TEXAS BOARD OF PARDONS AND PAROLES
In 1985, the legislature mandated that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles incorporate parole guidelines, with minimum release criteria, into parole decision-making. The enabling legislation required that the guidelines establish criteria on which parole decisions were to be made. Furthermore, the guidelines were to be developed according to acceptable research methods and be based on the seriousness of the offense (policy) and the likelihood of a favorable parole outcome (risk). [See Section 508.036 of the Texas Government Code.] In August 1987, the Board formally adopted parole guidelines.
In 1996, the Criminal Justice Policy Council conducted a study of the Board's use of the guidelines and recommended that revised guidelines be formulated in order to take a comprehensive approach to parole decision-making.
After extensive development and review, in August 1999 the Board issued a Request for Proposals for consulting services to develop a revised parole guidelines system. The board contracted with Security Response Technologies, Inc., (SRT) for the new guidelines, which were adopted by the Board at its January 18, 2001 meeting.
The Board’s contract with SRT developed into an 18-month project consisting of three distinct phases of work.
Phase I consisted of SRT’s comprehensive review of the Board's current practices as well as the practices of other states that use parole guidelines. SRT also completed a reliability test of the current Board guidelines.
Phase II activities involved completing a validation test of the existing guidelines and evaluating other selected factors that could be used for assessing risk. SRT used this information to develop a new set of guidelines for the Board to review and consider. After due consideration and revision of the draft guidelines, the Board adopted the final parole guidelines developed by SRT.
Phase III, the final project phase, consisted of training Board and Institutional Parole Officers (IPO’s) in the use of the new guidelines. This work required the drafting of new guidelines assessment instruments, with instructions on how to complete them. SRT also recommended other steps the Board needs to undertake to monitor and modify the guidelines on a regular basis.
The revised parole guidelines consist of two major components that interact to provide a single score. The first is a Risk Assessment Instrument that weighs both static and dynamic factors associated with the offender’s record. The other component is Offense Severity class.
Static factors are those associated with the offender’s prior criminal record. They will not change over time. Dynamic factors reflect characteristics the offender has demonstrated since being incarcerated and are factors that can change over time.
An offender can be assigned 0-9 points on static factors and 0-12 points on dynamic factors. A low score is associated with low risk. The higher the score, the greater the risk the offender presents for a successful parole:
| Score Assigned Risk Level Based on the total of static and dynamic factor points, the risk level to be assigned to the offender should be determined below: | Points |
| Low Risk | 0-5 |
| Moderate Risk | 6-8 |
| High Risk | 9-11 |
| Highest Risk | 12+ |
Members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles have assigned an offense severity ranking to every one of the 2,474 felony charges in the Criminal Code. Offense Severity classes range from Low for non-violent crimes such as credit card abuse, to Highest for capital murder. An offender's most serious active offense is assigned an Offense Severity Class according to the established list.
Here is a link to the Current Offense Severity List.*
Here is a link to the Offense Severity List in Word format.
*In order to read the above PDF document, you must have Adobe's Acrobat PDF Reader installed.
In addition to the standard risk assessment instrument, a supplemental DWI risk assessment is utilized for offenders convicted of DWI and is utilized when an offender's instant offense of record is a DWI offense. The supplemental DWI risk assessment instrument includes static factors related to DWI convictions and incarcerations.
Scores from the risk assessment instrument, or risk levels from the DWI supplemental risk assessment if applicable, are combined with an offense severity rating for the sentenced offense of record to determine a parole candidate's guidelines level. The intersection of his risk level and the offense severity rating on a matrix creates the offender's Parole Guidelines Score. Parole Guidelines Scores range from 1 for an individual with the poorest probability for success, up to 7 for an offender with the greatest probability of success.
| OFFENSE SEVERITY CLASS | Highest | High | Mod. | Low |
| Highest | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| High | 2 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
| Moderate | 2 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Low | 3 | 4 | 6 | 7 |
An offender with a high parole score correlates to a higher probability rate for success while on supervision. The guidelines are not automatic nor is the parole guidelines score presumptive as to whether an offender will be paroled. Board members retain the discretion to vote outside the guidelines when the circumstances of an individual case merit their doing so.
Updated 01-20-2012
