"The United States Parole Commission (Commission) has the authority to revoke an individual's parole if a violation of parole is substantiated and deemed so substantial as to warrant the termination of parole and re-incarceration. To determine whether an individual has violated the conditions of parole and whether revocation is warranted, the Commission follows a three-step process: issuance of an arrest warrant or summons to appear, preliminary interview, and final revocation hearing.
Upon receipt of the Report of Alleged Violations submitted by the CSO, the Commission determines whether there is satisfactory evidence to support the alleged violations and whether an arrest warrant or a summons to appear is appropriate. In most cases if the Commission finds that satisfactory evidence exists to believe that a parole violation has occurred, an arrest warrant will be issued. The warrants are executed by the U.S. Marshal Service. For parolees who are already incarcerated based on a criminal charge or conviction, the warrant will be lodged as a detainer to be executed upon release from the other custodial authority.
At the time of arrest or transfer of custody to the parole detainer, the parolee shall be notified that a probable cause hearing will be conducted within five days, the purpose of the hearing, and of the exact alleged violations of parole and supporting evidence that serves as the basis of the warrant or detainer. Within five days of arrest or transfer of custody to the parole violator detainer, the probable cause hearing, called a "preliminary interview," will be conducted."
"If probable cause is not established at this hearing, the release of the parolee will be ordered. If on the other hand, probable cause is found, the hearing examiner will determine whether release notwithstanding probable cause is warranted or not and if not, the parolee will remain in custody.
If probable cause is found at the preliminary interview, the parolee will be asked whether he or she desires a local or institutional revocation hearing. At a local hearing, the parolee will have the right to an attorney provided by the Public Defender Service... or one privately retained and the right to cross-examine the adverse witnesses in relation to the alleged violations. These specific rights are not guaranteed at an institutional hearing and the parolee may be transferred to a federal bureau of prisons facility prior to the hearing. Therefore, unless unique circumstances are present, the parolee should request a local hearing.
The local revocation hearing will typically be held at the facility in which the parolee is incarcerated and will be conducted by a hearing examiner of the Commission. At this hearing, the parolee and his/her attorney may cross-examine witnesses, examine the evidence considered, and present witnesses, documents, and argument. A finding that the parolee actually violated parole must be supported by a preponderance of the evidence. Once a determination has been made whether parole will be revoked or not, the hearing examiner then makes a recommendation as to the parolee's presumptive reparole date. In other words, the hearing examiner will recommend the amount of time the parolee should serve prior to re-release on parole. This recommendation is forwarded to the Commission, who makes the final determination. The parolee will be notified by a Notice of Action of the final decision.
The hearing examiners recommendation is guided by a risk assessment that involves calculating the parolee's salient factor score and the category severity rating of the parole violation. The salient factor score is calculated by assessing several different components of the parolee's criminal history and totalling the particular points assigned to each component as set forth in the notes to 28 C.F.R. §2.20. The offenses which form the basis for revocation are assigned a severity rating intended to reflect the seriousness of the parole violation; these ratings are referred to as category severity ratings and are listed by offense in 28 C.F.R. §2.20. The sanction ranges used in determining the presumptive reparole date are compiled in a matrix of the salient factor score and the category severity rating. All non-criminal, administrative violations of parole are rated as Category One. This means that if the parole board is seeking revocation of parole based on technical violations and not because of rearrest, the parolee's category severity rating will be assigned a rating 1. If you would like to calculate the total time to be served before re-release for a specific parole violation start with the Salient Factor Score Calculator. The calculation will take you through all the steps necessary to determine the parole consequences for a given violation. If you already know both the parolee's salient factor score and category severity rating but would like to see different sanction outcomes based on a change of category severity rating, go to the Salient Factor/Category Severity Rating Grid to compare. This is especially useful when considering pleas to various offenses. Since the sanction outcome will change depending on a given charge, you will need to know what is the assigned category severity rating for any given charge. If you do not know the category severity rating for a charge go to charges by category severity rating."
Get more info here:
http://www.pdsdc.org/CriminalLawDatabase/Parole.asp?ID=1
Also check out this site:
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/parole-violation-lawyers.html