Several people who couldn’t make it to the conference have asked for more information on Goro Toshima’s film we showed on Thursday, A Hard Straight: A Documentary About Doing Time on the Outside. The film is absolutely phenomenal. It provides an intimate peek into the life of three people – a tattoo artist with a poetic soul and strong gang affiliations, a drug dealer trapped in the Tenderloin, and a mother of three working on repairing her relationship with her children – who, upon release from prison, are trying to rebuild their lives.
For more information on the film director, and to contact him regarding the film, visit his website.
Dangerousness, Risk, and Release
As the day’s panels progressed, it became quite clear that every step of the correctional process was impacted not only by what happened earlier, but also by what happened later. Parole violations, and parole risks, are enormously important considerations for prison population size; also, the phrase “public safety” had so far remained unexamined. Our panelists for the Dangerousness, Risk, and Release panel were going to help us unpack and question the assumptions and considerations underlying our release policies.
Professor Jonathan Simon started by drawing an intriguing analogy between our risk assessment process for crime and for cancer. Why are we so willing to examine evidence-based, empirically tested risk rates for the latter, while at the same time keeping the real risk levels for the former clouded in a mist of public fear? A brief look at the genealogy of this fear revealed our collective “stranger danger”, generated gradually by Manson and other iconic fear figures, as well as by presidential assassinations. This public fear was generated and perpetuated by government officials of all stripes; a brief look at republican and democrat governors revealed their unified position on issues of public safety. The wall-to-wall opposition to the passage of Prop 5, led by Schwarzenegger and supported by others, was a good demonstration of what Mark Leno had said earlier in the day: no one, regardless of political association, wants to appear soft on crime.
Simon highlighted four important points in respect to our culture of fear. First, he said, risk assessment is a very difficult thing to do. Violence is highly situational, rather than an individual’s pesronal trait. Second, while CDCR asks for increased budget to lock up Level IV inmates, the decision to classify inmates as Level IV goes unexamined, and it may well be that this is yet another example of risk overestimation. Third, we must not forget that the supposedly neutral “risk factors” always carry with them social factors, such as race and class, and by doing so, perpetuate stereotypes and generate more demographic divides; and, finally, mass incarceration itself interacts with the broader problem. The mention of feeble, elderly lifers on breathalyzers as “public risks” denied parole was nothing short of absurd. Instead, suggested Simon, why not direct our public safety concerns toward more urgent, and less stigmatizing, needs, such as training our prisoners to help with the very real public risks posed by disasters such as Katrina? Our labeling of people who helped others during the hurricane as potential looters and rapists is very telling of our tendency to allow moral panics about crime cloud the real sources of concern.
For some, however, objections to release are based on a much more private threat to Safety. Shadia Merukeb, a victim consultant with the Alameda County DA’s office, provided the victims’ perspectives on parole. A great part of the problem for victims, she explained, consists of a lack of familiarity with a difficult system, which does not conform to what victims expect based on their crime-TV experiences. Long before the passage of Prop 9, Alameda County provided rights to victims, but without assistance these often went unutilized. The challenges a victim faces in terms of presence in parole hearings range from simple issues of transportation to far away prisons (fees, schedules, and child care!) to issues of fear and concern; often, the victim has to encounter the offender at rather close range, or wait with the offender’s family in the waiting room for the parole hearing. Under these circumstances, the victim advocates fill in the gaps for DAs and parole agents who are unable to provide them with the unique assistance that they require.
The parolees’ perspective was provided by Robin Rederford, community liaison for Legal Services for Prisoners with Children. The problem with release, explained Rederford, lies in releasing people completely unprepared for life on the outside, and with the same substance abuse and unemployability issues they went into prison with in the first place. The return home becomes a frightening prospect when one does not have a supportive family outside; having been humiliated and dehumanized, one has to rebuild one’s life with precious little in the way of resources. Some housing programs actually become unavailable to those with criminal convictions. The concern with public safety, said Rederford, might be greatly alleviated if people were offered services and opportunities for employment which would preclude them from parole violations.
Finally, we heard the CDCR’s perspective on parole reform from Evelyn Lara-Lowe, Deputy Regional Administrator for Parole. She assured us (and I believe her!) that the CDCR has no interest in bringing people back into prison. The issue of general parole is a legal given, which CDCR has to work with; she was willing to concede that there are people on parole who do not need to be under supervision. Ironically, those are the people who actually complete parole without violations. The problem is, said Lara-Lowe, lack of resources. Parole agents, and professional staff, are extremely busy and overloaded; support needs to come from the community, which is often inhospitable to formerly incarcerated people. Also, it is problematic to provide the same level of services in remote places with a relatively small parolee population.
