Parole & Mandatory Supervision Law
The library often receives questions about parole and mandatory supervision law and whether an inmate is eligible for parole.
The Board of Pardons and Paroles decides which eligible offenders will be released on parole or discretionary mandatory supervision. Their website provides answers to common questions and information about parole guidelines.
The Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Department of Criminal Justice Parole Division publish Parole in Texas, a guide that helps provide accurate information about parole and mandatory supervision. Parole in Texas is available for free in both English and Spanish.
Parole and Mandatory Supervision Laws
Texas parole and mandatory supervision laws have a long history of revisions and amendments. Questions about eligibility and other parole issues usually require that you look at the parole law that was in place on a specific date — for example, the date of a conviction or the date of the offense that led to a conviction.
If you are looking for parole law as it existed on a specific date, please see the information below.
Early 2004 – Present
The current version of the parole and supervision statutes is available online via Chapter 508 of the Government Code. Sections 508.145 and 508.149, which relate to eligibility for parole and mandatory supervision, refer you to the list of offenses found in Article 42A.054 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
You can see any version of these statutes from early 2004 to the present by using the Statutes by Date feature on the Texas Legislature's website. On that page, you can access the law as of any specific date after the 10th of January 2004.
Before January 11th, 2004
To locate the parole and mandatory supervision laws for a date prior to January 11th, 2004, we invite you to submit a request to the library. Through our fee-based Document Delivery service, we can provide copies of the law either in print or electronically. You can also visit a law library in person in order to view previous versions of the law.
If you wish to do this historical legal research on your own, we invite you to use our Historical Texas Statutes collection online. Our library digitized historical publications of the Texas statutes from 1879 through 1984.
Please contact us if you have questions about locating parole and mandatory supervision laws.