As in any line of work, there are aspects of the job which make it more difficult. The work of probation and parole officers is no different.

Field Note: A very frustrated probation and parole officer told me "All we do is paperwork! And before we turn around the state comes up with more paperwork for us to do. I worked 23 days last month and had 24 violation reports to write. They took about four hours each of the 23 days! There's no time for me to go into the field anymore and check up on my clients, and I have eighty of them! "If I can't visit with them in the field and find out what they need, then I'd expect the number of their violations to increase - and that's just what's happening. It's so frustrating! "I think the Department of Corrections for the state is more interested in having the prisons as the crown jewel of the department and it's being done at the expense of probation and parole. We get new prisons, but we don't get any additional probation and parole officers. And our caseloads are steadily increasing. It just doesn't make any sense! It's a broken system."

The number of cases in which the youth was placed on formal probation or ordered to a residential facility increased substantially between 1985 and 2004.
(OJJDP, 2007, Removed from the Internet as of 17 October 2009)

From having too few probation/parole officers, to excessive paperwork, undesirable working conditions (i.e., small offices, insufficient storage space at work, outdated technology, lack of privacy, inadequate libraries of needed information), there are many aspects of being a probation/parole officer that make doing the job well nearly impossible. Perhaps the most egregious offender in this line of work is having too many clients (case overload).  

There are other difficulties. Among them are the dual nature of being a probation/parole officer (social worker or cop?), dangers involved in working with convicted offenders, incompetent administrators and fellow officers, difficulties related to working with gang clientele, a lack of throughcare, working with police who are obstructionist, prosecutors and judges who are too lenient, and a community that is in denial about the gang situation or unwilling to provide resources needed to reduce gang activity.

Click on the topics below or  continue reading down the page ... Social Worker or Cop? Danger Probation and Parole Administrators Other Juvenile- and Probation and Parole Officers Working with Gang Clientele The Lack of Throughcare Working with Police Prosecutors and Judges The Community-at-Large  In Closing

Social Worker or Cop?

Probation and parole officers are caught in a struggle. On the one hand they are social workers - expected to care about their clients and to help them help themselves in modifying their behavior. On the other hand they are law enforcement officers - when clients violate a condition of their probation or parole, probation/parole officers are expected to enforce the law and have a client arrested or sent back to prison. This dual role of social worker and police officer complicates the client-officer relationship.

Field Note: A rather distraught Chief Probation and Parole Officer told me "The public and the legislators have this 'get tough' mentality that precludes proactive efforts. A perfect example is the new law authorizing our state probation and parole officers to carry a concealed firearm. This is very dangerous for our officers. Now clients can assume their officer is armed. How do you think this affects the way they perceive of our officers? I'm concerned that they'll be viewed more as police than as the probation and parole officers that they are. They're not likely to trust our officers as much as they used to. It's all very frustrating."

It is much like the situation prison caseworkers face. On the one hand, they are expected to create a relationship with inmates in which inmates feel free to share their concerns. On the other hand, if something goes wrong in the institution, and inmates and their cells have to be searched, caseworkers take on the role of correctional officer and search the very person with whom they were trying to establish trust.

Field Note: When asked how her work may be categorized, the probation/parole officer told me "About 30% is seeing clients in my office and 70% is paperwork, court time, home visits, jail visits, and investigations. For the investigations I have to determine if the address the client gave me is accurate, conduct drug drops, and do employment checks - Are they working where they say they are working?, Is it legitimate work?, stuff like that."

Another part of the struggle faced by probation and parole officers is the size of their caseload. "The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice recommended that probation/parole caseloads should average around 35 clients per officer. However, caseloads of 250 clients are common in some jurisdictions." (Schmalleger, 1999, p. 453) With only 80 clients an officer would be lucky to have more than one day per year per client for personal, one-to-one interaction.

Field Note: I asked the principal of an alternative school in a large mid-western city what she thought about probation and parole and she replied "In general, the relationship between them and our students is good. But like anything else, there are good probation and parole officers and bad ones. They are all overworked and they have a hard time doing their job as well as they would like."

Various authors have found that high caseloads, combined with limited training and time constraints forced by administrative and other demands, culminate in stopgap supervisory measures. 'Postcard probation,' in which clients mail in a letter or card once a month to report on their whereabouts and circumstances, is an example of one stopgap measure that harried agencies with large caseloads use to keep track of their wards. (Schmalleger, 1999, p. 453)

Danger

Like the work of police, the work done by probation and parole officers includes an element of danger. Among the sources of danger they face everyday are harm from clients, clients' associates, and their family members.

