LOS ANGELES – The County of Los Angeles Probation Department reported to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday regarding their latest efforts to deal with the AB 109 population and specifically how the county deals with parolees required to complete mental health treatment.
The Probation Department currently oversees little fewer than 8,500 active cases, which has been “fairly steady over last to six to eight months and will remain in that ballpark for the next six months or so,” said Chief Probation Officer Jerry Powers.
During the Dec. 17 report, Supervisor Gloria Molina had asked about what happens to those parolees who refuse to engage in required mental health treatment.
At the time, Marvin Southard, director of the Mental Health Department, and Jonathan Fielding, director of the Department of Public Health reported that their departments had 68 percent success and 39 percent success, respectively.
“I think it’s a very difficult group to keep engaged,” Fielding said. “They obviously come with a lot of baggage and a lot of problems.”
Currently, of the 7,000 parolees required to report for mental health treatment about 13 percent, or 912, are non-compliant, Powers said.
“Over half of those are going to sustain a new criminal arrest,” he said. “I think I’m safe in saying that those arrest numbers would have been significantly lower had they complied.”
The number of rearrests for parolees who refuse to comply with drug treatment programs is about the same as for the mental health patients, Powers said.
The rate of completion for drug treatment programs is about 32 percent, according to the Department of Public Health.
The number is closer to 50 percent, Fielding said, if they include the parolees who did not complete their required treatment but still had a satisfactory outcome.
Powers also addressed the issue of AB 109 offenders who are not even assigned to the Probation Department after their release.
Offenders that would have previously been under the jurisdiction of the state Parole Department after their release, must now be assigned to the county Probation Department by the court during sentencing.
“The way the law is construction now, that is not automatic…” Powers said. “The county does not have the ability to compel them to do it.”
The practice of sentencing offenders to serve part of their time in county jails and part under the supervision of the Probation Department is known as “split sentencing.”
Of the 16,000 offenders sentenced in L.A. County since AB 109 was implemented, only 1,000 have received a split sentence.
Full story by Allison Pari at hometownstation.com.
