[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 77 (Wednesday, June 12, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5391-S5393]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    REINVENTING PROBATION AND PAROLE

  Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. President, I yield myself 17 minutes.
  Today I would like to speak for a few minutes about the fight against 
crime in America. We have made tremendous progress over the last 10 
years, largely by putting more police officers on the street. But there 
are some troubling signs that the tide is turning against us. In 2000, 
the drop in the national crime rate was the smallest since 1991. And 
just yesterday, we learned that crime in North Carolina actually went 
up last year, for the first time since 1995.
  So now is not the time to rest on the laurels of our victories 
against crime. It is time to bring the fight to the stubbornest pockets 
of criminality and the toughest problems in the justice system.

[[Page S5392]]

  In my view, the number one problem in our criminal justice system 
today is the early release system--sometimes called probation, 
sometimes parole, sometimes intensive supervision. But whatever you 
call it, it doesn't work. It is overburdened, understaffed, 
inconsistent, and almost completely unsuccessful.
  There are about 4\1/2\ million people on probation and parole today, 
and most of them will break the law again and end up back in prison. 
According to a Justice Department study reported in the New York Times 
last week, two out of three inmates released from prison in 1994 were 
arrested again within 3 years. And that just counts the people who got 
caught. People on parole make up less than 1 percent of the American 
population, but they account for over 35 percent of the people entering 
prison each year.
  When criminals commit crime after crime after crime, we all suffer, 
and the poorest among us suffer the most. People leaving prison usually 
go back to the same tough neighborhoods they came from. In Winston-
Salem, NC, 80 percent of the prisoners go back to 40 percent of the 
city. And when they return home to return to crime, it's the very last 
thing their struggling neighborhood needs.
  We need to put an end to this. And we can put an end to it--if we 
follow the example of successful efforts in states and communities 
across the country, including a new effort in Winston-Salem. I want to 
name three principles culled from these successful efforts.
  First, we must make it clear that parole is a simple bargain--obey 
the law or suffer the consequences.
  Second, we need a system that has the resources to monitor the 
enormous number of offenders and the methods to monitor them 
effectively.
  Finally, we need to give those offenders who are truly ready to 
become law-abiding citizens the chance to succeed.
  Let me explain each of these principles a little further.
  First and foremost, we need real punishments for people who commit 
real violations of probation and parole. Today we have the opposite. We 
have a system where at one extreme, people can violate probation or 
parole 10 times before anything actually happens to them. Nearly half 
the people in the probation system have violated the terms of 
probation, but only one in five gets sent back to jail for doing it. At 
the other extreme we have some people who miss an appointment and go 
back to jail for years. It just doesn't make sense.
  Let me give an example. We know that many people commit crimes to 
feed their drug habits. Almost half of the crimes in many big cities 
are committed by drug users. So if we are going to cut crime, we have 
to get people on probation and parole off of drugs.
  Now, it's true that right now, we say you have to remain drug-free 
while you're on probation or parole. But too often, that requirement 
only exists on paper. Drug tests are few and far between--maybe once a 
month and maybe less, so if a guy is using, he can hide it. If he does 
get caught, his parole officer has to negotiate with a bureaucracy to 
get the guy punished, so a lot of the time the officer doesn't bother. 
And if he does bother, the judge may choose not to impose the only 
punishment that's available, which may be years in jail.
  The result of all this is that drug users on probation or parole know 
they're not likely to get caught, and so they use again and again and 
again. As they return to addiction, they commit more crimes.
  We can do better. A rational probation and parole system would deter 
crime before it happens, using two basic elements. First, we would have 
strict supervision focused on the conduct that leads to crime. Instead 
of just rules against drug use, we would have frequent drug testing, 
like twice-a-week testing.
  Second--and this is critical--we would have automatic punishments for 
people who break the rules. Those punishments would be swift and 
certain and graduated. You test positive for drugs, you get punished. 
You test positive a second time, you get punished more severely. 
Automatic, no exceptions; simple, swift punishment. Here in the 
District of Columbia, the system is moving in this direction, and 
research shows that it is helping in the fight against crime. It is 
time for more places to do the same.
  By the way, the system ought to be the same for other violations of 
probation and parole besides drug abuse. Set real rules that focus on 
conduct connected with crime. If you break those rules, you suffer the 
consequences. That simple.
  No. 2: We need to get probation and parole officers out of their 
offices and on the streets. Right now, a lot of probation and parole 
officers sit in their offices and wait for trouble to come to them. A 
typical probation officer has two 15-minute meetings with each 
probationer every month. That is no way to keep tabs on anybody.
  What needs to happen in probation and parole today is not all that 
different from what needed to happen in police work 20 years ago. 
Twenty years ago, cops spent their time in squad cars responding to 
crimes. They caught some bad guys, but they did not stop crime before 
it happened.
  Some innovative police chiefs went back to the method of policing 
they had learned when they first came on the force. They moved police 
officers out of the cars and back onto the beat, where they got to know 
the neighborhood; got to know the shopkeepers, the pastors, the 
principals; got to learn from the many good folks in every community 
who the handful of troublemakers were. And this kind of police work, 
community policing supported by the COPS program, has helped to cut 
crime rates across America.
  It is time for the same revolution in probation and parole: Officers 
need to know the communities, not just the criminals. It has worked in 
Winston-Salem, where teams of probation and police, working with the 
clergy and the community, helped cut juvenile violence by 35 percent in 
the last year. That effort drew on a success in Boston where a team 
effort called Operation Nightlight helped cut youth homicides by 65 
percent.
  Getting probation officers back on the streets will not be easy. For 
one thing, it will be impossible until we cut the massive burdens on 
these officers. The average probation officer had over five times as 
many cases in the late 1990s as in the early 1970s--sometimes 200 
cases. Under these conditions, even the most dedicated public servant 
cannot get the job done. So we have to both change the bureaucratic 
culture and cut the caseloads in these departments. That may mean 
increasing the number of officers, it may mean holding managers more 
accountable, it may mean increasing competition for the work. But it is 
something we have to do.
  No. 3, We need to make sure offenders who are ready to turn their 
lives around have a real chance to do it.
  A convict's debt to society does not end with his prison term. Men 
who have left prison have a responsibility to obey the law, stay off 
drugs, and stop victimizing their community. They have another 
responsibility as well--a responsibility to become productive members 
of our society who work hard, pay taxes, and support their children. If 
they are willing to fulfill those responsibilities, we have to be 
willing to help them and keep an eye on them while they do.
  This is not about what society owes to prisoners, but we have to face 
the reality that we will never build enough prisons to keep people 
behind bars forever, and we would not want to be a society that did. 
Except for a tiny minority, they all come back to our communities.
  This is about what society owes vulnerable communities. The last 
thing they need is an influx of people who are addicted to drugs and do 
not have jobs and do not have supervision. Far too often, that is what 
our prisons are churning out today.
  We know that drug treatment helps prisoners get straight, but the 
share of prisoners receiving treatment dropped from 25 percent at the 
beginning of the 1990s to just 10 percent at the end. We know that 
prisoners who learn to read and write are less likely to commit new 
crimes, but we have cut prison literacy programs. We know that when 
somebody leaves jail, giving him a sweatsuit and sending him to the bus 
station in the dead of night is not the way to give him a fresh start. 
Too often, though, that is all we do when we release people from 
prison.

