conceptualizes their professional identity as court-like or therapy-oriented. Half of the interviewees envision their space and identity as therapeutic. This therapeutic narrative is integrated with the interviewees’ construction of the time of the parole process as qualitative and with their flexible inclusion of past and future time in their therapeutic assessment (e.g. considering childhood experiences, re-ordering past harms/future needs). Through this narrative, the parole work is constructed as proximate to the individual prisoner’s experience, pains and hopes, and engages with the prisoner through caring, emotional and respectful communication in order to encourage reform, reconciliation and desistance (see Weaver, 2009). Their sense of close distance and their environmental setting (e.g. privacy, seeing tears) share important characteristics with those of therapeutic space; this intimacy is further reflected through the interviewees’ emotions (e.g. empathy, care), inquiry (e.g. character) and lack of neutrality (e.g. persuading other actors to promote the prisoner’s interest) (Lahad, 2001; Pressly and Heesacker, 2001).

Such vision seems to translate the close distance to the carceral space from a tension—experienced as undermining their visibility, neutrality and legitimacy—to a source of professional advantage (Gieryn, 1983). Such work seems to deviate from ‘new penology’ risk-management logic and is integrated with other experiences of discretionary parole decision-makers that claim their clinical and individual discretion (Lynch, 1998; Werth, 2017). It brings to mind the experiences of drug treatment courts where the ‘courtroom itself is transformed into a therapeutic space’ (Lyons, 2013: 422; see also Padfield, 2017) and some practices of restorative justice (Crawford, 2015).

This narrative may be used to distinguish the parole board’s work from prison work. It may also be used to connect parole with community: the parolees’ subjectivity was presented in liminal therapeutic-spatial terms (‘broken’; ‘walks outside but the prison walls are still around him’). This narrative is integrated with the penal ambiguity of the re-entry period (Maruna, 2011; Reitz and Rhine, 2020; Riggs, 2015; Shah, 2017; Werth, 2012) and the construction of parolees as both responsible and precarious subjects by other parole agents (Lynch, 1998; Werth, 2013). This narrative is integrated with the interviewees’ unbounded temporality that does not adhere to strict organizational limits (e.g. prison/community), and also recalls the traditional medical perception of parolees as ‘ill’ and in need of therapy (Shah, 2017; Simon, 1993). As we saw, such work seems to also hold organizational potential for spanning and collaborating with the clinical work of community correctional officers.

At the same time, this therapy-like narrative allows the interviewees to demarcate their work from that of statistical risk experts, on the one hand, and sentencing judges, on the other hand. The former are seen as overly bound by past events, and the latter are largely formalistic, distant and ‘outsiders’ to an individualized, humane penal experience. A consistent conclusion was reached in a study finding that parole officers do not simply follow ‘new-penology’ risk-management logic; rather, they see risk tools as an ‘impersonal and overly standardised way of knowing’ in comparison to their own experience (Werth, 2017: 817; see also Lynch, 1998; Turnbull and Hannah-Moffat, 2009). Another study similarly suggests that parole boards prefer to rely upon their own professional knowledge rather than static, historical or actuarial measures (Hannah-Moffat and Yule, 2011: 169). This fits also the reasons suggested by other criminal justice actors for resisting the use of risk-assessment tools (e.g. rejecting such tools’ one-size-fits-all approach) (Jonathan-Zamir et al., 2019; Jonnson and Viljoen, 2021; cf. Burkes et al., 2017).

This narrative leaves us with a puzzle. Despite the interviewees’ celebration of their interpersonal-therapeutic work, the overall parole rate is relatively low (about 40%) (Rosenfeld and Noah, 2021). This can be explained through the interviewees’ notions of risk that include a requirement to eliminate risk (Barry, 2021) and that premise parole as a ‘gift’ (see also Rosenfeld and Noah, 2021). Future research is needed in this area to confirm these explanations.

The interviewees are divided regarding the construction of the parole board as a judicial space and, resultantly, their identity as that of judges. Half of them (those who embrace the therapy-construct) adhere to the ‘division of labour’ between sentencing and parole guided by Israeli jurisprudence and other systems, preserving their distinct image as different from court (Padfield et al., 2013). The other half conceptualize parole as ‘court-like’ (Padfield, 2017: 19) and ‘quasi-judicial’ (Paparozzi and Caplan, 2009: 404) both in substance (e.g. normative power, review authority) and form (e.g. wearing court-dress, called ‘your honour’) (see Mulcahy, 2007). They can call upon their judicial rhetoric, emotions and responsibilities to span judicial-based knowledge (e.g. sentencing remarks, offence’s culpability). They also, in common with the judiciary, construct distinctions and moral hierarchies with other actors, specifically, by acting as neutral decision-makers (e.g. normative and review authority), as in other contexts (Machado and Granja, 2019).

The interviewees may feel their work is sentencing-like for several reasons. They have a shared past of judicial professional experience that may affect their parole decision making (Lerman and Page, 2016; Paparozzi and Caplan, 2009; Ruhland, 2020). This may also explain why the narratives regarding their experiences are relatively consistent among the interviewees. Further reasons may be that the interviewees’ organizational location is under the judiciary branch (Judiciary, 2021), that they are willing to exercise punitive discretion in serious cases and that their decisions carry significant, almost sentencing-like penal impact in a system that offers no other realistic parole possibilities.

The judicial narrative seems to allow the interviewees to adapt their work into their broader neoliberal penal climate and to secure their status within a retributive legal environment through interpreting, negotiating and adjusting retributive rhetoric to their parole time–space (see Shah, 2017). This narrative may be seen as a way to increase the legitimacy of parole through judicial ‘credentialism’ and to minimize the distance between sentencing and parole, viewed as a ‘late court’ that largely extends the sentencing court’s logics and values to the post-sentencing stage.

In conclusion, the findings call for broader lessons for penal theory. Penal theorists are primarily sentencing theorists and their treatment of penal time and space is done through a sentencing lens that disconnects the sentencing from the post-sentencing phases (e.g. von Hirsch, 2017). The findings, however, enlighten the under-researched role of ‘back-end’ actors (e.g. parole boards, prison officials, supervision officers) within the ongoing constructions of penal time and space. This encourages more engagement of penal theorists with penal reality as it is rather than purely with what it ought to be, considering the real-life organizational forces and pressures that construct and design penal decision making.

This study has several limitations. Beyond the limitations inherent to qualitative analysis, the sample is based on decision-makers who are chairpersons and have judicial backgrounds; possibly different boundary-work (if any) may be conducted by other parole decision-makers, which would complicate the picture even more (e.g. psychologists, criminologists). While we should be cautious in expressing generalizations, this study sheds light on the under-researched intersections between boundary-work literature and penal decision making, especially in regard to hybrid organizations. The findings encourage future engagement between penal theorists and organizational scholars within other penal contexts, which will help to expose more fully the time–space experiences, tensions and techniques of other penal actors and audiences.