TheAgitator.com
Feds Hot on the Trail of a Dead Parolee
Monday, June 15th, 2009It’s only Monday evening, but I’m officially designating this my favorite news story of the week.
Hawkins was a felon, convicted of second-degree murder and assault, and a heroin addict who spent most of his adult life in and out of prison and on and off parole. The system lost track of him one day in July 2007, after he had been out on parole for about two years and failed a drug test at his rehab center. Although parole officers spent countless hours making more than 340 attempts to find him — phone calls to relatives and friends, certified letters, arrest record checks, visits to his last place of employment (Goodwill) and his last known address (the Samaritan Inn), sometimes with police officers in tow — they never found him.
Hawkins died one year later, in July 2008, at 54, of metastatic lung cancer. His family has the death certificate and certificate of cremation to prove it.
The system still hasn’t found him.
But it’s still trying…
The case is still active, Len Sipes said yesterday. Sipes is the spokesman for the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, or CSOSA, the federal agency that took over the D.C. parole office nine years ago when the federal government assumed responsibility for the city’s prison system. According to its records, a warrant for Hawkins’s arrest, issued in April 2008, is still outstanding. He is to be supervised on parole until April 27, 2016.
Last month, Hawkins’s parole officer called one of his sisters to ask whether she had seen him lately.
“They said they were trying to get in touch with him because he’d been violating parole and they needed a number for him,” said Maria Watson, Hawkins’s younger sister. “I said, ‘Well, you can call 1-800-G-O-D.’ “
…The phone call was only the latest frustrating twist for Hawkins’s family. Parole officers have called other siblings for the past several months, they said, and they have all told the officers the same thing: Edward is dead.
I can see how the parole officers might have had some difficulty piecing together such puzzling, ambiguous hints about Hawkins’ whereabouts. If only the family had been more cooperative.
Oh, and here’s the punchline…
CSOSA’s 344 or so community supervision officers, or parole officers, are responsible for keeping track of 15,000 parolees at any one time. The most potentially dangerous — currently about 800 — are fitted with ankle bracelets equipped with GPS tracking devices. Officers keep tabs on the rest through the Supervision and Management Automated Recording — or SMART — system.
But the system must be smart, right? I mean, it says so right there in the acronym.
Wow, they were just hound that guy until he died, huh? Hey! Why stop there! Job security!
How about this…
“Hollywood movies make you think the government can find you like that.” He snapped his fingers. “That they can turn off your credit. Steal your identity. Well, not in D.C. they can’t.”
Now that gives me hope that no matter how police statish we become, the ineptitude of the government will keep them from hurting us too much.
Anarchism is the answer. I struggled with Constitutionalism, then minarchism for a while, believing that we needed the state for things like criminal justice. Ineptitude pervades every level of government. We’d be much better shape by governing and policing ourselves through private and voluntary mechanisms.
I think i know of a dog that could probably sniff him out.
@claude: Six months after the fact? :D
I am so smart, I am so smart, I am so smart, I am so smart, SMRT, I mean SMART.
There is nothing that annoys me more than “cute” acronyms for systems or, worse, a law (see PATRIOT ACT).
I’m particularly fond of the fact that the acronym doesn’t even work.
There’s no “T” following the only possible “R” in “Supervision and Management Automated Recording”. Talk about your severe case of cluster-fail.
You see, that’s why the police can’t find him… he was cremated.
If the family had only buried him with his ankle monitor, the police might have had a chance.
It is an amusing story, but in all probability the database doesn’t have the ability to connect up with other databases, such as those with the death certificate on file etc. I wouldn’t take the families word for it either. A simple drive down to county records would solve the problem, so it’s really about the parole officer either not having the time or inclination. If there are 15K parolees I could see time being an issue. I know a lot of people have this image of government officials with access to a ton of info on everyone, but the truth is that most of the data systems are old, unconnected to each other, and access to any particular system is strictly limited to a small group, regardless of how useful that might be. Heck, I know a lot of places don’t even have internet access.