[[Page S5393]]

  We need to recognize that enabling prisoners to reintegrate into our 
communities as lawful and productive citizens is good for everybody. We 
should support proven efforts that get former prisoners to beat 
addictions and stay at work. And we should support the efforts of 
community leaders, especially religious leaders, to keep a stern eye on 
former offenders, while also lending them a helping hand. This is 
something that is beginning to work in Winston-Salem thanks to the 
Center for Community Safety at Winston-Salem State University. It is 
beginning to work in places like Maryland and Ohio. It is something 
that needs to work across America.
  That is the challenge: First, develop real and automatic punishments 
for real violations of probation and parole. Second, enable probation 
and parole officers to get out of their offices and onto the streets. 
Third, make sure offenders who are ready to turn their lives around 
have the chance to do it.
  Meeting that challenge will not be easy. Every State has different 
probation and parole systems. Some States have differences within their 
systems. While the truth is that a lot of these systems are not 
working, some of them are. Every reform I have described is already 
working someplace in America today. Our job in Washington will be to 
spread the things that work. I know there is legislation in conference 
right now that will help do that in a limited way.
  I believe we should think bigger, on the model of the COPS Program, a 
program that not only helped police departments hire over 100,000 more 
cops, but that also helped change the way police departments do 
business. We need the same kind of effort when it comes to transforming 
probation and parole into an effective, accountable system for reducing 
crime.
  It may be that this administration will oppose this effort. Their 
current budget has already proposed gutting the COPS Program. This 
administration seems to think that permanent tax cuts for the very 
wealthiest Americans are more important than cutting crime in the very 
poorest communities. I see it differently.

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