Parole officer

Sorry, no sympathy from me towards Max. First, Max doesn't go to the halfway house as agreed. Second, he arrives LATE for his first meeting with his PO AND compounds the problem by rejecting any responsibility for the robbery that put him in jail in the first place. Third, he violates his parole by getting in touch with Busey. Fourth, he allows Busey to do drugs in his room. Fifth, when confronted unexpectedly by the PO already in his room (courtesy of the Manager, although the viewer has NO IDEA of how LONG the PO has been in the room) Max LIES to the PO about the amount of his weekly rent. Think the PO doesn't know Max is lying about the rate (he was let in by the Manager, remember? Think he may have asked the Manager the weekly rate?). Sixth, Max lies to the PO about the burnt matches. Sorry! SIX strikes is three MORE than generally needed and Max is OUT!

The interesting thing is the film subverts conventional morality. We follow Dembo and see things through his eyes, and we think that Dembo is just trying to get his life together and must endure humiliations from the PO. When you examine it objectively, Dembo gives hints of his anti-social proclivities from the get-go. When he orders a hot dog at a hot dog stand, he tries to leave without paying. The cashier reminds him to pay. Dembo acts dumb like he forgot. When it happens, we assume it's an honest mistake. But when you consider Dembo's future actions, it is a forestaste of Dembo's subsequent criminal rampage in the 2nd half of the film.

Dembo knew that he could fudge the system a little bit by avoiding the half-way house as long as he expressed appropriate remorse to the PO. He even tells the PO, "I don't have an attitude, what kind of attitude do you want me to have?" Dembo probably figures that slight infractions of his parole agreement will not land him back in prison. Prisons are overcrowded, and he figures there are little things he can get away with.

I think the PO was being more than fair in allowing Dembo to avoid going to a halfway house as long as he gets a place and finds a job within a week. Or perhaps the PO wants Dembo to fail, and is allowing Dembo enough rope to hang himself. Or maybe halfway houses are too crowded, and PO's are encouraged to let cons finds places on their own.

The film definitely paints the PO as a sadistic jerk, as he makes offensive jokes about Polish people. He is also overweight and wears ugly clothes, and has an annoying way about him, along with a whiny voice. I will give M. Emmett Walsh a great deal of credit for playing this character without any trace of vanity.

So the question remains, was Dembo destined to go back into a life of crime, or was he driven to it by the PO's obnoxious and sadistic behavior? I think he would have gone back to the life of crime, because one of the first things he does is visit one of his partners in crime once he's free. He does get a job, true, but I think that is just a time-marker while he figures out his next score.

A big part of what the film is dealing with is recidivism. On the commentary Hoffman says that Bunker told him his character would have been a star in prison. He would probably run things like gambling and the other cons would look up to him. When he gets out he is bascially a nobody who struggles just to get a low paying job. He's bound to hear that his other con friends are making big scores. All this will make him want to relapse.

In the film he's trying to make what for him is an honest effort to go straight. A parole officer like a police officer has something called discretion. Once Dembo tests clean he could let it go with a warning, but instead he leans on him. I think Bunker's making the point that if we're serious about rehabilitation, this isn't the way to go about it. The con should be given some leeway.

I think that Dembo was likely to end up prison in general, but it is certain that the PO wasn't helping him. The PO was a self-centered, attention-deprived a-hole and this is best illustrated by him deciding to take Dembo in after hearing that he has a date, not to mention keeping him there longer than necessary. And for whoever said that this was the PO showing Dembo that he's generally going about this the wrong way, I really disagree, because if that were so, he wouldn't have been so condescending and arrogant.

The PO wasn't very discreet in how much affirmation of authority he needed and he would be at it without any regard to consequences for others. In essence, he was a catalyst.