Two Unrelated Stories
A poorly monitored parolee (allegedly) commits a violent murder:
A 17-year-old girl killed last July, allegedly by a transient parolee, had bite marks to her face and ear and had injuries all over her body showing she violently struggled with her attacker, a coroner’s official testified Monday.
. . . .
[Defendant Charles] Samuel had been permitted to leave for the day from a residential drug-treatment facility on the day of the killing.
And California launches its plan to relax monitoring of parolees, to deal with prison overcrowding:
State prison authorities Monday began reducing the number of parole violators sent back behind bars and offering inmates more opportunity to shorten their sentences, as part of a plan to decrease the prison population by 6,500 inmates over the next year.
Low-risk offenders, including those convicted of nonviolent crimes, will not have regular supervision by a parole agent. And they will no longer be returned to prison for technical violations such as alcohol use, missed drug tests or failure to notify the state of an address change.
What could possibly go worng?
So, they save money on the front end — no new prison construction, no P.O. to check up on parolees — and wind up paying it on the back end, in the form of new trials for repeat offenders, police overtime, lawsuit settlements with victims (and relatives of the really unfortunate victims), etc.
Gee, is there no possible way that they could cut something else out of the budget to free up funds to AT LEAST keep the status quo?
Icy Texan (858a9a) — 1/26/2010 @ 1:57 amMy very evil brother-in-law is now running free some where in Central America doing God knows what because Minnesota wasn’t all that careful with their parolees.
I really am not understand the confusion about how we treat sexual predators – BTW – they are more prone to repeat offend than any other criminal. WTF are we doing sending them back out? If I must choose who stays in prison I choose the sex offenders.
Also, I’m pro-capital punishment for child molesters & serial rapists. Just laying it out there.
Vivian Louise (643333) — 1/26/2010 @ 3:34 amThese people don’t know how to prioritize.
happyfeet (e9e587) — 1/26/2010 @ 4:27 amFirst job of government is to protect people. If that means locking scumbags away till the end of time, so be it.
But don’t sweat it California. By cutting back on parole enforcement, that windfall in revenue can be used for something really necessary, like state-funded back scratchers.
KingShamus (fb8597) — 1/26/2010 @ 5:04 amThey will facilitate the brutal rape and murder of your daughters until you allow them to raise your taxes.
That’s their argument and they are sticking with it.
Amphipolis (b120ce) — 1/26/2010 @ 5:13 amI don’t have a problem releasing true non-violent offenders early. I think most non-violent offenders shouldn’t be in prison in the first place, or there only for a short period of time.
However: said non-violent offenders still need close supervision, whether it’s work-release, probation, community service, whatever, and that still costs a lot of money. Simply dumping them onto the streets is a set-up for more crime.
There is, of course, the problem of knowing up front who is, and who isn’t, non-violent. The state has been known to be wrong about this before.
Steve White (ca326c) — 1/26/2010 @ 6:06 amNah, they’ll just stick an ankle bracelet on ’em, and then ignore them unless they get into some kind of stupid idiot trouble.
And I do think it’s not really intellectually honest to equate the first case with the instance implied by the second. There is a distinct difference between a violent drug abuser and some idiot serving time for kiting checks.
Now, if the system is NOT making that distinction, THEN you have a legitimate issue.
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 1/26/2010 @ 6:51 amThere is a max security prison in Illinois that is looking for business as an alternative to taking prisoners from Gitmo.
MD in Philly (d4668b) — 1/26/2010 @ 6:54 amOT, but the alleged “real” Ellie Light” supposedly called Michael Smerconish this morning claiming to be a traveling nurse:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0110/Ellie_Light_speaks.html?showall
Also, there’s an amusing edit war going on the Wikipeida, with one of their liberal operatives repeatedly deleting mention of the incident at the “Exmaples” section of the “Astroturfing” article. Likewise, the stand-alone article on “Ellie Light” has been proposed for deletion.
Northeast Elizabeth (c780a0) — 1/26/2010 @ 7:06 amOne of my sons has a friend who works in the State of California’s correction system administration. He tells my son that approximately 1/3 of the 27 people in his office work, while the other 2/3 basically amuse themselves with surfing the net, reading books, breakroom gossiping, etc., all work-day long. I can only surmise that this scenario plays out in nearly every public sector department.
I’ll believe this state has a chance at reversing the decline it has been in for decades when I see deadwood being cut from their employment rolls.
GeneralMalaise (919990) — 1/26/2010 @ 7:18 amHere in Illinois several of the inmates released early pursuant to Governor Quinn’s secret program have already committed additional crimes and have been sent back. I think at least one has been accused of attempted murder, and that program is a substantial issue in the upcoming primaries.
Rochf (ae9c58) — 1/26/2010 @ 7:58 amThats the great thing about Mike Huckabee, just Pardons em and gets rid of the Middle Man…
Frank Drackman (c2d1a4) — 1/26/2010 @ 8:21 amUnfortunately, unless the voters are willing to pass a bond measure to build new prisons, or the legislature is ready to fund new prisons without bonds, there isn’t much of an option here.