The dangers associated with gang clientele are equal to, and perhaps greater than, those presented by non-gang member clientele. Whether it's visiting the homes of gang member clients or dealing with inebriated gang members during an office visit, probation and parole officers are at risk.

Field Note: The parole officer drove me to a client's home. The client was sitting in a car in the driveway. Someone else was in the car with him and they were obviously getting stoned on marijuana.  As we drove closer, her client saw us and was startled. He squirmed around in the car, jumped out of it, and walked up to about three feet from the passenger side of the officer's car. I don't think he wanted us to be able to smell his breath. His eyes, barely visible through his squint, were bright red, as were his eye lids. After the officer asked him a few questions we left the scene. I asked the officer "Why didn't you take a urine sample or do something about his being stoned?" She said "I'll call him later today and ask him to come into the office tomorrow and then I'll drop him (have him take a urine test). I asked if she could arrest him and she told me she can't do that. "I can't even frisk him," she said in disgusts. "I'd have to call a police officer to do that." She listed a variety of reasons why she didn't take formal action against the client. Among them were her concern that she didn't know the other individual in the car or what may be in the car (a weapon, for example). She told me "Thirteen of the fifteen drops I did last week were dirty [showed evidence of illegal drug use]. I could write reports all night and there would be no consequences for my clients." That was, of course, an indictment of the court.

Field Note: Making her once a week rounds, the probation and parole officer I was observing arrived at one of her client's home. There were four cars parked in the driveway. The officer refused to get out of her car and, instead, honked the horn in hopes the client would come outside. I asked why she wouldn't go to the house. "I don't know who else is in the home," she said, "or how many of them there are. It's just not safe for me. I went in once before, at another client's home, and I won't do it again. I don't get paid enough to put my life in danger." I didn't ask about what had happened at the other house.

A juvenile officer I was interviewing expressed her concern about the families of the youths she has as gang clients. She told me "In this county we don't make home visits. It's too dangerous. We don't have guns like the state probation and parole officers do. And the parents can't be forced to come to our offices. We have no process for making that happen." Her comment made me wonder about how juvenile officers could possibly identify problems in a client's family without meeting and talking with family members and observing them as they interact with their child. How do they determine what help the child/client needs? How can they effect a change in the family, if that's what is needed?

I believe there is a risk of harm at work, too. No metal detectors were installed at the entrance to any of the probation and parole offices I visited. Of the administrators I spoke to about this, all were hesitant to install metal detectors due to the cost of the system and a full time person to monitor it. One of the offices I visited had approximately 200 probation and parole officers. Local police told me there were over 5,000 documented gang members in that city. No one knew how many of the documented gang members were on the client list at probation/parole, but they knew they had many of them. I wondered how long will it be before one of the gang member clients comes to the office with a gun.

Probation and Parole Administrators

Probation and parole officers are up against terrible odds. In all of the jurisdictions I visited, case loads were large and prohibited any meaningful individual attention to clients. Officer pay was low, training was subpar and seldom on-going, inner-office rivalries were rampant, and apathy made the work environment less than desirable. Administrators are the individuals responsible for most, if not all, of these conditions. 

In some cases it was clear that the source of the problems officers were having was due to incompetent administrators. Among the grievances expressed were a "lack of creativity among our bosses" when it came to trying out new ideas and a certain "rigidity in their thinking" about what should be done.  

Bryan Hart, a probation and parole officer with a specialized caseload of "dangerous felons," posted on his office door a list of places where clients could get free food.  It was posted so that his and other probation/parole clients would be able to see it and avail themselves of needed food supplies. Upon seeing the list, Hart's supervisor told him to remove it from his door. Hart said he wanted to post it, so his supervisor told him he could post it on a nearby bulletin board. Hart told him "That's not a good place to put it, someone will take it." The supervisor told him it wouldn't be touched. The sign disappeared in a few days.

Similar difficulties arose when Hart searched the Yellow Pages of the local phone book for the names and addresses of all the temporary employment agencies in the community. Told by his supervisor that he would not be allowed to post it, he asked for permission to distribute copies of the list to the other probation and parole officers. The supervisor, after some convincing, allowed him to make and distribute the copies. I wondered why the administrator was being so obstructionist.

