A broken system: sex-offender oversight

This Editorial tells us a few things, first, that since they are still talking about Garner, such cases are few and far between. And, the answer to Gardner case lies in decisions made earlier in time and not by parole or probation folks; those need to be addressed. Secondly, given a recidivism rate of around 5% or so, registries should be limited to those folks and folks deemed a higher risk by prison therapists or parole boards. Finally, before including a recidivist in a registry, their cases need review because recidivists are not necessarily dangerous, the facts of a case should determine that, so a review system is needed. Such an efficient system would allow law enforcement to focus on those considered more dangerous, esp with today's limited parole and probation, and law enforcement funds. Civil commitment, following a prison sentence (-as we know it today-), simply is unconstitutional and needs to be eliminated. Any evaluation needs to be done before sentencing and the sentence adjusted accordingly.

5-31-2010 California:

Parole and probation policies at core of controversy

Earlier this month, a sex offender named Leonard Scroggins took off his GPS tracking device, left Northern California, came down here and in the span of two days attacked four different women. He had been in and out of prison since he was a teenager. Why is somebody like Leonard Scroggins out on parole?

KERNAN: It really illustrates the limitations of both parole and GPS technology. The fact of the matter is, as a law enforcement agency, we adhere to what the court sentences these offenders to, and once they complete their sentence we’re mandated to release them to parole. I know there are many ideas about one-strike and lock them up – Chelsea’s Law. It seems to me the only fail-safe way to keep offenders from preying on our children and on our public is to keep them locked up behind the walls of a prison.

Are you endorsing Chelsea’s Law?

KERNAN: The governor has indicated that he would sign Chelsea’s Law. The department doesn’t have an official position.

The one-strike provision of Chelsea’s Law is based on the premise that sexually violent people cannot be rehabilitated. Do you accept that premise?

KERNAN: The department struggles with these terrible cases and monsters like John Gardner (who pleaded guilty to the rape and murder of Chelsea and Amber). Certainly, I understand the public’s questioning of whether these guys can be rehabilitated. It’s our charge, once they are under our supervision, to try to rehabilitate them.

JENKINS: The key is identifying who those individuals are – those individuals that may have been assessed, either through a psychological evaluation or from their history, that would fit the description of a sexually violent predator. I think there’s a lot of literature that says their behavior doesn’t change. ...

One of the mistakes that frequently gets made in the conversation about sex offenders is that we use the term too broadly. A predator is different from one who flashes. But a predator, somebody who has been identified and shows a history of that behavior, those are the ones that the system should be focused on most. I think there’s a lot of literature about pedophiles who have a primary interest in underage children. There’s a lot of literature that says that those individuals never lose those proclivities.

O’BRYAN: These are people. These are brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, friends. These aren’t just mad, wild animals running around the streets. The containment model is supervision, medication and therapy. And those three things can really do a wonderful job. You have to have educated, experienced and dedicated parole agents to be working with these people and that is something that I think CDCR, or the parole division, has really failed. So, yes, you can work with a lot of sex offenders if you do it the correct way.

Where in the John Gardner case did the system break down?

KERNAN: The fact that he got a plea bargain and was only in prison for the short period of time that he was, certainly, is probably a great breakdown in the system. When he paroled, his supervision, certainly there were errors as we look back. I don’t think it was agent errors and I certainly don’t think it was intended. I always struggle to not sound defensive when I hear people critical of parole because I think my agents are out there every day in tenuous circumstances working with law enforcement and probation and the district attorneys to protect public safety, and so it’s always difficult for me to hear people throwing them in this bucket of bad supervision. I think in the Gardner case, certainly the system failed. The agents didn’t fail, I failed. If somebody’s going to take responsibility, it should be the policymakers that have limited resources, a limited budget, a number of other challenges to try to implement policies in our state that will do what I think everybody in this room would hope, and that is that we stop people like Gardner or Scroggins.

