With respect to returning lifers, there is another great difficulty that, perhaps ironically, very often foils the efforts of the returning prisoner: the parole system. Professor Liem reports that paroled lifers often cannot find work that their parole officers will approve, and that in practice, parole is a system of control and discipline (similar to institutionalization), and not one of rehabilitation and assistance. The stories of individual lifers related in the text reveal a healthy distrust of parole officers, whose decisions are god-like, life-altering and often arbitrary.

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