A LOOK AT . . . GETTING OUT OF JAIL

With 10 slayings in the nation's capital in a single week, the District's
police chief, Charles H. Ramsey, was in the hot seat last month when he
announced yet another initiative to stop the killing--deploying more
officers to the streets.

When violence erupts, police are always called on for the solutions. But
the most glaring failure in the nation's fight against crime isn't a police
matter. It's the lack of staff, services and support for parole and
probation systems--and Washington is no exception. There are now 17,000
criminal offenders on probation or parole here, plus thousands more
suspects awaiting trial. And several studies show that people on parole or
probation are responsible for a disproportionate share of crime. But as in
cities across the country, the community supervision apparatus here is so
overwhelmed, fragmented and lax that it neither protects the public nor
rehabilitates offenders.

While the rise in the U.S. prison population--now topping 1.3 million--has
gotten a lot of publicity, the dramatic increase in the number of offenders
released to community supervision seems to have escaped public notice.
Nearly 5 million Americans now crowd probation and parole caseloads.

Once made up mostly of minor offenders, probation rolls increasingly mirror
the prison population. More than half of those on probation are convicted
felons and about 60 percent are drug addicts, according to the Justice
Department.

It follows that the best chance we have to put the biggest dent in the
crime problem is to target these serious and chronic offenders on probation
and parole much more effectively. Parole and probation departments need
adequate funding to provide intensive drug testing and treatment; to put
more probation officers out in communities in teams with police; and to
modernize information systems to ensure that offenders don't slip through
the cracks.

Yet over the past 20 years, funding per prisoner nationwide has grown three
times faster than funding per probationer and parolees. This disparity has
left the supervision agencies unable to handle their current caseloads, let
alone manage the crush of prison inmates being released daily.

A recent and chilling example of the inability of the system to adequately
supervise parolees is the brutal slaying of 8-year-old Kevin Shifflett in
Alexandria. The man who is the prime suspect in the case was released on
mandatory parole on April 7 after serving six years in prison in Virginia
for malicious wounding and sodomy. On April 17, he was arrested for felony
cocaine possession at a Fairfax hotel, but a judicial officer, apparently
either unaware of or without regard for his parole status, put him back on
the streets. Two days later, the boy was stabbed to death. Detectives have
linked the suspect's DNA to the getaway vehicle.

It would be easy to point a finger at the probation and parole officers
themselves. But the real issue is that they are understaffed and
underequipped, and they lack sufficient legal authority and treatment tools
to control their charges. Many of them "supervise" offenders by talking to
each one across a desk for 15 minutes a month. They then spend hours
churning out forms without access to computers, let alone databases that
would alert them to the arrest of one of their 100 or more clients.

Even when officials learn somehow that an offender has broken the rules,
there's not much they can do about it. The standard practice is to let
violations pile up until there are enough to convince a judge or parole
board to revoke release and send the offender to prison to serve out his
sentence. It's all or nothing. Very few courts or probation offices set or
follow policies of graduated sanctions, designed to enforce conditions of
supervision and teach offenders that the system is serious about holding
them accountable--for their own safety as well as the public's.

Some judges even seem to believe that if someone has too many violations,
he simply isn't suited to probation. In 28 percent of cases for probation
violation brought before D.C. Superior Court judges, probation is
terminated without penalty, and the violator is released from his legal
obligation altogether, according to a recent University of Maryland study.
Twenty-three percent of cases result in no action. Probation is
revoked--and the violator is imprisoned--in only 17 percent of cases.

Both political parties share the blame for the debacle. Republicans place
their chips on more prisons and torpedoed part of the 1994 federal crime
law that would have allowed states to spend part of a massive federal
infusion of corrections dollars on community supervision. They seek to
lengthen prison terms by abolishing parole, but are silent on the equally
important question of how to deal with convicts once they do get out.

Democrats have put their political bets on more police, who are far more
visible and far better organized than parole and probation officers when it
comes to labor unions and lobbying. Democrats have shied away from granting
stronger legal authority to probation departments. Some even have opposed
dedicating drug treatment slots to offenders, preferring to let dangerous
criminal addicts stand in first-come, first-served waiting lines with those
whose drug habits less clearly threaten public welfare.

Drug treatment courts represent the largest effort to shake life into the
community supervision system. By combining the carrot (drug treatment) with
the stick (frequent drug testing and increased penalties for failed tests),
some 450 drug courts across the nation are providing a more intensive level
of supervision than ever before. But these courts have had spotty results
to date and still handle only a minuscule amount of the total offender
population.

Much more fundamental changes must be made, in funding, training, basic
management and philosophy. Some jurisdictions, including the District and
Maryland, are beginning to tackle these challenges. Technology is beginning
to connect the police and treatment providers with probation agencies so
they can share intelligence quickly. Drug treatment slots are becoming more
readily available, and low-cost, high-speed drug testing machines now allow
for frequent screening of all offenders, not just the few in drug treatment
courts. Most importantly, new legal mechanisms are being created to allow
swifter and more certain penalties for violations of supervision.

In much the same way that community policing is reinventing law
enforcement, community supervision must be transformed from a reactive,
closed-door operation into one that is based in neighborhoods, enlists
participation from victims and citizens, and aggressively seeks to prevent
crime.

Adam Gelb, former policy director for Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend, is executive vice president of PSComm, LLC, a public safety
management and technology consulting firm in Montgomery County.

Interviews outside the prison were conducted by Val Hymes, an Episcopal
prison ministry activist.