TV REVIEW : HBO’s ‘Convicts’ a Look at the Harsh Reality of Life for Ex-Cons

For those HBO subscribers tired of the pay cable service’s usual low-calorie entertainment fodder, they should find “Convicts on the Streets” (tonight at 10, with repeated airings this month) a fairly effective wake-up call. The irony in this example of “real life” television is that it is about people so accustomed to incarceration and suspended freedom that when they contend with real life, most fail tragically.

They are ex-cons put on parole and a tight leash controlled by their designated parole officer. For good reason. They have murdered, raped, abused children, robbed, and kidnaped. They may remain a danger to society, but given the prison system’s grossly overcrowded conditions, once their “time” is up, they are set free.

The report documents a year’s caseload of Long Beach officer Alex Estrada, part cop, part social worker, helping parolees who stick to the rules, hunting down those who don’t. A sample of the rules: Child molesters (who account for a depressingly high 13 of Estrada’s 50 cases) may not go near children, including their own.

Estrada proves to be a man with keen hunches. When he suspects convicted molester Lawrence Schoeneck of treading on forbidden home turf, or of the bright but unemployable Eddie Bell of robbing to buy drugs, he’s right. You get the feeling from Estrada that he would like to be wrong once in a while. With more than half his cases back behind bars before the year is out, Estrada’s job is often reduced to recycling human beings from the streets to prison, the way Bell recycles wood, paper and aluminum in exchange for some change before his life sadly breaks down.

More than anything, it is the system that seems to be breaking down. An unavoidable conclusion, especially when “Convicts on the Streets” leaves you with this statistic: The current population of 400,000 U.S. parolees will double in the next five years.