Kathy Scroggins is a probation and parole officer who acts as liaison between the Office of Probation and Parole and the criminal courts in a community of nearly 500,000 people. She is the only officer with this unique assignment. According to Scroggins, "Our agency (probation and parole) isn't doing anything for these gang members. We tell them what to do, but we don't actually show them how to do it. They need to know how to dress for a job interview, for example, but we don't show them where they can buy suitable clothes at an affordable price, or how to wear them."

She believes "Our regional administrator is of the opinion that gang misbehavior is no different and deserving of no more attention than the misbehavior of non-gang members. This fails to recognize the seriousness of the 'gang mentality' issue and the lure gangs present to neighborhood children and their introduction into the gang life." 

Most of the probation and parole offices I visited had no gang specialists in their midst. Instead, gang-member clients were distributed randomly among all the officers. On several occasions I asked officers to tell me about their gang clientele. The most common reply was "I don't know if any of the people on my caseload are gang members. I mean, maybe there are two or three, but that's about it." If they don't know if their clients are in gangs or not it makes their work more difficult.

I was curious if the officers knew about their gang clients' gangs. Unless they had a significant caseload of gang-member clients, they knew little, possessed inaccurate information, or they knew nothing. They, like many of their administrators, viewed gang member clients the same way they viewed non-gang member clients. Gang members were simply people who needed services and the services they needed weren't different just because they were gang members.

Field Note: In a city with over 5,000 documented gang members, more than 160 gangs, and a gang unit of nine officers, the probation officer told me "We have probation and parole officers here who know nothing about gangs. Nothing about colors, graffiti, throwing signs, clothes, vocabulary, demeanor. Nothing!"

There were exceptions. There were probation and parole officers who were intensely interested in their local gang situation, and officers who tried to learn as much as they could about the gangs to which their clientele belonged. But these officers were few and far between and often frustrated by their supervisors' lack of interest in gang members or their needs and other officer's attitudes towards them. 

Working with Gang Clientele

Field Note: The parole officer told me "One of my clients called me early one morning and told me he had just made O.G. (a high ranking member of a gang). He was so excited, and I was upset. I said 'You know you're going to hell for this, don't you?' And he said 'Yes, but I've done lots of terrible things already so it doesn't matter.'"

According to the probation and parole officers I interviewed and observed, gang clients present a unique set of circumstances which make the work of a probation and parole officer more difficult. Officers estimated that three-fourths or more of their gang clients had a problem with substance abuse and nearly all of them suffered from abuse as a child. Some gang members are angry and are continually acting out. This behavior makes it difficult for officers to develop a caring attitude or trust and complicates the relationship they have with such clients.

Officers identified their gang clients' affiliation with fellow gang members as a particularly difficult barrier to overcome. The strength of the ties some gang members have to one another becomes a barrier to their personal development and change. In addition, their defensiveness and feeling that their probation/parole officers don't understand their situation frustrates the relationship between them. Many officers felt gang member clients failed to perceive the situation they were in as a "problem." Without that perception, they felt, there can be no change.

Field Note: I asked an O.G. who was convicted for several murders how he felt about taking the lives of others and selling drugs to children. He said "I come first. God said so. Just look at the alphabet. 'I' comes before 'U.' You is way down there, I comes first."

Officers stressed the importance of having their clients complete a high school or G.E.D. degree. Most said this was difficult, if not impossible, for their clients to do because it requires working fewer hours each day or not at all. Their clients' need for money to pay for rent, food, transportation, and care of their family, if any, results in a low priority for completing school. And without a high school degree, what promise is there for gang members, or anyone else, to make something of themselves?

Some of the typical problems juvenile probation officers face are a lack of resources, not enough staff, and too many cases. Although they chose this line of work "to help kids," their greatest sources of frustration are an inability to impact the lives of youth, the attitudes of probationers and their families, and difficulties in identifying successes. (OJJDP, March, 1996)

The vast majority of probation and parole officers I met, including those I interviewed and observed as they worked, were Caucasian females, most of the them in their 20s and 30s. Many of their clients were Latino- or African-American males aged 17 to 25. I believe the racial/ethnic and gender differences, and the difference in their social class affiliation, added to the distance between the two groups and made it more difficult for the officers to work with their clients - or visa versa.

I asked a juvenile officer "What does work?" and she said "Nothing! It puts a lot of responsibility on the juvenile officer. They have to develop an ability to read what's going on with their clients through facial expressions and other clues. It's all so archaic. There's no money to do what we really need to do, very few resources, no incentive for doing more or doing your work better, pay is low - but we love the kids!"

