End of Parolee Oversight Proposed

The chief of California’s prison system has proposed abolishing all supervision of paroled felons and eliminating the state-funded mental health care many inmates receive once released.

The dramatic cost-cutting suggestions come amid criticism that the sprawling penal system has escaped the budget ax that is striking nearly every other wing of state government.

They were quickly opposed by some officials who said the cuts, if adopted, would endanger public safety. Others dismissed the seriousness of the proposals, saying they viewed them as a way of warning finance officials and legislators against cutting deeply into the prison budget.

Corrections Director Edward Alameida, in a confidential telephone briefing with wardens and other administrators Monday, acknowledged that sending convicts into the streets without parole oversight fails “the test of public safety,” according to one official involved in the call.

But other officials said Alameida put forth the idea because there are few other ways to reach the 10% cost-cutting benchmark required of all state departments by Gov. Gray Davis.

A spokesman for the Department of Corrections, Margot Bach, said Alameida would not discuss the proposal, saying it was “executive information” sent directly to the governor’s finance team.

She called the suggestion “a doomsday scenario” that officials are “hoping will not come to pass.”

A high-level official at the agency that oversees corrections added that Alameida had few choices because of court mandates and other restrictions on the $5.3-billion-a-year prisons budget.

“Do we want to do away with parole? No,” said Stephen Green, assistant secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency. “But we can’t cut fingers and toes any more to reach certain savings goals. We have to look at entire programs.”

Green added that it is his “strong suspicion” that concerns about public safety would persuade Davis to preserve parole supervision when he releases his revised budget proposal later this month.

The administration is reviewing the proposal, said Davis press secretary Steve Maviglio.

Legislators were quick to criticize the idea.

“Mr. Alameida wants to endanger the California public by laying off parole agents that protect the citizens from sex offenders and other violent felons,” said Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez (D-Norwalk), a former parole officer who heads a budget subcommittee that oversees prisons.

State Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) suggested that Alameida may have offered the cut knowing it would not be accepted, a common practice during budget season.

She likened his proposal to those made by lobbyists for public universities, who insist the only way they could absorb cuts would be to shutter a campus.

“I hope it is a nonstarter,” Kuehl said.

The target of Alameida’s proposal is the parole and community services division, which has an annual budget of $483 million and employs 3,360 people, including about 2,100 parole agents. Within that division, the staff at a string of outpatient medical clinics around the state provided mental health counseling, medication and other care to about 25,000 parolees last year.

Lance Corcoran, a top official with the union representing parole agents, said Alameida’s proposal could result in the layoffs of perhaps 1,000 agents. The rest, he said, would likely be absorbed throughout the system in other positions.

“The elimination of parole does not serve public safety,” Corcoran said. “For all the complaints, parole does offer supervision and an opportunity to re-integrate felons. Given what we’re facing, it is a serious proposal. But it is ridiculous.”

Each year, the state’s 33 prisons release about 125,000 inmates into the community, giving each of them $200 and a bus or train ticket home.

The ex-convicts are then subject to three years of supervision by parole agents, who monitor their employment status, screen them for drug use and can recommend that they be returned to prison if they violate certain restrictions.

In the early years of his administration, Davis increased spending on parole, reducing caseloads so agents could spend more time on high-risk ex-convicts -- especially those with psychiatric problems and with two strikes, or felony convictions, on their criminal records.

Even with that extra effort, however, nearly 90,000 parolees were sent back to prison on new offenses or parole violations in 2001, the most recent year for which statistics were available.

While the elimination of parole was the most drastic cut he proposed, Alameida said during the call that he was recommending other cost-saving moves. They include:

* Canceling vocational programs and other activities for certain groups of inmates during the afternoon and evening.

* Delaying construction of a new prison at Delano by at least six months.

* Postponing the creation of 500 new slots for in-prison substance abuse treatment.

* Eliminating work crews that use prisoners to pick up trash, clean restrooms and perform other jobs for communities.

* End contracts with five small, privately run prisons for minimum-security inmates.

In his initial budget proposal, Davis recommended granting a slight increase in prison spending -- mostly to cover increased health-care costs -- while offering a few cuts in education and arts programs for inmates.

The state also is seeking to persuade the union representing prison guards and parole agents to accept pay cuts, an idea its leadership is resisting.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have called for money-saving steps that would permit the early release of some prisoners, an idea opposed by Davis and the influential guards union.