Who is supervising probationers in Houston? Actually, no one. There are no field visits by a probation officer. The only time probationers see their probation officer is during scheduled office visits. When probation relies almost exclusively on reports generated from information given by the probationer during office visits, we call that paper probation.
Recently I sat down with a former Harris County probationer to discuss his probation experiences. He had been convicted on a felony drug possession charge and could have been sent to prison. Instead he was placed on probation. He said his probation required him to abstain from the use of drugs, obey all laws, have a job and to see his probation officer during scheduled office visits.. He was drug tested during those visits. He was also required to perform a number of community service hours.
When I asked him what probation supervision he got, he told me that not once was he visited by his probation officer at his home or work during the years he was on probation. His only contact with her was in her office. There she would ask him how he was getting along.
He usually arrived a half hour before his scheduled visit. Once he had to take a leak just before the time to see his probation officer. He went to the restroom and was a few minutes late in seeing her. He said she threw a fit and told him she was required to report his tardiness to the judge as a probation violation. The judge punished him with additional community service hours.
She was required to report his tardiness as a probation violation? Horseshit! She did not have to do that. I suspect she did that in order to justify her job to show that she was supervising this man.
What about those drug tests? If a drug user knows ahead of time when he is to be tested, he can clean up his act several days before and come up negative for drug use. And the submission of urine was not eyeballed by a probation official, thus giving the probationer an opportunity to submit someone else’s urine.
Probation officers say they cannot make field visits because their case loads are way too big. That excuse just doesn’t fly. Since many probationers live in high-crime neighborhoods, probation officers are unwilling to go there without a police escort. Neither the Houston Police Department nor the Harris County Sheriff’s Department has the manpower to act as bodyguards for probation officers.
As I’ve said on many occasions, probation, as well as parole, is worthless without field visits. Those visits should be surprise visits, not scheduled visits. And the probation officer should also be required to make those visits evenings and on weekends. Mondays-Fridays, 8am-5pm wont cut it! Asking a probationer how he’s doing wont let probation officers know he’s been committing some crimes, something they wont find out unless he’s busted by the cops.
As for my discussion with the former probationer, some will say you can’t believe anything he says. The man is now an upstanding citizen and has no reason to lie. Also during my years as a volunteer at a nature center, I had the same discussion with at least a dozen Harris County probationers while they were there for community service work. Each of them gave me almost exactly the same information. They can’t all be lying.
And what about the probationers who in fact are unsupervised? There are those, like the man I interviewed, who truly want to be productive law abiding citizens. There are those who stay out of trouble only because they fear being sent to prison. There are the probationers that are committing crimes for which they haven’t been caught. Then there are those whose probation is revoked, not because they committed a crime, but because they refused or failed to follow their probation conditions. And, of course, there are the probationers who are caught by the police and sent to prison on a new beef … some of those would not have committed new crimes had they been properly supervised.
The citizens of Harris County are not well served by paper probation which is practically worthless.
If I was an unarmed probation officer, I would not go into a crime infested area of Harris County to surprise a probationer. I worked in those areas and there is no telling what additional criminal activity these probationers are involved in. The surprise may be the disappearance of a probation officer.
This system has been broken for many years. It can be fixed with new supervision strategies but unarmed field visits should not be one of them. Hopefully your blog will shed some light on the problem.
The job description calls for field visits. If they are afraid to go into high crime areas, then they should get another job!
Unfortunately the same is true in almost ALL of the formerly great state of California. Also in CA now with REALIGNMENT a lot of people are doing YEARS in county jail and being “supervised” by county probation and not state parole. It is inconvenient and time consuming to actually LOOK AT work places and living places, so you have the critter come in for an office interview. The PO has no idea whatsoever where the bad guy ACTUALLY lives or works or who he hangs out with. Supervision is looking on your desk for a note on your desk that says one of your guys got arrested or shot last night. The whole object of probation and parole now in CA is to ensure that criminals are NOT returned to custody. There is even such a thing as non-revocable parole in CA. All you get is a search waiver. Under the law you CAN’T revoke parole. The whole idea that probation and parole are suppose to contain an element of EFFECTIVE supervision is no longer there, except for a very few sex offenders. Everybody else is for all practical purposes on unsupervised release. With the change in the bail system here which will grant virtually all misdemeanents AUTOMATIC ROR the idea of responsibility is a joke. In fact CA is about to pass a “sentencing reform” law that gives criminals multiple free crimes. They can only be sentenced for the aggregate total of two sentences, not matter how many crimes they actually do. Do 50 burglaries, by law you can only be sentenced to the max term of 2X one burglary, with no enhancements added (like gun or gang enhancements). Wait until you see what happens when the bad guys start running with this one.
