LONG BEACH, Calif. \u2014 On a warm spring morning, a lone Los Angeles County probation officer stood across from a parking lot lined with cars full of homeless families. His goal was to meet with men who had recently left prison, some with no place to call home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several county Probation Department colleagues had been scheduled to join the officer in the parking lot. As part of the agency\u2019s efforts to reach former inmates struggling to find housing, officers staff vans that fan out across the county and serve as mobile resources centers. But at the last minute, officials said, the probation officers had been rerouted to work in understaffed county residential facilities for juvenile offenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Undeterred, the officer got to work. Alberto Perez, 46, a recently released prisoner who had spent most of his adult life cycling in and out of California prisons, walked up to him and asked for help getting a pair of construction boots. Perez\u2019s most recent conviction was for illegal gun possession. The officer cut to the chase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere are you sleeping?\u201d the officer asked. Perez said he\u2019d been couch surfing. \u201cYou trying to put me in the shelter?\u201d Perez asked. \u201cI don\u2019t have anything else to offer,\u201d the officer replied. Perez immediately refused and walked away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The officer said he wasn\u2019t authorized to give an interview, but Perez explained his decision. He said the shelter, where he was required to obey strict rules regarding his comings and goings, mirrored life in prison. \u201cA shelter is worse than a jail,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy do I have to be in a controlled, prisonlike environment to get assistance? That\u2019s what I don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
California, unlike other states with large prison populations, releases inmates without requiring them to have places to live. Correctional officials in other states with large prison populations, such as New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Illinois, mandate that parolees have housing when they leave prison. If they don\u2019t, they are required to live in halfway houses or, in some states, shelters. Those who refuse can end up back behind bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since 2019, at least 36,400 inmates have been released from California state prisons without fixed addresses. A quarter of them \u2014 roughly 8,900 people \u2014 were sent to Los Angeles County, according to an NBC News analysis of data obtained through public records requests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number of homeless former prisoners arriving in Los Angeles County nearly doubled from 1,621 in 2019 to 2,945 in 2020, when officials accelerated releases in response to the pandemic. Another 2,371 were released last year, according to the data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Los Angeles County probation officers, who are tasked with monitoring low-level felons released from prison, are already struggling with dwindling staffing, enormous caseloads and being assaulted on the job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Los Angeles County probation officials denied that officers were diverted to a juvenile facility and said the van didn\u2019t arrive in Long Beach because the driver had a family emergency. But current officers and supervisors who asked not to be named said the county is struggling to fulfill its mandate\u2002<\/a>to \u201cmeet clients where they are.\u201d The vans are just one part of an increasingly broken system that sends thousands of felons to the streets with limited support and monitoring, according to interviews with parole and probation officers, former prison officials and inmates, and re-entry advocates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe manpower and resources aren\u2019t there,\u201d said Ralph Diaz, who ran California\u2019s prison system from September 2018 to October 2020. \u201cI don\u2019t see how it\u2019s going to improve without some major intervention.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of multiple factors, including the pandemic, the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County has continued to rise in recent years \u2014 topping more than 75,000, according to the latest tally<\/a> by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority \u2014 despite major efforts to stem the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, the proportion of homeless people who spent time in prison has risen. Last year, 1 in 5 homeless people in Los Angeles County reported being on parole. Former prison officials blamed the increases on a round of criminal justice reforms that went into effect five years ago and gave many inmates early release dates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the pandemic hit, and prisons pushed people out even faster. \u201cWe knew this was going to be a disaster,\u201d said Douglas Eckenrod, the former deputy director of parole for the California prison system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s unclear how the rise in homeless parolees has affected public safety in the city of Los Angeles. Since 2018, the city police department has required officers to document whether suspects were homeless. For seven months, NBC News requested the number of homeless parolees arrested in violent crimes from the Los Angeles Police Department. Officials failed to provide it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But being homeless does increase the odds of becoming a victim of a violent offense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Twenty-four percent of homicide victims in the city of Los Angeles last year were homeless,\u2002even though the unhoused make up only 1%<\/a> of the city\u2019s population<\/a>, NBC Los Angeles<\/a> reported in January. Out of 381 homicide victims, 92 were homeless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen you are living amongst homeless people, whether you\u2019re a felon or not, you are living amongst a high-risk and statistically more violent group of individuals,\u201d Eckenrod said. \u201cIt becomes a petri dish of violence.