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| Probationers less trouble - new program |
| By statesman.com/news |
| Published: 03/30/2009 |
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First measure of probation department overhaul shows its working. By Steven Kreytak AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Monday, March 30, 2009 A two-year overhaul of the Travis County adult probation department seems to have reduced the number of people arrested for a new crime within a year of being put on probation, results that criminal justice officials call exciting but too preliminary to celebrate. Of the 1,287 people placed on probation in the six-month period of early 2006 that immediately preceded the overhaul, 29 percent were arrested for a new crime within a year, according to an analysis by the Council of State Governments. After the changes were fully put in place in late 2007, rearrests dropped to 24 percent. The 2007 numbers were drawn from a four-month period, the most recent data available, researchers said, and tracked 614 probationers. After taking over as head of the Travis County Community Supervision and Corrections Department in 2005, Geraldine Nagy spearheaded an effort to let research and analysis guide how strictly probationers are watched and what combination of programs gives them the best chance to stay out of prison or jail. Though other jurisdictions have put in place some of the same programs as Travis County, Nagy says she thinks the Travis department is the only one to base all of its practices on the most current research. For probationers considered at high risk of committing a new crime, for example, the department has beefed up the number of classes that seek to teach them how to adjust their thinking and moral judgment. For low-risk offenders, the department has minimized the number of visits required with probation officers, citing research that shows that saddling small-time offenders with too many obligations could increase their chances of winding up in prison. "The big deal is that there is a jurisdiction (Travis County) that has been able to stick to a two-year reform project following a very well-crafted design," said Tony Fabelo, chief researcher for the Council of State Governments, which intends to share the reform methods with other governments nationwide. The council is a nonprofit group that identifies and forwards policy ideas to state leaders. "So that's exciting," Fabelo said. "The big 'if' down the road is ,are these results sustainable?" On March 1, 12,549 people were on probation in Travis County, about half of them felons, according to department data. They are supervised by 187 probation officers and assistants at an annual cost of $20,771,000, 39 percent of which comes from fees paid by probationers. Nagy, a former state probation department deputy director who has a doctorate in psychology, has worked at various levels of adult probation during her career, beginning as a probation officer in Bastrop County in 1981. Her teamwork with Fabelo, a well-respected former state criminal justice statistician, has earned the confidence of criminal judges, state District Judge Mike Lynch said. "The judges are pretty impressed with what the probation office has done," Lynch said. "And we're a hard bunch of nuts to crack." In 2005, Fabelo helped the county with an analysis of department operations. It found, in part, that probation officers were too bogged down with paperwork and heavy caseloads to help probationers succeed, that they did not have enough time to conduct home visits, that low-level offenders were too closely supervised and that data was not being regularly analyzed to determine which programs worked best. Read more. If link has expired, check the website of the article's original news source. |
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