TICKET OF LEAVE. In Great Britain and its Australian colonies, a kind of permit or license granting a prisoner his liberty for good conduct, and revocable for subsequent miscon duct, under t-he terms of its conditions. The term was first applied to the license of liberty granted to convicts in Van Diemen's Land as a part of the reform in prison methods in 1840, and later to those who were granted a similar license in England as a partial compensation for their long term of imprisonment after transportation had been discontinued, but the terms of sentence bad not been shortened. These convicts became so numerous, and the number of crimes com mitted by them became so serious, that a still further reform led to the system of granting the license upon the mark system, under which it was given only to convicts sentenced for terms longer than two years, and who by their work and industry, as shown by their marks, became en titled to it. Under this system the ticket of leave has been found to work well, its chief de fect being the drawback put upon the prisoner's chance of success in obtaining work and living among reputable people by his liability to con stant surveillance by the police officials. This defect is largely removed by the existence of vari ous private charitable institutions which look after the prisoners who place themselves under their charge in such a manner as to remove the publicity of their being watched. The prisoner is
practically free to come and go as he chooses within a certain district, under certain condi tions of living an honest industrious life among honest people, and making periodical reports.
The effectiveness of such a system of reward ing good conduct on the part of prisoners, and inducing them to live honest lives without im prisonment, but yet where their conduct is sub ject to control, has become so generally recognized in the United States that similar acts have been passed in about half of them, the license being generally called a 'parole.' Most of these acts have been passed since 1890, and under none of them can a parole be granted to a person con victed of murder in either the first or second de gree; and most of them refuse it to a prisoner serving under a second conviction of crime. Of course the prisoners themselves are found to favor the granting of paroles; and the better element among them are in favor of the honest and strict enforcement of the conditions of sur veillance.
Consult the works referred to under PENOLOGY; PRISONS; and also the Report of J. Franklin Fort to the American Bar Association in 1898.