The Latest in Stupidity

Well work is getting bad. The horrible economy is hitting us now also. By state policy our caseloads are set at 75 max people. I have had 2 caseloads since starting to work here 5 years ago. My second one was below 70 for about a week. Last month it closed at 97. Now one way they have always tried to lower the numbers is to say that inactive cases don't count. That means absconders (people who have disappeared) and out-of-state transfers, don't count. That takes care of about 3 on my caseload. That's not completely fair on the absconders though as every month we have to do an arrest check on them and once a year run an ncic check. Once a year we also have to request a report on the out of state transfers too, but that isn't that much work.

However, almost every officer in the state that carries a caseload is well over the 75 number. This means that the state needs to hire, however a recent report sent to the governor stated that only a handful of empty slots needed to be hired for. When the numbers became public our managers were outraged. Apparently in submitting th caseload numbers, our higher ups completely ignored the absconders, out-of-state transfers, incarcerated and detainer offends. Detainer offenders are offenders that are active on our caseloads and have to be accounted for, but who are incarcerated on other offenses or for other reasons, say failure to pay child support. Incarcerated offenders are locked up on our warrants and we are generally in the process of violation hearings. Both these catagories require us to do things monthly with them.

Also in the Very Stupid Catagory is the recent news article that came out. The trend in our department is to try to avoid locking people up now. This article was claiming that there were people being locked up because they were not paying there supervision fees. It stated that many offenders were being locked up not for committing new crimes but for technical violations. The way it was written it made it sound like they were just being locked up for being poor.

Well, first, they never explained what a technical violation is. Basically a technical violation is any violation other that a new criminal offense. Absconding, running away, is a technical violation. Not reporting to your parole/probation officer is a technical violation. Using drugs is a technical violation. These are all serious violations, but they are classified as technical, but the only technical violation they ever mentioned was failing to pay fees. Now as far as probation is concerned, I don't know of a single judge in my area that would revoke an offender for not paying his supervision fees. They will for not paying court costs and restitution, but that goes to the county court clerk and the victim of the crime, not us. And usually, all they do is extend their probation and scold them. Now the lower court (county) judges will lock people up for 10 days for failing to pay court costs, but still not for failing to pay probation fees. As far as parole goes, a parole office has to both show an offender has not paid supervision fees and that he had the means to pay them, before he could get a violation sustained, and even then I doubt the parole board would vote to revoke even if the hearing officer recommended it. I doubt if there is a single person in this state locked up for failing to pay a supervision fee only. Now those charges mare on the warrant, because a recent policy change pretty much requires us to address fee arrearage in court, and since we can't ask a judge directly to waive past fees, at least adding it to the warrant brings it up so maybe the defense attorney will address it.