Montana has made changes within the Board of Pardons and Parole (BOPP) using a justice reinvestment approach and implementing Senate Bill 64. The justice approach, addressing concerns of arbitrary decisions (remember this term), replaced volunteer board members with Governor appointed, well paid board members. The three board members are paid approximately $90,000.00 each. This is a salary increase of a quarter of a million dollars during state level 4 budget cuts.
The three newly appointed, professional board members are as follows:
Scott Cruse. Mr. Cruse is a retired FBI Supervising Agent from Helena MT. Zach Gervais, a Native American from Browning MT, should not have died. Zach's killer had previously stabbed two people on the Blackfoot Reservation in unprovoked attacks, stabbing one man at least nine times. Even though most everybody in Browning knew the assailant and where he lived, Mr. Cruse failed to make an arrest for the murders for seven months. Only after Zach Gervais, in yet another unprovoked attack, was killed did Mr. Cruse take action and arrest the assailant. If there was two murders in the neighborhood of Supreme Court Judge Mike Mcgrath you can be assured the assailant would not go at large for seven months to kill another judge. Scott Cruse said they were just too busy to get the murder suspect arrested. Zach Gervais should not have died because he did not live in Judge McGrath's neighborhood. Annette Carter. Ms Carter was previously employed with Probation and Parole, most recently as the Reentry Program Manager in the Director's Office. Reentry refers to the offender transitioning from a correctional facility to the community. Annette Carter has repeatedly stated that since Pre-Release Centers are private, contracted facilities they are not required to provide offender records from the contracted facility to The Montana Department of Corrections. Essentially, Montana Department of Corrections has no records as to how the offender responded to authority, interactions with other offenders and the public at large. There are no records as to job performance in the community or how the offender responded to treatment. I addressed this issue, March 4, in a blog titled Montana Department of Corrections - A Shameful Failure. How can you successfully complete your job as reentry manager if you don't know the issues and needs of the offender? Oh wait, you need records for that information! You can't successfully complete the job. Mike Batista. As Administrator for the Department of Justice Investigations, he allowed his investigators to falsify or omit crucial information when applying for search warrants. He allowed his investigators to aid and abet other investigators to cover up their actions in omitting crucial information for search warrant applications. As Director for the Department of Corrections, he was directly responsible for the overcrowding of Crossroads Correctional Facility and he allowed the unprecedented revocations of offenders, particularly those of Native American descent, to overcrowd all correctional facilities. See my previous post, The Real Legacy of Mike Batista. These three board members have released many serious offenders to Parole status based on certain conditions. These standard conditions are taken directly from the BOPP website: Parole upon completion of Pre-release. Regular Chemical Dependency counseling; regular Mental Health counseling; comply with court ordered conditions; restricted from entering any place where gambling takes place; shall not enter any place where intoxicants are the chief item of sale; restricted from participating in any medical marijuana program. Parolees are transitioned to private, contract Pre-Release Centers where arbitrary decisions, made by unqualified personnel, decide whether the offender is transitioning properly. These "arbitrarily decided" incarceration records from these private, contract centers are not transferred to Probation and Parole when the offender transitions to community supervision. The Probation and Parole officer has to make arbitrary decisions as to whether the parolee is allowed to continue parole or be revoked because they do not know whether the parolee successfully completed prerelease. The following are qualifications for Resident Assistants at CCCS Inc, known as Butte Prerelease. Resident Assistants are the eyes and ears for recording how the offender responds to authority, interacts with other offenders and the public at large. These qualifications are taken directly from the website for CCCS: CCCS, Inc. is accepting applications for the following positions: Resident Assistant, Client Technician, and Security Technicians, at all of our SW Montana facilities. The entry level positions provide supervisory, security, transportation, and recreation services as required by the individual program. These positions requires High School diploma or equivalent. The qualifications for working at Town Pump:EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE:High school diploma or general education degree (GED); and related experience; or equivalent combination of education and experience. The Montana Board of Pardons and Parole transitioned from volunteer board members to a quarter of a million dollar, Governor appointed board because of concerns of arbitrary decisions. These board members come with serious background job performance. BOPP then send parolees with serious offenses, to private, contract facilities where arbitrary decisions are made by unqualified personnel with a high school diploma or a GED. These serious offenders are then released into the community, supervised by probation officers that have to make arbitrary decisions based on not knowing how the offender responded to treatment or even what treatment the offender received at the prerelease center. We could just release these offenders to Town Pump and have the same outcome. Parole should be granted. Many offenders have been incarcerated for too many years. The State of Montana will now pay a quarter of a million dollars a year to address concerns of arbitrary decisions, only to send parolees to prerelease centers where arbitrary decisions are made by someone with a high school diploma and then onto community supervision where parole officers make arbitrary decisions because they don't have the records of the arbitrary decisions made at prerelease. So what did BOPP accomplish? Nothing. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.