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Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Our View: How did parole agents fail Jaycee?

Inspector general's report offers valuable ideas where system fell short in Garrido case.

Though it contained little new information, the state inspector general's report on Phillip Garrido's parole supervision still is stunning.

Incompetence in the oversight of the man who is accused of kidnapping Jaycee Lee Dugard, and holding her captive for 18 years, defies belief.

We agree with most of the report's recommendations on actions to prevent this kind of outrage from happening again.

However, we have problems with the call for more aggressive GPS monitoring. And we think there's one key issue that both the report -- and the corrections system -- doesn't address.

Garrido was supervised by federal and Nevada parole agents from 1988 to 1999, after he was released from prison for a kidnapping and rape in Nevada. We still know very little about that time.

The California corrections system entered the picture only in 1999, when Garrido's parole was taken over by California through an interstate compact.

Inspector General David R. Shaw's report does an excellent job of recounting the surreal succession of opportunities parole agents missed to discover that Dugard was being held captive.

It found that parole agents properly supervised Garrido in just 12 of 123 months in the past decade.

The original agent handling Garrido's case never read his file, which described the large backyard (the place we now know housed a secret compound). Despite 60 visits to the home, no parole agents noticed "clearly visible utility lines" that ran from the house to a carport in the backyard.

Parole agents were not alone in failing to observe clues.

In 2006, a neighbor told the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department that people were living in the backyard. An officer talked with Garrido, concluded there was no problem, and left.

In light of this history, it's hard to argue with many of the report's recommendations, including improving the training of parole agents, ensuring that the risks offenders pose are correctly assessed, and establishing better means to share information with local public safety agencies.

Questionable recommendations focus on the use of global positioning devices. While there's nothing wrong with efficiency, we doubt whether these devices truly deter the people forced to wear them. Little in the Garrido case leads us to think otherwise.

The report doesn't address a larger issue: whether the parole population is now so huge it's beyond effective supervision.

As a June article in "Federal Probation" noted: "California's parole population is now so large and its parole agents so overburdened that parolees who represent serious threats to public safety often are not watched closely, and those who wish to go straight often cannot get the help they need."

The system failed miserably with Phillip Garrido, with tragic consequences for Jaycee Lee Dugard. The inspector general's report offered valuable ideas on where parole agents fell short. We also have to take a hard look at the system in which they work.

Editorials are the opinion of the Merced Sun-Star editorial board. Members of the editorial board include Publisher Hank Vander Veen, Executive Editor Mike Tharp, Editorial Page Editor Keith Jones, Copy Desk Chief Jesse Chenault and Online Editor Brandon Bowers.