Mike Cogh

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/5997920696/

By Joaquin Palomino

A life sentence with the possibility of parole is one of the only sentences in California designed to encourage the convicted to reform. Lindsey Bolar, who served 23 years in prison before receiving parole, believes “lifers make up your best population in prison.” After serving between 20 and 25 years, Bolar says, “you know that the mad stupid stuff doesn’t go anymore, then all of a sudden you are trying to find a meaning for your life and you want to go home.”

The system seems to work. Only around one percent of lifers return to prison after being released, and almost never for another violent crime. Still, for the past three decades, it has been nearly impossible to be paroled. The reasons have less to do with public safety than politics. In the second segment of a three-part series, we look at the political chutes and ladders of California’s parole process.  KALW’s Joaquin Palomino has the story.

Around one quarter of California prisoners are serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Also known as lifers, they’re a unique group of inmates. For starters, most have committed a horrendous crime – typically murder, rape, or kidnapping. They also have one of the only indeterminate sentences in California, meaning their term is open-ended and they have to work for their freedom.

J.B. Wells is one such person. “The crime I was charged with is murder in the second degree and it carries a maximum sentence of 15 to life,” says Wells. In 1983, he was sentenced to life with the chance of parole (“chance” being the key word). To be freed, he had to participate in programs, build up a resume and kick a steady drug habit. In prison, he became a published author. “I’ve been in famous plays, I played the part of Lucky in Waiting for Godot, I played the part of John Brown in John Brown’s Body, and I just had a really, really fabulous prison experience.”

It’s pretty rare to hear an inmate say he’s had a “fabulous prison experience.” Although most released lifers don’t use such animated terms to describe prison, many do say it was positive. Much of this has to do with their indeterminate sentence, a type of sentence that was once much more common in this state.

For almost the entire 20th century, California had an indeterminate sentencing system.  Offenders would get very broad sentences, such as five years to life in prison. A parole board would make the final decision on whether or not an offender would be released. “[An] independent, objective set of experts would look at someone, look at their psychology and look at their behavior, look at the totality of the situation and make a reasonable decision,” explains criminal justice expert Barry Krisberg. Theoretically, those that were fit to reenter society would be released, and those that posed a threat would stay in prison. But there were flaws in the process.

In 1979, a number of factors led to the end of that system and the implementation of determinate sentencing. The driving force was fairness. Under an indeterminate sentencing system, one person might get four years in prison for dealing drugs and another could get six months for the same crime. Accusations of discrimination and favoritism are inevitable.

Determinate sentencing prevents those accusations. “Under determinate sentencing, for virtually every crime, there are three potential sentences that the judge can choose from: a high sentence, a medium sentence, and a low sentence,” says Krisberg. “Under determinate sentencing, you walked out of the courtroom knowing exactly how much time you were going to serve.”

The state needed to rewrite the penal code to reflect the sentencing overhaul and it put the legislature in charge of deciding which crimes carried which sentences. That decision came with an unintended consequence. “Suddenly, in this very political environment, with everybody watching, with the media there, you have elected officials who don’t necessarily have training or background deciding [the scale] of penalties,” says Krisberg. The shift sparked an era of tough-on-crime politics in California.

“It almost became a bidding war. ‘I want to show that I am tougher than you, so if you think a rapist should get ten years, I think he should get 20 years.’  So there has been this natural escalation upwards,” Krisberg explains.

Life with the chance of parole was one of the few sentences excluded from the overhaul. It maintained its indeterminate status, but it wasn’t excluded from the trend towards toughness.

For most of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, the chance of being paroled on a life sentence was around one percent. Last year, it peaked at 18 percent, the highest it’s been in 30 years. Again, the reason for this has to do with politics.

“California was in the grips of a moral panic about crime,” explains Krisberg. “Voters were concerned with it. People would get defeated for office because of it. We would have statewide elections that were strictly about criminal justice sentencing.”

At the onset of this panic, in 1988, a ballot measure had passed that granted the governor power to overturn parole board decisions. Governors have been taking advantage of that power ever since.

During the 12 years Pete Wilson and Grey Davis were in office, almost no life prisoners were released. Schwarzenegger was more lenient, but he still reversed about 70 percent of his parole boards decisions. According to Krisberg, Governor Brown is allowing more inmates to be paroled, but the system is still stuck.

J.B. Wells can attest to that. He was eligible for release in July of 1990, but each time he went in front of the parole board he was rejected for the same reason. “They would cite the gravity of the offense, the heinousness of the crime,” says Wells.

He was turned down ten times on those grounds. Then, in 2008, the California Supreme Court changed the rules. The Justices decided that a lifer’s original crime could not be the sole factor in a parole board’s suitability hearing. “The courts eventually said you just can’t use that over and over and over again,” Wells explains, “because that is something the prisoner can’t change.”

In a 2010 parole hearing, Wells was found suitable for release – but he still couldn’t get out right away. The tape recorder had malfunctioned during the hearing and he was told that, without a transcript, the parole hearing was null. Wells had to wait another year.

