After far too long, the shocking details of how federal prob.ation officers completely failed to supervise Phillip Garrido are coming to light.
The hard-to-believe mistakes and horrendous judgment are as bad, if not worse, than those of California parole agents. Those who were supposed to protect society from the likes of Garrido let him keep Jaycee Lee Dugard prisoner for 18 long years.
By stonewalling, the U.S. Parole Commission tried to escape being held to account. It failed in that, too.
This month, Chief U.S. District Court Judge James Ware took it upon himself to make public a confidential report issued last December by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts that is unsparing in its criticism of federal parole officers and their supervisors.
"I believe that the strength of our public institutions is tied directly to their openness to public scrutiny," wrote Ware, who deserves full credit for releasing the report.
Then on July 11, Garrido's 351-page federal parole file was released through a Freedom of Information request filed by The Sacramento Bee in September 2009.
Together, they itemize an inexcusable record of ineptitude and leniency -- "clearly substandard," the report concludes -- during the nearly 11 years that Garrido was under federal parole supervision, from December 1988 until his early discharge in March 1999.
During all that time, officers made less than a dozen home visits. One of those rare checks came in June 1991, only nine days after Garrido snatched 11-year-old Jaycee near her home in South Lake Tahoe.
Another came six months later, but Garrido cut it short, saying he had to take his wife to work. There was no follow-up. Indeed, it appears the next home visit didn't happen for more than three years, until May 1995, the report says. During that time, Garrido repeatedly assaulted Jaycee, who gave birth to her first child at age 14.
Officers didn't talk to neighbors or local law enforcement, and at times misled state officials. They ignored frequent positive drug tests and didn't verify that Garrido had registered as a sex offender. They went months at a time with no contact whatsoever with Garrido.
The San Francisco-based office recommended his early release from parole. "You are commended for having responded positively to supervision and for the personal accomplishments you have made," the Parole Commission wrote Garrido. "The commission trusts that you will continue to be a productive citizen and obey the laws of society." The report says there's no evidence that even if federal officers had searched Garrido's Antioch home, they would have found Dugard, who was being confined in a backyard shed, noting that state officers also failed to discover her.
"Nevertheless," the report says, "one may fairly question whether Garrido could have been deterred from the horrendous acts attributed to him had his federal supervision been conducted properly from the outset." Even after a review in 2000 concluded that the probation office's supervision of offenders was poor, it followed none of the recommendations. Changes were made only after the district court replaced the chief probation officer in 2007, the report says.
The administrative office and Ware say there have been substantial improvements since, notably requiring more frequent home visits.
The Parole Commission says it's still evaluating the report and has no response.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has also tried to fix shortcomings made painfully clear during the decade its parole agents supervised Garrido, until his crimes against Dugard were discovered in August 2009.
Of 14 recommendations made by the state inspector general in a report that November, the department has satisfactorily implemented 10, according to a May follow-up audit. Since then, the department says it has made more progress on a key area by giving parole agents more training on how to supervise sex offenders.
Because of its grievous blunders, the state is paying a $20 million settlement to Dugard, whose memoir sold 175,000 copies on its first day of release this week.
There's no guarantee, but the changes hopefully will prevent another case like this from ever happening. Those lessons, however, came at a heavy price for Jaycee Dugard.
Editorials are the opinion of the Merced Sun-Star editorial board. Members of the editorial board include Publisher Eric Johnston, Executive Editor Mike Tharp and Online Editor Brandon Bowers.
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