The questions from the audience were absolutely fantastic. We got to discuss parole caseload, as well as to question the link between victimhood and punitiveness. One commentator, a psychiatrist for CDCR, said she couldn’t think of a better way to make people dangerousness and unsafe than to house them in a CDCR prison.
Seven Nagging Questions about the Post-Plata/Coleman World
1. Is this really going to happen after the final decision, or will we all wait for the appeal, which will surely come?
2. If we are about to dramatically relieve prison overcrowding, how do we guarantee that people don’t end up back in prison anyway, due to parole violations, and with precious little reentry resources?
3. Doesn’t the decision render the release part of Prop 9 pretty much irrelevant?
7. If we’re worried about recidivism among released inmates, isn’t it better to systematically find out what works in the real world, rather than work with simplistic, imaginary models?
Do you have any nagging questions about the aftermath of the District Court’s decision? Please post them in the comments, and we’ll try and answer them together.
Prisons Under Pressure documentary series
screenshot courtesy ccpoa.ca.gov
In the course of responding to an email avalanche from you, our gentle readers, expressing interest in our conference (thank you!) and in the blog (thank you!), I came across the four-part documentary series Prisons Under Pressure, an interesting attempt to present the various perspectives on the overcrowding and medical crises in California prisons. It seems to be available as a pay-per-view, but I have just watched the first episode for free on their website. It’s a good introduction to the crisis for those of you joining us for the first time, and it provides a lot of insight into the financial part of the mess, which at this point may seem incomprehensible to many of us.
Prison and Parole Cuts: Lean Years, Lean Budget
Yesterday’s Sacramento Bee reported Governor Schwarzenegger’s new budget plan, which has direct implications for corrections policy. The gist of it is as follows:
Parole would be eliminated for all nonserious, nonviolent and non-sex offenders. The proposal would cut the parole population by about 65,000 by June 30, 2010, or more than half of the Christmas Eve count of 123,144.
At the same time, the corrections plan calls for increasing good-time credits for inmates who obey the rules and complete rehabilitation programs. Combined with the new parole policies that would result in fewer violators forced back into custody, the proposal would reduce the prison population by 15,000 by June 30, 2010. It stood at 171,542 on Dec. 24.
The California Correctional Peace Officers’ Association, who has previously opposed the Governor’s plan for state employees to go on one-day furloughs, opposes this plan as well. This letter from their Executive Vice President, Chuck Alexander, has bits and pieces of the proposed budget in it.
A careful read of the budget will reveal cuts not only in the prison and parole systems, but also in the medical system’s Receiver’s budget. Some rehabilitative re-entry programs might actually see an increase in funding.
Desperate times, apparently, call for desperate measures. These steps echo what I commented on here and here: we no longer care about the merits of a correctional institution or project. We only care about how much it costs.
But wait: isn’t de-crowding our prisons, and cutting our parole system, a good thing on the merits as well? This is a bit more complex than it might seem. A credit accumulation system is certainly a good thing, and it helps focus the release decision on factors having to do with actual behavior and change, rather than on a regurgitation of issues concerning the offense itself (a bit more on that, from a broader doctrinal perspective, in this piece by W. David Ball). But rather than eliminating mandatory parole, if we had the leisure of giving this reform careful thought, we would perhaps be better off retooling parole to act as an institution encouraging and supporting ex-felons in re-entry, rather than supervising them and returning them to jails for technicalities? A reformed parole system could be an invaluable resource for people seeking housing and work upon their return from prison. As is becoming plainly obvious, this is not about common sense, even if, in some cases, it seems to make sense as a policy. This is strictly about the money.
It remains to be seen whether the legislator will approve these changes. To Be Continued.
Prop 9 Comes to Life, But Perhaps Not Entirely
In the wake of the elections, the CDCR is in the process of implementing Prop 9, which we paid some attention to here and http://californiacorrectionscrisis.blogspot.com/2008/11/othering-of-crime-call-for-empathy-in.html.
Prop 9 has a new webpage, detailing some of its provisions.
One of the interesting bits reported by the CDCR is as follows:
Proposition 9 also changed timelines and procedures for parole revocation hearings. However, on December 5, Judge Lawrence K. Karlton with the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California, ordered those portions not be implemented in response to a motion filed by plaintiffs in the Valdivia v. Schwarzenegger class action lawsuit, which had previously challenged the constitutionality of parole revocation proceedings. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for March 9, 2009.
