Ashley's Comments on Meeting with Professor Pank

On November 3, 2009, Errol and I met with Professor Karen Pank at her office in Sacramento. She works as a lobbyist and attorney for several important players in the law enforcement arena. Her clients include the Chief Probation Officers of California; California Probation, Parole and Correctional Association; and the California State Sheriff’s Association. Additionally, Ms. Pank is a visiting professor at UC Davis School of Law, and she is my professor for Legislative Process. Because of her qualifications and knowledge, I felt we would greatly benefit from speaking with her.

Professor Pank provided us with helpful information regarding each one of our proposals. Out of the three, she liked the first one the most: creating differing levels of parole monitoring. Other states have found this to be a valuable way of doing business. Basically, some lower-risk parolees can be placed on “technical” parole, but are not actually heavily monitored. Doing so frees up time and resources for parole officers to monitor higher risk parolees. She said that we are moving towards this practice because it can lower the cost of parole. However, one of the downsides to this system is that the lower risk parolees oftentimes need more supervision because they are on the cusp of reoffending. Moreover, these parolees would receive very little attention.

After speaking with Professor Pank, proposals 2 (discretionary parole) and 3 (utilizing other social services and community groups) seem difficult to achieve. Proposal 2 faces difficulties against the public, because many people see this as “early release” and then think of cases like the Garrido case. Proposal 3 also faces challenges because it can be very difficult for parolees to receive social services, even government funded services. Professor Pank provided a helpful example. Prop 63 was enacted to increase funding for mental health services through a tax increase on the wealthiest Californians. However, parolees were expressly prohibited from receiving such funding, even though they are often the people who need such services the most.

Professor Pank also noted the need for reform at the probation level. Approximately 90% of state prisoners were on probation at one time prior to going to prison. The state could save tons of money by intervening early on and providing social services when the local authorities discover a problem. She explained her opinion that local agencies are often better suited to deal with local problems. While probation reaches past the scope of our topic, I thought this was an important point.

We also asked Professor Pank about quotas on officer caseloads. She explained that parole officers would be against such a proposal because it could lead to them being paid less.

Victims of Crime Resource Center

The following is a brief summary of Kathleen Benton’s thoughts on Mark’s and my proposal regarding Marsy’s law. For a full description of the meeting Eve, Emil and I had with Kathleen, please see Emil’s post below.

Following Eve and Emil’s discussion with Kathleen regarding their proposal for reforming the Victim’s Bill of Rights, I informed Kathleen on Mark and my proposal for reforming Marsy’s law. Our proposal seeks to make three main changes to Marsy’s Law: 1) reduce the mandatory waiting period for inmates seeking parole; 2) reduce the standard evidence required for an inmate to establish his or her need for an early parole hearing; and 3) add a restorative justice aspect to the bill that allows a victim to request that the parole board exercise its discretion to advance a parole hearing.

Kathleen prefaced her critique of our bill by highlighting that she was not too familiar with the logistical implications of Marsy’s Law. However, after listening to our revision to Marsy’s Law, Kathleen commented that our proposal sounded good. She pointed out that reducing the standard of evidence from ‘clear and convincing’ to ‘reasonable’ was a great idea. Also, she noted that instead of simply reducing the mandatory waiting period for inmates seeking parole, we might instead want to set up a system that restricts the longer waiting periods (10-15 years) for the more serious offenses such as rape and murder. Finally, Kathleen pointed out that not everyone is a murder victim and that were we to amend our proposal further, we should keep that in mind.

I found our meeting with Kathleen extremely informative and interesting. I especially enjoyed her thoughts on the reality of parole hearings. Much to my surprise, Kathleen informed us that the majority of those who speak at parole hearings are supporters of the inmate and not the victim. She went on to tell us that parole hearings often take place at prisons that are far away from where the victim or victim’s family reside. Thus, it is often difficult for the victim or the victim’s family to travel to the hearing.

Special thanks to Eve for setting up and securing this meeting!

Meeting with the Victims of Crime Resource Center

First, a big thanks to Kathleen Benton, a staff attorney at the Victims of Crime Resource Center in Sacramento, for meeting with our group to discuss our proposals to reform the Victims’ Bill of Rights and Marsy’s Law. Eve scheduled an appointment with Kathleen, and met with her along with Chris and I on November 2.

Although Kathleen was not as familiar with the logistical implications of Marsy’s Law, her insights into the practical aspects of the Victims’ Bill of Rights proved incredibly useful. As someone who has attended many parole hearings, Kathleen said one major problem is that testimonies during the hearings are often very repetitive. She said parole boards can limit the length of testimony given, but they cannot deny victims the right to testify. This leads to multiple short testimonies from the same groups of victims (e.g., family members) that essentially discuss the same concerns. In some cases, a representative is sent to read a letter from victims who could not attend. These letters are also often quite repetitive.

The problem is that substantially similar testimonies do not further justice and often lead to longer parole hearings, which collectively cost taxpayers money. To compound the problem, each victim is entitled to receive notice of any upcoming parole hearings. The administrative burden of identifying the victims and providing them with notice is also quite costly.

To combat both of these problems, our proposed bill limits the number of victims who have the right to receive notice and participate in parole hearings by only permitting one spokesperson for each group to speak on behalf of the victim at parole hearings and one designated person to receive notice of the parole hearing who can disseminate the notice to those parties entitled to attend the hearing. It further provides prisoners the right to have one member of either the prisoner’s family, next of kin, or designated representative have the right to receive notice and participate in parole hearings.

Kathleen also introduced our group to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation website where the public can find additional information about parole hearings, and discussed other logistical and substantive aspects of parole reform that we were able to use in our proposals. Thanks again to Kathleen. We look forward to sending her our final proposal and keeping her updated as the project progresses.