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Parole and probation officer stress.

June 10, 2016 by

DC Public Safety Radio

See the main site at http://media.csosa.gov

See the radio program at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2015/10/parole-and-probation-officer-stress/

Leonard Sipes: From the nation’s capitol, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, by our microphones today, Lorenzo Hopkins. He’s supervisory community supervision officer known elsewhere as a supervisory-prone probation agent from my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, www.csosa.gov. Lorenzo, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Thank you for having me, Len.

Leonard Sipes: Today’s topic is parole and probation officer stress. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the most ignored topics that you can possibly imagine. I see all the time. I witness all the effort to deal with police officer stress and that’s a mighty subject. We know what’s been happening throughout the country over the course of the last six months, and in terms of fully integrating law enforcement in the community and the controversy that that has entailed. Everybody’s looking at police officers. Nobody’s looking at the stress of parole and probation agents. Am I correct or incorrect?

Lorenzo Hopkins: You’re correct, Leonard. I’ve been in this business for over twenty years, and I’ve seen it change. What I mean by that is, probation and purple agents are asked to do more. The government is talking about reducing the prison population, which is going to mean more people coming back on community supervision. When you have that, you’re going to have those increased stressors. Again, some of the prison criminal probation population is getting more and more violent. They’re getting younger. I’ve seen the national trend. DC, again you can see the shootings went on the street, how young people are getting and our agents are going out into the community in those environments, dealing with people just released from prison, some of them just fresh off of probation. Really, there’s limited to no talk about the stress that they undergo each day.

Leonard Sipes: Now, I have to, just for the sake of grounding the people who are listening to this program, there are five million people caught up in the criminal justice system on any given day in the correctional system. Two million are involved in prisons and jails, which means the bulk are under community supervision with parole and probation agencies. When you talk about correction in America, when you talk about incarceration, when you talk about America’s response to crime, the vast majority of Americans’ response to crime are individuals assigned to parole and probation agents, correct?

Lorenzo Hopkins: That’s correct. We have a huge impact as relates to attempting to reduce [inaudible 00:02:46]. What that entails today was much different than it was when I entered the business over twenty years ago. Back when I first started, you simply received a court order and it told you, “Pay restitution, do community service and things.” We made sure they did that. We’ve since transitioned CBI, cognitive behavior intervention, motivational interviewing. Now you’re going to take those four thousand people, most agencies have trended that way, and instead of checking boxes saying they’re completed, no. You have to actually change behavior and change thinking patterns.

Leonard Sipes: When I was first involved in the correctional system and we’re talking about a quarter of a century ago, I was told by parole and probation for the agency that I represented, which was the Maryland Department of Public Safety, that our role in parole and probation is to enforce the will of the court and enforce the will of the parole commission. That was it. It wasn’t talking about changing individuals. It wasn’t talking about intervening in their lives. It wasn’t talking about providing them with the support they needed to deal with their substance abuse, deal with their mental health issues, deal with their reunification of their children. It was simply to enforce the will of the parole commission and enforce the will of the courts.

Now, as you’ve just said, it’s much more than that. What we have to do is to intervene, is to get into the lives of individuals under community supervision to find out what makes them tick, what makes them angry, what their issues are, what their hopes and dreams are and try to provide wrap-around programs to support that individual. The mission of being a parole and probation agent has changed dramatically just within the last ten years.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Certainly it has. What hasn’t changed is the fact that we’re still required to put public safety first. That’s primary, but I would say our biggest job now is being change agents, meeting a person where they are, CBI.

Leonard Sipes: Cognitive-

Lorenzo Hopkins: Cognitive behavior intervention. Right.

Leonard Sipes: Cognitive behavioral intervention.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Yes. What happens is, we used to just take people and say, “Okay, the court says you need to go substance abuse treatment.” Now, you have to say, “Is that person ready to go to substance abuse treatment?” If that person is not ready, you’re wasting money. That’s what research has shown. If you make a person just go to treatment for the sake of going to treatment, they will program, as we call it. They will go through a program, complete it just to satisfy it. They still have the same cognitive thinking, the negative thinking that they used to have and eventually they go back to using.

Leonard Sipes: Okay, well let’s talk a little bit about the people under supervision before we get onto parole and probation agent stress. The vast majority of people under supervision have histories of substance abuse, and in many cases, really raging histories of substance abuse. I’ve seen surveys where up to fifty percent of the offender population have histories of mental health problems, lack of job history, did not do well in school, many with anti-social attitudes. If you talk to women caught up in the criminal justice system as I have before these microphones, the great majority have had histories of sexual violence directed at them as children, as teenagers by people they know. The point is that they bring an awful lot of baggage to the table. Suddenly they come and they sit in front of Lorenzo Hopkins and Lorenzo Hopkins has got to somehow, some way, break through all those barriers, deal with all of the issues that that person brings to the table, and do it in such a way that does not make him crazy, correct?

Lorenzo Hopkins: That’s correct, because right now when we talk about dealing with the substance abuses you spoke about, and I’m glad you prefaced it by the other issues, the trauma and things of that nature, for years, when I say “we,” parole and probation, we’ve treated the symptom. The symptom was substance abuse. We never really got to that underlying trauma.

A brief story. I was briefly assigned to the mental health branch as a supervisor. I had this older lady, mid fifties, maybe. She was a heroin user for years. She and I had a conversation and she kept getting violated. That’s when the parole commission, if you violated substance abuse, you will get violated and go back and go back under supervision, correct. I sat her down one day in my office and said, “Tell me what’s going on.” She said, “You’re the first person who asked me about what’s going on instead of just saying, ‘You need to stop using heroin.'” Then she went to a story about being sexually molested as a child and all those things. I’m like, “Wow, if we don’t treat that trauma, we’re going to fail with substance abuse.

Leonard Sipes: You know, we’ve increased our rate of successful completions here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency from about sixty-two to about sixty-nine percent. Our rearrest rates have been down, as of late. Obviously, we’re moving in the right direction, but we have a fifty to one case load. I know of parole and probation agents in various states that have a hundred to one, a hundred and fifty, two hundred to one, and more. When you’re carrying a case load of a hundred and fifty to two hundred individuals caught up in the criminal justice system, it doesn’t strike me as that person having a snowball’s chance in Hades of actually breaking through those barriers and to meaningly intervene in the lives of the human beings under supervision. If they’re talking about doing cognitive behavioral therapy, as you’ve said, getting into the heart and soul as to why people are doing certain things and training them as to how to deal with those problems, when you have a case load of two hundred to one that seems to me to be impossible.

Lorenzo Hopkins: It’s extremely difficult and that’s where a lot of stress come in. Even with case loads in DC being fifty to one, if you could imagine. Let me put you in a probation officer’s seat on a reporting day. On reporting day, let’s say it’s Thursday. You may have thirty of your people coming in on that day for drug testing, to speak to you. Could you imagine hearing thirty different trauma stories every day and the kind of stress you would take home with you every day?

Leonard Sipes: That’s just it! Half of our contacts need to be made in the community. You could be walking through the community and see your person under supervision. You could be going into their home. It could be a surprise visit. You could be taking along a police officer with you. All you’re hearing all day long is trauma, trauma, trauma, correct?

Lorenzo Hopkins: That’s absolutely correct.

Leonard Sipes: How do you escape that?

Lorenzo Hopkins: The thing is typically most people don’t. They don’t recognize it. That’s one thing I talk to my staff about right now, even being in diagnostics. People think that they are the report writers. They don’t have to hear. They don’t have to see the finish. Could you imagine interviewing someone at the local jail, even someone at the office, and they’re telling you about the trauma they’ve suffered, the sexual abuse they’ve suffered, standard sibling murder, their mother mother murdered, and you read that day in and day out? That’s secondary trauma and I don’t think people pay much attention to secondary trauma.

Leonard Sipes: If you’re going to get into the heart and soul of that person, if you’re going to use cognitive behavioral therapy and intervene in the life of that person, you’ve got to somehow, some way, take on the emotions that that person is talking about. It cannot be just, “I dismiss it at the end of the day. I’m going to go home and have a beer and walk the dog and play with the kids.” That trauma stays with you. It’s inevitable that that trauma is going to stay with you to some degree.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Well, to be human, it has to. The problem, Len, is a lot of people don’t know what the symptoms look like. They think going home and just having a beer or two is normal. That could be their way of coping. You’ve seen research about law enforcement professionals, correction officers. They end up with substance abuse problems, drugs, and alcohol to cope.

Leonard Sipes: There are higher rates, I’ve seen, of substance abuse amongst people in our profession than in terms of the larger society.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Absolutely, because that’s a coping mechanism. Some people can’t sleep at night. Look at the divorce rate among people in our profession also, because you take things home.

A quick story. Before I started working in probation and parole, I worked as administrator at a juvenile detention facility. I went home after hearing this stuff and seeing these kids every single day who weren’t doing well. You know what I did?

Leonard Sipes: What?

Lorenzo Hopkins: I was a young married guy and I said, “I don’t want any children.” Seriously. My wife said, “Honey, are you serious? These are just the children you see. All children aren’t like that.” I tell that story to say when you are starting to become jaded in this business, you start to become skeptical of everyone.

Leonard Sipes: It takes its toll on you. I’ve always said after forty-five years in the criminal justice system, I’ve become acidic. I see the world differently than the average person because I understand bands in humanity towards man. We had a woman at a conference one time dealing with women caught up in the criminal justice system who stood up in the conference and said, “The woman I live with pulled a knife on me last night and pulled a knife on me and my child and we had a huge argument. I had to get out of there. I now have no place to live. I now have a child and I now have to go back and get my private possessions out of this apartment from a woman who pulled a knife on me.” Then she took a look at everybody in the hall and said, “Now, what are you going to do for me to help me out of this situation?” That’s what our people deal with every single day, correct?

Lorenzo Hopkins: That’s correct. When you have young officers just into the business, or even some more seasoned ones, if you get that every day, you’re in, I call it crisis mode every day because you never know what’s going to happen.

