The culture of releasing authorities is fundamentally shaped by the appointments that elected officials make to those authorities and the guidance and tools the authorities are provided to make their decisions. By appointing well-informed professionals to make release and revocation decisions and ensuring that release decisionmakers (both judges and parole board members) are trained in the use of evidence-based instruments, governors and legislative leaders enable releasing authorities to regularly make accurate decisions and produce successful outcomes.

Members of a releasing authority should be required to meet some professional criteria. Currently, two-thirds of states have no professional qualifications for parole board members. ^[1]   Training for judges, who set conditions of release for some categories of offenders at sentencing (which can be many months, and sometimes years, before a person is to be released to the community), could also be useful. (See Policy Statement 18, Release Decision, Recommendation a, for more on training releasing authorities to use risk tool assessments for release decisions).

To ensure that people making critical release decisions have the appropriate training and background, policymakers can require board members to obtain standardized certification. In this regard, the standards developed for board certification or training accreditation by professional membership organizations or other associations can be extremely useful. While parole board members can either be appointed by the governor or by a state-level corrections official, their selection should be determined by predetermined standards. ^[2]   The Association of Parolling Authorities International (APAI) has issued guidelines for how governors should select parole board members, developed a resource kit for new parole board members, and offers conferences geared towards training and exposing board members to as much information, research and techniques as possible. In addition to offering training for new parole members, APAI also conducts training for tenured members and for the officers who provide the board with the information to advise the release authorities' decision.

Example: Training for New Parole Board Members, National Institute of Corrections (NIC) and Association of Paroling Authorities International (APAI)

The National Institute of Corrections (NIC) and the Association of Paroling Authorities International (APAI) offer New Parole Board Training for individuals who have served less than two years on their term. New parole board members are required to review an extensive series of materials (and complete discussion questions) before they can even participate in this first level of training. The four-day program features corrections experts addressing issues such as individualized interviewing, structured decision-making, risk assessment instruments, consequences of making decisions to/not to release, re-entry, legal issues, and 'best practices' in managing supervision and violations.