jusstryit3
07-16-2004, 11:26 PM
California's broken parole system
The Sacramento Bee reports (http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/8013619p-8949908c.html) that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking to save money by cutting the corrections budget, perhaps by releasing as many as a third of the inmates in California prisons because they're non-violent and no danger to anyone. Atrios (http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_12_21_atrios_archive.html#107254435036687384) has been on this, and apparently makes some good points:
The thing is, when something like this is being proposed as a budget-cutting measure rather than a "good public policy" measure they're bound to get it wrong. I'm all for speeding up the release of many/most/all non-violent drug offenders but you obviously just can't do itall at once, and you can't do it assuming that it will magically suddenly save lots of money. Our society has put up so many barriers preventing the re-integration 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.
The trouble is, that in California's instance, they probably can do exactly that. Read the Bee article linked above, but notice these passages near the end:
On Nov. 14, 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.
"The state's fiscal crisis provides an important opportunity to rethink essential public safety policies that are not working well," commission Chairman Michael E. Alpert said when the report was released.
And on Nov. 18, the day after Schwarzenegger took the oath of office, his administration settled a federal lawsuit over how long suspected parole violators were forced to sit in prison before hearings were held on whether they actually did break conditions of their release. That settlement, resisted by the Davis administration, calls for hearings within 35 days and gave suspected violators the right to have their case argued with a lawyer.
These two points only hint at a huge problem in California's penal system that never seems to register with people until it's specifically pointed out, and even then, they don't often want to believe it.
In California, parole violations are determined and assigned exclusively by correctional officers - in essence, prison guards. If a parolee's parole officer says "you've violated parole," he is arrested and taken to the county jail. There's no warrant, no proof - nothing but the parole officer's word. He then sits in jail for 1-2 months before being transferred to a state prison, where he sits for another 30-90 days before a "violation committee" reads the parole officer's report and hears the inmate's response in person.
The committee then sides with the parole officer (something like 99.5% of the time) and assigns the inmate a violation prison term of between two weeks and one year. Sometimes it'll be "time served," since many parolees have been back in custody for 2-3 months by the time their hearing comes up. That's one aspect of the November 18 settlement - from now on, California has only 35 days from the time the parolee is re-arrested to hold the legally required hearing. Apparently, the settlement doesn't require it to be more than the rubber stamp against the inmate that it's been for decades.
If a parole violator wants to appeal this decision, California law requires that he first do so through the Board of Prison Terms' own administrative appeal process, which usually takes about eight months and always (again, about 99.5% of the time) upholds the violation finding. Only then can the inmate take it to court, but by the time any court would hear the case, even the maximum one-year violation term is over, and the court dismisses the case as moot.
Put these facts together with some statistics about the California penal system and the problem becomes clearer:
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. All of the state employees involved, other than in the BPT's administrative appeals, 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.
California's prisons have held about 50% more people than designed capacity for many years. This leads to lawsuits and demands for more prisons. California's prison system is larger than the US Federal prison system.
About half the people currently in California state prisons are parole violators.
California's parole system eventually issues violations (and re-incarcerates) 70% of parolees, twice the national average.
In other words, CCPOA members - who directly benefit from overcrowding and more prisons - are the ones who decide on parole violations. If they did so at the national average rate, California would instantly (or at least within one year) drop the prison population by about 25%, probably at no risk to anyone.
Many California inmates actually dread parole, because they know that their parole officers will find some way to "violate" them, as it's called. They won't be able to keep a job or start anything long-term because they know, at a moment's notice, a parole officer who doesn't like them or who they pissed off (while not violating the rules) can have them re-jailed for up to a year. By law, it can continue for up to three years even on a one-year sentence. If you're sentenced to 16 months in a California prison, you can actually serve more time on parole violations than you did on your sentence - even more than 16 months total. It's not like that in other states, but it is in California.
It's something like this: by law, the parole term is a maximum of three years from the date of initial parole, but that clock stops running while you're in prison on a violation, but only for one year. So if you're paroled on July 1, 2003, but "violated" on September 1, 2003, for a period of six months, you've completed two months of the parole, and the clock starts again on March 1, 2004, when you're released again. If you're then violated again for a one-year term on May 1, 2004, the clock starts ticking again on November 1, 2004, even though you're still in prison on the violation. Since you'd completed four months "outside," then when the clock resumes on November 1, 2004, your parole must be discharged by law 32 months later, on July 1, 2007, even if you spend every day of that time in prison on various violations. If you spend no time in custody (as only 30% of parolees do), your term is a maximum of three years. If you spend a year or more in custody on violations, it's four years.
