For the purposes of this chapter, these definitions apply:

(1) "Board" means the Board of Pardons and Parole as authorized in 2-15-2302, MCA, the board staff and the board's duly constituted hearing panels.

(2) "Chair" means the person appointed by the governor to serve as the presiding officer of the board.

(3) "Controlling sentence" means the sentence(s) that, based on a district court judgment, requires the longest period of time served to parole eligibility.

(4) "Dead time" means the time an offender is not serving his/her sentence of incarceration because a hearing panel has determined the offender was in violation of the provisions of release.

(5) "Department" means the Department of Corrections as authorized in 2-15-2301, MCA.

(6) "Furlough" means temporary absence from confinement for the purposes authorized by the board.

(7) "Hearing" means the personal appearance of an offender before a hearing panel for release consideration, executive clemency, or revocation.

(8) "Hearing panel" means two or three board members appointed to conduct parole hearings, revocation hearings, rescission hearings, administrative parole reviews, and to make recommendations in matters of executive clemency.

(9) "Offender" means any person sentenced by a state district court to a term of confinement in a state correctional institution, committed to the director of the Department of Public Health and Human Services, or committed to the department.

(10) "Parole" means the release to the community by a decision of a hearing panel prior to the expiration of the offender's sentence, subject to conditions imposed by the hearing panel and subject to the supervision of the department.

(11) "Parolee" means a person whom a hearing panel has granted parole, who has signed the rules of parole and been given a parole certificate, and whose parole has not been revoked.

(12) "Parole certificate" means the document signed by the board chair and executive director authorizing the release from confinement to parole.

(13) "Parole eligibility" means the earliest possible date an offender may be released from confinement to parole supervision.

(14) "Prior conviction" means a sentence which the offender has completed.

(15) "Rescission" means an action of a hearing panel that annuls or voids a prior release decision.

(16) "Review" means the informal administrative process of considering the conduct and progress of an offender to determine if a reappearance or parole is desirable.

(17) "Rules" means the conditions, limitations, and restrictions upon which parole or furlough is based.

(18) "Sentence" means the penalty imposed by a court for a specific criminal offense.

(19) "Term" means the total period of time, minus applicable good time, that an offender was ordered to serve in prison or committed to the Department of Corrections or the Department of Public Health and Human Services for the commission of a criminal offense.

(20) "Victim" means a person who has suffered loss of property, bodily injury, or reasonable apprehension of bodily injury as a result of the commission of a criminal offense or a member of the immediate family of a person who was killed as a result of a crime.