PAROLE—CHANGE IT NOW
 

In 2002 the Board of Prison Terms held 4,826 hearings for Lifers. Lifers are Inmates with a term-to-life sentence. It found exactly 48 or 1% suitable for parole. The now deposed governor was forced by the courts to release 2 or 3 of these inmates, inmates who had served many years beyond their minimum sentences. At least 2 were victims of battered woman syndrome. The new governor has released about 35 to date.

What school or business producing a 1% success rate could continue to operate? The California Department of Corrections has a Board with a 99% failure rate. An entire department exists that accomplishes virtually nothing! A few years ago the department was threatened with being dissolved.

What is the makeup of this board? Who are these people? It is comprised of former police officers, former correctional officers, crime victim advocates, law enforcement boosters, and of course, lawyers. Is it then surprising that no one gets out? Where are the experts in human behavior to determine fitness?

The board had to reduce its work load so a law was passed to allow them to delay rehearing if an inmate is denied to 5 years. I mean its hard to issue all those denials year after year. They might have to meet twice a month. 

Here's a quote from the Board's web site: It is not uncommon for inmates to receive many parole hearings before they are found suitable for release. Now there's some news for you. 

The District Attorney from the prosecuting county may make a presentation opposing or supporting parole.  He doesn't even have to attend but can communicate via TV or the internet. Crime victims or their families are entitled to present a 15 minute Victims Impact Statement. The inmate may have a lawyer. Inmate families have no say.

This board also looks at Mentally Disordered Offenders. Tell me why exactly mentally disordered persons are in prison?

Here's how you are classified as Mentally Disordered by the BPT on their web site:
the parolee has an illness or disease or condition that substantially impairs thinking, perceptions, emotions, judgment or behavior 

The parolee was convicted of a crime that involved force and violence that resulted in or threatened serious bodily harm 

Note this one-this covers many potential parolees. I don't see how it determines mental illness.

The mental disorder was the cause or a contributing factor in the crime for which the parolee was convicted. 

The mental disorder is not in remission and cannot be controlled by medication 
the parolee has received treatment for severe mental disorder for at least 90 days in the year prior to parole the parolee poses a danger to others because of the mental disorder. 

We're talking about between 500 and 1,000 hearings per year.

Please remember there are thousands 3 strikers in prison. None of these have reached the minimum 25 years in the 10 years since its passage. But the time is coming when the system will be clogged worse than ever.

There is another parole system, much larger than the lifer paroles conducted by the Board of Prison Terms. The Department of Corrections handles all determinate sentence paroles. At the end of a sentence the inmate is placed on parole for 3 years. Once an inmate is released, he is given $200 and told to report to his parole agent immediately. 
In the words of one parolee: You catch the bus, by the time you even get where you're going, you're down to $150. By the time you even see your parole officer you have no money in your pocket. 

As the parolees return to the same poor neighborhoods they left, there is mounting evidence that they have become what some criminologists and prison officials now call the collateral damage of the prison- building boom. Because of the spending binge states were forced to sharply curtail programs. Education, job training and other rehabilitation programs inside prisons were slashed. The newly released inmates are far less likely to find jobs, maintain stable family lives, or stay out of the kind of trouble that leads to more prison. Many states have unintentionally contributed to these problems by abolishing early release for good behavior, removing the incentive for inmates to improve their conduct.

The recidivism rate for California is 70% and half the inmates in California State Prisons are parole violators. Is a 30% success rate anything to crow about? The national rate of violators being returned is 35%. A 65% rate isn't good but it does mean the rest of the country at least achieved a "D". California has a disgraceful "F".

Here's a statistic for you: In 1980, 2,995 parole violators were sent back to prison in California. In 2000, 89,363 were returned. The numbers have continued to soar: a fifth of all parolees nationwide are from California. 

About 80% of the parole violations are for technical violations not new crimes.

Some of you may remember when Governor Dukakis ran for president. He was accused of being soft on crime and the ad that did him in was the revolving door with prisoners going in and out. In California we have reversed things. The revolving door awaits the parolee. 

Consider this: The state's Little Hoover Commission issued a scathing report in which it noted that nearly 70 percent of California parolees were returned to prison. The national average is 35 percent, and many of the California inmates who went back to prison did so for violating relatively minor conditions of their release A missed meeting, bad drug test, or whatever the parole agent considers a violation.

Our society has put up so many barriers preventing the reintegration of previously incarcerated felons into "normal" life that one can't imagine a successful mass prison release program without spending quite a bit of additional moneys on reintegration programs

No court or jury put any parole violator back in prison. That happens solely by non-judicial parole officers, upheld by parole committees also composed of correctional officers. Almost all of the state employees involved are members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association - the CCPOA, better known as the prison guard's union. The CCPOA is, at present, the most politically powerful union in California, and has pushed hard for new prisons and tougher laws to fill them. For the past 20 years, CCPOA's version of "public safety" has been "lock up every single person we can for as long as we can and never parole them.

We spend about $1.5 Billion on paroles. $1 Billion to imprison recidivists and $500 Million on the outside. What a colossal waste.

The money could be spent better on drug treatment, job training and education for inmates before release, the Hoover report said, greatly reducing the number of people returned to prison. Although three-quarters of the 160,000 inmates have drug or alcohol problems, only 6 percent get treatment. Only one-third take part in job or education programs. What a colossal failure.

All this leads to one thing: ACTION!

There is an act to amend Section 3041 of the Penal Code, relating to parole. 

SB 1522, as amended, Vasconcellos. Parole. Existing law regulates the setting of parole. This bill would provide that the determination not to fix a parole date would only be reached upon a showing of clear and convincing evidence that the individual currently poses an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety.

I would ask you to urge the legislators to act upon this bill by taking it off the suspense file and putting it to a vote. Write your local papers with  a letter to the editor and demand some sanity in the parole system, send a copy to your legislator and if possible visit them.