Scientific Status of Parole Prediction
![handle is hein.journals/jclc27 and id is 202 raw text is: THE SCIENTIFIC STATUS OF PAROLE
PREDICTION
COMMUNICATED BY
FEaIS F. LAuNE*
In an article entitled Is Parole Prediction a Science?, which
appears in the present issue of the JoURNAL, Mr. Ray L. Huff points
out the desirability of an open interchange of views between in-
vestigators in the same field, as a means of clarification of issues and
mutual rapprochement of opinion. The present instance is a splen-
did case in point. For it is our belief that Mr. Huff's views con-
cerning the scientific status of parole prediction and our own are
very nearly identical; the only points of difference seem to rest
upon misapprehensions arising from lack of clarity in our previous
statement of our point of view. The present brief note is an attempt
to correct that lack of clarity.
In an article entitled Parole Prediction as Science, which
appeared some months ago in this JOURNAL,1 the point of view was
expressed that parole prediction as hitherto practiced constituted
a fine art-a series of more or less completely independent attempts
by various investigators to work out a methodology which would
make it possible, to some degree, to foretell the probability that a
given inmate of a penal institution would, when released upon
parole, succeed in the sense that he would not be declared a
violator of his parole. The opinion was advanced, however, that
there now existed a sufficient corpus of experimental findings in
this field to permit of a critical analysis of the various methodolog-
ical techniques-to isolate those elements of the techniques which,
by their consistency and universality, seem, in contradistinction to
the purely fortuitous factors, which vary from study to study, to be,
in some manner, inherently connected with the quality under in-
vestigation: probability of success on parole. Finally, it was ad-
vanced as our belief that the factors employed in prognostic tables
must, if parole prediction is to become a science, be rigidly limited
to such as can be shown to possess four fundamental criteria: reli-
ability, significance, orthogonality and stability.
*The Sociological Research Office of the Illinois State Penitentiary.
'Lanne, Wm. F.: Parole Prediction as Science, Journal Crn., XXVI:3T1.
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Scientific Status of Parole Prediction
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