Again, before I went to diagnostics and mental health, I had my day planned out most days but it never failed. Someone came in. They started to decompensate. One of my staff and I had to take them to the CPAP, for the condition they’re dealing with [inaudible 00:13:39] medicine to admit them. Your days are not yours. Then, you run into another stressor is, when you try to get help, as you talked about the young lady at the meeting you were at, take that and multiply that by decreasing city budgets and town budgets when there really is no housing out there.

Leonard Sipes: Right. Yeah, finding housing for people caught up in the criminal justice system is really difficult.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Absolutely, and then you try to put them in a shelter. The shelter could be full. Then you have women and children, which is another difficulty trying to place because there are limited resources.

Leonard Sipes: My phone number is the only phone number on the website and I get calls at night. I get calls on the weekends. “Why is my son on probation? Why did my son was taken to jail? What’s happening with my son? He was supposed to go to this rehab clinic and he’s not doing well. Now he’s out. Are you guys going to get a warrant for his arrest?” There’s a certain point. It’s like, “Folks! I can’t just do this every night. I can’t do it every weekend. I’ve got my own life to live,” but you can’t tell them, “No.” You cannot not listen to them. If I’m experiencing that and I’m the spokesperson for the agency, what are you all going through?

Lorenzo Hopkins: Well, that’s a huge stressor. When I first left mental health and went to diagnostics, my staff at my first meeting were saying, “Well, Mister Hopkins, we’re working on weekends and evenings trying to get these reports done.” I said, “That stops today.”

Leonard Sipes: Yes.

Lorenzo Hopkins: “That stops today, because I understand that you have to have healthy work-life balance. That’s extremely important in this business because what happens is, I found myself doing it late. I’m not telling you something I’m thinking of or guessing about. I found myself with my Blackberry on at my child’s karate meeting contest.

Leonard Sipes: Yes, yes, yes.

Lorenzo Hopkins: I found myself checking the newspaper to see if a defendant was ever arrested. What do I have to face tomorrow?”

Leonard Sipes: Every time somebody goes out and commits a homicide or commits a crime, you’re sitting there going, “Oh my God, I hope he’s not on my case load.”

Lorenzo Hopkins: Exactly! You take your eight hour day, just an average eight hour day, and you go home and you take it home with you. That’s twenty-four hours a day besides the time you’re sleeping that you’re dealing with something about seeing so-and-so or about this profession.

Leonard Sipes: Well, we’re halfway through the program. I do want to reintroduce you, ladies and gentlemen. We’re talking to Lorenzo Hopkins, a supervisory community supervision officer with my agency, our agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, www.csosa.gov. We’re talking about parole and probation officer stress.

Lorenzo, you went to the American Probation and Parole Association in Los Angeles and you gave a seminar on parole and probation officer stress. What are the key points of your address in Los Angeles dealing with a national audience on this topic?

Lorenzo Hopkins: Well, one thing we have to realize is that, and I actually said it like this, oftentimes in this business, we take far too much credit for peoples’ success and far too much blame for their failures. We’re always looking at something that, “Well, did I do this or did I do that?” We try to be but we are human and you can’t be everything to everyone. That’s one. Two, when you leave your work and you’re not on duty, the biggest mistake people make is leave that cell phone or Blackberry on. They check it religiously. I told them in LA that actually it’s an addiction. It’s an addiction because you find yourself in conversations with people. You’re checking your work phone. When that occurs, you’re actually cheating your family because your family deserves some you time.

Leonard Sipes: Some work-life balance.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Right. You also deserve some time away because you can’t continue at that pace. You can’t. You’ll be surprised how many people, Len, that work for me that I have to make take vacation. What you get to carry over in the government two hundred forty hours, or whatever the case may be?

Leonard Sipes: Yup!

Lorenzo Hopkins: I’m sitting down with them doing a life plan. “You need to take off some days.”

Leonard Sipes: I do want to emphasize this, is that our rate at successes here at Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency is going up, so we are succeeding in getting people to do the right thing. I understand that there’s no such thing as the perfect offender on supervision. I understand that they all bring a tremendous amount of issues with them, in particular, substance abuse. We have done a better job. We have been able to get into the lives of individuals. We’ve gotten into the lives of their families. We have helped them deal with all the different things they had to deal with to the point where our success rate is going up. What toll is that taking on what we call community supervision officers?

Lorenzo Hopkins: It’s taking a tremendous toll. We talked about earlier, we put a lot of effort into CBI, cognitive behavior intervention, motivational interviewing, things that change the thinking of the defender or defendant population. The problem is, as you alluded to earlier, there’s not a lot of research or anything about people who actually do the work. We have to really start to think, as managers, I’m a supervisor, take a look at your people and start speaking to them about how are things impacting them.

Leonard Sipes: Your employees, yes?

Lorenzo Hopkins: Yeah, my employees. You have to start talking to your employees the same way you want them to invest in the defender population, you must invest in them.

Leonard Sipes: You’ve got to do the same thing for them.

Lorenzo Hopkins: You have to, because guess what. A lot of these ladies and gentlemen are young.

Leonard Sipes: Right.

Lorenzo Hopkins: They’re young. Half of that stuff they’re reading about or talking to the defenders about, they haven’t lived it.

Leonard Sipes: It’s interesting. They are college educated. Everybody comes to us with a bachelor’s degree. The great majority of our agency have master’s degrees. Some have above. That’s a very well-educated workforce that we have, but they’re still people. Regardless of their education, regardless of their understanding, regardless of their grounding, they’re still people subject to the same levels of stress as any police officer, as anybody in any profession.

Lorenzo Hopkins: That’s true, Len, because you alluded to the national epidemic what’s going on between law enforcement and many communities. In that whole conversation, you don’t hear people talking about probation and parole because guess what, we’re in the community also. We’re there daily. We’re engaging people in conversations, so a police officer’s law enforcement. We’re law enforcement also, so that same sense of heightened expectations and anxiety when we go into some of the worst neighborhoods in our cities is there. It’s natural. The hair stands up on the back of your neck.

Leonard Sipes: It rubs off on everybody, whether you’re a police officer or whether you’re a parole and probation agent. The trauma that you deal with, you could not simply separate that from your life. There’s just no clean break. You’ve got to acknowledge the fact that this exists.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Right, and that’s why it’s imperative on partners being partners. When you have a partnership with people you work with, if your supervisor doesn’t do it, look out for your colleague. Look out for your co-worker. You can see when they’re under undue stress. You can speak to them about it. Most of our friends, let’s be honest, in law enforcement, you’ve been in law enforcement a long time, they’re other law enforcement people. Guess what we talk about when we go out.

Leonard Sipes: Oh yeah!

Lorenzo Hopkins: The job.

Leonard Sipes: We sit there and we gripe about the criminal justice system. We gripe about those idiots at headquarters, and I always laugh because then I became an idiot at headquarters as a spokesperson for, again, Maryland Department of Public Safety. The point is is that we sat there and we griped and we drank too much.

Lorenzo Hopkins: There was no release.

Leonard Sipes: We drank too much.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Right.

Leonard Sipes: I’m not quite sure when I went home from one of these drinking-too-much, griping-too-much sessions, I’m not quite sure I felt a whole heck of a lot better.

Lorenzo Hopkins: No, because guess what. If you’re anything like I used to be when I entered the business is that I still thought about, well come the other night, thought about, “Did I do this? Did I do that? Maybe I should have done this differently.”

Leonard Sipes: Because we are talking about the lives of people in crisis and there’s no way of leaving that behind. You have to acknowledge that, deal with it, and come to grips with the tools that help you cope with it. Alcohol or drugs certainly is not part of that coping mechanism.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Right, and you have to have balance. When I talk about work-life balance, work-life balance isn’t splitting time between work and life. Work-life balance is what’s important to you. If you’re a person who loves playing golf, make some time. Take some time out of your week to play some golf.

Leonard Sipes: Yup, play that golf.

Lorenzo Hopkins: You deserve that, because you need a release. If you’re not going to release it doing something you enjoy, you’re going to release it doing something destructive, i.e. drinking too much.

Leonard Sipes: Okay, now what I was told years ago, I was told when I entered in the law enforcement, take meditation. Take classes on meditation. Learn how to meditate. I was taught to talk to your spouse. A lot of us, when we bring work home, when we come home we don’t want to talk about work. The last thing in the world we want to talk about is work. If you’re in a bad mood and if you’re affected by your experiences throughout the course of the day, you owe it to your spouse to tell your spouse what’s going on. There are tools for coping.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Absolutely, Len. We do the same thing in my household. I’ve been in this business a long time. My wife and I give each other fifteen minutes apiece to vent about work, to decompress.

Leonard Sipes: Oh, that’s a great idea.

Lorenzo Hopkins: After that … huh, it’s over. You have to have that because she understands that my job is stressful. She’s an accountant but she also has those stressors also and she needs to understand, “If my husband comes home in a not-so-good mood what’s going on out there.” Certainly, we don’t use names because that’s privacy, but we also are human because you can’t take it. We’d like to take your hat off when you get home and that’s all I’m thinking about, home. Our lives blur and they blend all the time.

Leonard Sipes: Sure. Well, it’s like the woman who I talked to one time about her history of sexual abuse and she just said, “You know, I was raped multiple times before the age of eighteen by family members and people who I know, who I knew.” Then she just looked at me in front of the same microphone you’re sitting in front of now and said, “Now, what is the system going to do for me in terms of my trauma?” It’s like, “One human being. Excuse me. I can’t undo the fact that you were raped multiple times before the age of eighteen.” That’s what our folks go through every single day.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Right, and the difference is though, we have to get to the point where we recognize when we’ve had too much. I’m not talking about retiring, I’m talking about taking leave. I’m talking about making sure you have your supervisor having your people schedule leave before the end of the year, because they need some time away and apart to spend with their family. I encourage it. When I speak to my staff at mid-year or whenever, I talk about work-life balance. What are you doing for you and you family? What are you doing to improve yourself outside of work? That way, I keep that in the forefront of their mind to let them know it’s not only about work, you know?

Leonard Sipes: Mm-hmm (affirmative), but you can tell in law enforcement because the person becomes too aggressive.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Yes.