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMany times the homeless population is victimizing itself,\u201d he added. \u201cThey are both the perpetrator and the victims.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n State and federal officials have spent more than $12 billion<\/a> since 2018 to combat homelessness in California, with limited results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n California, which has 12% of the U.S. population, is home to nearly one-third of the nation\u2019s homeless population, with numbers on the rise, according to researchers\u2002<\/a>at the University of California, San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. Last year, 17% of people on parole said they were homeless, according to data obtained from the California prison system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Gabriella Aguilera, a regional parole administrator with the state corrections department, said the agency is doing the best it can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is not illegal to be homeless,\u201d Aguilera said. \u201cWe do have formerly incarcerated offenders who want to be homeless and don\u2019t want any programs that we offer. And in order to not violate any type of due process or their rights, we ultimately allow that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Homeless people recently released from prison have particularly long odds of finding housing. Some public housing programs bar people convicted of certain felonies. The options are particularly limited for formerly incarcerated men who struggle with drug addiction and mental health issues, advocates say. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked this winter how many homeless offenders are under its purview, the Los Angeles County Probation Department, under its previous chief, said it could provide only approximate figures. In June, after a new chief took over, officials said that on average there were 1,192 homeless offenders on their roster every month. And 35% of them were in housing programs. A department spokesman said he couldn\u2019t explain why the department originally released approximate numbers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Housing availability was even lower for people who applied through a separate county program known as the bridge housing program. A spokesman for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said in May that 184 beds were designated for program participants countywide. The beds are open from three months to a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Bornman, a former Los Angeles County sheriff\u2019s captain whose duties included trying to find shelter for people leaving jail, said it was a constant struggle. \u201cWe would have maybe 1,000 inmates released, and we\u2019d be lucky to place three,\u201d Bornman said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Former inmates are often left on their own to figure out how to apply for housing. But many struggle with illiteracy, how to use a smartphone or how to get online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe biggest problem is that there is no continuum of care,\u201d said Mara Taylor, the founder of Going Out by Going In<\/a>, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group of hundreds of former inmates who help recently released felons navigate life on the outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Terri Hardy, a spokesperson for the corrections department, said prisons offer an array of classes, from basic reading to college level, as well as job training to help prepare inmates to find employment when they are released. The agency said it had spent more than $84 million as of last year on housing and support programs for people on parole, which can last from six to 15 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile we understand how important it is to deal with this initial homeless issue right now, we are definitely working on ways to work on this issue in a long-term, more systemic way,\u201d Hardy said. \u201cWe have extended the runway within the institutions. We are training them and giving them more ground and preparing them while they are incarcerated.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n California\u2019s prison system was overhauled in 2011. At the time, about 156,000 inmates were squeezed into the state\u2019s prisons, double the legal capacity. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled\u2002<\/a>that the overcrowded conditions were \u201ctoxic,\u201d \u201cexceptional\u201d and unconstitutional. The court ordered the state to release inmates as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among other changes, legislators created a two-tier parole system that shifted inmates with nonviolent felonies to county supervision. Counties across the state have responded to the influx differently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The San Diego County Probation Department contracts with a nonprofit group that picks up released prisoners outside prison gates and takes them to a transitional center where they have access to housing for 90 days. In Sacramento, probation officers take some transient former inmates to a city-run tent encampment that\u2019s staffed around the clock and has bathrooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\u2018We knew this was going to be a disaster\u2019<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u2018No one gives a f— about prisoners\u2019<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n