Revoking Early Conditional Release Measures in Spain

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how early conditional release measures for offenders are revoked in Spain, paying special attention to the criteria and the procedures legally established, and discuss relevant statistics and case law on this subject.

Abstract: In this article we examine how early conditional release measures for offenders are revoked in Spain. For this purpose we analyse the legal framework of revocation, paying special attention to the criteria and the procedures legally established. We also take a look to the practice of revocation by discussing relevant statistics and the case law on this subject. Finally, we raise some critical points on the Spanish system of revocation suggesting some changes inspired by the principle of revocation as a last resort.

Summary

Introduction

• Over the past thirty years, local access to food stores has become an increasing concern for retail planners and policy makers.
• Most notably, successive investigations by the UK government’s Competition Commission into the supply of groceries have identified local ‘areas of concern’ where retail provision is regarded as problematic.
• In order to examine these effects empirically, the authors adopt a stated-preference approach (Louviere, Hensher and Swait, 2000).
• The authors apply this approach to consumers from neighbourhoods with different levels of deprivation to assess the effect of levels of household deprivation as a moderator of consumers’ perceptions of choice.

Recent policy issues: ‘retail diversity’

• As Guy (2009) has documented, the term retail diversity has come to the fore in retail planning and competition debates over the past five years in the context of supermarket competition, ‘clone towns’, brand concentration, and questions over the extent to which small independent and specialist stores should be encouraged and protected.
• The authors argue that retail diversity is key to the ability of a particular centre to adapt and thrive in the face of environmental and competitive forces.
• The composition of the store mix is one determinant of consumers’ satisfaction with their local store assortment.
• Marjanen (1997) suggested subjective distance is not linearly related to objective distance because closer and shorter distances tend to be overestimated, and longer distances underestimated.
• Previous research has identified links between social deprivation and store choice.

Method

• To test their hypotheses, the authors adopted a stated-preference approach.
• Second, because the method is experimental it allows stronger inferences of causality than can be derived from survey-based approaches using real market observations.
• Finally, although the hypothetical nature of the task does impose some limitation on the external validity of the findings, stated preference methods are very well able to capture respondents’ preference functions and have been shown to be adept at predicting real market behaviours (for reviews see Louviere, 1988; Louviere et al., 2000).
• Retail fascias present in Worcester at the time included Tesco (two major outof-town stores), Tesco Express (three outlets), Sainsbury (one high street and out-of-town store), Somerfield (two outlets) and the Cooperative Group (three outlets).
• The city has a population of around 95,000, with a socio-economic profile almost identical to England as a whole.

Sample and Procedure

• Nine neighbourhoods were selected that varied over three levels of social deprivation, measured using the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).
• The overall IMD is conceptualised as a weighted area-level aggregation of the specific dimensions of deprivation (ODPM, 2004).
• In each location, a starting point for recruitment was randomly selected, after which additional respondents were recruited from the same area by door knocking until over 30 interviews had been successfully completed within each neighbourhood.
• The procedure resulted in 288 completed householder interviews.
• Respondents received four scenarios, one at a time, and the interviewer asked for each how satisfied the respondent would be with the store mix in terms of retail choice (see Figure 1).

Experimental Design

• The experimentally designed store mixes were presented on show cards as shown in Figure 1.
• Tesco is the largest multiple operator of supermarkets and superstores in the UK and has by far the largest market share of the four main operator brands.
• In addition, the store mixes included a Somerfield supermarket.
• Finally, the authors allowed for systematic variation of the presence of multiple instances of Tesco’s main supermarket format on the show cards, enabling us to test for the effect of additional supermarkets of the same brand (in this case using Tesco) in the area on satisfaction with the store mix.
• At the 15-minute edge of town location the options were: (4) a Tesco supermarket, (5) a Tesco branded small store (Tesco Express) and/or (6) an ASDA supermarket.