Leonard Sipes: You can tell it when the person apprehends somebody and instead of just cuffing them, they’re slammed against the police car and that’s the point where you’ve got to walk over, and we did, whether people believe it or not, walk over to that person and say, “You know, Johnny, you’re taking this too far. You need to back off. Do you want me to finish this?” What do you see in terms of parole and probation agents?

Lorenzo Hopkins: Well, typically what happens when I see stress is they’re short-tempered. When I’m short-tempered, I don’t mean exploding but their conversation is about evil in the defendant or defender population, you can tell they’ve become certainly desensitized. “I’m going to start going through the motions like a robot,” you know? “I’m just going to do the job because I have to, but I’m not really caring.” People can feel when you don’t care. When it gets to the point where it starts to become not a good situation, I typically have the defendant wait, if I hear it from my staff, pull them aside, and say, “Hey, decompress. Take a deep breath and just relax a little bit,” because sometimes we have to recognize the symptoms. Not us, because if I don’t sometimes you don’t see yourself in this situation.

Leonard Sipes: Yes.

Lorenzo Hopkins: As colleagues, we have to make sure we’re paying more attention to what’s going on because you’re going to start saying, “Offenders, stop coming in.”

Leonard Sipes: That hurts the mission. That hurts the bottom line in the same way that the police officer being overly aggressive hurts the bottom line because he’s breaking confidence with the community. We, on the front lines, you all on the front lines whether you be parole and probation agents or whether you be police officers, people need to understand how unbelievably stressful these jobs are. People need to provide some space, work-life balance, and some tools in terms of whether it’s deep breathing exercises, whether it’s meditation, whether it’s talking to your wife, whether it’s playing that game of golf, everybody needs to come to grips when that stress is enormous. That stress exists in all folks caught up in the criminal justice system.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Right. I think what gets lost when you’re talking about probation and parole professionals, that’s what I like to call us, is that we wear so many hats, because you’ve got to realize we’re the person who, in most jurisdictions they can have arrest powers. This one, you do reports. Actually, it’s also your responsibility to be able to take someone’s freedom. They gave it to you, more or less. However, however, but what we have to really start to understand is that people who do that are humans and they don’t want to take peoples’ freedom. When you start dealing with non-compliance, it doesn’t make people happy so when you go that house the next time to do a visit, how are going to be received? You don’t know that. Because guess what, that person just got released from prison after you did a report that got him sent back for two or three years.

Leonard Sipes: Right, right, right, but that’s the part of the stress and part of the dilemma of being a parole and probation agent, again what we call community supervision officers here in the District of Columbia, is that cognitive intervention, you’ve got to get into the mind, get into the heart of that person. Build bond. Build trust, but at the same time, you have that responsibility to protect public safety and send them back to prison, if necessary.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Absolutely.

Leonard Sipes: No therapist on the face of the earth would work under those circumstances.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Could you imagine wearing all those hats?

Leonard Sipes: No.

Lorenzo Hopkins: Because you’re a social worker one day, no, not one day, one second. The next second, you’re saying, “Oh, you’re violated. This is unacceptable. I’ve got to put a VR, a violation report in.” Those are those fine balances that a lot of people don’t understand. The difference between us and police officers, again, great work. A police officer can arrest someone on the street. They throw them into the court and that’s it. That’s it.

Leonard Sipes: And walk away from that, entirely. You’ve got them for the next five years.

Lorenzo Hopkins: I have to deal with that. If they go in and out, in and out, I’m still the person who’s there.

Leonard Sipes: You’ve got to deal with them for the next five years, which is stressful unto itself. Lorenzo Hopkins, I’ll tell you. This has been a fascinating conversation. Lorenzo is a supervisory community supervision officer for my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. We’ve talking today, ladies and gentlemen, about parole and probation agent stress. Lorenzo, I really want to thank you for a fascinating conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, our website, www.csosa.gov, ww.csosa.gov. This is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments and we even appreciate your criticisms, as stressful as they may be. We want everybody to have themselves a very pleasant day. Thank-

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The Challenge of Parole and Probation from an Officer’s Perspective.

June 10, 2016 by

DC Public Safety Radio

See the main site at http://media.csosa.gov

Seed the radio show at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2015/09/the-challenge-of-parole-and-probation/

Leonard: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I am your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, The Challenge of Parole and Probation from an Officer’s Perspective. At our microphones today, David Mauldin, he is a Community Supervision Officer, known elsewhere as a Parole and Probation Agent, and Keith Cromer, again, a Community Supervision Officer, again, known elsewhere throughout the country as a Parole and Probation Agent. Our agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, www.csosa.gov. David and Keith, welcome to DC Public Safety.

David: Thank you very much.

Keith: Good afternoon.

David: [crosstalk 00:00:39] to be here.

Leonard: Gentlemen, what a tough job. We’re here to talk about the challenge of parole and probation agents, again, what we call community supervision officers in the nation’s capital. I cannot think of a more challenging job. I’ve been in the criminal justice system for 45 years. I’ve been a cop, I’ve been a spokesperson, I’ve ran group decades ago, within the prison system. I did Job Corps, where the judge said to the young individuals, “Go to jail and go to Job Corps.” I’ve done a lot of what it is that you guys do, but it’s a long time ago. I found that being a cop was simple, being a parole and probation agent was a thousand times harder than being a police officer. Am I right or wrong?

David: I would definitely agree with that. Our job is unique in a sense that we’ve got multiple roles in it. We have a client/offender/person under supervision come to our office, and we are given all of these resources to provide them. We’re encouraged to provide motivation and counseling, and we should, that should be part of our role, but at the same time, there’s another side to what we do, which is, if the supervision, if what is expected of the person is not occurring, if they’re not responding to the resources and directives we’re giving them, then there’s this side of our job, which we end up in court.

We write a violation report, and we can find ourselves in front of a judge recommending that the person’s freedom be taken away, the very same person sometimes where maybe even a few weeks earlier, you were sitting down and talking with them about really powerful reasons why they fell into a life of crime and you were trying to counsel them. Sometime, I know for myself, it can seem a sudden switch, and I’m sure for the clients as well, it can be like, “Wait a minute, you were just encouraging me and counseling me and now you just requested that my freedom be taken away.” It’s a hard balance.

Leonard: When I ran group, I was told not to tell anybody I was an ex-cop, ran group in the prison system and doing a cognitive-behavioral therapy group session. I did end up telling people that I was a former cop, and the people who were part of the group said, “I wish you hadn’t told us that, because now we don’t trust you.” Keith, most of the people caught up in the criminal justice system are not trusting human beings. How do you break through that barrier when you’re there to get into their heads, help them deal with their lives in a pro-social way, but at the same time, you hold the authority to send them back to prison if necessary?

Keith: It takes a lot of time. It takes effort to get to know the individual on a one-on-one basis. They’re not willing to come forth all the information that you might need in the first couple of meetings, so you got to keep pushing towards to know exactly what their needs are in order for them to trust you. You want to try to get to know their families, their kids, their needs for employment, their needs for education. At that point in time, they start trying to break down barriers and allowing them to know you, to allow them to know who you are.

Leonard: The whole idea is … Our successful case completions keep going up and up and up, so we’re doing something right. We’re well above the national average in terms of successful case completions, so we’re doing something right. We’re helping men and women overcome extraordinary barriers. When I say extraordinary barriers, we’re talking about massive substance abuse, we’re talking about mental health issues. The substance abuse, 80% of our population, the mental health can go, in terms of self-reported, mental health can go as high as 50% according to some surveys, so we have problems.

When individuals come to us, they come to us with not much of a work history, not much of an educational history. Women who come out of prison, they have higher rates of substance abuse, higher rates of mental health, their backgrounds typically involve being sexually abused by somebody they knew when they were children, and they have children themselves. There’s a certain point where the deck is so stacked against the individuals, not necessarily just in the District of Columbia, but throughout the country. I’ve had offenders sit there and tell me, “Leonard, what you’re asking me to do is impossible. I can’t deal with all of the ills of my past life.” That’s why so many individuals were revoked in years past, because they came to us with immense difficulties. David?

David: What was on my mind as you were saying all of that is, and maybe I’ll get in trouble for saying this, but I think because the clients can come and often do come to supervision with such an enormous array of issues, I don’t think we can solve all of their problems. Sometimes they come to supervision, they’ve got these special conditions, we’re supposed to help them do their anger management class, drug test, get treatment if they need it, but sometimes I just think that maybe what we need to be focusing on is, by the time that somebody gets done with supervision, have we assisted them ,in whatever way that looks like, but have we assisted them to have the confidence that they can, moving forward, have control over their lives.

I was talking to Cromer on the way here, I got a call from a gentleman just released from incarceration about a week ago crying on the phone because he’s telling me, “I don’t have family, I don’t have food, I don’t have housing, and I’m expected to meet all of these requirements [inaudible 00:06:17] probation and parole. I have no idea how I’m going to do it.” On one hand, I think our job is to look at him and say, “Come into the office, let’s get you connected to our resources,” but I think there’s fundamentally something else going on there that he’s saying, “I don’t feel like I have control.”

My goal is, man, if we can help the men and women who come to us feel that when they leave supervision that they can have an impact, a positive impact on their life, that they can affect positive things in it, I think that would be a positive thing, but meeting every single need they have, I think that’s where, if we don’t realize we can’t meet every need, that’s where burnout can come in. [inaudible 00:06:57].

Leonard: Keith, I’m going to throw this question to you. I’ve interviewed lots of people under supervision by these microphones, hundreds over the course of years, and when I ran public affairs for the Maryland Department of Public Safety, interviewing them there as well. Oftentimes they were telling me that their parole and probation agent, again, in this case, in Washington, D.C., community supervision officer, they would say that their officer was the key, in many senses, of them crossing that bridge from law-breaking behavior to law-abiding behavior, from drugs to no drugs. They would give the credit, in many cases, to the parole and probation agent/community supervision officer as being the person who helped them make that transformation. Is that true? Do community supervision officers here in the District of Columbia, can they make that degree of change in a person’s life?

Keith: Yeah, I believe they can. Actually, one of my offenders in the past has, he crossed over tremendously. He had a plan when he came out and I helped him work his plan together. He wrote his own books, we helped him get it published. He started his own security company. He’s doing really well. I think that we can help out, as long as we continue to help them with their plan. We have to find out exactly what their needs are. As soon as we find out their needs, we can just help them out with moving forward in their lives.

