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BEDFORD HILLS, New York (CNN) -- The New York Board of Pardons and Paroles on Wednesday rejected former 1960s radical Kathy Boudin's bid for parole.

Boudin has spent the last 20 years in prison for her role in a deadly armored car robbery.

The board told her that "notwithstanding your positive response" while in prison, "due to the violent nature and circumstances" of the crime, "your release at this time would be incompatible with the welfare of society and would serve to deprecate the seriousness of the criminal behavior ... so as to undermine respect for the law," said Tom Grant, board spokesman.

She will be allowed to come before the board again in August of 2003.

Once a member of the Weather Underground, a group of radical activists, Boudin was convicted for participating in a 1981 robbery of a Brink's armored car in a New York town. A Brink's guard was killed during the robbery, and two police officers were killed during a subsequent roadblock.

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Her father, a prominent New York civil rights attorney, had negotiated a plea bargain and Boudin was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

Another suspect in the robbery, Susan Rosenberg, spent 16 years in prison on unrelated explosives and weapons charges. She was granted clemency by President Clinton on January 20.

Boudin, now 58, has been a model prisoner at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York, earning a master's degree, working with inmates who have AIDS and editing a book on parenting from prison. Her son, who was an infant at the time of the robbery, is a student at Yale University.

She has expressed regret for the robbery. "I have no pride for what I have done," she said. "Only the wisdom and regret that came too late."

That has not satisfied the victims' families.

"We have to live with this, all of us, our entire lives," said O'Grady's widow Diane O'Grady. "So why should she get out now?"

Almost 1,000 people attended a rally last month opposing a parole for Boudin.

Jan Haber, editor and publisher of the Nyack Villager newspaper, said she has been receiving letters concerning the parole hearing since May.

"The overwhelming opinion is that she should stay in jail," Haber said. "People here are very upset that she could receive parole."

Boudin denies knowing about bombing

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Boudin became a radical activist in the 1960s. Before the robbery, Boudin lived underground for almost 12 years.

She went into hiding in 1970 after surviving an explosion at a Manhattan townhouse where members of the Weather Underground were building a bomb. Three people were killed from the blast.

In a recent article in The New Yorker magazine, Boudin said she did not know about the bomb.

She later signed on with Black Liberation Army members and other radicals who were planning to rob the Brink's armored car near Nyack, a community along the Hudson River north of New York City. The group's October 20, 1981, robbery of a Brink's armored car claimed the life of guard Peter Paige and wounded another person, as well as seizing $1.6 million.

Police stopped the van at a roadblock and the gunmen opened fire, killing police Sgt. Edward O'Grady and Officer Waverly Brown.

Boudin was captured by an off-duty corrections officer who saw her try to flee the scene on foot.

-- CNN.com editor Kevin Drew and Correspondent Garrick Utley contributed to this report.