An Arkansas State Police investigation of the state’s parole system found no criminal negligence but rather evidence of “systemic problems” that failed to keep an eight-time parole absconder off the streets before his May arrest in a Little Rock murder, Gov. Mike Beebe said Monday.
Darrell Dennis, a repeat offender who was charged with at least 10 new felonies after his 2008 parole from prison, benefited from lax supervision and “rigid interpretation” of parole policies, according to the state police report that Beebe released Monday.
Despite the numerous felony charges, Dennis didn’t face a revocation hearing until after his May 22 arrest in the May 10 kidnapping and murder of 18-year-oldForrest Abrams, according to an Arkansas State Police investigation.
“There were ample opportunities to have him jailed,” Beebe said of Dennis. “Even though he didn’t meet a lot of criteria - he hadn’t done a lot of violent stuff at that point - he wasn’t cooperating with anybody and he was gaming the system.”
During Monday’s news conference, the governor pointed out that over the summer, many of the parole policies that permitted Dennis to remain free have been tightened and that many of the players involved in Dennis’ case are no longer in positions of authority.
The policy changes have led to a boom in revocations for parolees and have choked the state’s prison and county-jail network.
As of last Friday, approximately 2,292 inmates were being held at local jails, either waiting transport to prison or awaiting a parole hearing, state officials said.
Beebe said a “significant” increase in funding is needed to handle the influx of detainees, 1,600 of whom are parolees.
“There’s got to be a systemic influx of monies to address these policy changes and issues come February,” Beebe said. “There’s just no way around it. You can’t have 2,200 folks in county jails… without more financial responsibility from the state.”
Beebe announced that his office was reviewing the Dennis case and state parole policies and procedures on June 17 after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published a story that detailed Dennis’ criminal history and routine evasion of parole officers anddisciplinary actions.
Dennis was released from prison in 2008 after serving less than a third of a 60-year sentence for aggravated robbery.
In and out of the Pulaski County jail over the next five years, Dennis was arrested at least 14 times, racked up at least 10 felony drug or weapons charges and had eight absconder warrants issued for his arrest.
After his May 1 arrest on his seventh abscond offense, Dennis’ parole officer, Debra James, requested that Dennis be held and scheduled for a revocation hearing.
That request, like prior requests, was denied.
On May 8, Dennis was told that he would have to go to a technical-violators center, where he would be incarcerated and treated for 60 days, instead of returning to prison.
Dennis was freed from the jail at 10:30 p.m. that night after a parole administrator notified jailers that he could be released. Parole officials told him he’d have to report to the violator center the next day, but Dennis never showed.
In the early hours of May 10, Abrams was found shot dead near the intersection of West 11th and South Woodrow streets.
INVESTIGATORS’ FINDINGS
The state police report on the state Department of Community Correction parole system found “no evidence that any [parole agency] policies had been violated.”
“However, I believe part of the reason for this is there were few policies in place regarding situations of this type,” the report’s author wrote regarding the Dennis case.
The report highlighted several policies and practices that led to Dennis’ evasion and continued criminal activity and stated that Little Rock-area parole supervisors’ interpretation of those policies often ran counter to public safety.
Parole officers use the “intervention matrix” to assess what type of disciplinary action, if any, is needed when a parolee violates the terms of his supervision.
The matrix was implemented along with Act 570, a criminal-justice policy passed two years ago that heightened thresholds for some drug and property crimes and emphasized goal-oriented planning with parolees. A parolee’s offenses committed before the implementation of the law were not counted against him.
Offenders also had their offense histories wiped clearonce they finished a 60-day stay at a technical-violators center, the state police report said.
“The decision to not include offenses occurring before the implementation of the matrix and the rigidity in which it was interpreted by [Little Rock area] supervisors was a major factor contributing to Dennis not being incarcerated,” the lead investigator wrote. “It appears this decision and interpretive rigidity provides for fewer parole revocation hearings; therefore, lower recidivism numbers.”
