After you serve a third of your New Jersey prison sentence, you may become eligible for parole. If granted parole, you then have to adhere to certain compliance requirements. These typically include making regular appearances in front of a parole officer, among others. If the State Parole Board Hearing Unit hears that you have violated one or more of the terms or conditions associated with your parole, it may require you to attend a hearing.
Per NJ.gov, the point of a parole hearing is to figure out whether there is “clear and convincing” evidence that you committed the particular violation in question.
How the parole revocation hearing works
A Hearing Officer from the state’s Parole Revocation Unit conducts the hearing. The first hearing looks to see if there is enough probable cause to move forward with the second one. The second hearing, the revocation hearing, seeks to determine if the alleged violations were serious enough to warrant the state revoking your parole and sending you back to prison.
What outcomes you may face
At the conclusion of your hearing or hearings (you have the option of waiving the preliminary hearing and moving straight to the revocation hearing, if preferable), the Board Panel makes one of several decisions. It may decide to revoke your parole and give you a future parole eligibility term. Conversely, it might decide to keep you on parole as planned. If it decides to do this, you may face additional compliance requirements moving forward, depending on the circumstances.
While most New Jersey inmates become eligible for parole after serving a third of their sentence, this does not apply in instances where the inmate received a sentence of parole ineligibility.