Last year, Wells was finally released, 21 years past his minimum parole date, at the age of 68 years old.  “I’m just so grateful to still be alive, to have hair on my head and teeth in my mouth,” says Wells.

Having an indeterminate sentence, which aims to rehabilitate, in a prison system guided by retribution creates some pretty noticeable contradictions. Wells experienced the extremes of both. In his own words, he had a “fabulous prison experience,” accessing a number of rehabilitative services and enrolling in a multitude of arts programs. He was also an active member in a San Quentin Vietnam War veterans group. But he also spent 21 extra years in prison despite never being considered a risk to society by the parole board.

“At the end of the day, corrections was about the bumping of heads of those people that think prison should be for punishment and those people that think that prison should be for rehabilitation,” Wells says. “And I was caught between that every day.”

It’s clear which side is winning this tug of war. In past 30 years, California criminal justice has been guided almost exclusively by goals of retribution, which many believe is the root of our current prison crisis.

There are signs, though, that times could be changing. In 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger put a key word back into the title of the state department responsible for prisons, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. More recently, the implementation of prison realignment has started bringing more discretion to the sentencing process. Some lawmakers are even wondering if a return to indeterminate sentencing might be in order.

Rachael Towne

The previous year was a huge one for criminal justice in California, and 2012 promises to be just as dramatic. This year we’ll see the continued fallout of California’s prison overcrowding crisis, which coupled with the state’s financial crisis, is opening the doors to reforms never thought possible in our state. Here are three big issues to watch this coming year.

Capital punishment

A piece in Time Magazine today suggests that capital punishment is “slowly dying” in the United States. Rather than a broad, sweeping abolition at the constitutional level, Time predicts that states will continue down an Illinois-and-New-Jersey-forged path of ending the practice locally and unceremoniously. California, the piece says, seems like it’s next. A stalled Eight Amendment case, claiming California’s method of execution can cause extreme pain during death, remains unresolved in federal court. Meanwhile, a state judge recently found that California violated its own rule-writing procedures by not adequately considering public input when it developed its current lethal injection protocol. Still, it’s hard to imagine the death penalty will simply dribble out without a major fight. This year may see what’s been a mostly an obscure legal battle enter into the realm of public opinion (and public opinion-makers like lobbyists, politicians, and interest groups). Opponents of the death penalty in California are currently gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would replace the punishment with life without parole. Look for the proposal–and its corresponding ad campaigns and heightened rhetoric–to come before voters in 2012.

Juvenile justice

This year will see renewed calls for the end of youth prisons in California. The Division of Juvenile Justice, which replaced the notorious California Youth Authority, has been steadily shrinking over the past decade. Since its peak of over 10,000 youth in 1996, the system shrunk to 1,118 at the end of 2010. Nevertheless, counties beat back a proposal last year by Governor Jerry Brown that would have essentially shuttered the DJJ and returned the remaining inmates to county juvenile halls. With California’s ever-deteriorating financial predicament, however, counties may have no choice. The Bay Citizen reports that among the “trigger cuts” necessitated by the state’s revenue shortfall are changes to juvenile justice subsidies. In other words, “instead of receiving state financing, the counties may have to pay the Division of Juvenile Justice $125,000 annually for each offender, more than 10 times the current rate. For Alameda County, the tab could reach $6.25 million. Contra Costa County faces a $5.25 million bill.” That kind of tab might just induce counties to stop sending these remaining juvenile offenders to the state, and develop a means of keeping those kids locally.

Parole

Of the many, many changes that’ll rock California’s criminal justice world as realignment rolls out, parole promises to see the biggest shift. California’s recidivism rate is among the highest in the country, with 65 percent of those released from prison returning within three years. What’s hidden in that figure is that 45 percent of those who were released and then returned to prison between 2007-2010 were returned on parole violations–and over half of those parole violators (54 percent) were sent back to prison on technical violations. Realignment essentially put an end to prison for parole violations. Post-realignment, only a handful of these parole violators will be sent to prison. Counties will now have to charge parolees with a new crime, or else deliver any sanctions for violations locally. Some counties (like Fresno) are simply releasing them. Historically, parole has acted as both a security blanket and as a black hole–while it has allowed the state to keep tabs on people coming out of prison, the revolving door to prison in California often (45 percent of the time) goes through the parole office. Whether this drawdown of surveillance and eliminating the ease of re-incarcerating released prisoners is good or bad will come down to the crime rate. But that three-year period of parole, now effectively eliminated for many released prisoners, has traditionally been a strenuous, stressful time and much of the developing thinking on prisoner “reentry” will be put to the test by California’s reforms.

Ben Chaney

As you may have heard, counties in California are taking over some of the responsibilities formerly held by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. In an effort to comply with a federal court order to drastically reduce the state prison population, the shift to the county will come in several phases over the next few years. The first phase starts October 1, 2011. On that date, people leaving state prison who are classified as “low-risk” for reoffending (and who did not commit serious, violent, or sex offenses) will not be supervised by state parole agents. Additionally, people convicted of certain lower-level felonies will no longer serve their sentences in state prison. And those who’re out on parole or county supervision, with few exceptions, will no longer go back to prison if they violate the conditions of their release. Right now, counties are rushing to get ready for this new set of responsibilities–a shift that many are calling the biggest shakeup to criminal justice in California in decades–and there are many, many questions they’re asking themselves. Do they have enough room in their jail? Do they have enough probation officers to supervise the new caseloads? Will crime levels go up?