The Lack of Throughcare

In the British system of justice "throughcare" refers to the continuity of treatment of offenders prior to incarceration, while they are incarcerated, and during parole. This practice is rare in the United States.

One of the gang-specialized probation and parole officers I interviewed expressed her concern that "The file that is developed on a client prior to incarceration doesn't follow that client into the institution. Instead, the case worker or probation/parole officer in the institution begins the process of learning about the client's background all over again. And, when he's released from the institution, the institutional file is kept at the institution and not passed on to the client's parole officer. Once again, the process of learning about the client's past begins. There's no continuity." When asked why a throughcare policy has not been adopted, she said "Our state moves very slowly."

Somewhat analogous to the lack of throughcare is the situation in the United States wherein delinquent records of juveniles are not legally accessible to police and adult probation and parole officers.

Field Note: Towards the end of a 90-minute interview with a Chief Probation and Parole Officer whose office works only with adults, I asked him "What else, if anything, do you think we need to do to reduce the gang situation?" He said he "We don't need any more legislation! What we need is more involvement of youth in the community. Everyone needs to be more involved in the community."   Thinking more about it, he added "Maybe we do need more legislation. We should put adult and juvenile probation and parole services together. The information sharing that could be done would be very valuable. We would be able to help our clients even more and we might catch the problem before it gets too late. It would get us into their homes and lives at a very early age.  "To have a major impact on juvenile delinquency and crime, you'd have to pull some of these kids out of their homes at birth. Things are sometimes that bad. Instead, we get them when it's too late, see them for a few minutes a month, then send them right back into the environment that created the problem in the first place."

When a juvenile breaks the law, he may be detained by the police, found delinquent by a juvenile court, punished/treated in some manner, and then released. If that juvenile continues to offend past the age of being a minor, he or she may be arrested, convicted, sentenced to punishment/treatment, and returned to the community. In every instance, the record of offenses committed by that individual as a juvenile will not be shared with his adult probation and parole officer. This is a problem.

Field Note: I asked a probation and parole officer about the relationship of adult probation and parole to those who work with juveniles. He said "You know, juvenile delinquent behavior is an indicator of behavior later in life. It would be good if we knew about an adult client's delinquent activity as a juvenile when we prepare reports and appear in court. I wish the two services [adult and juvenile] were one. But, as it stands, confidentiality keeps us from getting much information on our clients' histories of delinquent behavior."

The vast majority of clients on the caseloads of adult probation and parole officers have records as juvenile delinquents. Because in probation and parole officers can not legally obtain those records in most jurisdictions, they know little if anything about their clients' behavior as a juvenile other than what the clients or their relatives care to share with them. This makes determinations as to treatment or punishment difficult to make. This lack of continuity, like throughcare, makes the work of probation and parole officers more difficult.

Working with Police

While some probation and parole officers I observed worked well with local police, most were not allowed access to the kinds of information they needed to understand their gang clients more fully or to determine at what level of risk they were exposed in regards to their clients.

Field Note: A probation/parole supervisor told me "The head of our police gang unit has stood in front of the public and said 'We have no gang problems here.' That just makes the gangs more elusive, enhances the image that there is no problem - when in fact there is! - and fails to empower the community to do something about the problem. "The police gang squad is not respected by other police officers, and the head of the unit is the one they don't respect. And when probation and parole officers request information concerning gang members, the gang squad is not forthcoming with what is needed. Instead, they present a barrier to getting information. They often say they have 'no information' when it's quite likely they do."

I witnessed the almost contested relationship between police and probation and parole officers (who work with adult gang clients) and between police and juvenile workers (who do work with juvenile gang clients). Generally speaking, there seems to be considerable hesitancy on the part of police to share intelligence about gang matters with anyone who is not "commissioned" (a licensed law enforcement officer).  

Field Note: The probation/parole supervisor said "Sharing information is an important aspect of the gang situation. Agencies in our community do a good job of sharing information - especially the state and local agencies. But confidentiality statutes hinder this effort considerably.  "We have a sort of one sided confidentiality agreement with the local police department. They can read our clients' files but it's a little problematic concerning our reading police files. We can request an arrest report, but there is too little information made available to us on juveniles."

A probation and parole officer shared with me her concerns related to her clients' criminal activities. She enjoyed having good relations with the local police department because she knew who to call when she needed a client arrested or needed to know more about a client's activities. "That's why it's important to have a good working relationship with police," she said. "I need them and they need me for information I often have and can share with them."

Field Note: The probation/parole officer told me the residents on the north side of town are "so frustrated about gangs that they're angry at the police for doing so little to address the problems they see. When some of these people call the police they're treated as though they're suspects themselves! They're offended and it's not surprising that they lose interest in calling the police about gang problems."

When they refuse to share information, police are further empowering gang members in their community. Knowledge is a powerful tool in efforts to reduce gang activity and a lack of it cripples such efforts. One of the most dedicated probation and parole officers I observed told me of her difficulties in working with the police. She told me that during a recent investigation of a drive-by-shooting, the police "never called me to help determine who the shooter may have been." 

As a result of her own initiative, however, she figured out who it may have been, shared that name with the police and, not surprisingly, it was a good hit. The police arrested the suspect she identified and charged him with the shooting. "If only the police would work with me, things would be so much better," she said. "But, instead, they think they know everything."  

I experienced police resistance to sharing intelligence when my request to attend a regional conference on gangs was denied. I had completed two years of in-the-field research on gangs and had been allowed to ride with and interview dozens of police in as many communities. None of that mattered to the police responsible for the regional conference. They were not willing to share their intelligence with "an outsider."

Prosecutors and Judges

Field Note: A probation/parole officer with four years experience working with several gang members on her case load shared her frustration with me regarding a perceived leniency of the court. "One of my cases, a man who was convicted of armed robbery, only got probation. Another client was put on probation for a crime and, while on probation, committed another crime. He was placed on probation for that crime then committed a third crime and was placed on probation for that crime!"

Judges and prosecutors make some very important decisions as regards juvenile and criminal offenders. They determine if an alleged offender's case will be heard in court and, if found delinquent or convicted, what the consequences of his or her wrongdoing will be (within the confines of the law, of course). Making either of those decisions without complete information is hazardous, at best.

If juvenile officers are unfamiliar with the gang situation in their community, how can they prepare meaningful sentencing recommendation to the judge? The same concern applies in terms of adult offenders. Criminal courts do not have access to adult offenders' juvenile records. How can a meaningful decision be reached as to how to treat/punish those adult offenders?

Field Note: I asked a probation/parole officer about the relationship between local judges and the local gangs to which she responded "They're apathetic regarding gangs. They don't recognize the problem. You know, I offered them free training on gangs and there was no response from them. I think they're too lenient. We have some serious and repeat offenders who are gang members and, even when we prepare careful cases in favor of revocation of their probation [meaning they would be sent to prison], the judges just continue their probation."

Further complicating the matter is the fact that, in many communities, there is no vertical prosecution of alleged gang members. I believe that prosecutors offices which fail to use vertical prosecution in handing gang cases put their communities at risk. And the judges to whom they make their case may not be able to see the larger picture of the gang situation in their communities because the prosecutors lack that vision. 

Field Notes: A probation officer told me "It's unusual for a judge to inquire as to whether a person before the court is a gang member or not. Around here, being a gang member is given no more attention than if a suspect is married or not."  In another community a parole officer said "I'm really perturbed about the leniency of our judges concerning gang members and other offenders. It's typical that, after working very hard to show why an offender should be heavily sanctioned (punished), the judge let's him off with probation."

The offender, too, loses in this situation. Some gang members can be helped, if given the appropriate treatment/punishment. Probation and parole officers also lose since offenders are likely to be given inappropriate sentences which result in their return to probation or parole time and time again.

The Community-at-Large

Among the difficulties probation and parole officers face when working with the community-at-large are: denial that there is a gang situation that needs correcting; a lack of funding for the development, maintenance, and growth of community-based services; limited opportunities for job training; and provision of meaningful jobs for gang-member- and non-gang member clients. 

Field Note: Most of the police gang unit officers I interviewed expressed the belief that gang members on probation or parole are not being served well. They believe probation and parole officers have excessive caseloads, insufficient experience, are lackadaisical, and the communities they serve typically do not have services sufficient or appropriate enough to serve their gang clients.

In Closing

I would have preferred to conclude this section with a positive note. Based upon what I saw and heard, however, the odds of a juvenile officer or an adult probation/parole officer being able to help gang members reduce their offending are very small. In too many cases, nearly everything is working against them in this effort. On the other hand, in those few instances where client and officer motivation intersected with community willingness to help, lives were changed. 

I need to add a disclaimer at this point. There are many large cities in the United States which I did not visit and it is possible (I would think highly probable) that some of them have probation a parole officers with gang-specialized officers. If I had interviewed them my findings may have been different.

Sometime counselors are able to help gang clients help themselves. Sometimes they aren't. That's our next topic.