THE prison gate swings shut and a man stumbles blinking into the desert sunshine. Looking up, he sees a blonde with big sunglasses and a headscarf waiting for him in a convertible. That is how screenwriters imagine the scene, but the reality of leaving prison is grimmer.

Prisoners are often released with no supervision and no help finding a job. That makes them more likely to reoffend. According to a report published on June 4th by Pew, a think-tank, the number freed with no form of parole has more than doubled over the past 20 years, though this varies a lot from state to state. In Florida 64% of prisoners leave like this; in California the figure is less than 1% (see chart).

The decline of parole is a side-effect of an old policy. Rampant crime in the 1980s and 1990s brought a fashion for mandatory sentencing laws: inmates should serve all their time behind bars and not be released a day early. That typically means that when they are freed, they are free of all supervision. Even as conservative reformers now argue that locking up more than 2m people is unaffordable and ineffective, the effects of strict sentencing rules linger.