In an earlier post, I raised the question whether Prop 9 violated the single-subject rule, by addressing both victim participation and parole timelines. This argument, as a doctrinal argument, doesn’t carry a lot of weight; as Mike Gilbert explains in a phenomenal new piece, the tests used by judges to examine single-subject rule issues are skewed against striking down propositions. However, it seems that the bit that doesn’t fit, the punitive bit that relates, if at all, to a narrow and punitive aspect of victims’ interests, is the one that is at question. I suggest we stay tuned.
Parole: An Overview, and a Personal Story
As prison population grows, the parolee population grows too. A series of pieces on the North County Times has recently highlighted the experiences of parolees and the challenges of parole agents.
One of these articles discusses the impact of a constantly growing parolee population on the ability of parole officers to supervise – and rehabilitate – their clients successfully:
This is California’s parole system, an overworked, underfunded system that is ill-equipped to deal with a crushing caseload of former prisoners who leave prison with a meager $200 allowance to feed, clothe and house themselves.
It’s a caseload that stands to get much worse if a panel of federal judges conducting a trial in San Francisco to address overcrowding orders the early release of nearly 40,000 men and women now behind bars to ease prison overcrowding.
“California’s parole population is now so large and its parole agents so overburdened that parolees who represent a serious public safety threat are not watched closely and those who wish to go straight cannot get the help they need,” said a federally funded report released last month by three experts on the criminal justice system.
Interestingly, the article sees imprisonment and parole as inversely impacting each other. Naturally, the ecology of imprisonment, release, and reimprisonment, is something that merits attention; but is the problem really the growing rate of release, and if so, is the solution for parole officers’ caseload simply to release less people? Curious to hear your thoughts.
Another piece recounts the optimistic story of George Loving, a parolee who managed a group home in Vista. Among other things, he says:
“I didn’t think I was ever gonna change. I was either gonna die on the streets or die in prison. I didn’t grow up with a whole lot of schooling, so I basically only knew one thing: how to steal. I really didn’t know nothing else.
“You know, the (parole) department can make all the changes they want, but if you’re not ready to change, it really doesn’t matter. And then a lot of us don’t be ready to change. And when you basically been spending your life out and in, out and in, you don’t have no education and all that, you only really know that one way. A lot of people, you get my age and you don’t wanna be talking about going back to school and all that. So you just, like, feel hopeless, like maybe this is all I will ever do.
“And then I took a few programs in prison. After sitting there and listening to people tell their stories, I’d sit back and be thinking, ‘Damn, I did some (stuff) like that,’ and ‘Damn, am I that (messed) up and don’t know about it?’ The programs have a lot to do with me wanting to change, because I thought that there was nothing wrong with me. But there was a whole lot wrong with me.
“It just clicked. I was tired. I was tired, I was getting older, my kids was getting bigger. I just got tired. I been doing this since I was 11.
“This job (at a sheet metal company) don’t pay a whole lot of money, but it beats 10 cents an hour or whatever I was getting in prison.
“I just feel good where I’m out now. Sometimes I think about what took me so long to realize that it’s actually not hard to do that right thing. You know, and I really don’t even get all them old thoughts of doing this and doing that no more, you know. Life has just been good. Just living it the best I can.”
Happy Thanksgiving.
Court of Appeal Strikes Down Voter-Approved Restrictions on Released Sex Offenders
(image from Megan’s Law website)
As many readers may know, many states have implemented laws that meticulously regulate the lives of released sex offenders after imprisonment. These restrictions often include a requirement to register on a sex offender database, which can be searched online, and a requirement to notify the community about a paroled sex offender who has moved in. In addition, some states impose residence restrictions on sex offenders.
In 2006, CA voters approved Prop 83 (“Jessica’s Law”), which included a series of such restrictions. Yesterday, the 4th District Court of Appeal found the residence restrictions to be unconstitutional. Per Prop 83, sex offenders were prohibited from living within 2,000 feet of a school or a park; the court, according to the Chronicle, has ruled that Prop 83 is “banishment by another name”.
This ruling is quite interesting, because, as the good folks blogging on the Criminal Appeal blog astutely observe, CA district courts have interpreted other pieces of sex offender related legislation in deference to, and consideration of, the perceived voters’ wishes. For example, the court has interpreted a discrepancy between laws regarding the two-year-commitment of sexually violent predators in favor of the voters’ perceived wishes. It seems, though, that the residency requirements in particular were more controversial and more “ripe for constitutional attack”, as per the other team of good folks blogging on CrimProf Blog.
