The Tennessee Board of Parole, formerly known as the Tennessee Board of Pardons and Paroles and Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole, is the state
parole board A parole board is a panel of people who decide whether an offender should be released from prison on parole after serving at least a minimum portion of their sentence as prescribed by the sentencing judge. Parole boards are used in many jurisdiction ...
in
Tennessee
Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...
.
Description
The Board of Parole is an independent state agency led by seven board members appointed by the
Governor
A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...
. The Board has authority under state statute to issue
parole
Parole, also known as provisional release, supervised release, or being on paper, is a form of early release of a prisoner, prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated ...
to offenders who have served a certain percentage of their sentences, as well as to revoke parole privileges for parolees who fail to follow the rules and standards established for them as conditions of release. The Board also receives and considers requests for executive
clemency
A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the j ...
and makes recommendations to the Governor on the disposition of these requests.
Charles Traughber is chairman of the Board of Parole. Except for a two-year period from December 1985 to December 1987, he has served on the Board since 1972. He was its chairman from 1972 to 1976, from 1977 to 1979, and from 1988 to present.
History
The agency was established in 1961 as a division of the
Tennessee Department of Correction
The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) is a Cabinet-level agency within the Tennessee state government responsible for the oversight of more than 20,000 convicted offenders in Tennessee's fourteen prisons, four of which are privately man ...
, headed by a three-member Board of Probation and Paroles that consisted of the Commissioner of Correction and two part-time board members. The board was expanded to five members in 1963; in 1970 the Commissioner of Correction ceased being a member.
In 1972, legislation enacted by the 86th
Tennessee General Assembly
The Tennessee General Assembly (TNGA) is the state legislature (United States), state legislature of the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is a part-time bicameral legislature consisting of a Tennessee Senate, Senate and a Tennessee House of Representa ...
created the Tennessee Board of Pardons and Paroles as a full-time board of three members. Members were to be appointed for six-year terms, with staggered terms of two, four, and six years for the initial appointments. Governor
Winfield Dunn
Bryant Winfield Culberson Dunn (July 1, 1927 – September 28, 2024) was an American businessman and politician who served as the 43rd governor of Tennessee from 1971 to 1975. He was the state's first Republican governor in fifty years.Phillip ...
appointed Charles Traughber as the first chairman and Dorothy Greer and Joseph Mitchell as the other charter members.
In the 1970s, the Board of Pardons and Paroles had a central role in the cash-for-clemency scandal in the administration of Governor
Ray Blanton
Leonard Ray Blanton (April 10, 1930 – November 22, 1996)Fred Rolater"Leonard Ray Blanton" ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2009. Retrieved: December 31, 2012.Marie Ragghianti, whom Blanton had appointed to chair the Board of Pardons and Paroles, was removed from her position as chairwoman in August 1977 after she refused a request to release certain prisoners who were later found to have
bribe
Bribery is the corrupt solicitation, payment, or acceptance of a private favor (a bribe) in exchange for official action. The purpose of a bribe is to influence the actions of the recipient, a person in charge of an official duty, to act contrar ...
d members of the Blanton administration to obtain their release. Ragghianti's story later gained national attention as the subject of
Peter Maas
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Peter Maas (June 27, 1929 – August 23, 2001) was an American journalist and author. He was born in New York City and attended Duke University. Maas had Dutch and Irish ancestry.
He was the biographer of Frank Serpico, a New York ...
probation
Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offence (law), offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration. In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences (alternatives to incar ...
responsibilities were transferred from the Board to the Department of Correction. As a result of this change in its responsibilities, the Board of Probation and Parole was renamed the Board of Parole.