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Often, Parole Is One Stop on the Way Back to Prison continued

In California, for example, 68 percent of the people admitted to prison last year were on parole at the time they were sent back, up

from only 21 percent in 1980, according to the California Department of Corrections. Evidence of the troubles posed by the large number of returning prisoners is beginning to show up across the nation.

In Boston, which has had one of the largest declines in crime of any major city, the police superintendent, Paul Joyce, said that newly released inmates were a major reason for a 13 percent increase in firearms-related crimes in the first half of the year.

Mr. Joyce said part of the reason was that the former inmates brought prison grudges or gang affiliations back to the streets. In Tallahassee, Fla., Todd Clear and Dina Rose, a husband

and wife team of criminologists, have found that the crime rate in poor neighborhoods rises as the number of newly released inmates increases. Family and financial pressures often are the cause, they say - including the pressure to pay the $50 to $150 the state charges them for their own supervision.

California Led the Way
Although law enforcement experts say that the large number of inmates being returned to prisons is a nationwide phenomenon, nowhere is it more

striking than in California, the state with the largest prison population and the first state to abolish flexible sentences, which historically led to early release for good behavior.

In California, four out of five former inmates returned to prison were sent back not for committing new crimes but for technical violations of the terms of their parole; for example, failing a drug test or missing appointments with parole agents.


	*January 2002*