Leonard: You can break through the barriers that they bring to you. I always say, I use the example, the chip on their shoulder the size of Montana. They don’t trust anybody. People listening to this program need to understand that people caught up in the criminal justice system, they may trust their mother, they might trust their mother, they don’t trust you, they don’t trust anybody. They don’t trust the religious leaders, they don’t trust the Governor, they don’t trust the President. They don’t care who it is, they’re not trusting individuals, yet you’ve got to break through those barriers to help that person, right, David?

David: Yeah, we do. I’m thinking, I’m not 100% convinced that … I think the clients know how to trust. I think it’s difficult for them, I think they’re hesitant, but what I found is that whether it’s working here in probation and parole or in [inaudible 00:09:19] Covenant House, working with homeless young adults, I think there’s hesitancy, but as soon as the client sees that this person is willing to listen to where I’ve been, as soon as I see that this person is not assuming that they’ve figured me out, to me, I’ve seen that’s a huge one, don’t assume that we know them. Once they see that willingness to hear who they are, hear where they’ve been, and that we’re willing to listen to maybe where they want to go as we try to develop that plan with them, I’ve found that the trust does come.

Then in my mind it becomes the issue of, okay, so they learn to trust you, then, though, all of their issues are still there, and so how, once you have their trust, how do you keep it, because I think it can be lost very easily, because they’ve been disappointed before, whether by family, the system, themselves, how do you keep that trust, and again, as I was saying earlier, especially in a position where on one hand we can counsel and motivate them, but if things build up where their supervision isn’t going a good direction, we got to take them to court. I feel like I’ve actually lost the trust, and I’m sad to say this, but I think I’ve lost the trust of clients before when I had to take them to court, and my hands were tied, I had to.

Leonard: I do want to explain that, but first of all, a piece of context for people listening throughout the country, our ratios, supervision ratios, are the best in the United States. We have one community supervision officer for 50 people under supervision. I know of states where it’s one to 150. I know of counties where it’s one to 250. I have seen data from jurisdictions where it’s one to 300.

We’re a federal agency, and because we’re a federal agency, we have funding. We do provide substance abuse, very comprehensive substance abuse therapy to 25% of our population who needs it. We have a mental health team, we have learning labs. We have a ton of resources that the average parole and probation agency doesn’t have, but still, even though you’ve got the best circumstances within parole and probation probably within the United States, when I talk to community supervision officers, they remind me that it’s the hardest job that they’ve ever had. That true?

Keith: Yeah, that’s true. Even though we have all those resources, if the individual doesn’t want to take advantage of those resources, it’s not even needed. It’s just we’re sending them to waste their time and waste everybody else’s time, wasting money, because it’s on the individual to really want to move forward in his life and to change and get away from that substance. No matter how much resources that we have, it can go out the door in a heartbeat by just going outside the front door and seeing what’s going on in the community.

Leonard: It’s our job to break through those barriers. It’s our job to convince a person who doesn’t want to participate. It’s our job, with a person who is struggling to participate, to successfully enter his world, her world, and help that person out. How do you help a person out who doesn’t want to be helped out?

Keith: First and foremost, I think they have to establish trust. Once they start trusting who you are, actually think that you have the best need for them, then they’ll start realizing and saying, “Okay, I’m going to go ahead and give this a opportunity and get my substance abuse worked out, get my employment worked out.” Those are the factors that may be having a barrier in their lives. I think this basically boils down to trust.

David: I definitely, yeah, I was shaking my head yes as Keith Cromer was talking, that it’s once the trust is there, then I think someone else too can come into it, that you can help the person experience exposure is what I’m thinking. Oftentimes I think a lot of clients come to parole and probation, at least from my experience in D.C., they come to parole and probation, and their lives have been focused around a specific neighborhood for many, many years, the resources they’re looking to are within that specific neighborhood.

I think there’s some goodness to that, that they feel like they know where they’re from and they can access those resources, but there are so many things in Washington, D.C., and so many opportunities, that once they trust us, that we can encourage them to take advantage of, “Maybe don’t apply for the job right down on your block, why don’t you go downtown and apply for a job?” or, “Don’t go to that GED program down the street, but why don’t you go to the one Uptown?” For those that don’t live here, Uptown’s a different part of D.C. from where Cromer and I work. I think exposure is important, and it can take away some fear to try new things. I think exposure can maybe help clients not stay and keep repeating the same things over and over again.

Leonard: Keith, go ahead. You want to jump in?

Keith: Oh yeah, I was, just get them out of a box. I think a lot of times they’re boxed in and they think they have no way of getting out. I think the opportunities that are around them, a lot of these guys know where these resources are, but they don’t take the opportunity, because I think a lot of times it’s self-doubt, negative-

Leonard: They’re frightened by it.

Keith: Yeah, they’re frightened by it, by the chance.

Leonard: Somebody, a person under supervision, an offender, one time told me, scariest thing that he’s ever done in his life is go through substance abuse treatment, because he had to confront his entire life and the reason why he was so desperately in need of drugs every single day, and that was the scariest thing he’s ever done, because he had to relive everything that propelled him towards substance abuse. Is he right?

David: I would lean towards yes. I was thinking that a lot of the older guys that I have on my caseload, maybe guys in their 50s and 60s, what I’ve found is that they’re more, not all of them, but for the most part, they’re more willing and able to look back on where they’ve been and what they’ve been through, and to demonstrate insight on how it’s affected them. I’ve found that is extremely helpful in their ability to stay out of the system, whereas the younger guys, it’s like Cromer was saying, or like we’ve been saying, that it’s almost too frightening, because if they look at it and accept what’s happened to them, accept what they’ve done, accept what they’ve been through, it could almost paralyze them.

Leonard: We’re halfway through the program, I do want to reintroduce everybody. The Challenge of Parole and Probation from an Officer’s Perspective is a program that I’ve looked forward to doing for quite some time, because I do think the role of parole and probation agents is probably one of the most difficult jobs that you can possibly imagine. David Mauldin, he is a Community Supervision Officer, Keith Cromer, Community Supervision Officer, both with my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, www.csosa.gov.

Gentlemen, I have two questions. Number one, you’re talking to a national audience, so first of all, what do you want somebody in Des Moines or somebody in Hawaii, 20% of our audience is international, somebody from Europe to know about what it is to be a parole and probation agent?hen the second question after that is, when do we have to revoke and send that person back to prison because of transgressions, problems, new crimes? First of all, in terms of, what do you want people throughout the country to know about being a parole and probation agent? Cromer? Easy question, just simple.

Keith: To be a probation officer, a parole officer, you have to wear multiple hats. You have to b a counselor, a mentor, sometimes their father, their mother, their brother. You have to be a lot of things for them at certain times in their life, and you also have to be law enforcement as well. You have to be able to look them in the eye and tell them exactly what’s going on, and the right time, be on them, be hard on them, and then learn at the same time, break, fall back and say, “Tell me what’s going on. Allow me to cry for you, I’ll cry with you,” and then all at the same time, tell them how to, lift them up and show them how the ways to go to the next level in their lives.

Leonard: If you were dealing with an individual without problems, without substance abuse, without mental health, without educational deficiencies, who had a good job history, who doesn’t have an anger manage problem, who wasn’t abused as a child, if you’re doing that with the best possible person under the best possible circumstances, it would still be an extraordinarily difficult job.

Keith: That is correct. I have found that a lot of those guys have no other outlet, because a lot of people that are around them are negative as well, so they come to my office and speak to me friendlier than anyone, anybody else, so they dump a lot on us, what’s going on in their lives. We have to take that and process it and try and help them stay on a right, narrow path, because even though they’re doing everything correctly in their lives, a lot of times, that negative influence is still around them that they may want to go back to it.

Leonard: Both of you are out in the community, seeing them in the community, seeing them in their homes, going into their homes, talking to their parents, talking to their wives, talking to their children, talking to their grandmothers, right?

Keith: Correct.

Leonard: You’re out in the community, both at that person’s job, in their home, seeing this person in the community on an announced and unannounced basis, correct?

Keith: That’s correct.

Leonard: You roll up on a guy and the guy is standing on the street corner. The guy was fine and everything’s compliant and he’s doing fairly well and he’s getting his GED and he’s getting his plumbing certificate and he’s going to Narcotics Anonymous, and you roll up and he’s smoking a joint sitting on his front porch step with his friends. Now we get around to this issue of revocations. Look, a parole and probation agent from the state of Maryland told me that if you revoked everybody under supervision for smoking a joint on his front porch, there would be no sense in parole and probation, you would just automatically send them back to prison after a day.

David: Yeah. The clients on our caseloads, they’re on drug testing regiments, so we get notifications daily on the results of their drug test.

Leonard: Intensive drug tests.

David: Intensive drug tests. Many of them are on twice a week. If we had to respond with strong, immediate sanctions, taking them back to court every positive drug test, the jails, the prisons, would have even more people in them than they do now.

Leonard: We’d have to build four to five times the amount of prisons-

David: We would.

Leonard: … than we currently have now.

David: Absolutely. The thing is, the way I think about it is, is something becoming a pattern. I had a guy when I first started, he tested positive for cocaine. He had been clean as a whistle prior to that for several months, and then boom, positive for cocaine. Of course, we call him into the office and I sit down with him and I show him the positive and we have a conversation about, first of all, the surprise of it, “You’ve been doing well. Are there any triggers that have come up recently that hadn’t been there for a while?” We try to provide support. He no longer tested positive after that, but if that had become a pattern where it’s cocaine, cocaine, cocaine, cocaine, then we go to treatment. If that didn’t work, then we …

After treatment doesn’t work, I think that’s when you come back and take a look and say, “Okay, what else can we do?” If all options have been exhausted, I think then, yes, you can go to court and request revocation. I would just want to make sure that before I requested somebody’s freedom be taken away, that I have truly tried every single thing and given that person every opportunity to turn things around.

