An estimated half of all parolees will be back in prison within a year of their releases. About 65 percent will return within three years. Some say privately the "dirty little secret" in the corrections department is that parole violators make up about half of the prison's annual population growth.

Some offenders will violate their parole agreements by repeatedly using drugs or failing to check in. Others will commit crimes from burglary to murder. Mike Mayer, AP&P Salt Lake area regional administrator, estimates as many as 15 parolees return to prison each week.

"Unfortunately, most go back to jail, but sometimes that's the only way to save their lives," said Martin Pick, a probation officer for five years.

On any given day, about 600 offenders are on the lam and out of contact with their agents. They are considered fugitives.

Bulging caseload

One of the biggest challenges for the overloaded Utah Department of Corrections is regularly tracking probationers and parolees while trying to keep them from punching their tickets back to an already crowded prison.

The 140 probation and parole officers who cover Salt Lake and Summit counties have on average 60 to 70 people on their caseloads. It's a low-pay, high-turnover job marked by frequent burnout.

Behind the counter on a December day, parole agent Mark Breinholt is yelling into his cell phone.

"The only reason you are out of prison is because I told the board you'd do some treatment and intervention," he says. "What you are doing is not cutting it."

This is a guy with eight DUIs, Breinholt explains. He was arrested on a parole violation and sent back to prison. "But I talked to his mother," Breinholt says. "I could have left him in prison for the holidays, could have left him sitting in there for four months, but I've got a soft spot in my heart ...."

But now the con is playing him.

Alcoholics Anonymous meetings do not qualify as substance-abuse treatment, he chides the offender.

"This is every day," said Brown, an AP&P manager who gets the rundown on Breinholt's offender's actions. Not long after, he watches agents lead a parole violator to a patrol car. "It's a very intense process," Brown said. "It's time-consuming."

"In general, the public doesn't understand what this part of corrections does," said Sierra Worley, an AP&P agent. "They know about the prison, but they don't know that our whole goal is to help the offender succeed so they don't end up incarcerated again."

So the officers are watching all the time.