West Virginia Indeterminate Sentence and Parole Laws

While this part of the study is supposed to be a study of West Virginia's indeterminate sentence law, it is in reality a study of this state's indeterminate sentence and parole laws. No indeterminate sentence law can be of value unless it is correlated to an adequate parole law, and, it is said, no parole law can be of full value unless it is used in conjunction with an indeterminate sentence law. At the outset several generalities may be set forth. There is no perfect answer to the penal problem.

When men and women must be deprived of their liberty for the benefit of society it is at best an unhappy business. There is no way of completely satisfying the prisoners or, in most cases, their families, short of releasing them completely. No system of laws is better than the person who administer those laws make them. No administrator or administrating board can do a good job of administering laws without adequate funds for personnel.

The most that a report of the results of this study can do is to point out what system of laws seems best in theory, since the system which is best in theory stands the best chance of being the best in practice. The report can also show how West Virginia's laws have fared in practice.