Leonard: I do want to emphasize, anywhere from the Department of Justice to [PU 00:21:31] to the National Council of State Governments to the American Probation and Parole Association, and I could go down the list and name 15 more, they want us to remediate, to the best of our ability, I’m saying “we,” I’m talking about parole and probation throughout the country, to try intermediate sanctions, to try to hold the person accountable, provide those sanctions, and provide those resources to help that person. Every organization out there is telling us to do exactly that, so now becomes the key issue, when do you maintain, when do you try to remediate, when do you try to provide these intermediate sanctions, and when do you revoke? Is there a magic formula?

Keith: I think it’s on a individual basis. There’s no such thing as a magic formula. I think every individual comes in front of you is different and you have to treat them differently. To revoke somebody for using cocaine one time would not be a great decision for that individual, because everybody makes mistakes.

Leonard: It’s not going to be one time. Let’s be honest.

Keith: That’s true.

Leonard: Our folks screw up on a regular basis.

Keith: A regular basis, right.

Leonard: Yet at the same time, 69% successfully complete supervision, so obviously, the community supervision officers are working with that individual, with their parents, with their families, with their treatment providers, to try to provide some sense of stability so that person can safely complete supervision, but nobody does it without screw-ups.

David: Very true.

Keith: That’s correct, that’s correct. Then the more they screw up, the more they dig a hole for themselves, and eventually, no matter how much you try to do as far as intervention for them, revocation is on the way. You either tell them that you are doing this for them, you’re trying to help them out, trying to find a cause of what’s going on behind it, treatment, modality, inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment, it doesn’t matter, at one point in time, revocation is inevitable. You can talk to them as much as you can, but some people, no matter what you do, they’re still going to want to, they’re not going to follow the rules and regulations of supervision, so they’re going to go back.

David: I want to throw this out there too, to consider too. Sometimes when we think about revocation, it is a hard thing to think about, taking somebody’s freedom, but I had a few clients actually that have said to me before, after they’ve been released, that they feel, and it’s a touchy subject, it’s something for debate, but they said that they feel like their time in jail saved them.

Keith: That’s true.

David: Now you can look back in their histories and see PCP, cocaine, heroin, constant use, homelessness, no employment, so those are strong risk factors for possible recidivation, but sometimes I think our society as a whole looks at prison and jail and says, “It’s the worst thing ever. It’s the worst thing ever. It needs to change.” There are things that need to be adjusted, most definitely, but when I hear clients who have said that’s what saved their life, it really gives me pause to say, “You know what? There is a time when we have to go to the judge and say, ‘Take their freedom.'” I was going to throw that out there. I think one thing, can I go back for a second?

Leonard: Yeah, please do.

David: You asked the question about what would we recommend to people across the country listening and about our role as probation officers, and I think one thing too is that, remember that we are on the front line of behavior change, of trying to instill behavior change in a very, very, very difficult population, the people that you read about who have committed the armed robberies, the people that you have read about that are running through the streets high on cocaine and heroin. Those are the people we meet with. Those are the people who we get to know their grandmothers, their children, their spouses, and it is difficult. I think people need to remember that if a client messes up, even several times on supervision, it’s not just a cut and dry process. If it took 20 years for somebody to get involved with the criminal justice system and they’ve got a year on probation, we need to keep in mind what sort of issues. It takes a while.

Leonard: I go back to my experience in Maryland where the person said that if you’re going to revoke them for one, two, three, four, five drug positives, then just revoke them now, just revoke everybody. They come out of prison on a Tuesday and they’re back on a Wednesday, because what’s the sense? They’re not going to go to treatment or they’re going to be disruptive in treatment, they’re not going to get a job or they’re going to take too long to get a job, and they’re going to pay their fines in restitution, but not pay all of it.

There’s always problems with people under supervision. Your job is to break through the barriers, understand that person, understand their family, understand their circumstances, use cognitive-behavioral therapy, establish a relationship with that person, and at the same time, magically induce these individuals to participate in programs, encourage their successful participation in programs, and hold them accountable when they screw up.

David: Yeah, correct.

Leonard: That’s a huge, huge, huge task. People need to understand, people listening throughout the country, people need to understand that out of the correctional population, which is 7,000,000 individuals on any given day, 5,000,000 belong to us in parole and probation. The vast majority of people involved in the criminal justice system are not behind bars. The vast majority of the people in the criminal justice system are beholden or responsible or reporting to parole and probation agents.

Keith: That’s correct.

Leonard: Can I throw out a question to Cromer real quick?

David: Yeah, please.

Leonard: Keith, I have a question for you. We had talked about this earlier, but you said before you had had clients that on supervision were doing stellar, they were meeting all their special conditions, coming to the office visits, drug testing clean, working, but then something happened where everything just falls apart. You mentioned earlier the importance of helping the clients build a plan. Was it just that they didn’t have a plan that they fell apart or was there something … How does something go from this really positive trajectory and then it just evaporates?

Keith: Yes, either one, they have a plan or …

Leonard: Back in the mic. There we go.

Keith: One, they didn’t have a plan, or two, something in their lives that destroyed them. A lot of times they don’t know how to cope with issues that come up in their lives, so the first thing they do is go to drug use. The friends, the family, things happen, or death in the family, everybody goes out with everybody, but a lot of people [inaudible 00:28:07]] surroundings tend to cope with using drugs, marijuana, cocaine, whatever the case may be, or celebrating, the same direction. That’s the reason what you have to figure out is how to let them know that that’s not okay to celebrate or to go into mourning regarding using drugs regarding an issue. Then also a lot of times, they’re going well and then they sabotage themselves because they don’t know, “I’m doing so well, I don’t know how to-“

Leonard: “I don’t know what to do from here,” maybe.

Keith: “… [crosstalk 00:28:39] do from here,” so they do, the fear comes in, and so they use cocaine or whatever drug.

David: Because in my head I was thinking, that’s one of the most difficult parts for me as a supervision officer is when somebody’s doing fantastic, and so in your head you’re like, “Wow, this person, they’re going to have a great life. 20 years from now, they’re going to be great,” and then everything falls apart.

Leonard: I think that struggle is with every person out there. You’re going to have good days and bad days and some points where they’re doing well and some points where they’re not doing well, and somehow, some way, you’ve got to work your magic regardless of the circumstances. We got about 15 seconds left. Comments? Comments?

David: I was going to say, just remember that we’re on the front lines of behavior change with folks involved in the criminal justice system, not easy.

Leonard: Look, we have better results in the last couple years here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, higher case closure rates, fewer arrests. Congratulations to you and everybody out there that chooses to be a community supervision officer, and a parole and probation agent, outside of the District of Columbia. Ladies and gentlemen, we have been talking to David Mauldin, CSO, Keith Cromer, CSO, with my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. This is D.C. Public Safety. We appreciate your comments, we even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have themselves a pleasant day.

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Women Offenders

March 24, 2016 by

DC Public Safety Radio

See the main site at http://media.csosa.gov

See the radio program at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2015/02/programs-women-offenders-womens-reentry-forum-dc-february-14/

Leonard: From the nation’s capital, this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Back at our microphone is Marcia Davis, supervisory community supervision officer, talking about women offenders. My agency, our agency, the court services and offender supervision agency reorganized around women offenders a couple years ago. We want to talk about that and talk about upcoming events, www.csosa.gov. Marcia Davis, welcome back to D.C. Public Safety.

Marcia: Thank you, Leonard.

Leonard: Marcia, you’re a veteran of these radio shows. You pretty much know what to do. We’re going to be talking about women under supervision, talking about their social characteristics. First of all, in terms of some stats, we have close to 2,000 women under our supervision services, correct?

Marcia: Yes, Leonard. We currently have 1,963 women on supervision which is about 15.5 percent of our population.

Leonard: We did reorganize around women offenders a couple years ago. We have a lot of really interesting programs that focus on the needs of women, correct?

Marcia: Yes.

Leonard: Before getting into that, I do want to remind everybody that the purpose of this program today is to support an event on Saturday, February 14th from 8:30 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon at the Temple of Praise, 700 Southern Avenue SE, Washington, D.C. where we will have a daylong exhibition of services and issues and support services for our women under supervision. It’s one of the most extraordinarily interesting things that I’ve ever seen in my 45 years within the criminal justice system. We do want to talk about that in a while.

First, let’s get back over to what we do in terms of the reorganization. I mean, we have a re-entry and sanction center which is, I don’t know of any other parole and probation agency in the country that operate as a center. It’s huge. We have an entire floor for women. We have developed gender-specific teams for women because we recognize that women need to be supervised/assisted in ways different from men. We have, now, a day reporting center which I think is really unique where it’s just a women’s day reporting center. We have WICA, Women in Control Again, that program. We have expanded that. We have done a lot of things in between all of that. Marcia, where do you want to begin in terms of talking about the reorganization of our agency around women offenders?

Marcia: What our agency did was, they went back and they looked at the research. What the research shows is that when women are on supervision, if you want your women to be successful, it’s important that you create programs that are gender-specific to deal with the issues relative to your females.

Leonard: Is it a given that that women offenders are different from men?

Marcia: The issues that women face are different from men. When we look at the profile for the female offender, a lot of our women, victims of childhood sexual abuse, they have low education, they’re homeless, they have low employment. Due to that victimization from their childhood, a lot of them as adults are still involved in toxic relationships, their children have been removed, they carry a lot of guilt and shame. These are issues that most of our men don’t face.

Leonard: We know that women do better under these circumstances when it’s a gender-specific program than when it’s not a gender-specific program. I think it’s safe to say … I’m not quite sure if it’s safe to say. I’ve been told that most parole and probation agencies throughout the country have not gone to a gender-specific program. We, at the court services and offender supervision agency, have. That makes all the difference in the world, correct?

Marcia: Right. The reason we have done that is because CSOSA is evidence-based. We are an agency that uses evidence-base …

Leonard: Practices.

Marcia: Right. Practices.

Leonard: The best research. The best research that unless you break it down to services specifically designed for women, the women aren’t going to be that successful. If you do that, they’re going to be more successful.

Marcia: Right. We are seeing the success with the women that we are supervising now. We are seeing the successful outcomes.

