It’s highly disturbing to read how the probation and parole system lost control of a detainee last week in Butler.

Authorities on Friday were looking for 58-year-old Richard J. Dortman of Butler. Dortman reportedly escaped home detention by removing his electronic monitoring bracelet earlier in the week.

That’s bothersome, especially knowing that Dortman is not the first individual this year to cut off a monitoring bracelet and elude house arrest. A Butler woman serving house arrest for opioid possession removed her bracelet and eluded capture from Jan. 28 until March 24.

But the reliability of the bracelets is only part of the reason why the occasion should alarm the community.

Here’s a more compelling reason: Apparently this most recent episode began when Dortman came home drunk Friday afternoon and was asked to leave.

Two weeks earlier, Dortman was granted parole, was fitted with the monitoring bracelet and was released to live in the sober-living house on Third Avenue, which is operated by MHY Family Services.

When he came home intoxicated, the house manager sent him away — asked Dortman to leave, the manager later told detectives.

That’s when the defendant apparently walked away, then cut off the monitoring bracelet, triggering its tamper alarm. That’s what alerted probation officers, who tracked the alarm to find the bracelet in a parking lot near Virginia Avenue in Butler.

We’re baffled now.

Is the defendant a menace to the public? If he is, then the monitoring bracelets are proving inadequate to keep track of dangerous individuals.

At what point was it clear that the defendant had violated terms of his parole? Wasn’t that the time for the MHY supervisor to notify authorities to come get the violator?

By arriving at the sober-living house intoxicated, the defendant already has shown he’s not prepared to fend for himself in society. The whole notion of parole is a controlled environment intended to ease the offender back into a state of autonomous responsibility — and if the offender has show an inacapacity for responsibility, isn’t the management of that controlled environment responsible for his safety — and ours?

To be fair, the MHY manager had no way of anticipating the man would cut off his bracelet. Maybe they’re just too flimsy to be practical.

Something’s too flimsy.

We respectfully suggest the county take a hard look at this case and others like it. Parole and probation are positive steps and tools available for the rehabilitation of offenders who have worked hard and earned the privilege. Let’s not dole it out to those who demonstrate that they haven’t done so.

— TAH