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PENNSYLVANIA BD. OF PROBATION
AND PAROLE v. SCOTT
Opinion of the Court

search knows that the subject of his search is a parolee. We
decline to adopt such an approach. We have never sug-
gested that the exclusionary rule must apply in every cir-
cumstance in which it might provide marginal deterrence.
United States v. Calandra, supra, at 350; Alderman v.
United States, 394 U. S. 165, 174 (1969). Furthermore, such
a piecemeal approach to the exclusionary rule would add an
additional layer of collateral litigation regarding the ofﬁcer’s
knowledge of the parolee’s status.

In any event, any additional deterrence from the Pennsyl-
vania Supreme Court’s rule would be minimal. Where the
person conducting the search is a police ofﬁcer, the ofﬁcer’s
focus is not upon ensuring compliance with parole conditions
or obtaining evidence for introduction at administrative pro-
ceedings, but upon obtaining convictions of those who com-
mit crimes. The noncriminal parole proceeding “falls out-
side the offending ofﬁcer’s zone of primary interest.” Janis,
supra, at 458. Thus, even when the ofﬁcer knows that the
subject of his search is a parolee, the ofﬁcer will be deterred
from violating Fourth Amendment rights by the application
of the exclusionary rule to criminal trials.

Even when the ofﬁcer performing the search is a parole
ofﬁcer, the deterrence beneﬁts of the exclusionary rule re-
main limited. Parole agents, in contrast to police ofﬁcers,
are not “engaged in the often competitive enterprise of fer-
reting out crime,” United States v. Leon, 468 U. S., at 914;
instead, their primary concern is whether their parolees
should remain free on parole. Thus, their relationship with
parolees is more supervisory than adversarial. Grifﬁn v.
Wisconsin, 483 U. S. 868, 879 (1987).
It is thus “unfair to
assume that the parole ofﬁcer bears hostility against the pa-
rolee that destroys his neutrality; realistically the failure of
the parolee is in a sense a failure for his supervising ofﬁcer.”
Morrissey v. Brewer, supra, at 485–486. Although this rela-
tionship does not prevent parole ofﬁcers from ever violating
the Fourth Amendment rights of their parolees, it does mean