Top California prison official blasts parole system in Dugard case

Nov 4, 2009, 22:52 GMT

San Francisco - California's top prison watchdog issued a damning report Wednesday that said the state's parole system failed in basic measures, which could have led to the apprehension of convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido years before his victim Jaycee Dugard was released after 18 years in captivity.

The report by California Inspector General David R Shaw found that the state parole division supervising Garrido for the past decade could have discovered Dugard, and her two children fathered by him, much earlier than August, when he was arrested.

The report said Garrido 'committed numerous parole violations and that the department failed to properly supervise Garrido and missed numerous opportunities to discover his victims.'

The department also failed to train parole agents to conduct parolee home visits, failed to properly supervise parole agents responsible for Garrido and failed to adequately classify Garrido, the report said.

The report blasted the satellite tracking systems trumpeted by state prison officials and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a tool for monitoring sex offenders, often with ankle bracelets, calling them ineffective and saying they give the public a false sense of security.

Shaw said parole agents didn't revoke Garrido's parole and send him to prison when his tracking device indicated that he had strayed beyond the permitted radius from his home.

They also failed to properly investigate obvious clues to the hidden compound where Dugard and her daughters were kept even when a parole officer discovered a young girl at the house on one of his visits, the report said.

Garrido and his wife Nancy are accused of kidnapping Dugard outside her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991, when she was 11. They allegedly held her for 18 years in a tent encampment in the yard of their suburban home in Antioch, central California, during which time Garrido repeatedly raped her and fathered two girls with her.

The couple has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, rape and imprisonment charges.

Dugard and her two daughters, aged 14 and 11, are currently reunited with the family at a secret location.

Dugard was freed in August after a police officer at the University of California, Berkeley, became suspicious after spotting Garrido on the campus with Dugard's two daughters.