Articles & News

March 24, 2009

State's parole system broken, decades of reports reveal

By Paul T. Rosynsky, Oakland Tribune

OAKLAND — Every year, about 7,000 state inmates are released on parole to Alameda County, representing about 5 percent of the roughly 138,000 inmates released on parole statewide each year, statistics show.

Though the sheer number of parolees in the county concerns many, it's the number of parolees that end up back in prison for either committing a new crime or violating terms of their parole that prove the state's parole system is broken, studies conducted over the past decade show.

If Alameda County parolees return to prison as often as they do throughout the entire state, then of the 7,000 parolees released last year, about 4,600, or 66 percent, will be back behind bars by 2011. In Contra Costa County, 1,927 parolees were released back into the community last year, the numbers show.

"California's parole population is now so large and its parole agents are so overburdened that parolees who represent a serious public safety threat are not watched closely," a National Institute of Justice-funded report released last year states. "And those who wish to go straight cannot get the help they need."

As details emerged Sunday about the history of Lovelle Mixon, who killed Oakland police officers in two related shootings, attention focused on the status of state parolees and how the system fails them.

State Attorney General Jerry Brown used the killings to declare the parole system broken and said he would focus new energies on
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such a task.

But reports investigating the state's parolee system have been sending for the past decade cautionary tales about the dangers posed by an ever-increasing parolee population. But little, if anything, has been done to change a system that sees more parolees return to prison than any other state.

One of the main contributors to the state's parole numbers is a 1976 law, the Determinate Sentencing Law, that mandated parole for all state inmates after they serve a set number of years in prison for a crime.

Unlike other states, which allow a parole board to decide if an inmate is ready to return to society, California's law says all inmates, except those serving life sentences, must be paroled after serving their time.

"Because California releases nearly all prisoners "... the state's parole agents end up supervising some individuals who pose a far more serious threat to society than the typical parolee," the report concluded. "In states that use discretionary release, these high-risk prisoners can be denied parole and kept in prison."

In addition to having violent criminals released on parole, the system does not provide incentives for inmates to improve, reports state. Inmates know they will be released when their time has been served regardless of their actions in prison.

"Years of political posturing have taken a good idea — determinate sentencing — and warped it beyond recognition with a series of laws passed with no thought to their cumulative impact," a 2007 report conducted by the Little Hoover Commission concluded. "And these laws stripped away incentives for offenders to change or improve themselves while incarcerated."

The high number of parolees has overburdened the state's parole officers forcing them to keep track of roughly 100 parolees each compared to a 50-to-1 ratio endorsed by the American Probation and Parole Association.

While the Determinate Sentencing Law has increased the number of parolees in the state, other laws mandating what constitutes a parole violation, and who decides what constitutes a violation, has helped increase the rate at which parolees are sent back to prison, several reports state.

As a result, all parole violators, regardless of the severity of their violation, are sent back to prison, adding to the population of a prison system overburdened with criminals.

And once there, they have no means to improve themselves as overcrowding and budget cuts have resulted in the closure of programs intended to help inmates, reports state.

Despite the endless studies reviewing state correction policies and the numerous suggestions made by different reports, change in the system has not come and many blame politics.

"Despite ample evidence and recommendations, policymakers have been unwilling to take on the problem in a purposeful, constructive way," the Little Hoover report states. "The Governor and the current Legislature alone did not create the problem — California's leaders have neglected the correctional system for decades."