.jpg "Denton Dubbels")
Parole is an integral part of any criminal justice system. But, California decided to throw it out the window a few months back. As it turns out, maybe that decision wasn’t such a good idea. Surprise, surprise.
Fresno’s ABC 30 ran a story on April 7 about a new law that was implemented in January that allows criminals in California’s state prisons to be released after their sentences without supervised parole.
As is the case with most new laws, there are hidden loopholes that allow things, in this case violent criminals, to slip through the cracks.
The law was only meant for non-violent offenders to be released without being supervised. However, 250 offenders convicted of sex crimes, involuntary manslaughter and various weapons charges have been released without supervision.
“In a review of some 2,000 records of prisoners who were released without any parole,” the article said, “hundreds were convicted of violent crimes.” Oops.
The story featured some commentary from Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance). “I was shocked because we have state prisoners being released without parole supervision, and now walking the streets for some heinous crimes,” Lieu said.
“The department of corrections is not following the letter of the law,” Lieu said. “They have a sex offender walking the streets without parole supervision.”
Who is to blame? Surely not the bumbling state government. How about the department of corrections? It must be their fault.
“To be criticized on a penal code implementation that we didn’t create is not right and is not fair,” said Gordon Hinkle of the California Corrections Department.
For some reason, I was under the impression that we, the citizens, elect officials to govern our state with our best interests in mind. With this particular case, citizens’ lives are now being jeopardized because of this new law.
“The new parole law is supposed to reduce the state prison population by 6,500, and save California $500 million in its first year,” the article said.
Basically, what’s happening is that some prisoners convicted of violent crimes are serving their sentences and are being released. Nobody will monitor them to make sure they are on their best behavior and become productive citizens.
Parole acts like an insurance policy. Recently released offenders’ every move are watched under a microscope to make sure that they maintain a strict law-abiding lifestyle. Any little slip, and it’s back to prison.
With this new law, some of these recently released violent criminals may come to the conclusion that they just need to be more allusive and careful, and do whatever it takes to not get caught. Especially, when nobody will be watching.
According to a story from bnet.com, “Fifty-six percent of violent felons are repeat offenders.”
If my math (which has been known to be questionable many times) is correct, slightly more than half of violent offenders either have or will repeat crimes.
The dunces in Sacramento need to figure out a different way to try to save money. Endangering citizens by letting felons out of prison without parole is not the way to do it.
Criminals are supposed to be on parole upon their release. California’s elected politicians should be as well.
Anonymous • Apr 20, 2010 at 3:25 pm
If you actually believe, “Recently released offenders’ every move are watched under a microscope to make sure that they maintain a strict law-abiding lifestyle. Any little slip, and it’s back to prison” you have never had any contact with any corrections or parole system in this country!!! In California I give you three murdered police officers in Oakland before the parolee himself was killed, and most recently a parolee who had his child abductee living in a separate residence in his back yard long enough to have her become an adult, get her pregnant more than once, and have children with her, even then it wasn’t the parole officer who caught the offense, it was an alert security officer at a public venue that realized something was terribly wrong.
The reason the lawmakers passed this legislation, is because we DO have violent offenders on parole, many more than we have parole officers to monitor – and by taking NON-violent offenders off of parole, the caseloads of parole officers would drop to allow them to actually provide meaningful monitoring to those high-risk parolees.
There will always be new crimes – we have 70 percent recidivism in this state (reincarcerated within 3 years of release). We do not have the money to continue our current failed correction policies. Why we spend more and more money on prisons and incarceration, we spend almost nothing on deterrence or rehabilitation – because those funds are already used to cover the astronomical costs of our current policies. Law enforcement’s own evidenced-based studies show if we raise high school graduation rates (which we know how to do) by a mere 10 percent, we will reduce homicides by 3000 p/yr and 175,000 aggravated felonies p/yr. Yet we have fallen to 47/48 in the nation in per-pupil spending because all our funds are spent on the back end/incarceration. CA had over 1000 unsolved homicides in 2009, and the LA Times just released a story saying they are pulling officers from even solving/investigating homicides because they are out of funds.
This early release from parole was a small improvement in changing where we spend the money – on solving ‘seriously violent crime’ and monitoring the highest risk parolees. We are in a crisis, and we need to start now using pre-school for all (44 percent increase in HS grad rates), truancy programs, after school programs, and programs that target children at risk of dropping out. Each additional year a child completes in school the risk of losing them to the criminal justice system increases – their completion of high school creates a dramatic improvement in the chance of their succes – that they will become law abiding, tax paying citizens, instead of locked up at a cost of $50K and rising p/year for the rest of their lives ($250K if they are juveniles sent to CYA). Seems $250K invested in their education may be a much better investment considering CYA has a 91 percent recidivism rate (liklihood they will be rearrested in 3 years).
babysoft • Apr 20, 2010 at 7:25 am
If you actually believe, “Recently released offenders’ every move are watched under a microscope to make sure that they maintain a strict law-abiding lifestyle. Any little slip, and it’s back to prison” you have never had any contact with any corrections or parole system in this country!!! In California I give you three murdered police officers in Oakland before the parolee himself was killed, and most recently a parolee who had his child abductee living in a separate residence in his back yard long enough to have her become an adult, get her pregnant more than once, and have children with her, even then it wasn't the parole officer who caught the offense, it was an alert security officer at a public venue that realized something was terribly wrong.
The reason the lawmakers passed this legislation, is because we DO have violent offenders on parole, many more than we have parole officers to monitor – and by taking NON-violent offenders off of parole, the caseloads of parole officers would drop to allow them to actually provide meaningful monitoring to those high-risk parolees.
There will always be new crimes – we have 70 percent recidivism in this state (reincarcerated within 3 years of release). We do not have the money to continue our current failed correction policies. Why we spend more and more money on prisons and incarceration, we spend almost nothing on deterrence or rehabilitation – because those funds are already used to cover the astronomical costs of our current policies. Law enforcement's own evidenced-based studies show if we raise high school graduation rates (which we know how to do) by a mere 10 percent, we will reduce homicides by 3000 p/yr and 175,000 aggravated felonies p/yr. Yet we have fallen to 47/48 in the nation in per-pupil spending because all our funds are spent on the back end/incarceration. CA had over 1000 unsolved homicides in 2009, and the LA Times just released a story saying they are pulling officers from even solving/investigating homicides because they are out of funds.
This early release from parole was a small improvement in changing where we spend the money – on solving 'seriously violent crime' and monitoring the highest risk parolees. We are in a crisis, and we need to start now using pre-school for all (44 percent increase in HS grad rates), truancy programs, after school programs, and programs that target children at risk of dropping out. Each additional year a child completes in school the risk of losing them to the criminal justice system increases – their completion of high school creates a dramatic improvement in the chance of their succes – that they will become law abiding, tax paying citizens, instead of locked up at a cost of $50K and rising p/year for the rest of their lives ($250K if they are juveniles sent to CYA). Seems $250K invested in their education may be a much better investment considering CYA has a 91 percent recidivism rate (liklihood they will be rearrested in 3 years).
ed • Apr 19, 2010 at 6:31 am
Mr. Dubbels,
I couldn't agree more. With so many tax payer resources spent on so many absurd cuases its inconceivable that so many are set free to prey on well … so many!!