Audit finds more crimes by parolees

The now-defunct system of alternative sanctions for violators is criticized.

By Andy Furillo -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 2:15 am PST Friday, November 11, 2005
A state audit of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's since-disbanded "new parole model" found that 242 offenders were convicted on new felonies committed when they otherwise would have been in prison.

The Bureau of State Audits report did not provide a breakdown on what crimes were committed, nor did the corrections agency have any details available Thursday on the types of offenses.

According to the audit, the offenses were committed by parolees who had violated the terms of their releases but had been placed in halfway houses or in drug-treatment programs that the prison department put in place last year as alternatives to re-incarceration.

"It's unfortunate that 242 crimes had to be committed and tried at expense to taxpayers when parole revocation may not only have prevented the crimes, but caused the individuals to change their ways," said Lance Corcoran, a spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which had expressed harsh criticism of the new parole policies when they were implemented last year.

But Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman J.P. Tremblay said that not all of the 242 offenders necessarily would have been re-incarcerated under the old policy. Some of them might have been continued on parole without being placed in the programs, he said.

"You have to look at these cases in their totality to decide what would have happened," Tremblay said.

Corrections officials rolled out the alternative sanctions programs - first designed during former Gov. Gray Davis' administration - in early 2004 amid considerable fanfare by the new Schwarzenegger administration that it was seeking to overhaul an expensive, corrupt, overpopulated and brutal prison and parole system.

Two key components of the new parole program were the Halfway Back and the Substance Abuse Treatment Control units, which were put in place in January 2004 and May 2004, respectively, as alternatives to prison for offenders who committed minor violations of their parole terms, such as testing positive for drugs or missing a meeting with a parole agent.

Statistics reported by The Bee in February, however, showed that with the programs in place, fewer offenders were being returned to prison on parole revocations while more were coming back in after committing new crimes.

A crime victims' group financially supported by the CCPOA launched a limited television advertising campaign that highlighted the re-incarceration statistics and criticized the Schwarzenegger administration's parole policies. In April, the then-Department of Corrections dumped what it had called the "new parole model."

In its assessment of the parole changes, the state auditor found that the new policies didn't save nearly the amount of money the department had promised ($1.2 million a month instead of $8.4 million), failed to analyze its own data and was never able to "establish benchmarks ... to measure the programs' results."

"They basically did not know how the parolees that were participating in these programs were doing," Chief Deputy State Auditor Steve Hendrickson said Thursday.

The auditors, however, found on their own that parolees who completed the new programs were far less likely to be returned to prison on either revocations or new offenses than those who did not.

"They knew there would be benefits," Hendrickson said of prison officials, "but it goes back to weighing the benefits against the risks."

In ultimately failing to assess the program's long-term impact on public safety, Hendrickson said there is "no doubt" that Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation management was "remiss and they were deficient."

Tremblay said the audit is "validating the reason why we pulled back on (the new parole model) in the first place." He said the department didn't have the capability to compile the data, but that it has since contracted with the University of California, Irvine, to study revised electronic monitoring and drug-treatment programs that are scheduled to go on line this month.

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it goes back to weighing the benefits against the risks

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Really quite surprising that California officials would recognize that new criminal activity might actually be more expensive than continued incarceration costs. Why were the decreased costs (in raw numbers of dollars) only about a seventh of the predicted amounts? Perhaps this study will be useful to the Texas Legislature when it next debates all the wonderful alternatives to incarceration.