As I was running my laps early this morning, I saw Patrick, a prisoner I remembered from Lompoc Camp, walking around the track and looking a little disoriented. A judge ordered Patrick’s return to prison for violating conditions of his supervised release. It’s a sad story, but one that every prisoner and every prisoner’s family members should understand.

Patrick was an older prisoner, but he kept himself remarkably fit during the four years that he served. He was very bright, having earned a law degree and an MBA from UCLA during the 1970s. When authorities transferred me from Lompoc Camp to Taft Camp, Patrick was one of the men whose company I would miss.

When I asked Patrick to explain what happened, I could tell that he was somewhat embarrassed. He once led an extremely successful career and had earned millions of dollars as a financial professional. I empathized with his disgrace and listened patiently as he told me about the personal struggles he faced when he returned to Los Angeles from Lompoc Camp.

At 70 years old, Patrick told me that he had a difficult time in his search for employment. He had lost his license to practice law or work as an accountant with his felony conviction. After six months of searching, Patrick found a job working the telephones as a debt consolidator. With millions of homes in foreclosure, it was one of the few sectors where Patrick could persuade a business owner to extend the courtesy of employment despite his felony conviction. In time, Patrick began to earn a livable wage, and he felt good about his work—helping people keep their homes.

The U.S. probation officer who supervised Patrick’s release made regularly scheduled trips and unannounced visits to his residence and to his place of employment. She provided him with travel boundaries that he could not breach without prior written authorization. If Patrick needed to travel for work-related purposes, permission was granted in most cases, but if he requested permission to travel for leisure, Patrick said that he faced a higher hurdle.

Part of Patrick’s sentence required that he complete three years of supervised release without incident. He completed two years and seven months without a problem, and he was looking forward to finishing the final five months in order to receive an official discharge from his sentence. But instead, Patrick’s probation officer surprised him with a request for all of his credit card statements. When the probation officer reviewed the statements, she noticed that Patrick had breached the boundaries by driving and charging food, gas, and lodging to his credit card in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, and San Diego—despite his not being allowed to travel outside the Los Angeles area without written authorization. As a consequence of violating the rules, a judge sentenced Patrick to one year in prison to be followed by an additional two years of living under the scrutiny of supervised release.

Men and women with stories just like Patrick’s fill our nation’s prison system. Those stories provide all the reason in the world for prisoners to follow the rules of supervised release scrupulously, and for their loved ones to help.

I ran 3 miles and followed with 200 pushups.

[consecutive running log: 4,029 miles over 455 days]

[pushups in 2010: 24,800]

Friday, 12 March 2010

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