NEARLY LOST amid the recent revelations of cronyism in the state’s Probation Department are the tens of thousands of troubled individuals trying to get their lives back on track — and the thousands of dedicated probation officers working to keep their charges on the straight and narrow. The dysfunction at the top of the department has made it harder to pursue the kinds of public safety reforms many other states have undertaken, and has tarnished what once was a model agency.
“It’s not just the hackocracy aspect, but actual public safety that’s adversely affected,’’ according to Len Engel, senior policy analyst at the Crime and Justice Institute in Boston.
The Globe’s reporting this week vividly describes a department rife with patronage and nepotism, lorded over by an unaccountable potentate, John O’Brien, whom the Legislature protects. But the department has long been a thorn for policy makers who are struggling to get the state corrections system into line with national trends.
“If you’re crafting a well thought-out community corrections program, probation has to be at the table, but they just refused to come,’’ said one public safety official. “Probation was always thumbing their nose at our proposals.’’
Probation occupies a middle ground between the let-em-bust-rocks approach and bleeding-heart liberalism. It is meant to hold criminals accountable for their actions and redeem broken lives. It uses a combination of carrots and sticks — mandatory drug tests and ankle bracelets, for instance, but also job-training, GED certificates, and mental health care. And, it provides a steadfast relationship with a probation officer, sometimes the only responsible adult in an offender’s life.
Although they have similar functions and some experts believe they should be merged, probation should not be confused with parole, which is applied mostly to state prison inmates who are completing their sentences. Probation is required by judges as part of a sentence, often as a way to avoid prison. A crucial part of a functioning justice system, probation touches more lives than the Department of Correction, the county jails, and parole combined.
Unlike parolees, who often have been hardened by their prison terms, people on probation include first-time offenders and juveniles, and the majority suffer from drug or alcohol addictions. Properly supervised, their lives can be redeemed.
All over the country, states are giving their probation departments more responsibility in an effort to address overcrowding (and overspending) in prisons. From Oregon to Connecticut, according to a report Engel prepared last year for The Boston Foundation, states have been changing their sentencing laws to divert more offenders from incarceration and rely more on community corrections, with good results.
Engel says what’s missing from Massachusetts is a detailed, customized profile that matches an offender’s specific problems with resources in the community. He says the Probation Department is using an outdated one-page form, when other states use a much finer screen to determine whether an offender is a high risk to commit more crimes.
The number of people behind bars in Massachusetts has reached record levels, with 11,320 in state prisons and 12,800 in county jails — 148 percent of capacity. The annual cost is roughly $46,000 per state prisoner and $35,000 per inmate in a county jail. A viable alternative to incarceration is desperately needed.
But can Massachusetts trust its Probation Department to handle more cases? The Patrick administration is so wary that it carved probation out of sentencing reform provisions it filed this legislative session, which would require post-release supervision of all state prisoners, and give certain drug offenders earlier chances at parole. Those provisions were stripped out of the House version of the criminal records bill it passed this week, but remain in a Senate version.
O’Brien’s high-handed management of the Probation Department is deeply unfair to the probation officers who work long hours, sometimes at personal risk. They go out at night armed with little more than breathalyzer kits or urine tests to help offenders meet the terms of their probation — or bring them back before the judge if they do not. They are the lifeblood of the system, and they deserve a boss who cares about public safety, not personal power.
Renée Loth’s column appears regularly in the Globe. 