JENKINS: In Gardner’s case, certainly the system failed in its primary objective of public safety because Gardner was able to kill two girls after he came through the system. But with regard to where it broke down, if the system broke down, I think when you look at it in hindsight what appears to have happened with Gardner is that, at his contact with the system in 2000, he wasn’t identified as the predator that apparently he is.

But the psych evaluation did identify him as a predator.

JENKINS: The psych evaluation said he was unamenable to treatment. The psychologist said, based on his interaction with him, that he felt he would be a risk to underage girls for as long a time as he remained in the community. That part was really clear. ...

But one of the points that’s not commonly understood about that process is that that evaluation at that point in time was not really a sentencing evaluation. I’m not discounting the input that the psychologist offered, but the purpose of that evaluation at that point was really to determine whether the defendant was a suitable candidate for probation.

KERNAN: If we had zero-tolerance policy and we said every time a sex offender violates a condition of parole – gets a red-light violation or a low battery on his GPS – we were going to toss him into prison for four months, which is the average violation term, and not provide any treatment and then throw him right back on the street, some people would say that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense with very limited resources. ..For the remainder of this opinion.. by Union-Tribune Editorial Board,

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County Budget Cuts May Impact Sex Offender Monitoring

5-10-2010 California:

SAN DIEGO -- The budget axe is about to swing in San Diego County and there are new concerns about the county's probation department and its supervision of high-risk sexual offenders.

The San Diego County Probation Department is under close scrutiny now, with many wondering about the monitoring of sexual predators and if the new county budget might mean less supervision.

Overseeing the probation department has become a hot-button issue because of sex offender John Gardner, who is now days away from being sentenced to prison for life without parole or appeal for the murders of teenagers Amber Dubois and Chelsea King.

Gardner was a registered sex offender but no longer on parole when he killed them.

There is legislation under consideration in Sacramento to crack down on sexually violent predators, including talk of more prison time and lifetime supervision.

With the county's budget now on the agenda, probation officers are worried that an already heavy workload could get worse.

"You have to go out and see offenders constantly to keep on top of them," said Ernie Susi of the Probation Officers Association.

County Probation's Enhanced Sex Offender Unit has 10 officers currently assigned to supervise 480 sex offenders. Of that number, 200 of those are high-risk, and six officers handle that group. The goal is to see each one twice a month.

The suggested budget doesn't cut any of those officers, but it would trim support staff.

"Now they're gonna be spending more time in offices doing casework, doing the reports, filing forms where we had secretaries [and] clerical staff helping out," said Susi.

Chief Probation Officer Mack Jenkins told 10News, "As a result of budget cuts, the Probation Department has proposed cuts that include a reduction in support staff. However, community safety has and will remain our number one priority. The highest risk offenders will continue to receive the highest level of supervision."

San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob said nothing is more important than public safety and protecting children.

"I'll be looking at entire budget, particularly the public safety aspect of that, to make sure we're not losing ground. But again, this is a very, very tough year we're in, once again," said Jacob.

The county has a $5 billion budget and revenues are down dramatically but Jacob told 10News more needs to be done.

"There must be some money somewhere to make sure we're doing the job of protecting our kids," said Jacob.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors will begin reviewing the proposed budget on Tuesday. ..Source.. 10News.com

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CA- California Struggles With Paroled Sex Offenders

9-27-2009 California:

ESCONDIDO, Calif. — Darrell Littleton calls them “his guys,” but he does not trust them.

One got drunk and exposed himself to a jogger in a public park. Another was a fire captain until he molested his 13-year-old stepdaughter, went to prison and lost his wife, his job and his home. Now the man sleeps behind a drive-through restaurant.

Mr. Littleton is a parole agent, and “his guys,” about 40 in all, are paroled sex offenders. On a September morning, as he does each day, Mr. Littleton fired up his laptop computer to check on his charges; the signals from their global-positioning ankle bracelets trace dotted trails cutting through a Google satellite map. Mr. Littleton tracks them, calls them frequently and shows up unannounced to make sure they are behaving themselves. But they still struggle to stay straight.