In San Francisco, what we do know is this: the county has plenty of room for the new arrivals in its jail system–San Francisco may even have room to offer other counties that are overstuffed and looking to contract beds. What we don’t know is how this influx of new inmates and parolees will tax our other public institutions, like the courts, probation, police, district attorney, public defender, and even the public health department. Here’s a breakdown of some of the numbers these offices are looking at while they determine what needs to be done to serve this population and maintain public safety:

• 700 The number of people, on any given day, that San Francisco will now be responsible for, who in the past would have been in state prison or on state parole.
• 80 The estimated percentage of this population who will require treatment for substance abuse.
• 60 The estimated percentage of this population who will require treatment for a serious mental illness.
• 13 The estimated percentage of this population that will be homeless when they’re released from jail or prison.
• 50:1 The proposed caseload for probation officers supervising those who would, in the past, have been supervised by parole agents.
• 70:1 The average caseload for state parole officers in early 2010.
• 20:1 The caseload recommended by the American Probation and Parole Association for an officer supervising this risk-level population.
• 5,787,176 The number of dollars San Francisco will receive from the state in the first year of this switch.

San Francisco’s draft proposal for realignment is here.

Helene Goupil

Cutting back on GPS monitoring is one of California's many budget-related cuts

Consider some prime sources that feed our jail and prison systems: probation violators, parole violators, and petty drug and property offenders. There are a number of ways the state is chipping away at its criminal justice apparatus simply by underfunding the mechanisms that sweep up such offenders in the first place, and the mechanisms that elevate their status from a person supervised in the community to one who needs to be locked up.

Take probation. A lot of people currently in prison were once on county probation. In 2009, the Judicial Council of California reported that about 19,000 people head to prison each year because they violate their probation (and that number doesn’t include those prosecuted for new crimes while on probation). These inmates started at what is essentially the lowest rung of seriousness in the criminal justice system, probation, and are now in just about the most serious place you can get, state prison. Once these folks entered the criminal justice system, for whatever reason, their criminality escalated, and they became further entrenched.

Recognizing this fact, the legislature passed a bill in 2009, SB 678, that offered incentives to county probation departments to cut down on the number of probationers getting violated and sent to prison. And counties did. Corrections Secretary Matt Cate recently said that the new program cut down the number of people entering prison by 4,000 last year.

There are two ways this reduction could have happened: either people stopped committing crimes and probation violations or they did these things, but no one noticed or violated them for it. The real reason for the reduction is probably a combination of the two, but the change comes down to something Fernando Giraldo, the head of juvenile probation in Santa Cruz County told me: kids who’re on probation get into more legal trouble than kids who’re not on probation. Why? Because they’re under stricter scrutiny. If you’re a regular kid and you miss an appointment or are late, you might get a lecture. If you’re a probation kid and you miss an appointment or are late, you can end up locked up in the juvenile hall. Same with a crime like graffiti or theft–if you do it when you’re already in the system, you’re more likely to get caught and get a harsher sentence, simply because there are more people looking at you, more people evaluating your decisions and behavior, and more ways to get in trouble.

On a relatively small scale, SB 678 unravelled this system a bit, turning the mentality of a county probation department, through incentives, away from strict supervision and towards keeping a person from escalating to a higher level of supervision. Now, with budget cuts amass, the state is, piecemeal, unwinding its apparatus in other similar ways:

• Realignment, the governor’s plan for shifting inmates from state prison to county jail, will inevitably result in the release of some jail inmates onto community supervision. Note that this does not mean prison inmates will be released, but more likely, low-level jail inmates. There simply isn’t enough room for 30,000 new inmates on the county level, and counties will have to decide who really belongs in their jails and who can be released. This means fewer people will graduate from probation to serving time in jail–or from being arrested (and not being able to make bail) to serving time in jail.
• Parole is one of the prison system’s biggest sources of inmates. In 2007, 93,000 people returned to prison on parole violations. Like probationers, parolees are under strict scrutiny and can be sent to prison for violating terms of their agreements with the courts that are not strictly crimes. They can also be sent back to prison on “parole violations” if they commit a new crime, but the district attorney does not, for whatever reason, have the capacity to charge them. Now, under the governor’s realignment plan, many fewer people will be on parole when they leave custody, and parolees will not return to prison on parole violations. Instead, they’ll serve parole violations in the county jail. If they commit a crime, they’ll have to be prosecuted for it in court. Which brings us to:
• Courts are taking a huge cut this year (about $150 million) just when they’re being asked to do more than ever. San Francisco’s Superior Court, according to ABC, is expect to be hit hard: “The court’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Yuen told ABC7 it will mean closing 40 percent of its courtrooms and laying off up to 200 employees. Yuen says many of the services provided for years will no longer be available to the public.” Will these cuts come from the criminal side at all? If so, it could be pretty difficult for courts to execute the new cases that are headed their way.

