You would think that "counseling" would now be understood for the joke it is. You would be wrong.Dangerous parolees are remaining on the streets in Colorado, despite breaking the law and failing drug tests, a Denver Post review finds. Some have gone on to commit serious crimes.
A push to reduce recidivism rates among Colorado parolees is leaving dangerous ex-cons on the streets, including a man now accused of murder, another who shot a Denver police officer and another man accused of pimping a teen runaway.
Instead of sending difficult offenders back to prison for breaking rules, parole officers increasingly are told to find alternatives such as counseling, short-term jail stints or other sanctions.
The story continues (emphasis added):
A 2015 law -- aimed at reducing the prison population -- changed how and when parolees are arrested and sent before the State Parole Board. Then in October, the Department of Corrections added another layer that put the decision about whether to seek parole revocation in the hands of just two people.
Within three months, the changes slashed in half recidivism rates for technical violations.
And there you have it. None of these criminals has to change his behavior for the better, which is what a normal person would think of as a "reduction in recidivism." All that needs to happen is for pro-criminal bureaucrats to change how they count the behavior!
Far out! Gads, why didn't we think of this before?
But the reduction has come at a cost, an investigation by The Denver Post has found.
Parole officers describe a high hurdle created by their bosses that has left them feeling frustrated and powerless to protect the public.
In some cases, "There's only one way to stop the madness, and that's put them in jail," one parole officer said. "We effectively let a guy get killed."
He and five other parole officers spoke to The Denver Post on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by corrections department officials.
My goodness. If the line officers dare to tell the truth, their jobs are in jeopardy.
This is sentencing "reform" at work. A blend of being nicer to criminals, intimidating those who try to cope with the bloody aftermath, and covering up the truth.
Ladies and gentlemen, behold "sentencing reform."
Curious, Bill, if you think a parolee who drinks a beer when not supposed to or who fails to attend a meeting with a government official is properly called a recidivist? My understanding of Colorado law was that it changed the definition of these kinds of technical offenses. One of many reasons I am always concerned about recidivism stats are the huge issue of whether these kinds of violations are being counted as recidivism.
But you miss (probably intentionally) the point, Doug.
It is not whether having a beer should count as recidivism. It is whether it is morally and ethically correct to change the definition in a way that will naturally result in fewer "recidivists" and then pretend that you accomplished something.
I agree Tarls that changing a definition is not an accomplishment. But it the definition of recidivism was too broad in the past, changing it is the right thing to do. Everyone, if watched long enough and closely enough, will "break a rule," and so the fundamental question is what kind of rule breaking should get one sent to prison or sent back to prison.
Again, that's not really the topic here.
I know, and surely you do too, that in the coming years the "reform" supporters will be touting how recidivism declined in Colorado and it is a sign that we need to reform further.
It will be "the best data available."
"Curious, Bill, if you think a parolee who drinks a beer when not supposed to or who fails to attend a meeting with a government official is properly called a recidivist?"
Curious, Doug, if you see any problem with this "reformed" system that, in the words of the liberal Denver Post, "is leaving dangerous ex-cons on the streets, including a man now accused of murder, another who shot a Denver police officer and another man accused of pimping a teen runaway."
Any problem there?
As to your question -- a question which quickly and quietly walks past these inconvenient facts -- alcohol is, as we both know, a huge cause of why parolees get back in trouble, to their detriment and ours. As you also know, it's never just "a" beer.
Parole is a form of conditional release. The conditions are designed to HELP THE INMATE SUCCEED in the outside world. When he blows off the conditions he agreed to, he has started down the path to the behavior that brought him to jail in the first place.
Doug, I see these dodges all the time. We're supposed to believe, for example, that people go to jail for sex crimes that are really just public urination. What nonsense. By far the main thing they go to jail for is rape, attempted rape and child molestation. Reformers need to start telling the truth rather than hyping as routine what they full well know are outlier cases.
I'm sorry, I'm not just for limitless indulgence of excuses. If you're on parole, and you agreed to quit the boozing (which you should do anyway), and you blow it off, then the responsibility LIES WITH YOU NOT SOCIETY.
As I've said in the post, a normal person would understand that the loudly advertised "50% drop in recidivism" would mean that former inmates have improved their behavior.
It means no such thing. As with so much else with the "reform" movement, it's intentionally false advertising. It's just a re-engineering of the data to make the government bureaucrats who invented this scam look good. They lead citizens to believe their "reformed" program of "counseling" has produced less expensive and more humane outcomes. What it has actually produced is exactly what the Post reports: a murder, a policeman shot, and some teenage girl now enslaved as a hooker.
In what universe is that more humane?
Bill and Tarls, let me be clear that I agree 100% with your concerns about efforts to show "success" in prison reform by just playing games with definitions.
But I also think in this context that it is very important to recognize that one significant reason for (1) reported recidivism rates being so high, and (2) state prisons becoming so overcrowded is because parole officials have been in recent decades much more inclined to record and bring to court every kind of technical violation, which the Denver Post article notes can "include failed drug or alcohol tests, missed therapy sessions, arrests or curfew violations."
That all said, what this article and many others highlight is that you need to be able to look behind any reported data to understand how the data was constructed and what it means in light of the (often biased) source promoting the data. I agree with you both that folks advocating for reform --- including those in academia --- are often eager to "spin" numbers to serve their agendas. But I also think we see plenty of examples of government bureaucrats doing the same both to support reform (as in this article or DAG Yates' recent comments about the federal "Smart on Crime" initiative) and to resist reform (as in the recent Indiana article about claims by the Indiana DOC).
That all said, I am still looking for a direct answer to the important definitional question about recedivism that I first asked: do you think a parolee who drinks alcohol or who fails to attend a meeting with a government official is properly called a "recidivist"? I think such a parolee can and should be help accountable for violating the terms of his parole, but I do not think a parolee doing things that are not otherwise illegal should be considered a recidivist.
Don't you find it odd that the change in the definition occurred at exactly the time the people who initiated the "reform" program needed some "evidence" to support their claim that the program was succeeding?
The change was used solely as dishonest cover for the program's failure. There was more crime. The public was not "just as safe." That was a lie.
Because a change like this is used for deceit, I oppose it.
Now, I hope you will answer this: How much more crime is worth it to release criminals earlier? And who do you nominate to be the victims?