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| Parolees crowd California prisons |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 03/15/2004 |
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California has a take-all-prisoners approach to ex-convicts, a policy so tough that more than half the inmates in state prisons are behind bars for violating parole, an Associated Press analysis has found. More than 82 percent of these returned parolees are sent back to prison for less than a year, serving new sentences for such minor violations as being drunk in public, driving more than 50 miles from home or driving with a suspended license. The policy has proven costly for state taxpayers -- returning so many parolees for such short sentences accounts for more than 20 percent of California's prison spending, which has exceeded its budget by $1.58 billion over the past five years, the AP found. The percentage of parolees in the state's prisons is eight times higher than that of Texas, which has nearly as many inmates as California. According to a 2002 study by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center, California accounts for 42 percent of all parole violators returned to state prisons in the United States. Prison officials justify the huge number of parole revocations as a means of taking dangerous ex-cons off the streets. But the practice is increasingly criticized as wasteful and ineffective, especially for nonviolent offenders struggling to become productive members of society. California settled a class-action lawsuit late last year that will add legal protections for parolees in hearings and substitute substance abuse treatment for prison sentences in some cases. And the Legislature is likely to take reforms further, given mounting budget overruns. "We've got to solve the parole problem before we tackle the (prisons) budget," said State Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Corrections. The percentage of parole revocations has risen steadily in recent years and is now well over 60 percent per year, causing problems for California's overcrowded prisons. Each of the state's 33 prisons are above capacity, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in unbudgeted overtime for prison officer. Prison officials say revoking parole in administrative hearings often buys time for prosecutors to build stronger cases. "It's a safety net," said Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the Board of Prison Terms, the agency responsible for parole revocation proceedings. The revocations avoid having to put criminals on trial for minor offenses, and when major crimes are involved, "we can keep a parolee behind bars until a case can be made." |
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