Senator Cuts a Special Deal to Keep Parolees Out of His County


One of the sex-offender related legislative innovations of the last decade was the introduction of residence restrictions. As we explained elsewhere, residence restrictions, which prohibit registered sex offenders from living near schools or parks, have made many parts of California inhabitable for those formerly for sex offenses, many of whom have become homeless.

As to others, well, it turns out that at least one CA lawmaker thought they should stay out of his county, even before Jessica’s Law was enacted. . The Sac Bee reports:

In what state Sen. George Runner characterized as a “side agreement” with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the prison and parole agency said it would limit assignments of released offenders into the Antelope Valley to those who had “historical ties” to the area….

CDCR officials, saying that the deal violated the law, terminated the agreement this spring.

“When we took a look at it, we said we can’t treat offenders in this county any different than offenders in any other county,” said Terri McDonald, the CDCR’s chief deputy secretary for adult operations.

Runner sees the agreement as a proper way to correct the imbalance generated by the habit of “dumping” parolees in Lancaster Valley.

“From the very beginning, there was not a connection between the issue of ‘Jessica’s Law’ and this particular issue of parolees in the Antelope Valley,” Runner said in an interview.

He said that the location of a major, maximum-security prison in the Antelope Valley combined with the area’s relatively cheap housing made it “easier to dump (parolees) in Lancaster.”

I think this story is an interesting lesson in the side effects of sweeping punitive legislation, and it is a good reminder of the inequality between different counties. Can we imagine how the segregation of parolees into specific counties might contribute to the big differences in how they are treated and perceived?

Correctional Budget Cuts at the Local Level: Decrowding Shasta County Jail


(Shasta County Jail building image from the Sheriff’s website)

Not long ago we discussed the plan to shift state prisoners into local facilities, as well as the local resistance to the plan. This may not be as feasible as the Governor’s office believes, since many local facilities face financial difficulties of their own.

This morning’s Redding Record Searchlight reports on more humonetarian occurrences on the local level.

According to the Shasta County Sheriff’s website, the Shasta County Jail is a high security facility, with a capacity of 381 inmates, 317 males and 64 females. It seems that this capacity has been reached through aggressive parole revocation operations, and the plan now is to scale back on jail time and on parole operations to relieve the budgetary distress.

Here is what seems to be going on:

Shasta County’s drunken drivers, petty thieves and drug users are less likely to serve jail time. Parolees will be given a bit more leeway on violations that can send them back to prison. And even fewer prisoners police bring to the Shasta County jail will spend a night in a cell.

Local officials say that’s the reality now that Shasta County’s 381-bed jail is 150 inmates smaller.

As jailers have been quickly and quietly working to release a third of the inmates from the jail because of budget cuts, local law enforcement officials have been meeting to plan how they’re going to deal with the sudden loss of space at the already chronically full jail.

…

The decision to clear out a floor of the jail came earlier this month after the Shasta County Board of Supervisors refused Sheriff Tom Bosenko’s pleas to find other ways to trim from the county’s general fund budget rather than make him cut more than $2 million cut from his budget.

Bosenko has since ordered the floor closed and the layoffs of six jail employees.

Jailers began freeing up jail space almost immediately after the decision, mainly by stepping up their “capacity-release” program that lets newly admitted prisoners go free, often before they’d even had time to post bail.

“We’re trying not to do a mass release,” said Lt. Sheila Ashmun, the jail’s second-in-command.

Localized Parole Operations

As the budget conversations continue, including the possibilities of cutting parole, local parole task forces arrest parolees for parole and probation violations in Coachella and in Vallejo. Interestingly, while the latter operation targeted sex offenders (listed by name in the article), the actual violations included “possessing illegal contraband, pornography and drug paraphernalia, being under the influence of drugs or alcohol and failure to pass on-site drug testing”.

