The Missouri Legislature gets a second chance today. Members of the Joint Committee on Corrections will again have the opportunity to learn why Brian Walters did not get help after he told a counselor that he was having fantasies of rape and murder. The counselor told a parole officer, and the parole officer spoke to Walters, who confirmed the counselor's account.

The parole officer, Christopher Sarchett, did not mince words in his report. He wrote that Walters "emphasized to this officer that he has a problem and needs help. Based on Walter's high risk behavior this officer is concerned about his actions if left in the community without proper treatment. Therefore this officer respectfully recommends to the Board that Walter be supervised as a sex offender, and that a special condition requiring him to successfully complete an approved treatment program designed specifically for sex offenders be added."

But Walters did not get help. Police say that 10 days after he was eventually released from prison, he raped and murdered Nancy Miller, a retired Post-Dispatch editor and columnist.

After this newspaper revealed that Walters had told a counselor, and then a parole officer, about his sadistic fantasies, the legislators decided to look into the matter.

Last week, Larry Crawford, the director of the Department of Corrections, appeared in front of the committee. We're overworked, he said. Crawford is a former member of the House himself and was appointed to the DOC job after being term-limited out. His former colleagues were filled with sympathy.

"I hate that this happened, but I think you guys did the best that you could," said Rep. Van Kelly, R-Norwood.

That's a low bar to set even for the legislators.

But today the legislators get a second chance. Best of all, the talk in Jefferson City is that Steve Long, the chairman of the Board of Probation and Parole, will appear with Crawford. This would be a welcome development, because Long is a corrections professional, who almost surely knows exactly what went wrong.

So what should the legislators ask him?

First of all, they should write on their sleeves this date — July 27, 2005.

That's the fail-safe date. Even if everything else went wrong, all mistakes should have been corrected on that date.

But let's start at the beginning. Sarchett wrote his Parole Special Release Report in April 2003 when Walters was at the St. Louis Community Release Center, waiting to be released into the community. Before Walters could be released, he was arrested for burglary and sent back to prison.

He was sent to the diagnostic center at Bonne Terre. An institutional parole officer there should have reviewed the report. Also, there is a unit in the central office that deals with parole and probation violators being returned to prison. Somebody in that unit was assigned the case.

What happened? Did people overlook this startling report? Or perhaps somebody higher up made the decision that Walters wouldn't be in prison long enough to get him into the sexual offender program at Farmington.

From Bonne Terre, Walters bounced through the system. He was at Algoa, Pacific, Bowling Green, Moberly, Tipton, Algoa again, Tipton again and Moberly again before being released. Institutional parole officers should have seen his file as he bounced along. Perhaps they didn't. His stays were short.

But on July 27, 2005, Walters had a parole hearing. He was in Moberly. An institutional parole officer had to read his report. Let me repeat that. Walters had a parole hearing. Somebody had to read the report. And somebody apparently did. The parole was quickly turned down.

Why then was nothing done?

I've heard from a number of parole officers who talk about a "zero population" mandate. Crawford was given instructions to keep costs down, the parole officers say, and consequently, recommendations to return offenders to prison or to add special conditions to parole that could delay an offender's release are often ignored. Did this play a role in the Walters case? After all, his conditional release date could have been extended.

Another note. A member of the parole board should have read the report before Walters was given his conditional release. Who was that member?

And finally, if Crawford or Long argue that there is a waiting list to get into the sexual offender program at Moberly, the legislators should know there are other options.

There are "regional sex offender specialists" who monitor private practitioners who provide treatment to offenders while on probation or parole. That was the kind of program Sarchett so strongly recommended in April 2003.

Instead, Walters was given no help. He was released to his parents. Not knowing what else to do, they got him in Alcoholics Anonymous. As if drinking were his problem.