Dismantling the ease of the prison pipeline has its give and take. We’re seeing that already with the state’s decision to, for cost reasons, cut GPS monitoring of gang member parolees. Here were have a classic example of administrative decisions that maximize supervision of a person, making them more likely to end up back in prison: fitting those parolees thought to be gang members with GPS monitors, so they can be caught doing things like going back to neighborhoods they’re not supposed to be in, hanging out with people they’re not supposed to be with. The state heavily cut back its GPS monitoring of gang member parolees last month. Almost immediately, a report surfaced of a parolee who’s now accused of home-invasion robbery and a shooting, who had his GPS tracker removed the day before the crime occurred. So due to budget cuts, the parolee was not wearing a GPS, which should make it harder to prove he was the one who committed the crime. And when realignment happens, that kind of case will have to be proven in court, instead of through the parole process. This is just one case, but one can imagine that it’s going to be harder to get to prison post-budget-cuts, likely for those who may deserve to go, and for those who just get swept up in the system.

• An in-depth look at paroling lifersBy Nancy MullaneDownload

Nancy Mullane

rnest Morgan being greeted by his mother Hilda McCline on 5/12/11.

While many prisoners ask to be released for medical reasons, others seek to get out because they have turned their lives around, even when they’ve committed the worst possible crimes.

Often though, those serving time for murder, for example, are denied parole, even if they’re eligible. That’s because for 20 years, the Governor’s office has had the authroity to reverse parole decisions and keep those offenders in prison, even if they were approved for release on parole. And that has been the trend, until now.

Since he took office a little over five months ago, Governor Jerry Brown is allowing the parole board’s decision to stand for 80% of lifers found suitable to be released. That’s a significant shift, a reversal of the policies of the past four governors, who cancelled or reversed the parole for 8 out of every 10 lifers found suitable for parole by the governor’s own parole board.

KALW’s Nancy Mullane has been following the stories of prisoners inside San Quentin State Prison who are serving life sentences for murder. Yesterday, she sat down with KALW’s Hana Baba for an in-depth look at the issue. (Transcript after the jump.)

HANA BABA: So Nancy, this is a radical departure for Governor Brown. But it’s a little confusing. These inmates are in for life sentences. Life. So how can some be released from prison?

MULLANE: Well, let’s talk a little bit about their sentences. If you commit murder in California, you can be sentenced in a number of ways. First the person can be sentenced to death. Right now, in California about 700 people are living on death row. The person can also be given a life sentence without the possibility of parole. That literally means they never get out of prison. And today, California prisons house more than 4,100 people who are serving life without parole.

BABA: And then there are lifers who can be paroled?

MULLANE: Right. The person can be given a life sentence with the possibility of parole. First degree murderers can get a 25 years-to-life sentence. They become eligible for parole after about 20 years in prison. People who commit second-degree murder are usually given 15 years to life and they automatically become eligible to go before a parole board after about 12 years.

BABA: So you’ve spent quite a bit of time with lifers at San Quentin.

MULLANE: Yes. For the past four years, I’ve been documenting the parole process for lifers. And to help illustrate Governor Brown’s new attitude, I’m going to tell the story of one prisoner serving a life sentence inside San Quentin.

Ernest Morgan shot and killed his 14-year-old step sister in 1987 while he was stealing from his stepfather’s Oakland apartment. He was 18 years old at the time and was sentenced to 15 years to life for the murder. Over the past 24 years, while he’s been in prison, Morgan has gotten an education, he’s helped found a number of self-help rehabilitation programs, and, essentially, he became a model inmate.

In 2009, after he’d had served 22 years, the parole board found him suitable for release. But then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reversed the board’s decision.

So last December, Morgan went before the board for his sixth time. I interviewed him shortly after the hearing. And here he is, talking about the moment when one of the parole commissioners announced their decision:

ERNEST MORGAN: She started talking and I’d already buried my face in my hands, and my elbows were on the table because I’m expecting the worst of news, and I hear her say, “Mr. Morgan has been found suitable of parole.”

Then she started saying something else, but I stopped, because I know I didn’t just hear that, and I looked up at my lawyer, and she’s sitting up here with a big grin on her face, and I said, “I know she didn’t just say that.”

And I put my face back in my hands and she said, “The reason you’ve been found suitable…” And as soon as she said it the second time, which was like five or ten seconds from the first time, I just lost all control of my body. My head dropped. Almost hit the table and I just started crying.

It was something I’d been waiting for for a long time. I’d finally gotten to the point where people could say, “Okay. He’s a different man. He’s a changed man.”

BABA: That’s the voice of Ernest Morgan, a convicted murderer who was serving a life sentence, speaking about how he felt when a parole board granted him his release from prison. This is Crosscurrents, from KALW News. I’m Hana Baba here with Nancy Mullane, who has been reporting on the parole process of lifers in California for the past four years.

So, Nancy, tell me about this parole board that has the power to determine whether a convicted murderer should stay locked up or go free.