Findings

• The sample for this paper consisted of 288 households, distributed evenly across the local areas selected to reflect areas of high, medium and low levels of deprivation and local access.
• In addition, the model included the products of these attributes and attribute interactions with the deprivation dummies.
• Secondly, respondents in neighbourhoods that are classified as moderately deprived appear to perceive less value (0.61) in having an ASDA store in their mix, especially if they already have a Sainsbury in their mix (another 0.34 drop on the log scale).

Discussion, conclusions and implications

• Second, the authors find that the presence of a small independent store adds to satisfaction but only when overall provision is rated low.
• The presence of a second Tesco at 15 minutes travel added very little to the satisfaction levels but the presence of a different supermarket brand (e.g. ASDA or Morrisons) significantly increased satisfaction levels, even when stores were located 15 minutes away.
• They suggest that low levels of provision, and/or a lack of brand variety act as constraints on consumer choice; and conversely, a larger number of stores and a greater variety of store brands help maximise consumer choice and welfare by positively influencing consumers’ satisfaction with their local mix of grocery stores.

Figures

Table 2. Revocation of parole. Spain (2006-2010)

Table 1. Revocation open regime. Spain (2006-2010)9

Figure 1. Form of release. Catalonia (2006-2010) (average)

Full text

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REVOKING EARLY CONDITIONAL RELEASE MEASURES IN SPAIN
José Cid
Criminologia Aplicada a la Penologia
Department of Political Science and Public Law
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
e-mail: Josep.Cid@uab.es
Beatriz Tébar
Departament d’Interior
Generalitat de Catalunya
The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in European Journal of
Probation, 4 (1): 112-124, 2012, by SAGE Publishing.
Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/206622031200400110

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Abstract
1
In this article we examine how early conditional release measures for offenders are
revocated in Spain. For this purpose we analyse the legal framework of revocation,
paying special attention to the criteria and the procedures legally established. We also
take a look to the practice of revocation by showing the figures the case law on this
subject. Finally, the most critical issues on revocation are outlined according an
approach based on the philosophical that should rule revocation and the constitutional
principles that inform conditional early release mechanisms.
Keywords: early conditional release recalling, prison allocation, parole.
1
This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Políticas de
reinserción en el ámbito penal, DER 2008-0541) and the Catalan Government (AGAUR Grupo de
Investigación consolidado en Criminología aplicada a laPenología, SGR 2009-1117). The data presented
in this paper has been provided by Ramon Pares, Director of the Catalan Prison System and Virgilio
Valero, Director of Rehabilitation of the Spanish Prison). We would like to thank especially the prison
judge Benito Pérez, one of the six prison judges in Catalonia, for a long interview with him that improved
very much our understanding of the practice of revocation of conditional early release measure. We also
want to thank Mireia Balaguer, Manuel Cachón and Carme Navarro for the time they devote to answer
our questions. Nicky Padfield was not only the person who came out with this project on comparative
penology but also challenged us with stimulating questions that we have tried to answer. Beatriz Tébar
would also like to thank the Catalan Government for the Batista i Roca scholarship she was granted to
conduct comparative research on parole at the Institute of Criminology of the University of Cambridge
from March to December 2003.

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INTRODUCTION: AN OVERVIEW OF THE SPANISH EARLY RELEASE
SYSTEM (Cid and Tébar 2010a).
Spanish law provides two ways to be early conditional released while serving a prison
sentence: open-regime (with include home detention curfew) and conditional liberty or
parole.
Both mechanisms are categories or classifications from the Spanish prison system set by
the General Penitentiary Act 1979. This Act introduced a progressive system based on
individualisation of the prison regime, which provides the following four main levels of
classification or treatment categories as they are named by the General Penitentiary Act
1979, where the higher the level is the more open is the prison regime implemented:
THE SPANISH PRISON SYSTEM
Prison Treatment Categories Prison Regime
1st category Closed or max security regime.
2nd category Ordinary regime
3
rd
category Open regime or home detention curfew
4th category Parole
Open Regime and Home detention curfew
Third degree prison regime or category is a kind of semi-detention whereby prisoners
spend the day outside prison, usually working, and return to prison only at nights, from
Monday to Thursday. While from Friday to Sunday third degree prisoners normally
benefit from a weekend leave.