Re-entry Program for Women Parolees

As reported on the CDCR website, the first cohort of female parolees is graduating from the Female Residential Multi-Service Center (FRMSC) in Sacramento. The FRMSC, founded a year ago, is the first of its kind in California and provides gender specific programs (the need for which was so eloquently explained by Barbara Bloom a while ago) and services for female parolees. Here’s more about the program:

Twenty-five women can stay at the center from six months to a year. They are referred to the FRMSC from a parole agent or the Board of Parole Hearings upon release from prison, or in lieu of returning to prison for a violation.

The FRMSC offers a variety of gender responsive services including case management, trauma treatment, substance abuse and domestic violence education, life skills development, family focused services, parenting classes, educational services, GED preparation, vocational training and family reunification services.

…

When a woman arrives to the FRMSC she is assessed by the treatment team which includes an alcohol and drug counselor, family therapist, program director, vocational developer and parole agent. She is then evaluated in the following areas: substance abuse history, traumatic life events, family history, housing needs, legal issues, medical issues, employment and educational history. Based on these assessments, the team will identify strengths and needs and will try to maximize the potential of each individual woman.

…

In order to graduate from the FRMSC program, women either must be employed, enrolled in a vocational training program, or taking college courses. Also, graduates must have a stable place to live.

And true to the spirit of humonetarianism –

Housing a woman at an FRMSC is cheaper than the average cost of housing her in prison. It costs approximately $109 per day at the FRMSC compared to $126 per day at an institution.

BREAKING NEWS: -$400,000,000

That is the budget cut for CDCR. Today, CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate announced his plan to cope with the significant reduction in corrections budget. As reported on this morning’s Chron, Cate,

tasked with finding $400 million in cost savings, unveiled proposals Friday to save money by reducing the number of parolees by 30,000 and the state’s prison inmate population by 8,000 by next summer.

We knew this was coming for quite a while; Secretary Cate mentioned the dilemmas involved in crafting the plan back in late March. The objecting parties are, as expected, victim advocacy groups and the prison guards union.

There are no details of the plan yet on the CDCR website, but once the full plan is posted, we will analyze and comment. Stay tuned.

A Risk-Assessment Model from a Blog Reader

(all images by Tom McGee; click on graphics for clearer, larger image)

One of our readers, Thomas McGee, who worked for many years in the Youth Authority, has given some serious consideration to questions of risk assessment associated with issues such as the Lovell Mixon case. He writes:

Thank you for your blog, California Correctional Crisis. Your posts have been especially helpful.

I am sending this email, rather than posting a comment, because I wanted to enclose an attachment, which was prepared using Excel. It is a chart depicting a proposed Deprivation Decision-Making System. I believe that sentencing should be put in this broader context. You will see that it makes provision for both determinate and indeterminate courses of action. The Mixon matter you have been writing about is a good example of why something like this is necessary. Of course, I do not have access to his case history, but since he was classified as a high-control parolee, there must have been evidence that he was a high risk. Under the system I propose, Mr. Mixon would have completed the accountability part of his Deprivation Plan. But he would not have been moved to a lower level of restraint, because he had a high level of risk.
I know that risk determinations are contentious, but risk is a fact of life. Insurance companies deal with it all the time. It is not possible to predict with complete certain ty who will commit another crime, or what kind. But it is possible to estimate the probability that a person will recidivate,within a probability range. Policy makers have to decide how much risk is acceptable. If risk determinations do not reach a legally acceptable standard, then lets say so and act accordingly, rather than hiding this in some kind of sentencing double-talk.
Just one more point; I think it is ridiculous to ask judges to consider risk at the time of sentencing. Risk changes. Who can say today what an offender’s risk will be five years from now. A Risk Control Board should make periodic risk determinations of this kind. Parole Boards as we knowthem are not equipped for this task.

I would appreciate any comments you may have about the enclosure, and these comments. Again, thanks for the blog.

