On December 23, 2022, a new regulation, 120 CMR 700.00 was promulgated to establish new rules and procedures to be followed by the Parole Board in order to grant an early termination of sentence and thus issue a certificate of early termination of parole supervision. To be eligible for consideration for a Certificate of Termination of Parole under M.G.L. c.127 §130A, the parolee must meet the following minimum eligibility requirements, and they shall only be eligible for consideration of termination of parole every 12 months.
- Completed at least one year of satisfactory parole supervision
- Been assessed as low or very low risk in the most recent LS/CMI and currently under ‘reduced’ supervision, or assessed as moderate in the most recent LS/CMI and currently under ‘standard’ supervision, and completed at least ten years of satisfactory parole supervision
- Received no written warnings, parole violation reports, or warrants in the past year, and has no open court cases
- Been in compliance with all other parole supervision requirements.
Parolees seeking a Certificate of Termination must submit a completed Termination Application to the Office of General Counsel, which reviews the application to determine whether or not the parolee meets the minimum eligibility requirements. If the application does not meet the requirements, the application is administratively closed. If the application meets the minimum eligibility requirements, the Office of General Counsel submits the application to the Parole Board for review. The Parole Board votes in executive session where it provides a disposition to either deny the application and continue supervision of the parolee or grant a hearing to determine whether or not to approve the application and terminate the sentence. In some cases, it can also terminate the sentence without a hearing.
If an application is granted a hearing at the executive session, the hearing is held at the Parole Board's Central Office and is open to the public.
The final determination of whether to terminate the sentence or deny the application is made by a majority vote of the full Parole Board, which determines whether such termination is in the public interest.
The completed application should be submitted to PAR.Termination@mass.gov. Please use this email address for all Termination related matters and share with individuals applying for a Termination of Parole. The email account is monitored by the Office of General Counsel.