376
Souter, J., dissenting
nality he will be neglecting the public safety, and if he brings a revocation petition without enough evidence to sustain it he can hardly look forward to professional advancement. R. Prus & J. Stratton, Parole Revocation Decisionmaking: Private Typings and Official Designations, 40 Federal Probation 51 (Mar. 1976). And as for competitiveness, one need only ask whether a parole officer would rather leave the credit to state or local police when a parolee has to be brought to book.
The Court, of course, does not mean to deny that parole officers are subject to some temptation to skirt the limits on search and seizure, but it believes that deterrents other than the evidentiary exclusion will suffice. The Court contends that parole agents will be kept within bounds by "depart-mental training and discipline and the threat of damages actions." Ante, at 369. The same, of course, might be said of the police, and yet as to them such arguments are not heard, perhaps for the same reason that the Court's suggestion sounds hollow as to parole officers. The Court points to no specific departmental training regulation; it cites no instance of discipline imposed on a Pennsylvania parole officer for conducting an illegal search of a parolee's residence; and, least surprisingly of all, the majority mentions not a single lawsuit brought by a parolee against a parole officer seeking damages for an illegal search. In sum, if the police need the deterrence of an exclusionary rule to offset the temptations to forget the Fourth Amendment, parole officers need it quite as much.1
1 While it is true that the Court found in INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U. S. 1032 (1984), that the deterrence value of applying the exclusionary rule in deportation proceedings was diminished because the INS "has its own comprehensive scheme for deterring Fourth Amendment violations by its officers," id., at 1044, and "alternative remedies for institutional practices by the INS that might violate Fourth Amendment rights" were available, id., at 1045, these two factors reflected what was at least on the agency's books and, in any event, did not stand alone. The Court in that case found that as a practical matter "it is highly unlikely that any particu-
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