One of his parolees recently harassed a teenage prostitute, and Mr. Littleton had to “violate him” — revoke his parole and return him to prison. Another promised Mr. Littleton that once he is off parole in a few months, and no longer subject to random drug testing, he is going to resume his marijuana habit. And before the day was over, another parolee would emerge as a suspect in a sexual assault on a 9-year-old girl. “Twenty is really the ideal caseload for my guys,” Mr. Littleton said as he drove a high-riding pickup truck on one of several parolee visits he had planned that day. “With that kind of caseload, I could spend more time in the field and less in the office. With these guys, you don’t want them to know you’re coming. You need to watch them when they don’t know they’re being watched.”

A series of high-profile crimes involving parolees in California highlight the challenges of keeping track of them in a state that discharges more than 120,000 inmates annually, more than any other.

Last month, two campus police officers at the University of California, Berkeley, became suspicious of a paroled sex offender named Phillip Garrido and called his parole officer, leading to Mr. Garrido’s arrest on charges of kidnapping Jaycee Dugard, now 29, in 1991, raping her and holding her captive in a backyard encampment.

Like the sex offenders Mr. Littleton supervises, Mr. Garrido had been monitored by GPS and visited at his home at least twice a month by parole agents. But he was still able to keep his secret for 18 years.

In July, a Los Angeles man on parole was arrested in the kidnapping and murder of a 17-year-old girl, and an Oakland parolee shot and killed four police officers before killing himself.

California is the only state that places all released prisoners on parole, no matter the seriousness of their crime. Even at a time of historically low violent crime, critics argue that overloading parole agents compromises public safety.

Legislation passed this month will reduce the “average” caseloads for parole agents to 45, from 70, and nonviolent, less serious offenders will no longer be returned to prison for administrative infractions like missing counseling appointments, ditching parole agent visits or failing drug tests. Agents handling some of the most violent offenders, like Mr. Littleton’s parolees, will also see their caseloads reduced.

Legislators argued that the law was necessary to reduce chronic prison overcrowding. Packed prisons thwart rehabilitation programs and medical treatment and incite riots on a regular basis, according to findings in federal civil rights cases against the California corrections system.

The law was hard-won by the Democratic-controlled state legislature. Corrections officer unions, police organizations and prosecutors opposed it, arguing that even parolees convicted of nonviolent crimes were too dangerous to be left unsupervised.

Mr. Littleton said he thought parolees should be given incentives for early release and reduced supervision inside and outside of prison — G.E.D. courses, drug treatment programs and psychological counseling, for example. But providing services is one thing the legislation does not emphasize.

In fact, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced $280 million in cuts this week to educational and rehabilitation programs inside prison. The cutbacks follow an 80 percent cut in Proposition 36, the state’s largest drug treatment diversion program, even though most parolees suffer from drug and alcohol addictions, mental illnesses and chronic unemployment. A University of California, Los Angeles, study showed that the program, approved by voters in 2000, treated 30,000 drug offenders a year in lieu of prison and saved $2 in taxes for every $1 invested in the program.

Michelle Jackson, a parole agent in Corona, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles, who supervises 40 violent felons, said she would prefer to focus on the social work aspect of her job rather than the law enforcement role but sees few alternatives, even with the new legislation. “Most programs won’t take my guys or they want them to pay, and all my parolees have very low-paying jobs,” she said. “They can’t afford a month’s worth of counseling.”

When Ms. Jackson visits Faafetai Niusila, 39, a muscular member of the Sons of Samoa gang, she chides him for his lack of chivalry toward his wife.

“Really? You’re going to let her carry the groceries by herself?” Ms. Jackson asked as she watched Mr. Niusila’s wife struggle to carry bags into their house. Mr. Niusila, who served 12 years in prison for attempted murder, hustled across the lawn to help.

After Mr. Niusila, Ms. Jackson visited Shelton Miles, 38, who was on parole for shooting a man in 1991. He spent more than 10 years in prison. “Does someone collect shot glasses?” Ms. Jackson asked warily as she spied them on a shelf. If Mr. Miles is caught abusing alcohol, his parole could be revoked.

“No, no,” he said. “My sons’ sports teams give them out.”

