One of the most frequently asked questions, after "Should I hire a Texas parole lawyer", is "Should I get support letters to send to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles"? 

The answer is unquestionably yes.

However, those letters alone probably won't be the difference between someone being granted a parole in Texas and it being denied.

The easiest thing to do is send in support letters and so most inmates in the Texas prison system who have someone on the outside have one or more letters sent in to support their parole.

Realistically, we know from the number of paroles reviewed each year and from the number of people on the parole boards, that each parole application and packets get, at best, a few minutes of attention. Knowing this to be a mathematical fact, it is important to put the best information you can in the parole packet, including in the parole letters.

Our e-book, How to Prepare a Texas Parole Presentation Package, available here as a digital download and here as a digital download and a printed copy that can be mailed to you or to your loved one in prison, gives you several tips and examples on how to make the packet as complete as possible to increase the chances of parole.

One of the ways is to make sure that you put information in the support letter that makes the inmate stand out from all the rest. This can include information on where they will be living, what kind of support group they have in place, and anything that the person writing the letter knows about the inmate that makes them more human to the parole board member.

In Texas, the people who vote on parole rarely meet the prisoners, they make their vote based only on what is contained in the file.

One last tip, with parole support letters in Texas it is thought to be better to have quality, rather than quantity. Content matters more than there being a lot of them. You want to make sure that if the parole board pulls one letter out of the pack to read, that it has good information.