STAFFING WOES, BIG CASELOADS HURT SYSTEM

By 2002, nearly one in three prison admissions across the country were
the result of probation or parole rules violations, according to U.S.
Justice Department figures.

In Virginia, roughly one in six prison admissions in 2002 were
so-called "technical violators."

In California, which has one of the largest prison systems in the
country, it is a huge problem.

California accounts for 42 percent of all technical parole violators
returned to state prisons in the United States, according to a study
by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center.

Daniel F. Wilhelm, director of the state sentencing and corrections
program for the Vera Institute of Justice in New York City, said
California imprisons as many as 75,000 technical violators a year for
an average stay of four months at a total cost of $1 billion a year.

Of a prison population of about 167,000, about half will be released
within a year, said criminologist Joan Petersilia of the University of
California, Irvine.

Petersilia, who is conducting a study of the issue, said she believes
the number of technical violators entering the system is only a
fraction of 75,000.

Nevertheless, she said that "you've got about 40 percent of the
[prison] population churning. They go in for three or four months and
then they go back out . . . it's the technical violators."

A policy question Wilhelm said such numbers raise a serious policy
question.

"If you had a billion dollars to spend, is incarcerating a group of
people - who have failed to abide by the terms of the supervision -
for an average of about four months, is that the best way to spend a
billion dollars to get public safety?"

"More and more states are coming to the conclusion that that's not a
good bargain," Wilhelm said. "Nor is it an especially effective way to
guarantee public safety."

Dr. Michael Jacobson, a former New York City probation and correction
commissioner, said technical violators have become a big issue in many
states.

"Essentially, every incentive that exists now in most states - every
political incentive, every fiscal incentive, every organizational
incentive - is for these [probation and parole] officers to
technically violate as many of these people as possible and send them
back" to prison.

"It's just not fair to ask these probation and parole officers to
supervise so many people," said Jacobson, who also is a professor of
criminology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

At the end of 2002, over 4.7 million adult men and women were under
federal, state or local probation or parole - a record high, according
to the U.S. Justice Department.

Caseloads dropping Drew Molloy, president of the American Probation
and Parole Association and a former probation and parole officer in
Virginia, said there are signs caseloads are dropping, but they need
to drop even more.

Budget cutting in many states has hit community corrections hard, he
said, making it impossible to fill needed probation and parole officer
positions, leaving existing officers with caseloads too large to
properly manage.

Molloy said that because of the large caseloads, "instead of the
officers spending a great deal of time trying to do something with
those offenders, they're going to take them off the streets.

"And that's an unfortunate thing because if you had a manageable
caseload, some of those technical violators could be helped."

Jacobson said officers fear there is someone on their caseload who
might commit a horrific crime.

In a perfect world, when someone is caught breaking rules, there
should be alternatives to prison, such as drug-treatment programs,
electronic monitoring or day reporting centers.

"But the fact is, most agencies don't have anything like that -
certainly not in any significant numbers," he said.

Many parole and probation officers will say, "'if I had other options,
I'd use other options. But in this political climate, don't ask me to
ignore violative behavior. I'm not going to do it. I don't want to be
on the front page.'"

"So people are just flowing into prison," Jacobson said. "It's
insane."