Leonard: It’s really amazing to be that we haven’t done this decades ago. I mean, every state in the country is talking about how many people are in their prison system, how difficult it is, how much it cost. If we can stabilize individuals in the community and give them the services; the mental health substance abuse, the group services, you reunite them with their kids, find housing. If we can do all that, we can reduce the load on the prison system throughout the country, plus, make safer communities.

Marcia: That’s one thing. When we look at the prison system, we can see that the population of our female offenders is growing. When you look at the prison system, the research shows that in the year 2000, the female general population had the fastest growing rate in the correctional institution. The annual rate for females, it was an increase of 3.4 percent.

Leonard: I think it was 2010 data that you’re referring to. That’s fairly a recent data. It’s the fastest growing correctional population, what they were talking about that percentage of the jail population. More and more women are coming into the criminal justice system and that can be addressed by giving them the services they need while on community supervision.

Marcia: Right. To avoid going to the prison system.

Leonard: Tell me if I’m right or wrong, we’re taking a look at national data now. Women have higher rate of substance abuse, higher rates of mental health problems, and profoundly higher rates of being sexually victimized, particularly, when they were children. The women that we have to deal with, they come out of the prison system where they’re on probation and they have to deal with all of these issues. The fact that they don’t have, in most cases, a good work history. In most cases, they don’t have a GED or a high school diploma. They’ve been battered, they’ve been beaten, they’ve been bruised by life and by those around them. Considering that most of them have children and we have a general stat that says it’s 63 percent of the people that we have under supervision, our parents, but I think that figure would be much higher for just the women population, how did they possibly succeed if they have all that to deal with when they come out of the prison system, when they come out of jail or we get them on probation. When they’ve got all that against them, how can they possibly succeed?

Marcia: Tackling those issues one at a time. In the gender-specific unit, we have programs to address all of those factors. We have programs. We have the Women in Control Again program. That’s a program that deals with women who are early in recovery. In that program, they look at things such as the self, where you’re looking at your family history, you’re starting to look at the trauma that the women have suffered. We also talk about relationships in that program. They can look at the relationships that women have with their families, the relationships that they’ve had with their partners. We look at sexuality and we talk about spirituality. Also involved with the WICA program, we’ve added a new group which is a trauma group to address some of that past and present victimization that our women deal with.

We have a daily reporting center where we have a group called, thinking for a change which deals with anti-social behavior and it deals with anti-social thinking. We have a vocational and educational program where we can refer them for an assessment and for job placement assistance. Also, where they can go back to school and they can work on getting their GED or their high school diploma. We have substance abuse treatment. We can refer them to our re-entry sanction center, where we talked about earlier, where we have a floor that is dedicated to our females. At the re-entry sanction center, our population, they can get a thorough treatment assessment and they come out with a treatment plan for a continuum of care.

Leonard: That’s a lot of services that most parole and probation agencies do not have. Now, let me ask you this. Years ago, I ran a group for males. Men caught up in criminal justice system and the Maryland prison system. I’ve sat it on groups for men in our agency and I’ve sat in with the groups for women within our agency. The women’s groups are profound. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life. This is why I always like to talk to women under supervision that come from these groups on this radio show which we’ve done about, maybe, up to 10 times. They are profoundly honest at a certain point. Once they set me into the group and once I listened to their interactions with each other, they are profoundly, brutally honest. To sit there amongst these 15, 20 women listening to them talk to each other about their lives and about what’s going on is just the experience of a lifetime. Tell me about the group interaction.

Marcia: That was another reason why we needed to have the gender-specific groups. Because in the past, we have the co-ed groups where the women were mixed with the men. If you was to sit in that group, you would notice that the women would sit quietly. It would be a totally different group. In the gender-specific group, the first thing we let the women know that this is a safe environment where you can share. One of the main rules is that, what is said in the group stays in the group. We make it a point that anything that’s said in the group has to remain in this room and it cannot leave the room, so that they can feel safe enough to share those past stories.

Leonard: Those past stories are brutal. To sit there and one woman, basically, is struggling with getting to her appointments on time. You hear the other women basically saying, “I don’t want to hear that. This is your shot. This is your one shot to get clean, to get right, to get your children back. You can’t come in here and tell us about how difficult it was for you to make your appointments.” I thought that that was amazing.

Marcia: Although it’s a lot being said in the group, it’s also a lot of strength in the group. The women can see the resiliency from the other women. They can see, “Well, wait a minute. If she has this tragic story to share and she’s making it, hey, I can make it too. She said she was someone who share that, hey, I may have been molested, I may have been sexually abused, I may have been physically abused when I was 8 or 10, but I’m putting all that stuff in the past and I’m going to continue on. I’m not going to let that hold me back anymore. I want to get my kids back. I want to get a job. I want to get my education. I want to get a home. I want to complete supervision successfully.” That strength, it helps the other women and then they build off for that and they help each other.

Leonard: Critics of supervision, not necessarily within our agency but supervision across the board throughout the country basically say, “Look, Leonard, you’re asking way too much of individuals coming out on a criminal justice system.” I mean, here, we’re asking them to deal with substance abuse, we’re asking them to deal with mental health, we’re asking them to deal with their profound histories of abuse, we’re asking them to reunite with their children, we’re asking them to find housing, we’re asking them to find employment. We’re asking it awful lot and the new people who come into the group are saying, “There’s no way I can do this,” and then they’re sitting with their counterparts who have experienced all of that themselves and they’re doing it. They sit there and watch a new person watch everybody else. You can see the spark going off in their head saying, “Well, she is no different from I am and she is doing it. Why can’t I do it?”

Marcia: They know each other from the communities. D.C. is a small area. Some know each other from the community. They have seen the struggle that some of the other participants have been through. To see them go through that transformation and to see the new person, that gives them hope to know that they can do it too.

Leonard: Most of the women that I’ve encountered in the system, tell me if I’m right or wrong, are not necessarily coming from backgrounds of violence. A lot of it is drugs, a lot of it is theft, a lot of it is prostitution, a lot of it is creating some sort of disturbance in the community. Am I right or wrong about that?

Marcia: You’re right about that. A lot of that comes from the victimization. The past victimization that was never dealt with.

Leonard: When I flip that switch in saying, a lot of it is dealing with the men who were in their lives. When I was with the Maryland correctional system, how many women did I talk to who, basically, were in there for fairly long stretch is, under the premise that this guy says, “If you don’t take these drugs down Interstate 95, I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to hurt your children.” If I’m being stereotypical or if I’m wrong, tell me. A lot of this is due to the dysfunctional men that they keep in their lives because of their background. Am I right?

Marcia: Right. That’s the continuation of the victimization. They’re continuing in these toxic relationships.

Leonard: If they got those services that were necessary, and I always ask you and whoever else I’m dealing with and in the women under supervision themselves, what percentage of women would not go back to the correctional system if these services were offered not just in Washington, D.C. but throughout the country. What’s your percentage; the most of them would succeed, 40 percent, 30 percent?

Marcia: I would say, maybe, 40 percent. That would be 40 percent.

Leonard: Yeah. That 40 percent would not go back. We have a national recidivism rate in this country of about 50 percent. You’re talking about 40 percent not going back. That’s a huge difference. In essence, we can do a much better job if we put those services on the table. That’s the bottom line, correct?

Marcia: Yes. That’s the bottom line.

Leonard: I do want to talk more about under the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency but we’re more than halfway through the program. I want to reintroduce our guest today, Marcia Davis, supervisory community supervision officer with our agency, my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, www.csosa.gov is our website. On there, you will find the information about an event coming up February 14, 2015 at the Temple of Praise where we do a women’s re-entry symposium with the theme, Family Supporting Supervision Success. It is an extraordinary event. The public is welcome. If you have an interest in this issue, we encourage your involvement. Also, we want to talk about our city-wide re-entry assembly where we celebrate the success of our faith-base mentors and that’s Thursday, February 19, 2015 at a brand new location, The Kellogg Conference Center at Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Avenue NE, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Again, you can find out information about all of this on our website, www.csosa.gov.

Marcia, we have gender-specific teams, we have the day reporting center. How important was that day reporting center?

Marcia: The day reporting center is very important because this provides the outlet for our women during the day. We have programming through the day reporting center from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It takes out a large chunk of the day for our female offenders. It gives them somewhere that they can go. They can be safe, they can discuss their issues, they can get the services that they need. Throughout the reporting center, we provide vocational services where they can go for their GED assessment, they can go for job placement assistance. We have Thinking for a Change program. That’s the program that deals with anti-social behavior and anti-social thinking. We have a relationship group in the program …

Leonard: That’s important.

Marcia: … to help women who are involved in those toxic relationships. Our DRC coordinator, Ms. [Copeland 16:48], also will make referrals to our victim services program which is another important initiative that we’ve added. The victim services program helps victims of the domestic violence, get the assistance they need if they need to get civil protection orders or if they need to get housed and they will assist them through that process. Through the daily reporting center, we also provide tokens to our offenders. Those who are not financially able to get back and forth to the supervision office. One other important thing we do for our females is that we recognize them. Once a female completes any of our groups, we always hold a graduation so that we can recognize them for the positive steps that they’re making.

Leonard: Day reporting centers are there, traditionally, for those individuals who are unemployed and those individuals who are struggling. We provide them with structure and education throughout the course of the day. The interesting thing about what you’re saying is is that the day reporting center for women provides a sense of fellowship.

Marcia: Right. Daily programming. Yes.

Leonard: We run groups. Majority of the women that we have under supervision end up in groups, correct?

Marcia: Yes.

Leonard: They end up within a group structure. This is a continuation of that group structure. When I go to the day reporting center for men, I don’t see a lot of group interaction. Once again, in terms of the day reporting center for women under our agency, there is a lot of group interaction.

Marcia: Right. There not only group interaction, they also refer to a vocational development specialist. They may go to the vocational development specialist to complete the educational or the job placement assessment. It was not just groups. They may go there individually or they may be referred to our center intervention team for substance abuse assessment.

Leonard: When I ran group a lifetime ago, people coming into the system, they were what I said they had, a chip on their shoulder, the size of the State of Montana. They were very difficult to break through. A lot of women are very mistrusting of us in the criminal justice system. How do you break through that history? How do you break through that hard shell of it so many women under supervision bring to the table? How do you break through all of that to the point where you reach their sense of humanity to the point where they would open up and share what’s happening to them now and what happened to them in the past?