To get a sense of the extent of the limitations, I recommend you click on the Family Watchdog link, which will provide you with a map of registered sex offenders in your area, as well as information on each and every one of the registered sex offenders. As you’ll see in the maps, which include school locations, residence restrictions might rule out many areas for living, including much of San Francisco.
The Chronicle reports that the 4th District Court ruling will not change the situation for new offenders, but will only impact limitations imposed on people whose crimes were committed prior to Prop 83’s passage.
A couple of other interesting things regarding sex offender registration, which probably would merit posts of their own: The UC Irvine Center for Evidence-Based Corrections’ report on the implementation of GPS tracking of sex offenders, and a fascinating study by J.J. Prescott and Jonah E. Rockoff, which finds that notification and registration laws might have a much different effect on reoffending than lawmakers intended.
Bogeymen? The CDCR’s “Operation Boo”
This story comes in a bit too late for Halloween, but I think it merits some reflection. The CDCR parole department conducted a special operation on Halloween, called “Operation Boo”.
The plan, according to the CDCR, was for parole officers to make sure all sex offenders spend Halloween with their lights out and their doors locked. The reason, according to Tom Hoffman, CDCR Director of Parole, is to “ensure kids are free to have fun without added worries about potential predators and that communities are safe from potential contacts with sex offenders”.
I should probably mention that CA is not the only state to have taken such measures. ABC news report similar measures taken in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio, where parole departments sometimes even require all sex offenders to be present for a special counseling program on Halloween night to make sure they are not on the street. Here’s another interesting report from Rochester.
Given the recent emphasis on creating fact-based parole proceedings, one would expect some factual basis for these broad operations; I have searched the internet for statistics on sex offenses related to Halloween trick-or-treating and have yet to find one such incident. In fact, the only isolated violent Halloween incident I managed to find from recent years was this tragedy in South Carolina, which had nothing whatsoever to do with sex offenders (note, though, the fact that the shooter is described as an ex-felon in the headline).
Moreover, and contrary to public opinion, sex offender recidivism is actually quite low. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports a 5.3% recidivism rate, and that statistic does not distinguish between child abuse and such things as public exposure or statutory rape. Also, as Chrysanthi Leon, from University of Delaware, has found, punitive measures against sex offenders in California have risen with no connection to actual sex offense rates.
Parental concern on Halloween, while not entirely justified by the facts, is nevertheless understandable. But there is something else at operation here. Halloween is by nature a holiday that makes the veil between our daily lives and their dark side particularly thin. Its Pagan origins can be traced to seasonal memorials of the dead, both in Celtic culture and, as we know, in the widely observed Latin American Dia de los Muertos. As such, it has always been a magnet for dark myths, such as the infamous poisoned candy myths. As the Chicago Tribune explains, these stem from a very small number of incidents, which were, for the most part, committed by relatives of the children. Incidentally, this is similar to the heightened concern about sexual assaults committed by strangers, when most rapes are in fact committed by a person known to the victim.
So, the Halloween policies regarding sex offenders could be the combined product of two powerful cultural narratives: the Halloween mythology and our communities’ fears and concerns about sex offenses, which have not followed factual evidence, but which cannot be discounted. Fear of crime is a very real phenomenon, and in recent years has proven to be a very powerful narrative driving policies that extend much beyond law enforcement. For more on that, I strongly recommend Jonathan Simon’s recent, and excellent, Governing Through Crime, and his fabulous blog.
It is, of course, also difficult to discount the trauma and horrors of victimization. For those looking for a more emotional – possibly even visceral – understanding of the complexities of these multi-sided dynamics, I’ve recently seen the magnificent, and masterfully acted, 2006 movie Little Children, based on Tom Perrotta’s excellent book, which provides some frameworks for understanding the multiple perspectives on sex offender release. My intention in this post is not to argue that these horrors do not exist; I would, however, like us to be more aware of the power of cultural myth and of the differences between facts and fear.
New Parole Violation Approach
In early October, CDCR announced that it was “moving forward with a new evidence-based system for dealing with parole violations.” The new model is designed to rationalize CDCR’s use of prison as a punishment for parole violations, by focusing “custody resources on higher risk offenders while targeting less serious offenders with proven treatment programs that seek to address the root of their problems.”
This sounds like an important development and certainly one worth monitoring. If anything needs rationalization, it’s California’s broken parole system.
For more information on the new parole instrument, see: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/News/2008_Press_Releases/Oct_3.html