One issue that can be raised by the Governor's declaration of a state of emergency in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation this month (see the L.A. Times article on 10/5/06) is the problem facing the Department's parole services.
Why is the system fixating on out-of-state transfers as an answer to overcrowding, when the overwhelming number of parole violations that send criminal offenders back to prison are of a technical nature? If the majority of criminal offenders are not breaking the law to be returned to prison, then why not restructure parole to deal with technical parole violators with various community corrections sanctions regimes, including community service, electronic monitoring, drug treatment, restitution and fines, and intensive supervision?
The short answer is that the old solution—early release based upon a fixed formula, e.g. 85%, 50%, etc.---has failed. Incorporating parole into the structure of criminal sentencing across the board, without any consideration of parole readiness, spells massive parole failure. Parole, as a transitional supervision and support mechanism, only works on a discretionary basis. But as can be observed in the Juvenile System, it all depends on who is given these discretionary powers. The Youth Offender Parole Board (YOPB), comprised of political appointees, have no experience in correctional treatment, and cannot properly evaluate parole readiness because they are outsiders to the juvenile rehabilitative process. In this situation, YOPB parole discretion has become a tool to be held over the heads of offenders in order to coerce them into complying with institutional treatment. But since YOPB cannot evaluate treatment progress, and DJJ treatment is a mixture of incompetence and failure, it is clear that discretionary parole has its shortcomings as well, especially when tied to a flawed institutional structure.
Sad but true, only a restructuring of the parole system around a discretionary model that focuses on parole revocation prevention through services designed to support returning offenders will be able to permanently reduce the prison population in the only really viable way possible—through actually reintegrating offenders back into society.
In the meantime, of the approximately 170,000 inmates in the adult system at the present, many are parole violators that have not committed new crimes. In the juvenile system, nearly half of all commitments in 2005 were for parole violations. Re-releasing these people to the community would not be rewarding criminal offenders by early release. It would simply be releasing those offenders who have already served their sentence handed down for their commitment offense, but who are now taking up badly needed space because they failed to report to parole, turned in a positive drug test, failed to go to their treatment group, or could not find a place of residence. This hardly raises to the level of releasing early dangerous criminals who have yet to serve their time for crimes against society.
The devils advocate objects: hey, why can't these guys accomplish simple parole conditions? This exhibits a trend of irresponsibility that seems to be the underlying reason why criminal offenders can't be trusted and ought to be returned to prison.
I would reply: Parole conditions as they presently exist are ineffective and unnecessary. Parole conditions should be designed to prevent the recommission of crime, but also ought to be realistic about the limitations of criminal offenders, and establish conditions that seek to benefit and support parolees, rather than simply monitor and control them. If parole was responsive to the needs of returning offenders, its resources could be directed at ways to keep offenders out of jail, rather than on methods designed to send offenders back to jail for the slightest misstep. If parole services do not support offenders and make it their mission to keep them out of jail, then why have parole services at all? Why are we wasting our time and money?
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