Parole commissioners' workload overstated, inspector says

SACRAMENTO (AP) California officials who handle parole revocations routinely overstate how much work they do, and make life-altering decisions to revoke former convicts' paroles with little supervision or review, according to a state inspector general.

The criticism stems from the Board of Prison Terms' request for 24 additional deputy commissioners to handle a backlog of 7,000 parole revocation hearings. Some hearings are delayed so long violators spend more time in jail awaiting hearings than they would have spent in prison on their parole revocation.

But far from needing more commissioners, Inspector General Steve White found that the board's current deputy commissioners can do their jobs in about five hours a day. He concluded the board would need about half the 60 deputy commissioners it now has if the remaining commissioners worked harder.

Many of the deputy parole commissioners are former police and sheriff's officers who are paid $75,732 to $91,512 annually but work less than seven hours a day, according to the report. They regularly exaggerate the length of parole revocation hearings by as much as 150 percent.

White recommended the parole revocation duties be shifted to the state Department of Corrections.

Board chairwoman Carol Daly agreed with most of the findings in her written response. Gov. Gray Davis appointed her to the post about two years ago.

``As with most organizations, particularly those in government, the board has some inefficient practices that warrant our attention and correction,'' she wrote.

The board is implementing a new tracking system for deputy commissioner's caseload, said board spokesman Bill Sessa. Commissioners work from home and travel regularly to hearings at prisons around the state, so their activities are harder to monitor.

However, the board believes the deputy commissioners work hard and are honest, Sessa told The Sacramento Bee: ``We just weren't able to document that with a piece of paper saying what a guy was doing on a particular day.''

Davis spokesman Byron Tucker noted that the board, under Daly, has reduced a backlog of hearings for more than 2,000 inmates serving life terms, some of which were more than two years overdue. The backlog is now ``a few hundred,'' Tucker said.

``A lot of progress has been made at the board,'' Tucker said Monday. ``Gov. Davis has a lot of confidence in the current leadership there.''

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)