MULLANE: It’s a board of commissioners appointed by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate. Governor Brown can appoint six commissioners this year. They work full-time, usually in pairs, and travel to prisons around the state where they conduct the hearings. They consider anywhere from 4 to 7,000 lifer parole cases each year and find only about three to five percent, a few hundred lifers, suitable for release. If an inmate is found suitable, the governor then has 30 days to review the board’s decision, ultimately deciding whether a lifer in prison gets released or not.

So, since 1988, when California governors were given that authority by the voters in a constitutional amendment, we’ve had five governors: George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and now Jerry Brown. And up until Brown, the governors reversed 70-98 percent of all paroles.

BABA: They rejected most of the parole board decisions.

MULLANE: That’s right. The vast majority. And that caused the lifer population in our prisons to blow up from about 6,000 to more than 24,000.

But since Jerry Brown took office just five months ago, there’s been a huge shift. Instead of reversing 70-98%, he’s been allowing 80% of the lifers found suitable for parole to go home.

BABA: So why the shift?

MULLANE:  Well that’s a good question. And while he hasn’t said, there are some pretty good reasons.

Overall about 70% of inmates released from prison for crimes other than murder recidivate. That means they either violate the terms of their parole or they commit a new crime and are returned to prison to serve a new sentence.

But according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s most recent reports, when people convicted of murder are released from prison, fewer than 3% go back to prison, and even then it’s not for violent crimes.

So that could be one of Governor Brown’s considerations. The other is the cost of incarcerating people who are growing old in prison. According to a former Director of the CDCR, it costs an average of $50,000 a year to keep a prisoner locked up. But that number jumps to between $100 and $200,000 a year to keep a lifer locked up. They’re older, they have health issues and over the past decade, they’ve begun appealing the governor’s reversals in court, costing millions of dollars in lawyers and court fees.

Whatever Governor Brown’s reasoning, over the past four months, of the 150 lifers found suitable for parole, he has “taken no action” on 120. That means, he allowed 120 prisoners serving life with the possibility of parole to do just that. To go home.

BABA: So let’s bring this back to the story of Ernest Morgan. He was convicted of murder as a teenager, and after 24 years he was found suitable for parole.

MULLANE: For the 2nd time. I was with San Quentin State Prison’s Lt. Sam Robinson on May 6th, when he carried word from the Governor’s office to Morgan telling him whether or not he would really be freed.

Morgan was sitting with other inmates waiting in a room next to the prison chapel.

LT. SAM ROBINSON: Mr. Morgan? How are you doing? This is what you were waiting for, right? Let’s do it official. What’s your name?

MORGAN: Ernest Morgan.

ROBINSON: What’s your number?

MORGAN: 805063

ROBINSON: How long you been down?

MORGAN: In CDC about 20-21 years. Altogether 24 years.

ROBINSON: OK. What do you think I have here?

MORGAN: It’s too short. I think I’m…I think I’m done.

ROBINSON: Essentially that’s it. The Governor took no action. You’re done.  (Celebration clapping.)

LIFERS AROUND: Free man!

BABA: That’s Ernest Morgan, who was serving a 15-years to life prison sentence, finding out that he would go free. It was recorded on May 6th inside San Quentin State Prison by KALW’s Nancy Mullane. I’m Hana Baba, and you’re listening to Crosscurrents from KALW News. So he was understandably pretty excited there, Nancy. What did he have to say to you, after he heard the news?

MULLANE: He actually told me he was expecting another reversal – that Governor Brown would take his parole date away. Here’s what he had to say:

MORGAN: I don’t know for me, I don’t know about everybody but for me I want to be sure that everything that I’m doing is right. Schwarzenegger delayed me a year from going out and doing the work that I want to do with the communities but I also understand that I’d taken someone’s life and there’s a number of things I have to be accountable for and if the governor says, “not yet,” Not yet. It hurt, don’t get me wrong. It hurt. But I understand.

BABA: That’s San Quentin inmate Ernest Morgan speaking with KALW’s Nancy Mullane. So that was right when he found out he’d go free.

MULLANE: Yes. And I went back to San Quentin the next day to find out how some of the other 800 lifers who are incarcerated at the prison feel about the new Governor’s policy change. One of the people I spoke with was Michael Harris. He’s an inmate and works at the San Quentin News.

MICHAEL HARRIS: I get a lot of information because I’m editor in chief of the San Quentin Newspaper so my job is to find out what everybody interested in and everybody’s interested in is this new governor and the fact that he’s following the law and he has no problem following the law in terms of letting the parole boards do their jobs. He’s making it clear that if somebody’s done the work and done their time they shouldn’t be held up from their freedom.

And a lot of guys are inspired by that and are working harder and are encouraging other people to do the work on themselves. It’s done changed the way people feel about the system in terms of freedom in here.

BABA: That’s the voice of Michael Harris, Chief Editor of the San Quentin News, who spoke with KALW’s Nancy Mullane inside the prison. So Nancy, let’s fast forward now to the week after Ernest Morgan learned his parole was approved by Governor Brown.

MULLANE: Okay. Remember, now, this is a man who’s been in prison for 24 years – everything in the world that he knew on the outside has changed. So it was a pretty dramatic scene when he was put in a prison van and driven to San Quentin’s East Gate where his mother, father, and two younger brothers were waiting.