Ms. Jackson said that in the absence of appropriate programs, she was more likely to revoke an offender’s parole.

“If employment doesn’t work out, if staying home doesn’t work out, and they start using again or getting in trouble — even if it’s not another crime — we have to violate them to protect the community because we don’t know what will happen,” she said.

That uncertainty keeps Mr. Littleton thinking about his guys even when he is off the clock. Even a vigilant parole agent cannot keep parolees out of trouble every minute of every day, he said.

Around the middle of his shift, Mr. Littleton received an alert that the police here in Escondido, a suburb of San Diego, were looking for a parolee supervised by his office named Ricardo Perez Borbon, 70, in connection with an assault on a 9-year-old girl. Mr. Borbon was on parole after serving 12 years for sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl.

The signal from Mr. Borbon’s GPS anklet indicated that he had lingered near an elementary school an hour earlier and then had gone to his residential construction job before tampering with the homing device a few blocks away. Mr. Littleton gunned his truck toward the location to meet other agents. They found the anklet under a roadside cactus. Mr. Borbon was now a fugitive. “We’ll be focusing on him now,” said Lindon Lewis, Mr. Littleton’s supervisor. “He has our full attention now.”

Mr. Littleton returned to his truck and clipped Mr. Borbon’s mug shot — slicked-back hair, a salt-and-pepper moustache, grim eyes with dark circles underneath — onto his sun visor. The parolee’s face looked down at him. ..Source.. by SOLOMON MOORE

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UT- Probation and parole officers stretched thinner

"You have to separate the crime from the person ..." says the parole officer, and that is exactly what lawmakers do not want the public to do which is why they continue with hysterical rants and fearmongering. Lawmakers refuse to accept that prison and programs do change offenders, but they do not want the public to know that.

4-4-2009 Utah:

Corrections struggles to track offenders in tight budget times.

Kody Floyd wears a bullet-proof vest and Taser, and his hand lingers on the pistol resting in his holster. He is standing in the driveway of a Salt Lake City home to protect his partner, who raps on the side door.

It's just past 6 p.m. on a Tuesday, and both Adult Probation and Parole officers left for work before the sun rose. Floyd and compadre Billy Luke won't return home to their families until well past 10.

Time is the officers' biggest enemy with growing numbers of people to check up on. This stop is part of a goal to steamroll through a 13-hour work day in effort to knock on the doors of 105 homes by the end of the month.

A small girl inside the home peers out through the blinds at Floyd, who smiles and waves. She runs to the door and steps out onto the porch next to her mother, who is holding a baby. All appear unshaken by the officers.

Luke asks to see the woman's husband, a registered sex offender. Since he's not home, the officer tells the man's wife to get their new van on the sex-offender registry. He bumps fists with the girl and crosses her father off his list.

Both men wish they could have extended talks with the offenders they visit. But enforcing new laws penalizing sex offenders for failing to update their status on the state's registry falls on the shoulders of already swamped agents.

"In a perfect world, I'd see them all once a day and twice on Sunday," says Floyd. "When they reoffend, that's a new victim. You just don't feel good about not seeing them during a month."

Being out in the field is vital, said Luke, who at the end of the 13-hour day had confiscated a pocketknife from a rapist and caught a man, on parole for sexually assaulting his own kids, just as he was looking at pornography on his computer. The officers are required to visit the highest-risk offenders at home or work once per month and the lowest-risk offenders once every 90 days.

But with probationers and parolees now comprising one of every 136 people in the Salt Lake Valley, monthly checks are growing to be nearly impossible. Officers are coping by downgrading more high-risk offenders and ending supervision earlier for others.

Recent Department of Corrections budget cuts have included a six percent job reduction and the closure of an offender diagnostic center that recommended sentences to help judges. They have also thinned the number of courses offered at Adult Probation and Parole offices, such as anger management and parenting.

Brent Butcher, who oversees probation and parole, said his agents can still rely on classes already offered in the community for offenders.

"One thing the economy has done -- it's made us look at how we distribute our resources," he said.

