CA- California lawmaker arranges improper deal on parolees

6-23-2009 California:

A California lawmaker (George Runner) arranged an improper deal with state corrections officials to stop an influx of parolees into his district 10 months before voters approved "Jessica's Law," the 2006 ballot measure he wrote to restrict where paroled sex offenders could live.

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.

The agreement created an added layer of anti-parolee protection for the fast-growing desert valley communities on the northern fringe of Los Angeles County.

State law mandates only that parolees be returned to the county of their last legal residence. In vast Los Angeles County, for instance, an inmate from South Central Los Angeles could be paroled to Lancaster.

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.

"Jessica's Law," which bars sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools or parks, has turned the vast majority of the state's big-city urban landscapes into no-go zones for the measure's targeted population. One result of the initiative has been a huge increase in the number of sex offender parolees who say they are now homeless, spurring a key state oversight agency to call for a "rethinking" of the measure's housing restrictions.

Lawmaker: Valley hit hard

Runner, R-Lancaster, said his January 2006 deal had nothing to do with the possibility of sex offenders flooding into his home turf as a result of the ballot measure approved by 70 percent of California voters in November 2006. The wider open spaces and lower-cost housing in the Antelope Valley, which he represents, made it a potential relocation center for sex offenders looking to escape tightly packed urban locales for legal places to live.

Instead, Runner said, he only wanted changes in the parole division's operating procedures. He said the Antelope Valley was being disproportionately affected by run-of-the-mill parolees who moved there when they got out of prison. He said the side agreement had nothing to do with sex offenders per se.

"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."

Rather than getting special treatment from the state, Runner said he requested only "normal treatment" for the communities he represents.

(Should George Runner -author of Prop 83- be allowed to violoate law like this?)

"I don't think anybody should have disproportional numbers in their communities," Runner said. "I think my job as a legislator is to make sure my constituents are being treated fairly by the state of California."

In Lancaster, 0.9 percent of the population is made up of parolees. That is three times the 0.3 percent rate for all of Los Angeles County, according to corrections department statistics. The other, larger city in the valley, Palmdale, has a rate of 0.57 percent, nearly double the county's figure.

Since 2006, the parolee population in the Antelope Valley has climbed 17 percent, to a current total of 2,306, according to corrections figures.

But the number of paroled sex offenders in the area has not risen nearly so dramatically. There are only six more paroled sex offenders living in the Antelope Valley now than there were three years ago. The increase from 144 to 150 represents an expansion of 4.2 percent, corrections department figures show.

'Classic case of NIMBYism'

State Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, opposed "Jessica's Law" because he thought it would result in sex offenders moving from cities to rural areas such as the district he represents in Kern and Tulare counties. ..Source.. by Andy Furillo