Marcia: One of the things the agency did was training. They’ve trained all of the staff on cognitive, behavioral interventions, and motivational interviewing. Part of it just listening to the offender to see what their goals are and what their needs are from their point of view. Sometimes, when you just listen to see what their concerns are, that’s a lot to break down the barriers.

Leonard: You’ve got to admit, I mean, they’re not the easiest folks in the world to deal with or they’re new into the group setting.

Marcia: For women, one of the main issues is that their voice there is not heard. Once you listen and start hearing, some of the things that they say, just for them knowing that, “Hey, this person is listening. Okay. Maybe some of the goals that I’m including is being included into my case plan.” Those are things that are concerning to them.

Leonard: I’ve seen women, the new ones, it’s like, “My God, you’re asking me to do what? You’re asking me to deal with mental health, my substance abuse, my background, all of that and then you want me to go out and find work and then work with me in terms of the reunification with my kids. That’s overwhelming.”

Marcia: Now, one of the first things we do when an individual comes to a supervision, we want to do risk and needs assessment which is a comprehensive assessment so that we can determine what their risk to the community is and what their needs are. From that, we develop a case plan. From the case plan, we say, “What things you need to accomplish while you’re on supervision?” We set the plan and set target dates. Everything is not due at the same time. We will set a schedule and set a target date working with the female and realizing, “She’s not going to be able to do everything at one time especially if it’s someone with mental health needs.”

Leonard: It’s still overwhelming. I mean, that list by itself even if you stretch it out is overwhelming.

Marcia: We’re right here to work with them and that’s the most important thing. Not only that, when they’re assigned to a call service agency, we work in partnership with the call service agency. It was all of us working together for the success of the female even sometimes with their families.

Leonard: Marcia, how long have been doing this?

Marcia: For 16 years.

Leonard: 16 years. Is it 16 years with the court services or 16 years dealing with women?

Marcia: 16 years with court services, dealing with both men and women. I’ve been dealing with women for the last 6 years.

Leonard: 6 years. Do you ever go home and yell at people or kick the dog? I mean, your job is difficult.

Marcia: Yes.

Leonard: You’re taking people who can be saved, who can lead a life where they’re tax payers and not tax burdens, where they’re parents and their kids aren’t elsewhere. That’s a huge task to break through that barrier and to find the services and to make that connection with women who have had pretty difficult backgrounds.

Marcia: It can be challenging at times. I come in everyday willing to give 115 percent. I have a good staff on my team. We have a good unit. I mean, I go home everyday. It’s challenging but I go home everyday and I go to bed. The next day, I’m up and I’m ready to do it all over again. I love my job and I love working with the women.

Leonard: It is hard for people who are listening to this program now to understand that within the criminal justice system, there just don’t seem to be an awful lot of successes and you can get burned out from doing this sort of a job. Most, if not all, of our staff that I’ve talked to are pretty enthusiastic about what it is that they do. When I walk in among these people under supervision and for them to smile at me, it’s just a real interesting experience. All right. Women in Control Again, that was a program that was put together by your predecessor, Dr. Willa Butler. It’s been expanded. One of the focuses here is on high risk individuals. Tell me about that.

Marcia: Women in Control Again is a program that was developed for females with co-occurring needs. Women in Control Again, it deals with high risk offenders who have substance abuse and mental health and is developed to help them make better decisions in the future. Under Women in Control Again, we have 3 groups. The first group deals with women in early recovery. The second group goes through the 12 steps, it goes to each one of the 12 steps, and the third group is our new piece which deals with trauma. From that group, we have a psychologist that comes in a clinical person. She comes in and she works with our females. At times, we can also get our females, if needed, individual counseling.

Leonard: One of the things I do want to point out that we reorganized around women, we reorganized around younger offenders and we reorganized around high risk offenders. Within that category of young and high risk in female, you can have cross over. That’s all part of the women’s program as well.

Marcia: Yes.

Leonard: The whole idea is to prioritize the people who are at greatest risk for reoffending and to make sure that they get the services that are necessary for them not to reoffend again. We take a look at our data and our data has improved in terms of recidivism, in terms of successful completion. Obviously, you all are doing the right things.

Marcia: Thank you.

Leonard: Tell me more about that. I mean, how does it feel to make that sort of a difference?

Marcia: It feels good. I mean, I know just as having a gender-specific unit, it really means a lot to our females. If you could just see their faces when we have the graduation ceremonies, even at our re-entry event, the upcoming event. At that event, we do a dress for success makeover to help prepare those females who are re-entering society, to help prepare them to return to the working world. Just doing that dress for success makeover to see the transformation for these women. We get clothes donated from organizations within the community. To see them go through this transformation, to get the business attire, to get the makeup, to get the shoes, and to do the fashion show, I mean, it’s really exciting.

Leonard: The bottom line behind all of this in terms of having a gender-specific program and having people specifically train to deliver that gender-specific program is that we can meaningfully intervene in the lives of the people under our supervision. We can end that whole sense of the never ending rate of recidivism, people in the system, out of the system, in the system, out of the system. We can really help people overcome all of that and we can really help people overcome some very serious problems.

Marcia: Right. At least to address some of the issues, some of the things that I’ve held back in the past such as the trauma, such as the unemployment, such as the low education and the substance abuse.

Leonard: As I have experienced, when you go in the groups or when you listen to women talk to each other about these issues, it is profoundly real or profoundly stark. When you interview women at these microphones, they are about as honest as honest can possibly be. I think the biggest difference between women and men is that women were more than willing to be honest.

Marcia: Yes. They are.

Leonard: More than willing to talk about the reality of what’s happened to them in their lives.

Marcia: Right. That’s only when they feel safe and comfortable.

Leonard: I want to remind everybody that we do have 2 events that are coming up. The women’s re-entry symposium 2015 with the theme, Family Supporting Supervision Services on Saturday February 14, 2015 from 8:30 to 3:00 in the afternoon. It’s going to be at the Temple of Praise, 700 Southern Avenue SE, Washington, D.C. Behind that, we have a city-wide re-entry assembly. That is where we celebrate the success of the mentors and mentees regarding our faith-base program. That’s going to be on Thursday, February 19, 2015 at the Kellogg Conference Center at Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Avenue NE from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. You can find information about all of this on our website, www.csosa.gov. Our guest today has been Marcia Davis, supervisory community supervision officer dealing specifically with women offenders. Again, the website, www.csosa.gov. We’ll list all of the changes and all of the upcoming events and we encourage your participation. We appreciate you listening and we want everybody to have themselves a very very pleasant day.

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Supervising and Treating Mentally Ill Offenders-DC Public Safety Radio

May 31, 2013 by

Welcome to “DC Public Safety” – Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

The portal site for “DC Public Safety” is http://media.csosa.gov.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2013/03/supervising-and-treating-mentally-ill-offenders-dc-public-safety-radio/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentleman, our show today is on the supervision and treatment of mental health offenders. We, within the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, we say that 37% of our offenders have had contact with mental health providers or claim a mental health issue. Reports from the Department of Justice several years ago, they suggest a self-report figure of over 50%. To discuss this emerging issue within the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency and throughout the country, we have three guests today. We have Ubux Hussen, she is the Mental Health Program Administrator; a Community Supervision Officer – Supervisory Community Supervision Officer Marcia Davis; and Supervisory Community Supervision Officer Robert Evans. And to Ubux and Marcia and to Robert, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Female: Thank you, Leonard, for inviting us.

Female: Thank you.

Robert Evans: Thank you.

Len Sipes: All right. You know this is an extraordinarily important topic for us. It really is and it’s an extraordinarily important topic for every court, every parole commission, every parole and probation agency throughout the United States. It really is an emerging issue because it seems to – it seems to me that the numbers increase – continuously increase. Every time I read a piece of national research or local research, they tell me that they’re sort of astounded by the high numbers of people who have had contact with mental health providers and who claim to have a mental background. Like I said, there was a Department of Justice report that suggested that over 50% of the individuals who they interviewed caught up in the criminal justice system; they claimed to have a mental health problem or had contact with a mental health system in the past. So, Ubux, the first question is going to you. How many people out of the 15,000 individuals that we have on supervision on any given day, both parolees and probationers, how many are involved in our mental health unit?

Ubux Hussen: In our mental health unit, approximately 2068…

Len Sipes: That’s a lot of people.

Ubux Hussen: It is a lot of people spread across six or seven mental health men and women’s teams. The observation you made about the number of people – you know, back in the ’70s and ’80s, we did this deinstitutionalization from state mental health hospitals and a lot of those people have cycled through both state, federal, and local jails and prisons which really have become very innovative in mental health service delivery because of the need of the people under their care. So there are a lot more people who probably qualify than the 2068…

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: …who are currently assigned to our branch. So I’ll stop there.

Len Sipes: Well, that is an important piece of context for people to understand that one time we had within this country a fairly extensive community-based and hospital-based mental health system. They went through a process of deinstitutionalization, I think, back in the 1970s and at one time, there were thousands of people caught up in community care and in terms of intuitional care, but they’ve taken down most of those institutions from various states and they did not support the community component. So, in essence, we’ve heard individuals suggest that the criminal justice system is now the de facto provider of mental health services to a lot of people caught up who are in the system who are mentally ill and that’s shocking. You know, to me, it’s shocking. Marcia, who gets to be on our mental health unit? Describe that kind of person.

Marcia Davis: Okay. So the individuals who come to supervision come to us by way of the United States Parole Commission after they have been placed on supervisory list of parole or through the DC Court System after being placed on probation.

Len Sipes: Uh huh.

Marcia Davis: And in most cases, they’ve been either court ordered or ordered by the USPC to either undergo a mental health assessment, participate in mental health treatment, or be supervised by the mental health unit.

Len Sipes: Okay. Now, so they come either from the courts or they come from the US Parole System.

Marcia Davis: Right.

Len Sipes: Can a community supervision officer– what most people throughout the country call parole and probation agents, can a community supervision officer here within Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency can they mandate that a person receive an evaluation? Robert?

