Tehachapi News

Releasing ‘nonviolent’ inmates on early or shortened parol

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After spending 20 years in corrections as a psychologist, I am astonished that anyone - much less the governor - could define any class of felons as nonviolent. The current plan to release thousands of California inmates with no or shortened parole is fatuous if disingenuous. It is a complete fiction to believe that any convicted felon upon release is safe for community re-entry with out serious parole supervision and community based rehabilitation.

The re-offense numbers are striking and troublesome. According to up-to-date reports readily available through the corrections department, 57.44 percent of all paroled felons are returned to prison within three years for parole violations or for a new offense. And those are just the ones who have been caught.

Peer-reviewed studies reveal that for every crime for which an individual is arrested he or she commits scores of undiscovered others for which they are not. Moreover, there is no such thing as a nonviolent crime. Virtually every crime is committed by someone willing to do some kind of violence if in the doing of the crime they are discovered. Furthermore, it is not a stretch to understand that criminals do serious indirect violence to the community and the individuals they victimize. And you better believe that the indirect costs related to such violence are staggering.

Interestingly, the very crimes listed as “nonviolent” for which inmates are eligible for release are the ones for which the recidivism rates are the very highest: property crimes, grand theft, petty theft with a prior, robbery, burglary, auto theft, receiving stolen property, drugs, DUI, possession of a weapon and forgery or fraud.

Do some inmates leave prison and lead exemplary lives? Of course. But the last thorough study revealed that out of thousands of paroled criminals followed over many years, a mere 13 of those multiple thousands truly turned themselves around. The rest faced post-release lives skirting the law and flirting with re-arrest by continuing their criminal ways, just more cleverly than before.
Before the Governor’s plan to release thousands of inmates becomes sad reality, let’s hope and pray he does his homework and looks at the research and its data to fully understand what he is getting himself - and all of us - into. To the Governor: You think the cost of imprisoning inmates is high? Wait until you release them…