Pointing Fingers

The case of Phillip Garrido and Jaycee Lee Dugard has caused a lot of commotion around the country. We've all heard the story about this kindap and sexual abuse case that took place almost twenty years ago and took so long to be resolved. The main question was why wasn’t Garrido captured sooner? Well, there are different sides to the story but almost all put the blame on the parole supervision of the Department of Corrections of California. The much anticipated "Garrido Report" was released two months after the arrest by the Office of the Inspector General. This report bashes on Corrections for their poor parole supervision techniques.

The New York Times reports that one of the main criticisms of parole officials is that they failed to realize who Jaycee really was after so many home visits. However, there weren’t very many visits in the first place throughout the supervision. In one of those visits, officials became aware that there was a child living in the Garrido home and didn’t do anything. Maybe they forgot that Garrido was a sex offender or maybe they didn’t make the connection; either way this was irresponsible and could have helped end this kidnapping case a lot sooner.



The truth is that there were too many parties involved since the beginning, too many law enforcement agencies “working together.” Garrido was convicted in 1977 by state and federal court. The federal government sentenced him to fifty years in prison, while the state of Nevada sentenced him to 5years-to-life in prison. After this it gets messy; the federal government paroled Garrido after serving only eleven years of his fifty year sentence….isn’t there something wrong here?!!! This was the first mistake. This man was convicted of a serious crime and was paroled before serving even half of his original sentence. It was then that he was released to Nevada authorities to serve his state sentence and mistake #2 occurred; he was paroled AGAIN after only seven months from being received. I don’t know if it was Garrido’s sympathetic face that made officials feel that he was ok to be released or if they were really idiots. Then California came in the picture because this is where he was serving his paroles. Dumping Garrido on California must have been very convenient for the federal government and Nevada, washing their hands from this mess. Now California is the “bad guy” for not capturing this guy and for their poor parole supervision. It is unfortunate that only California is at the center of attention and when the federal government and Nevada deserve some of the blame as well.