************

One of the interesting things about Tom’s model is that it incorporates quite a multifaceted perspective on offenders and their motivations. One key dilemma in modeling and predicting human behavior has to do with the difficult trade-off between accuracy and simplicity. That is, the more complex the model is , the more accurately it can predict risk, but the more difficult it will be to apply. More on this in future posts.

OIG Inquiry Regarding Mixon’s Parole Proceedings: CDCR Followed Appropriate Proceedings

(photo sources: sfgate.com; cdcr.gov)

The Office of the Inspector General has led an inquiry into the proceedings carried by CDCR regarding Lovelle Mixon’s parole supervision. The conclusion? The parole agents, and everyone else involved, followed department policies and procedures. Here’s the gist of the review, from Undersecretary of Operations Scott Kernan (CDCR story is here and the full report, addressed to Secretary Cate, is here):

“The Inspector General’s conclusions confirm the results of our immediate internal review of the handling of Lovelle Mixon’s parolee supervision records. Our parole agents followed all appropriate supervision, drug testing, and even job assistance protocols when dealing with Mixon, who was classified as a high-control parolee. When Mixon absconded from parole supervision, he was promptly listed as a Parolee-at-Large and search procedures were activated. Local law enforcement agencies were notified and engaged in the attempts to arrest him, and our Fuguitive Apprehension Team laid out a plan to search suspected locations – even notifying the U.S. Marshals on a lead that he may have fled the state”.

Given this modus operandi, what can we say about this senseless tragedy? It is not unlikely that this horrible event is an isolated incident, stemming from individual pathology. But perhaps it also says something much broader about our parole policies and their potential to drive people to commit desperate, heinous acts. I found much of the discourse in the last few days remarkably unhelpful, whether it included racist epithets, super-punitive rage, or venomous anti-police messages. If there is a bigger lesson to be learned from this, let’s try and learn it on behalf of the parolees who struggle to stay on the straight and narrow; and let’s think about reframing parole as a reentry tool, performing aggressive supervision only when appropriate. I believe Evelyn Lara-Lowe, who at our conference last week said that the CDCR has no vested interest in bringing people back into prison; how do we retool parole proceedings and instruments to become a vehicle of hope, rather than desperation?

Karlton v. Prop 9: 1:0


More news on several controversial portions of Prop 9, which we discussed here in the past. As our gentle readers may recall, Prop 9 put into legislation more victim involvement in the criminal justice system, including parole hearings. While some of this was not news – and in several counties, at least, was common practice before the passage of Prop 9 – this is the aspect that was prominently displayed on the supporters’ website. However, Prop 9 also included punitive provisions: lengthening parole procedures as well as limiting the right to counsel in parole revocation hearings for indigent defendants.

Yesterday, Judge Karlton invalidated the portions of Prop 9 that infringe on parolees’ rights, particularly the restrictions on the right to counsel, due to a contradiction with a permanent injunction, reached as a consent decree, in 1994 following litigation regarding parolees’ rights. The Sac Bee reports:

In the parolees’ 1994 lawsuit, Karlton found the state’s existing procedures were in violation of the 14th Amendment’s due process guarantee. His resulting permanent injunction was ratified by the state and is legally construed as a consent decree.

“To the extent that Proposition 9 conflicts with the permanent injunction, the former may not be enforced,” Karlton said in Thursday’s 34-page published opinion, which cited the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution defines itself as the “supreme law of the land, and its judiciary supreme in construing what the law is,” the judge declared.

“The state’s action is not given special deference by virtue of having occurred through the initiative process,” he added.

Interestingly, the debate about Prop 9 has, yet again, been framed in terms of money. The Chron cites some of the arguments:

“Especially now, we cannot afford to be spending tens of millions of dollars on unnecessary privileges for convicted felons,” said Nina Salarno Ashford, representing Crime Victims United of California. She urged the state to appeal the ruling “to defend the will of California voters, and the pocketbooks of California taxpayers.”

Indeed. Because, what would get us talking about victim rights and due process for parolees, if not our pocketbooks?