MORGAN: Why are my two brothers bigger than me?

MULLANE: One person I was most curious to speak with at Ernest Morgan’s release was his mother, Hilda McCline. It was 24 years ago that Morgan shot his 14-year-old step sister to death. Now I wondered how his mother felt seeing her son being released from prison.

HILDA MCCLINE: It’s a great day. It’s one of my best days of my life. Other than mother’s day this year. It was a great day also.

MULLANE: I can’t imagine what it’s like to see a child get freedom.

MCCLINE: It’s amazing when you think you’re not going to have your child back again. To be able to go out to dinner and talk to him. It’s amazing.

MULLANE: Is that what you want? To go to dinner?

MCCLINE: Well. I would love to just spend time with him. You miss that. You miss that. The walls and visiting there is not the same as being free. So he’s been on a long road to freedom, is what they say. So I’m happy for him.

MULLANE: Some people would say that to forgive someone who commits murder is asking too much.

MCCLINE: I think we’ve all committed something so I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think some kids who are younger do things that they don’t mean to do and at some point in time they change and become different people. Everyone needs a second chance. Everyone needs a second chance.

BABA: That’s Hilda McCline, whose son Ernest Morgan was released from prison after serving 24 years of a life sentence. And we’re speaking with KALW’s Nancy Mullane. Nancy, one of the politicians who has taken a real interest in the fate of lifers and their parole is State Senator Mark Leno, from San Francisco.

MULLANE: Since 2002 he’s served on both the Assembly and Senate Public Safety Committees and has taken a strong interest in sentencing, prisons and parole.

I asked Senator Leno about Governor Brown’s willingness to follow his Parole Board’s recommendations for lifers. He told me he’s not a fan of Proposition 89, the 1988 law that was passed by voters giving the governor the authority to reverse parole decisions. Now, he says, this governor is simply following the letter of the law by doing his job and letting the parole board do theirs.

BABA: Let’s listen to your conversation with Senator Mark Leno.

SENATOR MARK LENO: It’s a bit of an ironic conundrum in that the parole board is hand chosen by the governor, by definition there to do his bidding. So then Prop 89 gives the governor the opportunity to interfere with what his own parole board has decided. That makes no sense. I’m not a big fan of Prop 89’s allowance for this. It highly politicizes a very delicate issue that should be handled by a less politically charged entity which is the Board of Parole Hearings. They do their due-diligence. They refuse many parole requests, 90-95%, so there are only very few that get through that screen.

So then for a governor like Gray Davis or Arnold Schwarzenegger to come and slash those few who get through that screen and reverse the decision is costing the state a great deal of money and denying some sense of justice for those who, yes, committed horrific crimes but were not condemned to death for a number of reasons and who, over in most cases decades, have been able to express their remorse, turn their lives around and have been ideal prisoners to even be considered by the parole board for parole.

MULLANE: With 24,000 lifers with the possibility of parole, and only maybe a 100 getting out a year, what is the possibility that a lifer in California doing a sentence with the possibility of parole, with that kind of population waiting to get out, what are the chances that they are going to see parole?

LENO: It’s very unlikely. The opportunity, the window for parole is miniscule, and it’s not likely that someone sentenced with a 15 to 25 years to life is going to get out.

BABA: That’s state senator Mark Leno speaking with KALW’s Nancy Mullane. And we look forward to following more of your parolee stories in the near future. Thanks, Nancy.

MULLANE: Thank you, Hana.

Ali Winston

Governor Jerry Brown has departed from his predecessors on a hot-button political issue.

Governor Jerry Brown has taken a much different tack than his predecessors when it comes to one of the most fiery political issues in the criminal justice arena: paroling murderers. Mainly, Brown is allowing more “lifers”–those sentenced to life-in-prison with the possibility of parole–out of prison than any governor in recent history. According to papers dug up by the Sacramento Bee in April, in the first quarter of the year, Brown let 106 out of 130 parole decisions allowing people convicted of murder stand–that’s 82 percent:

Brown’s deference to the state Board of Parole Hearings is in contrast to his predecessors, who more aggressively used their power to overturn parole grants.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger let stand only about 27 percent of parole decisions. Gov. Gray Davis was even less lenient, letting only nine of 374 paroled killers out of prison while he was governor.

One of those benefitting from Brown’s parole philosophy is Ernest Morgan, who was freed from San Quentin State Prison yesterday morning. Morgan has been in prison since he was 18 for second degree murder of his stepsister. He’s now 42 and according to prison officials, has spent his time in prison reforming himself. Schwarzenegger repeatedly denied Morgan parole–citing the heinous nature of his offense–but Brown declined to review the decision to let him out.

The common wisdom when it comes to governors and paroling murderers is that it’s simply better, politically, to leave well enough alone. Communities tend to react with outrage when the perpetrator of a particularly heinous crime comes home. A segment of politically powerful victims rights groups has continuously opposed paroling murderers. And should such a released offender commit a new crime, not only is there a psychological toll, but a political one on the head of the governor who allowed that person to walk free. (Remember Willie Horton?)

