Often, Parole Is One Stop on the Way Back to Prison Since then, Mr. Peterson has become an apprentice plumber, but he has had his parole revoked three more
times, department records show. Once it was revoked for possession of a dangerous weapon — a serious issue
to the department, given his original conviction — though his mother and lawyer say it was only a
plumber's knife his parole agent found in his toolbox when the agent searched Mr. Peterson's truck.

The next time it was again for possession of a dangerous weapon, what the parole agent described as a hand
grenade in Mr. Peterson's bedroom. Mr. Peterson's sister said it was actually a toy grenade she had bought
for her Halloween costume.

Then last spring Mr. Peterson was charged with assault and making a terrorist threat when he got into an
argument with a former girlfriend, who he said had been harassing his current girlfriend. A department
spokesman said the former girlfriend's mother testified against him, but Mr. Peterson's boss in the plumber's
union, who tried to testify for him, was excluded from the hearing.

So far, Mr. Peterson has spent a year and 11 months in prison on parole revocations, almost as long as he
did on his original two- year sentence. And the total could go on almost indefinitely, because under
California law, each time Mr. Peterson has his parole revoked, he stops earning credit toward his original
three-year parole term. The parole revocations themselves, in California, can last from a few weeks to a year.