Now, as it turns out, California law provides for a "presumptive discharge" of parolees after one year. If you haven't caught a parole violation after 12 months, your parole officer has to fill out a form explaining why you shouldn't be discharged from parole. If BPT doesn't agree with it, then after 13 months, you're discharged from parole and your sentence is completely over. This doesn't happen as often as it should, though, as the California Department of Corrections (CDC) pretty much assumes that certain classes of people don't deserve early discharge, like "people who were in prison." Don't think that running is the answer, either: by law, the three-year clock halts the day you abscond from parole, and it only starts again when you're rearrested, even if that's 20 years later.
Much of what the Bee says is true, too: California has way too many non-violent offenders in custody, largely because it spent much of the 90s trying to figure out how to declare more people to be dangerous, life-long offenders who could be locked up for 25 years or more without much chance of those pesky appeals or reviews. Pre-release counseling has been a joke, and there is no meaningful appeal because the system has been designed to keep it in CDC or BPT hands until the violation term is over.
However, the real problem in California is the parole system. Most people think "parole" means that if you're released after two years on a three-year sentence due to "good behavior," then you'll be supervised on parole for one more year and that's it. They have no idea you can serve four years in prison on parole violations after a one-year sentence, nor do they know that a judge or jury will never hear the case during any of that time - only people who have a vested financial interest in keeping the prisons packed. Simply bringing California's parole system in line with national standards would accomplish just about all of Schwarzenegger's financial goal for the system without endangering anyone.
Now go back and read the beginning of the Bee article again:
Convinced that California can no longer afford its $5.3 billion prison and parole system, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is exploring moves that would all but eliminate parole conditions for nonviolent, nonserious offenders and eventually -- through early release and lighter penalties -- dramatically shrink the prison population.
See? It's not so much "early release" of inmates as it is taking them out of the deeply-flawed parole system. Former prison guard Don Novey, head of the CCPOA, would only say that "anything they do should be looked at with public safety paramount." That's a clue - 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." Just you watch what happens next year. I'll bet a quarter that if any proposal removes parolees from CDC and BPT power - or never puts them under that parole system in the first place - Novey and his lobbyists will cry "endangering the public" to every reporter they can find, and they can find a lot of reporters. Eisenhower warned the nation about the military-industrial complex. It's a shame no one ever warned California about the correctional-industrial complex........ my husband has been in reception for 40 days and he still hasnt seen screening and he still cant call me .. why :confused:
The Sacramento Bee reports (http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/8013619p-8949908c.html) that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking to save money by cutting the corrections budget, perhaps by releasing as many as a third of the inmates in California prisons because they're non-violent and no danger to anyone. Atrios (http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_12_21_atrios_archive.html#107254435036687384) has been on this, and apparently makes some good points:
The thing is, when something like this is being proposed as a budget-cutting measure rather than a "good public policy" measure they're bound to get it wrong. I'm all for speeding up the release of many/most/all non-violent drug offenders but you obviously just can't do itall at once, and you can't do it assuming that it will magically suddenly save lots of money. Our society has put up so many barriers preventing the re-integration 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.
The trouble is, that in California's instance, they probably can do exactly that. Read the Bee article linked above, but notice these passages near the end:
On Nov. 14, 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.
"The state's fiscal crisis provides an important opportunity to rethink essential public safety policies that are not working well," commission Chairman Michael E. Alpert said when the report was released.
And on Nov. 18, the day after Schwarzenegger took the oath of office, his administration settled a federal lawsuit over how long suspected parole violators were forced to sit in prison before hearings were held on whether they actually did break conditions of their release. That settlement, resisted by the Davis administration, calls for hearings within 35 days and gave suspected violators the right to have their case argued with a lawyer.
These two points only hint at a huge problem in California's penal system that never seems to register with people until it's specifically pointed out, and even then, they don't often want to believe it.
In California, parole violations are determined and assigned exclusively by correctional officers - in essence, prison guards. If a parolee's parole officer says "you've violated parole," he is arrested and taken to the county jail. There's no warrant, no proof - nothing but the parole officer's word. He then sits in jail for 1-2 months before being transferred to a state prison, where he sits for another 30-90 days before a "violation committee" reads the parole officer's report and hears the inmate's response in person.
The committee then sides with the parole officer (something like 99.5% of the time) and assigns the inmate a violation prison term of between two weeks and one year. Sometimes it'll be "time served," since many parolees have been back in custody for 2-3 months by the time their hearing comes up. That's one aspect of the November 18 settlement - from now on, California has only 35 days from the time the parolee is re-arrested to hold the legally required hearing. Apparently, the settlement doesn't require it to be more than the rubber stamp against the inmate that it's been for decades.