GeneralMalaise: while there may well be a problem with the correction system administration, fixing that problem won’t fix the problem that the physical buildings are overcrowded; the salary cost for useless employees is tiny compared with the construction cost of new buildings.
aphrael (73ebe9) — 1/26/2010 @ 9:46 amHow much did it cost to run Manzanar?
Why can we not reopen Manzanar and relocate parolees there?
How many of those parolees are on parole for rape or murder?
Michael Ejercito (b0a575) — 1/26/2010 @ 10:00 amSince the State is incapable of, and legally not required to, protect individuals in their daily pursuits, it is time for CA to join the majority of states that have acknowledged reality and to institute Shall-Issue CCW so that we, the great unwashed, can at least protect ourselves when we are beyond sight range of a Winchell’s (it’s just a joke, Pat – the Winchell’s, not the CCW).
AD - RtR/OS! (6c8faf) — 1/26/2010 @ 11:10 amBy the 2012-2013 fiscal year $15.4 billion will be spent on incarcerating Californians. That’s about $405/year per resident: way too much.
Wesson (9fddaa) — 1/26/2010 @ 12:55 pmThis O’keefe story sounds pretty serious.
Too bad if it’s the case. He did the world a lot of good, but you can’t leave bugs in people’s offices. 20/20 shouldn’t do that, and bloggers and independent journalists shouldn’t do that.
No doubt, what he was trying to capture would have been interesting, and possibly criminal. But there are lines we can’t cross.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 1/26/2010 @ 1:17 pmNo one will agree with me on this, but anything that is said in a Senate office ought to be public information anyway.
If he committed a crime he should pay the penalty, but I wish we knew what this Senator’s office was up to behind the scenes. I wish we didn’t have to wiretap and commit crimes just to get behind those closed doors that Obama promised to open.
That doesn’t mean it’s OK to wiretap (if that happened… both sides may lie about what really went on). But it’s certainly understandable. Our government is running away from accountability. This senate seat belongs to the people. There’s no such thing as executive privilege for this Senator. ACORN had some kind of right to privacy too, and yet I don’t give a flip that this right was violated to expose horrible stuff.
It’s a shame the reaction to this will not be for the Senator to expose exactly what has been going on in her office, or what negotiations have been ongoing for the health care bill. It’s a shame ACORN will pretend this exonerates them. It’s a shame Holder would never prosecute democrats waving nightsticks at voters, but will probably use O’Keefe as leverage against Breitbart or out O’Keefe in prison.
Obviously, this isn’t different from that kid who hacked into Sarah Palin’s email account, but the press will surely see a huge difference, and so will the law.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 1/26/2010 @ 1:31 pmwrong thread, sorry!
Dustin (b54cdc) — 1/26/2010 @ 1:32 pmThere’s lots of ways to save money as long as they don’t worry about the ACLU’s feelings. Tent prison, porta-potties, chain gangs, no cable tv. Just the chain gangs would get a lot of expensive road crews off the payroll. Ok, not making any friends here, I’m sure.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio has it right. And he’s always fighting some kind of liberal backwash.
PatAZ (9d1bb3) — 1/26/2010 @ 1:35 pmApparently our Governor, in spite of Lily Burke, still doesn’t believe anything can go wrong. He was specifically asked about this at yesterday’s Press Club luncheon and I was just disgusted all over again at his willingness to risk the public’s safety.
QUESTION: I want you to expand, if you would, on this new law that takes effect today. You mentioned about the prison system — the law that basically requires Corrections to start working on reducing the prison population by focusing on non-violent and low-risk inmates. Could you specifically address the complaints, the criticisms of crime victim groups who believe that this inevitably is going to compromise public safety on the streets?
GOVERNOR: First of all, it’s not going to compromise public safety. And second of all, it is simple reforms that is working just strictly on one thing and that is that we have a 70 percent recidivism rate. So every time you have inmates go out they come right back in again, 70 percent of them and that costs our state of California a tremendous amount of money.
What we want to do is cut down on that recidivism rate and also loosen up — parole agents are now dealing, up until now, dealt with 70 parolees. Now it will be cut down, I think, to around 48 or so. We have Matt Cate in here — where is Matt? OK, right over there. Do you want to come out here Matt and just talk briefly about that? (Laughter) Because I think that the number is that we cut from 70 to 48 or so of parolees. So that will make the streets safer. Our parole agents can concentrate on those fewer and have much more time to concentrate on those few rather than on all 70.
So it’s really actually protecting the people. It creates better public safety and also it cuts down on the amount of money that we are spending on prisons.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 1/26/2010 @ 2:32 pm“GeneralMalaise: while there may well be a problem with the correction system administration, fixing that problem won’t fix the problem that the physical buildings are overcrowded; the salary cost for useless employees is tiny compared with the construction cost of new buildings.”
Let me be clear… I’m not just singling out the California Corrections Department as far as reducing a non-performing workforce… I’m talking about the entire State of California workforce. This state cannot be sustained at current levels, the politicians don’t have the will – let alone the inclination – to do what’s necessary to start down the path to fiscal responsibility and the public employee unions have the population by the short ‘n curlies.
I listened to two radio personalities read an alphabetized list of state departments and it took them 30 minutes from start to finish.
GeneralMalaise (919990) — 1/26/2010 @ 4:56 pm