THE DEMISE OF PAROLE IN CALIFORNIA

How times have changed. When I was a California parole agent we had a dichotomy among the agents between the social worker types and the law enforcement types. The chief of paroles, Milton Burdman, had an MSW (Master of Science in Social Work) and, accordingly, he believed the primary function of parole was to serve the needs of parolees.

I was fortunate to have worked under two district supervisors – Lou Carney in Santa Ana and Fred Galloway in Riverside – who also believed in meeting the needs of parolees, but only secondary to meeting the needs of society for the public to be protected from criminals.

That conflicted the MSWs in those offices. In the Riverside office we even had one agent who, during a home visit, came across one of his parolees suffering from a gunshot wound. He had been shot by a liquor store owner during an attempted robbery. Instead of arresting the parolee or calling the cops, the agent drove the parolee down to Tijuana to be treated by a doctor there. Now that was really meeting the needs of his client.

After seeing what has been happening to parole in California, I’m beginning to think that parole will not be missed and its demise will be mourned only by the agents who lose their jobs.

Here is Paco’s take on the rise and fall of California’s parole empire:

PREDICTIONS OF PAROLE’S DEATH PREMATURE … PRESCIENT NONTHELESS
By Jeff ‘Paco’ Doyle

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
May 14, 2013

While all but the most hopeful optimist saw the handwriting on the wall over a decade ago, it is still a shock to witness the demise of state parole. Inevitable as it is, hope and denial spring eternal–Reality is a bitch.

Now that they are rolling up the rugs at a parole office near you, it is appropriate to take a hard look at the laws, regulations and assumptions underlying the Rise and Fall of the Parole Empire.

Prior to July 1, 1977, when the Determinate Sentencing Law was enacted, parole meant an offender went before the parole authority and, if released early, was supervised in the community for the balance of the term. Thereafter, Penal Code 3000 was the law. Traditional parole applied only to lifers–All other released inmates, regardless of time served, were subject to up to 4 years of post-incarceration community supervision, aka “parole.”

The “parole tail” went into production, being pinned to every can exiting every can in the state.

So it was, in addition to the nearly impossible, absolutely thankless job of keeping tabs on high risk criminals, the “Parole and Community Services Division” was charged with managing a lot of offenders who weren't so much a threat to public safety as much as they were nuisances and chronic ne'er-do-wells. Were this not so, the minimum supervision (MS) classification would never have existed–Isn't minimum supervision itself an argument for discharge?

Which isn't to say most of the parolees, including MS cases, didn't violate parole–They did so with frequency. However, by and large, their criminality was of the non-violent variety. As a result, a huge parole bureaucracy was created to classify, supervise and monitor a mixed parole population: Those who needed supervision for public safety and those who needed supervision because PC 3000 said they did.

Invariably, bureaucracy becomes an end unto itself and the mission loses in the process. Managing and balancing caseloads, tracking violations, case reviews and all manner of paperwork became more important than risk assessment and field supervison. In the end, agents were encouraged to supervise by appointment, recommend discharge as a matter of course and, above all, make certain the Record of Supervision (ROS) had check marks in the correct boxes each month. It didn't matter how well an offender was supervised or how well the agent knew the case–It only mattered that the ROS had the right boxes checked to “meet spec.”

Does it come as any surprise that an agency so driven would have Phillip Garrido blow up in its face?

Parole was doomed to fail. It just never occurred to anyone it would do so with such enthusiasm and zeal. To the extent a parole function continues to be vested in the State, it will be limited to people who really need supervision…as it should have been from the start.