Clearly, the parole system has become so ungovernably burdened with cases that it’s at the point where we have to make a choice: streamline or die. Here’s an idea…keep those 800 dangerous fuckers in jail and save taxpayers the cost of ankle bracelets. Then we can let the nonviolent offenders out of the intrusive, Kafkaesque hell that is the parole system to resume their lives (they served their time, let that be the end of it).
Why should taxpayers be billed for an inefficient, secondary, utterly redundant correctional system?
That is only a ratio of 43 parolees to each parole officer, that should not be to difficult to keep track of…im just saying.
Bet he’s on the lam like Elis and Tupac!
Sorry but Elvis has left the building!
chance at 10 has it nailed:
This is a libertarian blog. The posters here are generally against giving the government money to do anything because they are philosophically disinclined to expand or assist its powers, either in theory or in practice. Further, they are almost always against the increasing sophistication and interlinking of government means of tracking its citizens, concerned, quite rightly, that this bodes ill for personal liberty.
Those points made, don’t you think it’s a bit daft to mock the fact that the government can’t do what you don’t want it to do? They can’t link their outdated systems to perform a simple cross-check. Yay, so far as most of the posters here are concerned: you don’t want it to have the authority or resources to do that sort of thing.
And double ding ding ding on this:
C’mon, folks, criminals’ families lie for them all the time. We are talking about a murderer here. If I was a cop (oooh! new moustache!) I wouldn’t believe their word … or even that the right person was cremated … either.
Seeker6079, while it is true that they should not take the families word for it, they could easily check it out, and confirm the facts.
I disagree with your view of tracking it’s citizens, as you have stated it here. I do not believe they should track just any citizen, but convicted murderers, sexual predators, kidnappers, or politicians that is another story.
They are as “parolees” not in prison for the crimes of which they were convicted, but as such have not paid for said crimes yet. I see nothing wrong with them reporting to an officer assigned to watch over them.
I believe few on here would think that no one should be punished when they have committed a crime. Many of us feel that personal choices such as no seat belt, intoxicant ingestion, no motorcycle helmet are not crimes against anyone. Murder, theft, or feeling the ass of a 10 year old is a crime, and punishment should be given.
The fact the state says we’ll let you out of prison early, but we will still watch you till your time is served, to me is simply a less severe punishment.
I know I will hear that innocent people are convicted, and I agree with that statement, but I do believe many more guilty are convicted.
Sorry, chance & seeker6079, the family has been called repeatedly and they have a death certificate and cremation certificate. It’s inexcusable that nobody from the parole office has followed up on that.
Further, you may think it’s daft to mock a govt for not being able to do what I don’t want it to do, but you’re missing the point: I’m laughing at them because they can’t do what they say they–and only they–can do. Screw them. I laugh at their incompetence and arrogance.
…and when I finish laughing, I find that I’m a little depressed.
There are conflicting goals: if government became more streamlined and efficient, it would waste less of our time and money, but could also do evil things more broadly and effectively. Regarding the subject article, while I oppose something like “total information awareness,” I wouldn’t mind if a parolee database could actually be kept up to date so the government is not harassing this guy’s family after he dies.
If I was the family, I think I’d start making shit up.
“Yeah yeah, I talked to him last week. He said he was in Oregon, but heading down to California…. No, he didn’t say where he was going, but he did mention that he stopped by a “Joe’s Diner”…. Sure, I’ll let you know if I hear from him again”.
Of course, they’d probably throw me in a cage for interfering with an active investigation after they figured out he’s dead.
—
As yes, government waste is annoying, but the alternative is government efficiency, which is downright terrifying.
#8, Mathew Peck:
I can make it work:
Supervision and Management Automated Recording… Thing.
I are smar! I come up with acro… acr… fake word!
““They said they were trying to get in touch with him because he’d been violating parole and they needed a number for him,” said Maria Watson, Hawkins’s younger sister. “I said, ‘Well, you can call 1-800-G-O-D.’ “”
Good thing she isn’t a 72-year-old woman with a moving violation. She would’ve been tasered for that smart ass reply.
“You see, that’s why the police can’t find him… he was cremated.
If the family had only buried him with his ankle monitor, the police might have had a chance.”
That ankle monitor would look mighty handsome around the neck of an urn.
Things could always be worse…he could still also be on the city payroll…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011802298.html?sub=AR