A team of parole officers in the Cedar Rapids area will begin tracking some convicted offenders released on probation or parole who are considered most likely to re-offend.Charles Larson, the U-S Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, says experience and statistics prove a majority of crimes are committed by a certain smaller number of criminals. Larson’s federal office is teaming up with the state’s 6th judicial district on this project.He says the district’s established a “Top 25” list of people who’ll be watched closely and if they break rules of their release, they’ll be sent back to jail or prison, depending on where they’d been serving time. Of particular interest will be crimes committed with guns, since it’s an offense just for a felon to have one. Larson says it won’t be tough to make up a list of a “Top 25” offenders who’d bear watching most closely.He says there’s a “matrix” of issues used to evaluate how an offender, like how many and what kind of crimes they committed, their response to drug-treatment programs in prison, and how they behaved when they were still behind bars. Larson says probation and parole are a privilege, not a right. Intensive monitoring could include daily home visits, drug testing and curfew checks. The program operates under a “zero tolerance” standard.
