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Parole Board · Commonwealth of VirginiaVirginia Parole Board and the Abolished-Parole Regime
Weight basis: 2,663 cases considered in 2024, 19 granted — a 0.7% grant rate
What this is
Virginia abolished discretionary parole for felonies committed on or after January 1, 1995. Under Va. Code § 53.1-165.1, a person sentenced for an offense after that date serves at least 85 percent of the sentence with no possibility of parole. The Parole Board that remains considers the shrinking population sentenced before 1995, plus geriatric and medical petitions. In 2024 it considered 2,663 cases and granted 19 — a grant rate of approximately seven-tenths of one percent. Reporting has documented that parole in Virginia has nearly vanished. This node is on the map for two reasons: it is the reason sentences in the 15th Circuit are effectively fixed at imposition, and it is the clearest available proof that the system has no functioning mechanism for recognizing that a person has changed.
Where it fails
Severity is a 1–5 editorial judgement about how acutely this institution damages a person along that dimension. It is an argument, not a measurement.
Spiritual Defining
A system with no second look has made a formal declaration that people cannot change. Everything a person does after sentencing — every program, every year of good conduct, every genuine transformation — is legally irrelevant to when they go home. Nineteen out of two thousand six hundred and sixty-three is not a review process. It is a door with a picture of a door painted on it.
Civil Defining
Board members are gubernatorial appointees under Va. Code § 53.1-134 and the board has been the subject of sustained controversy over transparency in its decision-making. Denial reasons are categorical rather than individualized, and the 0.7 percent grant rate is not accompanied by any public explanation of what would constitute a grantable case.
Economic Contributing
Serving 85 percent of every sentence, with no release valve, is the most expensive possible corrections posture, and the cost is carried by the same taxpayers whose localities are simultaneously paying to subsidize the state's per diem shortfall at the local jail.
Wellness Substantial
Hopelessness is a clinical condition, and a system that provides no achievable path to release manufactures it at scale. Geriatric and medical release provisions exist but are granted so rarely that people age and die inside rather than being released to care.
The story, as it passes through here
Two thousand six hundred and sixty-three people asked to go home in 2024. Nineteen were told yes. And if your offense was on or after the first of January, nineteen ninety-five, you did not get to ask at all — you serve eighty-five percent, minimum, no matter what you become in the meantime. Every program you finish, every year you keep your head down, every version of yourself you build in there: legally irrelevant. The Commonwealth has decided, in statute, that people do not change. It wrote that down. It is still written down.
Paul the Apostle · The System
Panels: Panel 28, Nineteen
Documented facts
| What | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Parole abolished | No parole for felonies committed on or after January 1, 1995; minimum 85% of sentence served | Va. Code § 53.1-165.1 (Abolition of parole) |
| 2024 consideration volume | 2,663 cases considered | Virginia Parole Board, Annual Consideration Reason Statistics 2024 |
| 2024 grants | 19 granted — approximately a 0.7% grant rate | Virginia Parole Board, Annual Consideration Reason Statistics 2024 |
| Board composition | Gubernatorial appointees under Va. Code § 53.1-134 | Va. Code § 53.1-134 (Parole Board composition) |
| Documented decline | Reporting concluded that parole in Virginia has nearly vanished | Mother Jones, “Under Glenn Youngkin, Parole in Virginia Has Nearly Vanished”, May 2024 |
Evidence
The only place people are named: documented cases and, where the record names them, officeholders.
Five restorative changes this institution could make
Restore discretionary parole eligibility for all sentences, because a justice system that cannot recognize change has abandoned rehabilitation as a purpose.
Create a universal second-look mechanism allowing sentence review after a defined term served, on evidence of rehabilitation, regardless of offense date.
Publish individualized written reasons for every parole denial and full board voting records, so a 0.7 percent grant rate can be examined rather than merely observed.
Make geriatric and medical release functional with presumptive eligibility and defined timelines, so that people are released to care rather than dying in custody.
Expand earned-credit programs and apply them retroactively, so that participation in rehabilitation has an actual effect on release.
Tagged to the Ten Theses for Humane Justice. Written to survive a change of administration.