Rumors of Early Prisoner Releases Squelched

The new man in charge of the state’s prison system said Wednesday that, despite California’s desperate budget woes, the Schwarzenegger administration would not release inmates early to save money.

Roderick Q. Hickman, secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, said a rumor that the administration would free nonviolent convicts before their scheduled release date to cut the $5.3-billion prison budget was not true.

“There is no intent to eliminate parole for that population or do early releases for that population,” Hickman said. “I won’t sacrifice community safety” to trim costs, he said.

Rather, he said, the administration aims to save money by reforming the state’s beleaguered parole system -- specifically by dramatically reducing the number of ex-convicts sent back to prison on parole violations.

By expanding programs to better prepare inmates for release -- and by supporting them with drug treatment and other help on the outside -- fewer will return to prison and “we will get a fiscal payoff,” Hickman said.

Hickman’s comments marked his first public appearance since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him to run the state’s adult and juvenile penal system, the nation’s largest.

He appeared before a special state Senate committee on corrections that met to examine California’s parole system. That system has been criticized by judges, legislators and, most recently, by a government watchdog agency that dubbed it a “billion-dollar failure” because two out of three parolees wind up back behind bars.

Hickman, who began his career as a prison guard, acknowledged that “we can do better.” He also said that, despite past tensions between the Legislature and prison administrators, his would be a “collaborative” leadership style.

State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), chairwoman of the committee that convened Wednesday’s hearing and a strong critic of the penal system, said she was encouraged by Hickman’s remarks and hoped he would bring a new emphasis on rehabilitation to California’s 32 prisons.

“The Department of Corrections should correct,” said Romero, who plans a series of hearings this year. “Otherwise, let’s rename it the department of warehousing.”

In his wide-ranging testimony, Hickman stressed that Schwarzenegger had no plans to shorten prison terms. Noting that it costs $28,000 a year to house an inmate in California, Democrats in the past have put forth proposals to release certain “lightweight” offenders early. But those ideas have never won much support in the Legislature or the governor’s office.

With the scale of today’s budget problems, however, officials in the Schwarzenegger administration have said that every proposal capable of saving money is on the table.

Hickman said that did not include letting convicts out early.

“You may feel [a crime] is nonserious or nonviolent,” Hickman said, “until someone does something to your TV or takes your child’s bike.”

While he would not disclose specifics of the governor’s budget for corrections for the coming year, Hickman said reforms already underway to the parole system would eventually save hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

About 125,000 inmates are released from California prisons each year. Each is given $200 and told to stay out of trouble while on parole, usually for three years. But few receive much help in rejoining society. A three-week prerelease program is voluntary and not available at all prisons. Only one in four of the state’s 161,000 convicts can take academic or vocational classes because offerings are so sparse.

Under reforms compelled in part by a class-action lawsuit by inmates, the Department of Corrections this year will establish prerelease centers at every prison, with staff members who will do a risk assessment of outgoing inmates and match their needs with resources in their communities.

Over the long term, that sort of transitional help is expected to slow the tide of parolees returning to prison. More immediate savings will come through the diversion of thousands of parole violators -- now sent back to jail or prison -- to residential drug treatment centers, home detention or electronic monitoring, among other options.

Only parolees whose records are free of violent or serious felonies and whose parole violations are considered “administrative” -- such as a positive drug test or failure to meet with a parole agent -- will qualify for diversion.

Officials said this new approach to parole, along with other policy changes approved in this year’s budget, would reduce the prison population by as many as 15,000 inmates -- or nearly 10% -- by June 2005. Such a decrease could save about $285 million annually and allow the closure of at least one prison, perhaps the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco.