A NOVEL APPROACH TO PROBATION: FELONS ON PROBATION WERE SUPERVISED BY FILE FOLDERS

A different form of what’s known as ‘paper probation’

Richard Krupp, Ph.D., had a sarcastic post on Monday’s PACOVILLA Corrections blog in which he dissected “The Future of California Corrections, A blueprint to save billions of dollars, end federal court oversight and improve the prison system,” a pie-in-the-sky document related to Gov. Moonbeam’s prison realignment program that was released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and which must have been put together by people stoned on medical marijuana.

Greg ‘The Gadfly’ Doyle responded by relating his experiences as an Upland, California police detective with the San Bernardino County probation department where felons on probation were in effect being supervised by file folders. That novel approach was a different form of what we call ‘paper probation.’

Paper probation occurs when a probation officer spends far more time doing paper work than supervising probationers. In the San Bernardino case, it was all paper work with no actual supervision of probationers. (When parole officers spend far more time doing paper work than supervising parolees, it’s known as ‘paper parole.’)

While Greg’s experience with San Bernardino County occurred in the 1990s, there is no reason to believe that such a novel approach to probation isn’t being carried out by some other probation departments in our cash-strapped country.

Here is what The Gadfly wrote:

One of the most eye-opening realities (when I worked as a police detective in the 1990′s) was working with the County of San Bernardino Probation Department. At that time, the majority of convicted felons on probation were assigned to what was affectionately known as the “Bank.” The bank was located in downtown area of the City of San Bernardino. After being placed on felony probation, those convicted felons were assigned to sturdy manila file folders, where those folders were monitored eight hours a day, excluding weekends and holidays.

Approximately 500 to 600 file-folder felons were assigned to one “seasoned” probation officer who, if a report was received from any law enforcement agency, court jurisdiction, or coroner’s office, would take action (if the probationer was in custody—by filing paperwork with to the court) according to the nature of the violation per department policy.

In most cases, those “Bank” probationers were obligated by their agreements with the court to not break the law EVER again. (Sounds scary in this context does it not?). If a probationer managed to avoid drawing the attention of law enforcement and their bank monitor, then probation was deemed a success.

Imagine being a non-violent convicted felon in San Bernardino County merely monitored from a file drawer. This ranked among the most feared punishments in all of Southern California and eventually led to many banked felons disappearing from the radar of probation supervision.

I must confess that I upset the apple cart with the felon-bank more than a few times with my investigations. I do not fault the Probation department for the system. I fault the system that never had enough funding for the Probation Department to adequately supervise those felons. In the County pecking order of priorities, Probation was the poor step-child who always was left with financial crumbs and given the lion’s share of the court caseload.

I can only imagine what is happening within a traditionally ill-funded San Bernardino County Probation Department in 2012 with the loving ass(istance) of Jerry Brown’s realignment.