So why is Brown taking a more measured approach to an issue that other governors have been content to leave alone?

Brown explains his departure from his predecessors as an appreciation for the rule of law. Legally, according to a 2008 court decision, the governor is supposed to consider rehabilitation and an inmate’s threat to public safety when reviewing parole decisions, and not the nature of the original crime.

Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle, Brown called former Governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approaches to parole a “failure… to follow the law.” He said that no governor should override a judicial system that sentences someone to life with the possibility of parole by simply denying them parole, despite their rehabilitation and lack of threat to society. (There are cases where Brown has intervened, citing an inmate’s likelihood to reoffend. About a month ago, he reversed the Parole Board’s decision to let out Christopher Fowler of Yolo County, convicted of killing his girl-friend’s 22-month-old son in 1983.)

Another possibly motivation for Brown’s approach is budgetary. Lifers, a growing prison population largely due to Three Strikes sentencing laws, are also older and therefore more expensive to incarcerate.

And finally, Brown’s take on parole fits into what seems to be shaping up as a rather nuanced political approach to criminal justice matters in general. The governor, who many expected to tow the traditional “tough-on-crime” agenda after the correctional officers union financed his gubernatorial campaign, is all over the place when it comes to issues that generally peg politicians as in one camp, “reformer” or the other, “tough on crime.” Is Brown above the typical California fray when it comes to the politics of crime? And if so, does this signal a shift in mentality in the Golden State or simply a seasoned politician who’s looking more towards retirement than reelection?

Pew

After 30 years of prison boom in the United States, people are starting to question the usefulness of incarcerating large numbers of people, especially for less serious crimes. In New York, where prison populations skyrocketed after the state passed a series of tough sentencing laws for drug offenders, recent changes have dramatically reduced the prison population. In California, budget woes and federal lawsuits have inspired things like the introduction of non-revocable parole and an expansion in good-time credits for prison inmates–both policies designed to cut down the prison population.

Now, Governor Jerry Brown wants to do more. The current budget calls for less restrictive supervision for a whole host of lower level crimes. That means that fewer crimes carry the penalty of state prison, fewer people getting out go under the strict supervision of state parole, and those that violate parole would likely not go back to prison for the violation.

The Parole Agent Association is starting to push back against these changes–because less parole means the elimination of jobs, but also because parole agents and correctional officers believe in what they do.

In a recent memo to membership, Parole Agent Association of California President Todd Gillam wrote:

According to the Attorney General, California is experiencing the lowest level of criminal activity since the 1980’s. The crime rate is not only low, it is still declining. The entire California criminal justice system, to include CDCR and DAPO, are to be commended for the safety in which Californians live.

It’s an argument we’re likely to hear a lot in the coming months and years as California and states around the nation look to scale back their prison systems. And the timing is hard to ignore: over the past 20 years, as the prison population has skyrocketed, crime has gone down. Does that mean the prison boom and the dramatic rise in incarceration rates have cut crime and kept Americans (at least those not in prison) safer?

The consensus among scholars seems to be that are many factors that contribute to crime levels and its hard to pinpoint any one change as the source of their rise and fall–but that the uptick in incarceration likely accounts for about 25 percent of the nation’s drop in crime.

In 2008, the Pew Center on the States interviewed two preeminent criminologists, Carnegie Mellon’s James Wilson and Pepperdine’s Alfred Blumstein on the impact of incarceration on crime. The interview revealed the reasoning and meaning behind this 25 percent figure.

Blumstein goes on to say that it’s not so much that incarceration isn’t effective, but that it’s effectiveness has been diluted through over-use. If we were more selective about who is incarcerated he said, we’d have “the highest yield in crimes averted per prisoner.”

Wilson concludes that it’s “too easy to make up a list of all of the things that are true of American society and then attribute changes in the crime rate to them.”

In an era where we extrapolate a lot from what we see–a high profile crime always provokes cries that there are systemic flaws, and we’re constantly looking for broad, sweeping changes that will yield tangible results–both men recommend thinking small: stick to programs and projects that have proved they’ve impacted individuals.

Ali Winston

Javier Quintero, in the green shirt, was arrested for a parole violation in Judge Robert Freedman's courtroom

What appeared to be another day of lengthy testimony in the court battle over a proposed gang injunction in Fruitvale took a dramatic turn this afternoon. Around 2:15 PM, after 45 minutes of testimony by Probation Officer Dalen Randa, two parole agents silently walked up to the juror box and left with one of the defendants, Javier Quintero. Quintero’s lawyers, obviously surprised, protested as their client was led away, presumably to jail.

Quintero, a 27-year-old painter, repeatedly denied having any gang ties during his testimony last month. On parole for felony drug possession, Quintero wears a GPS anklet because of his alleged gang ties.

Why he was taken into custody is a bit unclear. At about 2 PM today, City Attorney John Russo tweeted the following:

“Gang injunction “star” defndnt found last nite in car w drugs & gang symbols. Last wk he testified under oath that he knew nothing re. gangs”

Defense attorneys, on the other hand, say Quintero was arrested for “associating with other known gang members.”

