Granting parole to a prisoner is a big decision that makes a big impact. Over the past year in Minnesota, the responsibility was turned over to citizens as part of new legislation.
It used to be up to the commissioner of the Department of Corrections.
So far, the Supervised Release Board has paroled a higher percentage of prisoners than any commissioner in the past 30 years. Current Commissioner Paul Schnell has reviewed the most cases, paroling nearly 17% of them…