L.A. County Has Its Own Parolee Cycle of Despair

Thanks for beginning to unravel the complexities of California’s 20-year, tough-on-crime experiment (“Listening to Oakland,” by Scott Duke Harris, July 6). The story could just as easily have been written from L.A. County, where we have one of the nation’s highest parolee release rates--about 100 each day. According to California Department of Corrections figures, 85% of our offender population has substance abuse problems. Half are functionally illiterate. Many will become homeless. Few will find jobs.

Several years ago, community leaders alerted us to their concern that high rates of “churn” (incarceration, reentry and re-incarceration) were weakening rather than strengthening their communities. At first, it seemed counterintuitive. How could communities be worse off as a result of removing offenders from neighborhoods? But a significant new body of scholarship demonstrates that in high-crime neighborhoods this is precisely the result.

New approaches are on the horizon. Proposition 36 already has made clear that a few thousand dollars spent on drug treatment is a small investment compared to the $26,000 spent on a year’s incarceration. Locally, several community groups are beginning to provide the kinds of transitional services that will make it possible for ex-offenders to remake their lives successfully. For the sake of the state budget and community safety, California needs to find a new long-term paradigm for public safety.

Torie Osborn

Executive Director

Liberty Hill Foundation

Santa Monica