Santa Barbara supervisors back parole program

February 17, 2010

In an effort to reduce former prisoners from re-offending, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown’s plan to build two parole day reporting centers won board of supervisor support on Tuesday. [Noozhawk]

With a reporting center in Santa Maria and one in the Santa Barbara area, 300 parolees could be enrolled in the program, which would include job training, substance abuse counseling, anger management, high school completion classes, parenting training and case management. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has said that it will fund the effort and not require any money from the county.

Studies show that 70 percent of the parole population ends up back in prison within three years of their release. Currently, parolees, many who have spent years behind bars, are provided $200 and dropped off in the county where they were arrested.


Loading...
2 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Once people have served their time, then they should not be hampered by the ongoing stigma of being a FELON, which prevents them from access to employment, education, voting, and a whole bunch of other things. That would help a great deal.


However, that being said, people should not be released from prison until they have served their time. Parole is a method of freeing up space for other prisoners…. but if they reoffend then it does not serve its purpose anyway. It might also cause use to reexamine that crimes we are willing to imprison people for and the sentences they are required to serve. Then when we do decide to punish them with prison, ebsyre that we follow through with that decision.


It’s pretty stupid that almost no person jailed or imprisoned in California actually serves the sentence they were given…. if it’s because those sentences aren’t proper, then let’s fix the sentencing rather than play these stupid games with the time served calculation.


70% end up back inside within 3 years !!! ??? !!!


This statistic begs the question: Why bother letting them out in the first place?