It”s probably worth noting ITT that the Berkeley bike-lock attacker – who”s name is Eric Clanton – had all the felony charges against him dropped in a plea agreement with the judge and the county D.A. The violent attacker got 4 days in jail (time served) and 3 years probation. He had already violated his earlier probation before the plea deal but apparently was never dinged for that. Just to make this clear, this isn”t something like “90 days, with all but time served suspended, to be held over his head to make sure he behaves on probation. Nope, this a-hole got only 4 days for multiple violent attacks that could have easily been fatal.
In your previous article, you recognized there is nowhere near the number of government employees to adequately supervise the 17 thousand probationers in the area, yet now you imply that they are at fault for not making unsupervised home visits or otherwise checking up on these criminals. Were you aware that the bulk of the workers are not allowed to change their hours or days without express prior approval, that any overtime must also be approved beforehand or will be denied, and budget cuts have all but eliminated any funds for overtime? These policies are not written by the low level workers you think are too afraid to make visits just because they know they’ll have no police support or backup, they are written by the well paid fat cats that received 40% raises for controlling costs in recent years. These are the same managers that demand increasing caseloads on the workers who all have bachelor degrees to work for that $32,000 a year, the courts setting the terms of the probation, not the probation officers.
So while I completely agree with you on the need to make sweeping changes Howie, piling on the worker drones more than they already have been doesn’t seem the best place to start. Your experiences aside, here’s a tip: no probation officer alive has ever seemed to feel the need to justify their job, the state making it clear that saving a few bucks is more important than proper staffing to allow genuine supervision. Blaming the PO for crimes the probationer commits or bemoaning how some of them get sent back because “they refused or failed to follow their probation conditions” while not committing crimes is something they signed up for to get released early. If they aren’t going to follow the conditions they accepted, maybe they should just serve their entire sentences.
Let me suggest you reread this post and do so meticulously.
Howie: The experience of one probationer can’t logically be used to show how the entire probation system works. First, probably a majority or at least a great percentage of probationers are on misdemeanor probation for offenses such as DWI and possession of marijuana. They’re hardly a high-risk group.
If you drink at all, at sometime in your life you have been DWI, you just weren’t caught. Same for everyone who drinks.
Second, the probationers who get the attention are those who are trouble cases. Your buddy obviously was a “good” probationer. He likely hadn’t committed another crime and probably lived up to the conditions of probation. How much supervision did he need? Apparently not much.
Third, the Harris County probation department used to make random robocalls to probationers ordering them to report within 24 hours for a drug test. I think it still does. That makes it unlikely they will simply lay off cocaine for a few days before a scheduled drug test and not get caught. Also, remember, marijuana stays in the blood for up to 90 says, so it will show up on a monthly drug test.
Howie, let’s be a bit more careful about drawing broad conclusions from little data.
Tom, with all due respect, please note that I got the same stories from at least a dozen other probationers in the past few years, and they weren’t simply DWI or marijuana cases.
Please tell me how a probationer is considered to be a “good” probationer if the only time he is seen is when he appears for an office visit? He could be an active burglar or even a serial rapist who the cops haven’t caught yet, but he could look like a choir boy at the probation office.
While some probationers need little supervision, those on felony probation need more supervision. However even misdemeanants need occasional field visits. Dust off your old books on probation and parole and you’ll see how those institutions are supposed to work.
Your point on drug testing is well taken. However those urine samples are not eyeballed and the ‘warm bottle’ test is not always reliable.
“Good probationers” are folks who abide by the rules: show up on time, do their community service as ordered, that kind of thing. What a lot of people don’t understand is that a large percentage of probationers have NEVER had to abide by any rules and live up to ANY , ey were unreliable employees. Probation may be the first time in their lives they had to follow rules.
Also, it’s common at least in felony courts for judges to include conditions of probation like get a GED or high school diploma, take anger management classes, drug treatment, and similar conditions. I tell all of my clients getting probation that the way to get through it is to show up where and when you’re told to do so with no extraneous chemicals in them or on them and don’t pick up a new case.
Even most felony probationers are on probation for what in the great scheme of things aren’t that horrible, relatively small amounts of drugs, burglaries, thefts, that kind of thing. It isn’t common for a violent criminal to get probation.
If you want closer supervision of probationers, ask your legislator to raise taxes to pay for more probation officers.