But the officers are not paid overtime, and high-tech gadgets that allowed them to track offenders from afar are gone. A GPS monitoring device once mapped offenders on a computer screen; an in-home Breathalyzer emitted a blaring noise inside parolee and probationer homes until they blew into a tube to test their blood-alcohol level and have a photo taken.

Some probationers and parolees pay $180 per month for ankle-monitoring devices and officers to track them. But the bill is a tough sell for people with criminal records already struggling to find or keep jobs. And officers usually have to check on unemployed offenders more often since, Luke said, "free time can turn to drugs and deviant thoughts."

Although agents are encouraged to find alternatives to prison for those who violate their probation or parole conditions, Butcher said officers still won't hesitate to recommend prison time for those who threaten themselves or the public. Despite overcrowding concerns, the Board of Pardons and Parole hasn't yet turned to emergency releases of the past.

Luke said he is seeing twice as many new parolees added to his list. He thinks fewer classes mean people released on parole are now less prepared. Both hope their efforts to rummage through closets and sort through refrigerators during home visits are enough.

Some like William Smith, a 31-year-old who was sentenced for first-degree felony rape 10 years ago, in part credit parole agents for giving them life after prison.

"I have this wonderful woman who doesn't judge me by my past," Smith said. "I've done my crime, I've done my time, and now I'm trying to live my life."

Floyd used to walk laps around a halfway house with the 345-pound Rudy Fryer to help him lose weight so he could get knee surgery.

"They've been more of friends than Corrections officers," said Fryer, 52, who is on parole for a felony rape he committed nearly 20 years ago.

Asked whether it can be hard to care about criminals, Floyd said he keeps in mind that he owes it to the public to help the offenders who are out in the community everyday. That means checking on everyone -- even the husband of Shanni Einer when he's recovering from a heart attack.

"We know it is what it's gotta be," said Einer.

At the end of the long day, the work can take its toll. On-call officers can be pulled away from their families on weekends and holidays. And then there's the content of their work: Luke said he has become "literally sick to my stomach" from reading the criminal histories of those he oversees.

"If you work in this job long enough, you become desensitized to certain things," he said. "The trick is to learn how to do that, to protect your own mental health, while still remaining focused on helping the offender. You have to separate the crime from the person." ..News Source..

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NV- Budget cuts may be endangering our community- particularly children

11-16-2008 Nevada:

In light of budget cuts and hiring freezes, can parole officers keep our community safe? Certain members of our community may be in particular danger.

Parole and Probation Division of Northern Nevada says that with more than 13,000 Nevadans on parole or probation and fewer than 200 officers statewide on staff to supervise, each one carries a caseload of about 65 offenders.

According to the PPD, for each case, officers are responsible for: conducting drug tests, confirming employment, setting up interviews, conducting home visits and making sure offenders are compliant with all conditions attached to their freedom.

"There is no magic bullet," Department Chief Mark Woods said, Northern Nevada's Parole and Probation Division. "We are feeling the effects-we're not hiring and we will have to start adjusting how we supervise people, putting more resources toward the high-risk offenders."

Since they can't hire any more officers and they're seeing some leave for other agencies, they have to constantly do more with less.

For now, they say they are shifting resources over to supervising the most dangerous offenders while still keeping track of less violent ones.

Dwindling staff is not the only challenge Northern Nevada's parole officers are facing.

Right outside the door of their current office, school buses line up filled with students attending productions at the Pioneer Theater. One block south is the library and the children's museum, one block north is the river walk and beyond that, the ice-skating rink.

Dozens of sex offenders are required to report to the parole and probation building within sight of these places where children congregate.

"Our own internal guidelines say we should be at least 1,000 feet away from places where children meet," Sgt. Tiran said. "And when we first moved here in 2000, the Pioneer Center was here-but most of the other places weren't."

Sgt Tiran says they need to move but that creates another problem.

The lease on their current residence is up in July 2010 and with the state in financial meltdown, there is no money to buy or build a new place. Officers say they worry that their own lives and the well-being of children in the area are at stake. ..News Source.. by News 4

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