EDITORIAL: Governor's proposed fix comes too late to save child

Apr. 21—Gov. J.B. Pritzker is bulking up the staff at the state's Prisoner Review Board after an ill-conceived board decision led directly to the stabbing death of an 11-year-old boy.

Pritzker's decision to appoint Robert Montgomery as the board's executive director is not quite the equivalent of re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. But it's clear the board needs all the help it can get when making decisions about releasing prison inmates back into society.

For those who don't know, the PRB is a secretive and separate entity in the state's corrections department made up of gubernatorial appointees who are — at least theoretically — required to be confirmed by the Illinois Senate.

That hasn't always been the case because the governor has gamed appointment timing rules in ways that have circumvented Senate oversight.

There are two possible explanations for his actions. Either the governor wants marginal appointees to evade scrutiny, or members of the Senate don't want to be on record as voting to confirm Pritzker's marginal appointees. It's probably a combination of both possibilities.

At any rate, the PRB approves release decisions and conditions for paroled inmates.

That is a huge responsibility fraught with peril for both board members and the public. If board members err, they bear personal responsibility. If an inmate returns to his criminal or violent proclivities, the public suffers.

Controversy recently surrounded the board because on March 12 it made a catastrophically bad decision involving inmate Crosetti Brand, no doubt due to the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

One day after his release, Brand went to the home of a former girlfriend who had sought an order of protection against him just a month before. She sought the order because after Brand was released in February, he tried to break into her house.

She was denied the court order because Brand's parole was revoked. Why he came back before the PRB for a second parole is as unclear as it was unwise.

The very next day after his second parole, Brand went to his ex-girlfriend's home and stabbed her. When her son tried to protect her, Brand stabbed him to death.

This is an example of government at its absolute worst, a terrible parole decision leading directly to the death of an innocent child.

Naturally, there's been considerable controversy and plenty of finger-pointing. The governor has been publicly critical of his board. Two members, including board chairman Donald Shelton of Champaign, have resigned. Now the governor is proposing a bureaucratic fix to ease public concern.

It's no secret that the administrations of former Gov. Bruce Rauner and Pritzker have made it a priority to reduce the state's prison population as fast as possible.

As a consequence, the prison population has fallen from around 40,000 to roughly 29,000. That decline represents a lot of convicted felons who are returning to society and bringing all their personal problems — mental illness, drug and alcohol problems, violent tendencies and criminal outlooks — with them.

If only all of them were as intent on living a productive and law-abiding life as they claim when they go before the parole board. Clearly, they are not.

That's why the PRB's job is a crap-shoot in which public safety depends on how board members roll the dice. That's just one reason why the governor's rush to empty the prisons ought to be slowed from a torrent to a trickle.