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Third degree classification is a prison measure regulated mainly by the 1979 General
Penitentiary Act and the 1996 Prison rules, although some provisions about this regime
where introduce by the 7/2003 Fundamental Law, which reformed the Spanish Criminal
Code.
As for the legal criteria to be categorised as a third degree prisoner, two ways are
foreseen. First, prisoners may be first classified in an open regime if they have a good
risk prognosis. However the Prison Administration only decides an initial third degree
classification in the case of first-time prisoners with short sentences and a very good
risk prognosis (Capdevila et. al. 2006). Secondly, the third level may be reached as a
progression from the second prison category. The 1996 Prison Rules provide this
classification in the third category once a quarter of the sentence has been served and
provided the prisoner is considered to be ready for resettlement. Despite these legal
criteria, the Prison Administration practice requires the following additional criteria to
receive a third degree allocation: having served half of the sentence; having previously
been granted temporary leave from prison; and having a remaining sentence that would
make them eligible for ordinary parole in no more than two or three years (Cid 2005;
López-Ferrer 2004). In both case, as a primary classification and as a progression from
the second level, Spanish Criminal Code section 36, requires prisoners to pay the civil
liability arouse form the offence committed decided in the sentence or at least to make
guarantees of payment according to their possibilities. Another legal requirement
established by the s.36 Criminal Code relating to classification into the third level refers
to the discretional power of the sentencing Judge to imposed a minimum mandatory
period of half of the sentence before classification in the third period, when a sentence

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longer than five years is being served. This minimum mandatory period can be lifted by
the prison judge, provided that a low risk of reoffending is predicted. For sentences
longer than five years imposed for offences related to terrorism, organised crime, sexual
offences against victims under thirteen the minimum mandatory period before reaching
the third treatment category is perceptive and cannot be judicially lifted afterwards.
As for release in home detention curfew, prisoners allocated to the third level who carry
out labour or treatment activities outside the establishment, are eligible to be released by
this means during the nights. The 1996 Prison Rules established this special regime that
allows third level prisoners to replace the nightly return to prison by a home detention
curfew, so they only have to visit prison for arranged interviews with their supervision
agent. Generally, the home detention period, which normally lasts from 11 pm to 7 am,
is monitored by electronic tagging or by police officers.
Parole
Parole allows sentenced prisoners to be released into the community with supervision
before the end of a prison sentence. Supervision implies observing certain rules or
conditions, among which it is always included a duty not to re-offend. Parole remains in
force until the sentence expiry date, unless it is revoked earlier and the offender is
recalled to prison. As explained below, different modalities of parole can be
distinguished according to the criteria required to be released. Mention also should be
made to some cases where the type of prisoner, the number of offences committed and

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in "Revoking early conditional release measures in spain" ?

Cid and Tébar this paper introduced a progressive system based on individualisation of the prison regime, which provides the following four main levels of classification or treatment categories as they are named by the General Penitentiary Act 1979, where the higher the level is the more open is the Prison regime implemented: 

Q2. What are the two ways to be early conditional released?

Spanish law provides two ways to be early conditional released while serving a prison sentence: open-regime (with include home detention curfew) and conditional liberty or parole. 

Q3. What is the minimum mandatory period before reaching the third treatment category?

For sentences longer than five years imposed for offences related to terrorism, organised crime, sexual offences against victims under thirteen the minimum mandatory period before reaching the third treatment category is perceptive and cannot be judicially lifted afterwards. 

Q4. What are the reasons for revocation of a parole?

As for the grounds for revocation, the Spanish Criminal Code (section 93.1) provides the following two general causes: re-offending and the breach of the license obligations. 

Q5. How does the judge decide if a parole revocation is necessary?

In practice some Prison Judges decide parole revocation when the offence is flagrant, by means of considering there has been a breach of the license conditions or that the criteria required to access parole is no longer fulfilled.