Not all floor supervisors at halfway houses for ex-cons and addicts actually "see skin" when they conduct required nightly checks to make sure residents are indoors. So sometimes things happpen. Say, a guy who's checked off as "in" at night is really "out;" having reportedly bribed a staffer, left a dummy in his bed, and snuck out a side window. He gets in a nasty tangle outside a bar, and later that same night ends up dead somewhere else. The Seattle Times reports today on a federal investigation revealing disturbing details in the case of Terrell Milam.

Milam spent 10 years in the federal pen for manslughter, and after violating his parole was sent to Pioneer Fellowship House in Seattle, where he was supposed to be indoors at night. Period. But on the night his brother said Milam attacked Seahawk Ken Hamlin outside a Pioneer Square nightclub and later ended up dead, Milam left a dummy in his bed at Pioneer Fellowship House in Seattle and snuck out a side window.

Milam's wife and brother maintain that Milam and other inmates bribed their way out of the halfway house by paying $50 a night to have their names added to nightly head-count lists when they were gone....A female staff member on duty the night Milam was killed admitted "she did not always ensure she saw skin when she conducted her counts." .....Milam's younger brother, Tramaine Isabell, said both Milam and his roommate "got out by paying this lady not to look for skin" with the understanding that they needed to sneak back into the facility before her shift ended at 6 a.m.

"He said, 'I've got this [woman] in there and I be hitting her off for 50 bucks ... and in return, all I have to do is put my backpack in the bed and she knows to miss me,' " Isabell said....Milam's wife, Olamae Milam, said she lived at Pioneer Fellowship House on six occasions for parole violations. She said she spent three weeks at the facility this summer and was released Aug. 30. "Everybody is in there drinking every night and paying staff to leave every night," she said. "It's still the same thing." A second female employee at Pioneer claimed she was Milam's "childhood sweetheart" and that they renewed their friendship when Milam entered the halfway house, the report says.

As the Times notes, Pioneer Human Services operates six Seattle-area homes to help ex-cons and addicts "reintegrate into the community."

Soft sentencing alternatives don't seem to boost odds of reintegration to straight life any more than more time in the pen. At least in jail for violating his parole, Milam wouldn't have escaped out a window, wouldn't have reportedly become involved in a vicious assault, and wouldn't have ended up dead later the same night.

Lack of prison space is a big issue, but if new prisons are built on budget and managed competently, judges and juries at least have leeway to impose real consequences for more criminals. In the event added prison capacity fails to materialize, far stricter accountability is required from government-subsidized social service providers such as Pioneer Fellowship House.

For instance, even more pressing than whether nightly head-counts are conducted properly, what is the recidivism rate for residents of such facilities? Seattle Democrats love to sneer at conservatives talking about performance audits, but this is a classic example of the kinds of things performance auditors should be liberally funded to investigate.

Milam's case, and the testimony of Milam's brother and wife reveal Pioneer Fellowship House to be - or at least to have been - an utter and complete fraud. Are we really to believe this is an isolated example in the booming Seattle social services industry?