State plays dangerous game when it considers the early release of inmates
After spending 20 years in corrections as a psychologist, I am astonished that anyone -- much less the governor -- could define any class of felons as nonviolent. The current plan to release thousands of California inmates with no or shortened parole is fatuous, if not disingenuous. It is a complete fiction to believe that any convicted felon upon release is safe for community re-entry without serious strengthened parole supervision and community-based rehabilitation.
The re-offense numbers are striking and troublesome. According to up-to-date reports readily available through the state corrections department, 57.44 percent of all paroled felons are returned to prison within three years for parole violations or for a new offense. And those are just the ones who have been caught.
Moreover, there is no such thing as a nonviolent crime. Virtually every blue-collar crime is committed by someone willing to do some kind of violence if in the doing of the crime they are discovered.
Interestingly, the very crimes listed as "nonviolent" for which inmates are eligible for release, are the ones for which the recidivism rates are the very highest: property crimes, grand theft, petty theft with a prior, burglary, auto theft, receiving stolen property, drugs, possession of a weapon, forgery/fraud.
Do some inmates leave prison and lead exemplary lives? Of course. But the last thorough study revealed that out of 10,000 paroled criminals followed over many years, fewer than a dozen -- yes, a dozen -- of those multiple thousands truly turned themselves around. The rest faced post-release lives skirting the law and flirting with re-arrest by continuing their crime.
But sadly, that's not the whole story. Crimes are prosecuted under either mandatory or discretionary sentencing rules. Mandatory sentencing rules give prosecutors and judges very little wiggle room for sentencing. With crimes falling under the mandatory sentencing rules, a person can go directly to prison on the first offense.
However, the vast majority of crimes do not fall under such rules. Most are prosecuted under rules that provide for broad prosecutorial and judicial discretion and latitude. For those cases, the re-offending perpetrator may never see the inside of a prison until the prosecutor and judge have run out of diversion options and prison is the last sentencing resort.
The plot thickens: A person headed to prison for a "lesser" offense has generally begun his "career" of crime in early adolescence, has committed countless lesser crimes, has been in and out of the justice system multiple times and has had his many crimes forgiven in a concerted and deliberate effort to keep him out of prison. But despite all his second chances, he still finds himself again arrested and facing a sentencing judge.
And there's more: Many arrestees find their greater crimes bargained down to lesser offenses.
Out of the body of crimes he has committed, a criminal may have been arrested for one of his lesser, rather than greater, crimes on a purely "random catch" basis. To say that the crime he was arrested for means that he is a "lesser" criminal is a dangerous mistake. And to view those in prison subject to release programs as lesser felons eligible for release is an even greater mistake. A serious and socially dangerous felon may be released simply because he happened to be randomly caught doing one of his lesser crimes. And now you have a serious lawbreaker released to the streets to do his continuing work of serious crime.
Not a pretty picture, especially when we are facing personnel reductions in police and sheriff's departments, locally and throughout the state. More felons on the street, fewer of society's "protectors" in the field. Not hard to see where that might lead.
The only credible solution if these felons are to be released is to redirect a serious portion of money saved through the release program to parole programs throughout the state to greatly reduce the number of parolees on an agent's caseload -- as has now wisely been done -- to 40 or fewer, so that supervision is close, frequent and regular. And these parolees need to be in rehab programs and forced to wear GPS devises so that at any time they can be located for random checks. Anything short of that, we're courting disaster.
Brik McDill, Ph.D., is a senior supervising psychologist at the California Correctional Institution-Tehachapi.