If a parole violator wants to appeal this decision, California law requires that he first do so through the Board of Prison Terms' own administrative appeal process, which usually takes about eight months and always (again, about 99.5% of the time) upholds the violation finding. Only then can the inmate take it to court, but by the time any court would hear the case, even the maximum one-year violation term is over, and the court dismisses the case as moot.
Put these facts together with some statistics about the California penal system and the problem becomes clearer:
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. All of the state employees involved, other than in the BPT's administrative appeals, 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.
California's prisons have held about 50% more people than designed capacity for many years. This leads to lawsuits and demands for more prisons. California's prison system is larger than the US Federal prison system.
About half the people currently in California state prisons are parole violators.
California's parole system eventually issues violations (and re-incarcerates) 70% of parolees, twice the national average.
In other words, CCPOA members - who directly benefit from overcrowding and more prisons - are the ones who decide on parole violations. If they did so at the national average rate, California would instantly (or at least within one year) drop the prison population by about 25%, probably at no risk to anyone.
Many California inmates actually dread parole, because they know that their parole officers will find some way to "violate" them, as it's called. They won't be able to keep a job or start anything long-term because they know, at a moment's notice, a parole officer who doesn't like them or who they pissed off (while not violating the rules) can have them re-jailed for up to a year. By law, it can continue for up to three years even on a one-year sentence. If you're sentenced to 16 months in a California prison, you can actually serve more time on parole violations than you did on your sentence - even more than 16 months total. It's not like that in other states, but it is in California.
It's something like this: by law, the parole term is a maximum of three years from the date of initial parole, but that clock stops running while you're in prison on a violation, but only for one year. So if you're paroled on July 1, 2003, but "violated" on September 1, 2003, for a period of six months, you've completed two months of the parole, and the clock starts again on March 1, 2004, when you're released again. If you're then violated again for a one-year term on May 1, 2004, the clock starts ticking again on November 1, 2004, even though you're still in prison on the violation. Since you'd completed four months "outside," then when the clock resumes on November 1, 2004, your parole must be discharged by law 32 months later, on July 1, 2007, even if you spend every day of that time in prison on various violations. If you spend no time in custody (as only 30% of parolees do), your term is a maximum of three years. If you spend a year or more in custody on violations, it's four years.
Now, as it turns out, California law provides for a "presumptive discharge" of parolees after one year. If you haven't caught a parole violation after 12 months, your parole officer has to fill out a form explaining why you shouldn't be discharged from parole. If BPT doesn't agree with it, then after 13 months, you're discharged from parole and your sentence is completely over. This doesn't happen as often as it should, though, as the California Department of Corrections (CDC) pretty much assumes that certain classes of people don't deserve early discharge, like "people who were in prison." Don't think that running is the answer, either: by law, the three-year clock halts the day you abscond from parole, and it only starts again when you're rearrested, even if that's 20 years later.
Much of what the Bee says is true, too: California has way too many non-violent offenders in custody, largely because it spent much of the 90s trying to figure out how to declare more people to be dangerous, life-long offenders who could be locked up for 25 years or more without much chance of those pesky appeals or reviews. Pre-release counseling has been a joke, and there is no meaningful appeal because the system has been designed to keep it in CDC or BPT hands until the violation term is over.
However, the real problem in California is the parole system. Most people think "parole" means that if you're released after two years on a three-year sentence due to "good behavior," then you'll be supervised on parole for one more year and that's it. They have no idea you can serve four years in prison on parole violations after a one-year sentence, nor do they know that a judge or jury will never hear the case during any of that time - only people who have a vested financial interest in keeping the prisons packed. Simply bringing California's parole system in line with national standards would accomplish just about all of Schwarzenegger's financial goal for the system without endangering anyone.
Now go back and read the beginning of the Bee article again:
Convinced that California can no longer afford its $5.3 billion prison and parole system, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is exploring moves that would all but eliminate parole conditions for nonviolent, nonserious offenders and eventually -- through early release and lighter penalties -- dramatically shrink the prison population.
See? It's not so much "early release" of inmates as it is taking them out of the deeply-flawed parole system. Former prison guard Don Novey, head of the CCPOA, would only say that "anything they do should be looked at with public safety paramount." That's a clue - 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." Just you watch what happens next year. I'll bet a quarter that if any proposal removes parolees from CDC and BPT power - or never puts them under that parole system in the first place - Novey and his lobbyists will cry "endangering the public" to every reporter they can find, and they can find a lot of reporters. Eisenhower warned the nation about the military-industrial complex. It's a shame no one ever warned California about the correctional-industrial complex........ my husband has been in reception for 40 days and he still hasnt seen screening and he still cant call me .. why :confused: