On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced plans to use deputies to track parolees released from state prisons.

While we thank Sheriff Lee Baca, we agree with Supervisor Michael Antonovich who said that Los Angeles County will be “taking our law enforcement personnel, who should be out fighting gangs ... to do the state's mothering of these parolees.”

The County estimates that about 7,700 parolees are living in Los Angeles County and will be put on "non-revocable parole'' under a prison reform law that took effect in January. Sheriff Baca has said that 6,500 of those released will end up in LA County, since they are released to the jurisdiction where they committed their last crime.

California’s early release program in practice: Kevin Peterson was arrested for attempted rape less than 24 hours after release from Sacramento County Main Jail. Peterson said he was surprised he was released from jail ahead of schedule, but said, "it wasn't a bad deal."

The new law allowing for early releases has changed state law in some significant ways:

• Felons in state prisons will have their confinement cut in half. For every six months a criminal serves in confinement, that criminal will receive an additional six months of early release credit.
• Criminals in local jails will also have their sentences reduced. County jail inmates will now receive two days of credit for every four days served. As for state inmates, it provides one-day credit for one day served for inmates who are in reception centers (newly admitted), or on wait lists for programs or prison jobs which provide day-for- day credit.
• For state prisoners, CDCR has begun determining which prisoners to release without parole supervision, also known as non-revocable parole.
• Rehabilitation programs in state prisons are being gutted and 600 to 800 vocational and educational prison instructors will be given pink slips.

As a tidal wave of prisoners are released back into our community without rehabilitation services or parole supervision, we remain concerned that communities throughout California are less safe today because of this irresponsible early-release program.

We are heartened by Sacramento County Judge Loren McMaster’s order on Wednesday for a temporary halt in that county's early releases, but are concerned about the number of released state inmates who are still expected to be heading to LA County under this program.

A US DOJ study shows that 73.3% of parolees incarcerated for property crimes are rearrested within three years of their release---in fact, per the study, they have a higher re-offense rate than those in for “violent” crimes.

A tidal wave of prisoners is being released back into our community without rehabilitation services or parole supervision. Under the new law, the Department of Corrections is washing their hands of these inmates. With no parole conditions and non-revocability, these inmates will not be put back into prison until they are arrested, tried and convicted of a new crime.

The timing could not be worse for our local officials to consider police layoffs as a means of solving the city budget crisis. Local governments must maintain public safety resources to prevent worsening the effects of the recession and to put our city on the road to economic recovery.