Story Created:
Feb 10, 2010 at 1:48 AM PST
Story Updated:
Feb 10, 2010 at 1:49 AM PST
A sheriff's commander said Tuesday that the department plans to use its own resources to track parolees released from state prisons, raising concerns about county costs and law enforcement priorities.
Los Angeles County will be "taking our law enforcement personnel, who should be out fighting gangs ... to do the state's mothering of these parolees,'' said Supervisor Michael Antonovich.
About 7,700 parolees living in Los Angeles County will be put on "non- revocable parole'' under a prison reform law that took effect in January.
"Non-revocable parolees'' will no longer be supervised by state probation officers, but they will be subject to warrantless searches by law enforcement officers.
An unknown number of state prison inmates will also be given "non- revocable parole'' status and released to the jurisdiction where they committed their last crime.
Law enforcement officials, including Sheriff Lee Baca, have estimated that 6,500 of those released will end up in Los Angeles County.
Those parolees will provide their addresses to the state, but the state will not verify them, Sheriff's Cmdr. Todd Rogers told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. So sheriff's deputies will make the verification and reach out to offer resources, including mental health services.
County officials are concerned about their ability to fund those mental health programs as demand grows, especially given an expected county budget deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Local authorities have had difficulty getting information on the mental health status of prisoners and parolees in the state system due to confidentiality concerns, according to Marvin Southard, director of the Department of Mental Health. As a result, it is difficult to estimate the county's cost.
In addition, the sheriff's plans represent "a huge expenditure of time on a countywide basis,'' said Chief Executive Officer William Fujioka.
The Sheriff's Department is also working to negotiate access to the state prison in Lancaster to offer life skills training and other resources to soon-to-be-released inmates. Sheriff Lee Baca is looking to the state to fund that effort.
Rogers said "a trickle'' of parolees had already been converted to "non-revocable parole.''
Twenty-four of those newly paroled identified themselves to county mental health professionals and sought treatment in local programs, Southard said.
Lawyers with the Office of County Counsel are investigating options for limiting the county's financial exposure, including seeking an injunction to forestall releases and seeking reimbursement for parole reforms as an unfunded mandate.
The new state law is intended to lower the caseload of parole agents to allow them to focus supervision on the most serious and violent parolees, according to a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections.
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