The report highlighted other practices that “provided for lower requests for hearing and recidivism numbers but it didn’t provide for public safety.” Among those practices: refusing to send a parolee to a revocation hearing if the person was awaiting an Act 3 hearing, which is a criminal procedure used in court to determine mental health and culpability.
Over the summer, several legislators voiced concerns that parole administrators were playing a “numbers game” with parolees such as Dennis and pressuring frontline parole officers to keep revocation requests down in order to inflate their own performance.
Beebe said Monday that any relationship between the handling of Dennis’ case and the changes in community corrections made by Act 570 “was indirect.”
“It could indirectly have been to the extent that you had people out there that are running parole that thought it was important to look at what the statistics were, but I can’t know what was in someone’s mind,” Beebe said. “Act 570 didn’t directly do any of this except to the extent that there were folks [in parole] who were saying ‘let’s not be harsh on them,’ which wasnever the intent [of the law].”
Sen. David Sanders, R-Little Rock, who has been a vocal critic of the state’s parole system, said that the state police report’s suggestion that some parole officials were playing a numbers game vindicates many legislators who have accused certain parole administrators of the same thing.
“[Such practices] have been going on, unfortunately, for many years. To some that might be a revealing finding, but [to] those of us who’ve been following the system and are immersed in the system, it’s certainly no surprise,” Sanders said.
INCARCERATION COSTS
Days after the state police started its review of the Dennis case, Board of Corrections Chairman Benny Magness announced several new policies meant to rein in parolees. Many of the policy changes would have kept Dennis from being released from custody in the first place.
Among them:
Parole officials would no longer allow parolees waiting on revocation hearings to be released from jail.
Any parolees waiting on an Act 3 hearing will have to wait in jail.
Parolees who absconded two times would be incarcerated and go before a revocation hearing.
The policies ballooned the number of parolees being booked into area jails on parole holds.
Between July and September, 514 parolees were revoked, 81 people more than the 433 revocations that occurred between July of 2012 and this past June.
In that same time frame, 1,300 parolees have gone back to prison, most of whom are parolees who waived their revocation hearing.
By the end of October, the number of inmates in the state’s penal system was at 16,867, and 14,343 of those were being held in state prisons, which have a capacity of 13,467 prisoners.
As of right now, Beebe said, the state’s corrections system will need $6 million, or more, to open up and staff more beds to handle the growth in inmates.
The state also needs to find anywhere from $7 million to $8 million to compensate jails that hold prisoners awaiting transfer to a state facility.
“We’re going to have to pay the counties a lot of money,” Beebe said. “These are legitimate bills the counties are due. They’re holding prisoners that are state prisoners. … They’re going to have to be paid.”
Sanders said that any requests for further funding will require a rigorous review by legislators, but he said he’s optimistic about the opportunities in the 2014 legislative session.
“For the first time in a long time, public safety is front and center in the minds of lawmakers,” Sanders said. “I suspect there will be a positive reception to the request.But that’s not to say we won’t do our work in explaining what we’re doing [with the money] and why we’re doing it.”
The Board of Corrections will meet this week to review its policies and look for ways it can help reduce the glut of prisoners swamping state rolls.
One policy that may be changed is a recent one that required revocation hearings for parolees facing any new felony crimes, according to Magness.
Sheila Sharp, who has headed the Department of Community Correction since the abrupt July 1 retirement of former Director David Eberhard, said her agency needs more officers.
An average Arkansas parole officer handles 118 cases, nearly double the national average of 60 cases per officer.
Parole officials are re-evaluating the agency’s own risk factors, officials said, in order to better assess which parolees are a threat and which would benefit from increased monitoring.
Dina Tyler, the department’s spokesman, said that the agency now has 300 electronic monitors, half of which are in use, that could be dedicated to those parolees accused of a new nonviolent felony and relieve some of the strain of the state’s prison population.
“It wouldn’t affect a lot, but it would be some,” Tyler said. “And at this point, I think some would be acceptable.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/05/2013