Parole officers are now assigned new case management responsibilities beginning with the onset of correctional placement. This arrangement impinges on the formerly autonomous reporting role of parole agents, whose recommendations were made independently of the correctional system and with reference to a wide range of information sources outside the institution. In the long range, the new system threatens the very existence of parole commissions, whose decisional powers to recommend release cannot be viewed as an impediment to an inmate's completion of the correctional plan. The plans overemphasize behavior as the principal evaluation criterion and disclose information to inmates before its submission to the parole commission. These conditions limit parole officers' authority and engender inmate distrust. Most disturbingly, the new procedures are akin to the American trends of determinate sentencing and may promote the decline of probation.