Yolanda Huang, part of the defense team, said she was present when police searched Quintero, defendant David Pelayo and two other people near Quintero’s residence on Harrington Street around 6:30 PM on Friday, March 18–the incident possibly in question. While the details of the incident and the identity of two of the men remains unknown, Huang said she was in the area to meet with Quintero and Pelayo about an upcoming court date. Speaking with reporters after the hearing, Huang said the four were released after the search was completed. “This is part of a pattern of harassment and intimidation,” Huang said, echoing comments she made in court earlier. In front of Judge Freedman, Huang objected strongly to the “public spectacle being made of my client.”

Joey Moreno, Quintero’s parole agent who testified in court last week, is recommending him for a five to nine month parole violation for this incident.

Tricia Hynes, a Meyers Nave attorney representing the city, objected in court to the defense’s charges that the arrest was orchestrated ahead of time and with the knowledge of the city’s attorneys.

“We learned that Mr. Quintero was going to be arrested in court as we walked in,” said Hynes. “This is not the first time the defense has jumped the gun and accused us of unprofessional conduct in court,” she added, hinting at a incident during a February hearing when defense attorney Jose Luis Fuentes claimed the city leaked mug shots of the defendants to a television station, sparking an uproar in the courtroom.

Huang claims Quintero was detained because of “gang-related” items with the color red found in the car, including a red bandanna and a red blanket. Parole officials told the San Francisco Chronicle that Huang’s statements were inaccurate, but did not go into details.

As he walked out in bemusement, defendant Ruben Leal remarked that today’s hearing “was like ‘People’s Court.’”

Quintero’s arrest came during Deputy City Attorney Rocio Fierro’s examination of Dalen Randa, a probation officer who supervises gang-related probationers. Randa testified about his responsibilities supervising gang parolees and his contacts with Abel Manzo. During Huang’s cross-examination of Randa, she questioned the probation department’s criteria for determining gang-affiliated colors and items, once asking Randa if Alameda County Probation kept a color wheel as a reference tool.

Proceedings will resume at 9:30 AM on April 4th. The city will call three Oakland Police officers to testify about various incidents with defendants Abel Manzo and Javier Quintero.

CDCR

Along with funneling some 38,000 prison inmates to county jails, Governor Jerry Brown’s budget, if passed, would slowly and steadily dismantle much of the state’s parole system. According to a document released by the Parole Agent Association of California, there are a number of major changes planned:

• Only those convicted of serious and violent offenses, sex crimes, or those being released after their third strike offense would be supervised by parole agents after leaving prison. Currently, nearly every person leaving prison goes on parole supervision, meaning they have to check in with a parole agent, obey certain rules (like curfews, drug tests, sometimes wearing GPS bracelets), and give up certain rights (like not being searched without a warrant).

• Parole agents would no longer have the ability to send a parolee back to prison for violating the terms of his or her parole. In the current process, if a parolee does anything from not showing up for an appointment, to failing a drug test, to committing a new crime, an agent has the ability to send that person back to prison for a limited amount of time. That parolee can either accept the violation (and new time in prison) or appeal to the Board of Parole Hearings, which more often than not, affirms the parole revocation. Now, parole revocations would have to go through the court system.
• The vast majority of parole revocations would not mean a return to prison. Only lifers could be returned to prison for violating their parole–everyone else would serve whatever new sentence in the county jail.

The reasoning behind the changes to parole is likely that a vast number of people entering prison on any given day in California are there on parole violations. Over a three-year period, 46 percent of inmates released in California return to prison on a parole violation (and many of those on a technical violation, meaning not a new crime, but violating of a condition of parole, like a not reporting for a meeting or carrying a weapon). Brown no doubt believes that cutting down on parole supervision and cutting into the ability of parole agents to send parolees back to prison will reduce the prison population and California’s high recidivism rate.

Needless to say, the Parole Agent Association isn’t thrilled about these changes, which they say essentially take the teeth out of parole. In a memo to their membership, the PAAC argues that this realignment would result in a court system flooded with costly new cases (as opposed to the relatively streamlined way of dealing with crimes through parole violations). They also argue that strict parole has helped diminish crime rates in California and that counties will be unable to supervise these offenders effectively.

Full document below (I removed cell phone numbers and email addresses).

ParoleRealignmentResponse

The Governor rethinks his plan for shifting inmates to local control.

Via Southern California Public Radio, Governor Jerry Brown has scaled back his proposal to shift large numbers of prison inmates and parolees to county jails and probation. The old plan received mixed reactions from law enforcement around the state, who were skeptical of counties’ ability to take over responsibility for masses of offenders:

This one reduces the number of criminals that local law enforcement would house, although, the state will pay a higher rate to house prisoners serving three years or more.

The revised plan also says locals would manage only parolees convicted of low-level or non-violent felonies. But Brown’s new plan also reduces the money the state would shift to the locals from more than $1 billion down to $800 million.

The more ambitious plan, which has apparently been scrapped, had called for potentially shutting down parole entirely and transferring a larger population of prisoners to county jail.