Shakeup in Leadership of Parole System Is Planned

Unhappy with the pace of reforms designed to reduce the state prison population and save taxpayers money, Schwarzenegger administration officials are planning to shake up leadership of the program, prison sources said Wednesday.

The key change will be the transfer of Richard Rimmer, deputy director in charge of the Department of Corrections’ parole division, to another post later this month, the sources said.

A spokesman for the department, which operates 32 prisons housing a record 164,000 inmates, declined to comment, beyond saying that “some changes” are afoot.

“Nothing is official,” said Todd Slosek, assistant director of communications. “But we’ve said all along that we’re committed to reform in the parole area and would do what’s necessary to get there.”

In May, the state’s top corrections leaders unveiled an ambitious shift in parole policy that they said would save taxpayers millions of dollars by reducing the number of ex-convicts returned to prison on parole violations.

California leads the nation by far in the number of parolees it puts back behind bars, often for relatively minor violations. A 2003 report by the independent Little Hoover Commission, a government watchdog panel, criticized the parole system as a “billion-dollar failure.”

One centerpiece of the new program is the use of alternative sanctions for some violators. These include electronic monitoring and halfway houses, as well as residential drug treatment programs to help ex-convicts stay clean and avoid violating conditions of their paroles.

“The current parole system doesn’t promote public safety, it ignores victims, shortchanges taxpayers and fails the residents of this state,” Roderick Q. Hickman, secretary of youth and adult corrections, said in announcing the changes last spring.

Hickman said the reforms would help offenders “successfully transition back into the communities without returning to crime.”

Officials predicted that the program would dramatically cut the inmate population by as many as 15,000 over the next three years. That decline, they said, could lead to the closure of up to three prisons, leading to further savings for a correctional system with a $6-billion annual budget.

Instead, California is housing more adult offenders than ever, forcing managers to declare a state of emergency and jam convicts into prison lounges, classrooms, vocational shops and other ill-suited areas. Such measures, among many other aspects of the correctional system, were sharply criticized earlier this year by a panel headed by former Gov. George Deukmejian.

It has been Rimmer’s job to implement the parole reforms. Rimmer, a veteran department employee and former parole agent, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

But he told The Times last month that after an initial reduction in the number of parole violators returned to prison -- the figure dropped from 75,000 in 2001 to 60,000 in 2003 -- progress had “flat-lined.”

Rimmer blamed the sluggish gains on a “bureaucratic nightmare” involving hiring freezes and budget cuts, as well as an inability to line up available drug treatment beds and difficulties in contracting with operators of halfway houses for parole violators.

One source said the leadership on the parole reforms “fell short of what we wanted to see.”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has visited two prisons in his first year in office, has made it clear that rehabilitation and parolee success are priorities for the correctional system.

Times staff writer Tim Reiterman contributed to this report.