Parole Board Prisoners

October 29th Progress Report. Click here to read.

August 18th Progress Report. Click here to read.

August 9th Reply Brief. Click here to read.

Appellate brief filed with sixth circuit June 9th. Click here to read.

New progress report released June 12. Click here to read.

"I don't consider myself to be a convict or an inmate any more, but a political prisoner who is in the blind spot of society." - Thomas Balog #A241977 August 1996

Ohio 's Parole Board is a secretive government agency. Its work is conducted at prisons… behind barbed wire. It is a monolithic agency, much like a huge block of granite. Its inner deliberations are zealously guarded and known to only a few insiders. Its inner workings are impenetrable. Its people are unresponsive.

If you have been an Ohio inmate subject to the unfettered discretion of the Parole Board, or if you are bonded to an inmate, be it a child, a loved one or a family member, then you know what it feels like to tread through the deep, foreboding domain that surrounds this piece of stone. Decisions are driven by whim and caprice. Rules - the parole board's adopted rules - are routinely abandoned when they become the slightest bit inconvenient. No real explanations are ever given for their decisions. Instead, they issue fragments of words, such as "seriousness of crime" and "must be held accountable for behavior" to justify years of continuing incarceration. And there is seemingly no place to appeal. There is no place to seek help.

Think of this web site as a LIGHT into this domain. Follow us, as we expose this secretive agency and light your way.

Visit the section titled State Highway Patrol testimony and read the comments of parole board decision-makers, describing their animosity and bias toward inmates and their flippant attitude as they decide these prisoners' fates. Browse through the Progress Reports, and follow the legal challenge that we have mounted against this authority. View Charting Abuse, to see pictures of their decision-making, drawn from hundreds of actual cases. Look at the legal decisions coming down, against them.

Parole Board Prisoners is a story about a law suit against the Parole Board of Ohio, and more. It is a story about the pain, the resiliency and the courage of the people that are walking through this nightmare. It is also a journey. Our goal is to use our legal system as a chisel to make this piece of granite split and rupture until it is fully opened and exposed. We are determined to break through this darkness. We will rest only when this nightmare goes away - forever.

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