Robert Evans: Well, not necessarily mandate but one thing that is important to know is that we kind of train our staff to be very observant. We train them to have a listening ear and also be observant of when someone is experiencing some sort of breakdown or issue. And so what they’ll make – what they’ll do is make a recommendation and they will make a referral. So they will refer to our mental health program administrator to review a situation, most likely try to get this person a mental health assessment so that we can kind of gauge what this person is going through. So anybody who has a mental health assessment and assessment basically says that they have a current issue they’re dealing with, a mental health diagnosis, then we’ll take another look at that to see if they qualify for our unit.

Len Sipes: Well, from the beginning of the show, I do want to establish two things: a) Because an individual has a mental health issue does not mean that they’re going to be part of the criminal justice system and I want to make that abundantly clear.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: There are endless millions of people floating throughout the United States, throughout the world, who have mental health condition who never come into contact with the criminal justice system. However, if you are schizophrenic, if you have one of dozens of mental health diagnosis, if you are depressed in some ways that does correlate, however, with substance use that does correlate, however, with a contact with the criminal justice system. Did I phrase it correctly, Ubux?

Ubux Hussen: Absolutely. There also other environmental or psychosocial factors – poverty, low educational level, a fragile limited or non-existent family or social support network.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: In terms of poverty, access to health insurance whether you’re able to get the medication that allows you to have stability in your life so that you’re not engaging in criminal activity. So there’s both the diagnosis and then there is what’s called the ecology of the person’s life.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Ubux Hussen: So who else is in your life and what else is in your life that serves as a prosocial stabilizing factor?

Len Sipes: But we have to establish as well in terms of a baseline for this discussion people on parole and probation supervision both within Washington DC and throughout the country. It applies equally across the board. They come often with substance abuse backgrounds.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: They come often with multiple contacts with the criminal justice system.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: They come often with tough upbringings, oftentimes single parent family, often time I’ve heard dozens and dozens and dozens of people caught up in the criminal justice system describe the fact that they raised themselves, that they were basically on their own, that they basically got up, fed themselves, and took themselves to school. Individuals caught up in the criminal justice system have dozens of disadvantages. Most of the female offenders that we have do things, number one, the large number have children so it’s not just taking care of themselves as they come out of the prison system. Somehow someway they want to reunite with their children. My heavens, when you start stacking deck – when you start considering all the different things that an individual caught up in the criminal justice system has to deal with and you throw mental health issues on top of all those things, it becomes scary. It becomes what some people have claimed almost to be a school to prison pipeline because they’re saying how do you overcome all those obstacles?

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: Anybody feel to comment from a mental health point of view?

Robert Evans: Yeah. I’m glad you’ve mentioned that because you know we – we throw the word mental health around and it’s kind of – there’s a stigma that comes along that word just mental health.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: And we need to be clear that everybody has mental health. If you have a brain, you know. So everybody has health that they’re dealing with and you know, issues face us all. If you have death in the family, if you are struggling in life, so all these things that people have come along with, they deal with them differently.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: You know and how do they – how do they deal with it. And so, one thing that we have to mention is that – especially here in DC, there are services that people can get…

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: …as a result of having “mental health issue” and so that can also add to why people are getting into this system – the mental health system because, for example, you have people that are in – who are locked up and once they realize that they can get special treatment for being in mental health now that they want to fake issues. So there’s another, you know, a sort of layer of the whole mental thing that we should visit because it’s more than just you know people have in “mental health issue.” It’s a huge sort of box that they can be opened up. You know, people can get SSI checks, people kind of once they get a diagnosis they kind of rely on at some time.

Len Sipes: Okay. So it’s a fairly complex issue.

Robert Evans: It’s very complex.

Len Sipes: All right. Let’s start from the beginning then now that we’ve laid this groundwork. So a person either comes from the courts or comes from the parole commission with a mandate that we evaluate them for mental health services. What happens when we receive that piece of paper?

Marcia Davis: And then let me also add because we kind of touched on it a little bit but I want to add sometimes, like you said, people go to general supervision and while they’re in general supervision, the CSO may notice that there’s some things that may not be totally right with this person.

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: So they will refer them for an assessment and once they get assessed, they could be deemed appropriate for the mental health unit and be transferred over.

Len Sipes: Okay. Okay. What happens when that happens? Either through the CSO in general supervision or the parole commission or the courts? So somebody says I think this person has an issue, what happens?

Ubux Hussen: Usually, either through a supervisor or the actual CSO, I will receive an e-mail…

Len Sipes: Okay.

Ubux Hussen: …with an attached mental health assessment.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: That has to be current and not older than 12 months.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Ubux Hussen: We want the most current information about the person. That assessment is reviewed for whether the person has what mental health clinicians call a severe and persistent mental illness.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Ubux Hussen: And so that’s your schizophrenias, that’s your bipolar disorder, etcetera.

Len Sipes: Right. Right.

Ubux Hussen: We also, however, supervised other people who have developmental delays, who are mild to moderately what used to be called mentally retarded. We now have a – I’m noticing a trend as everybody is getting older, we have an older population of supervisees who have age-related cognitive deficits and so it is in just do they have a serious mental illness, it’s what else is going on that might impede their successful supervision.

Len Sipes: Okay, fair enough. But we get an evaluation from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Ubux Hussen: Yup.

Len Sipes: We get an evaluation from a mental health clinic. Do we do our own evaluations?

Ubux Hussen: Yes, sometimes.

Len Sipes: Okay. So who does those evaluations?

Ubux Hussen: We have consultants that we contract with.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: One of the things in the DC area that’s really hard to get is a psychological evaluation.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: And so the agency pays for those. If the information is conflicting, if it’s inadequate, if somebody for example has experienced trauma to the head while they’ve been in the community and we just need more information, we will pay for those services for them to get this assessment.

Len Sipes: Okay. So CSOSA does their own evaluations when necessary.

Ubux Hussen: Yes, that’s right.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Marcia Davis: And we also use the Department of Mental Health.

Ubux Hussen: Yes.

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: The DC Department of Mental Health Agency does assessments, too.

Len Sipes: Okay. So the person comes in, we diagnose them, we figure out on what level of deficiency they have and then they’re placed in the mental health unit with well over 2000 people under supervision. Right?

Ubux Hussen: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: Okay. So what happens at that point? So you get this person, not only does he have to make restitution, not only does he have to get a job, not only does he have to get his GED, not only does he have to get his plumbing certificate, not only does he have to obey all law…

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Len Sipes: …he now has to go through some sort of intervention in terms of his mental health problem and I’m assuming that that ranges in terms of the degree of severity of the mental health problem, right?

Robert Evans: Correct.

Len Sipes: Okay, talk to me about that.

Robert Evans: So, basically, the guy comes from my unit and he’s assigned to community supervision officer to supervise him. Now, this supervision officer has been trained to make sure that this person is connected with the mental health services. They’re going to make sure that they connect either for Core Service Agency. This person is going to be connected with a case manager or a therapist if necessary depending on the person’s need. Once they go to that Core Service Agency, the agency would do an intake and they’ll see what this person needs and so, now, this officer needs to follow up with the case manager or whoever they’re connected with…

Len Sipes: Okay.

Robert Evans: …to be sure that they’re following through with that.

Len Sipes: And that connection could be authorities from the District of Columbia. That connection could be with the Veterans Administration.

Robert Evans: Correct.

Len Sipes: That connection could be with lots of different agencies. So okay.

Marcia Davis: Correct. Private organization…

Len Sipes: Private organizations. It could be a private counselor. Now, but do all of them get the counseling they need? I mean, you know, all we hear are budget cuts, budget cuts, budget cuts and my guess is that not everybody is going to be getting counseling – not everybody is getting counseling, not everybody is going to get “therapy.” My guess is that people on the high end of the spectrum with serious mental health issues such as bipolarism or schizophrenic – or being a schizophrenic, they will get it and the people at the lower end don’t. Am I right or wrong?

Robert Evans: Well, you’re right. You’re right. In DC especially, you know, people are overwhelmed with clients. You know, the case mangers that we deal with have extremely high case loads so they’re trying to do the best they can to make sure that they meet these individual’s needs. Bu in most cases, the people that need the intensive service, what they’ll do is get connected with what was called the ACT team, which is Assertive Community Treatment.

Marcia Davis: Assertive Community Treatment.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Robert Evans: So this ACT team is going to be assigned to this client who has a very severe issue.

Marcia Davis: A severe need.

Len Sipes: A severe need, right.

Robert Evans: And so what that would do is get this person more specialized treatment but even in those cases, it’s very difficult. The difficulty that we face is we have to make sure that this person is following through with the recommendation but we can’t hold their hand, we can’t take them to treatment, we can’t pick him up from their home and take them to the case manager so –

Len Sipes: But in many cases – and that I want to get to this right after the break – in many cases, we are the principal pro-social entity in that person’s life which I find astounding…

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: …in terms of doing previous radio programs about this topic.

Ubux Hussen: Yes.

Len Sipes: Ladies and gentleman, we’re talking to Ubux Hussen. She is the Mental Health Program Administrator. We’re talking to Marcia Davis and Robert Evans. They’re both Supervisory Community Supervision Officers with my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, here in Washington DC. We are a federal independent agency offering parole and probation services to the great city of Washington DC. Our website is www.csosa.gov, www.csosa.gov. Talking about the issue of mental health and how parole and probation agencies treat mental health problems and again getting back to the issue that I’ve brought up right before the break that for so many individuals under supervision, we are, in many cases, the sole stabilizing pro-social force in their life, coming into contact with them and asking them: a) Are you taking your medication?; b) Are you going to the counseling clinic but we have liaisons, we know whether or not they’re complying with this counseling clinics; and c) To sit with that individual and we’re not therapist…

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: We’re not therapists but we do talk with that individual and try to help that individual through the various crises of their lives, and d) often times when they find themselves in crisis, we’re the first people that they turn to. So I talk to be all that.

Marcia Davis: Okay. So what we’re seeing now with the co-service agencies is that collaborations work tremendously. In the female unit, we have a group of women with unique needs. When we look at the pathways to crime for our women, these are women who have a history of childhood victimization. They’ve been –

Len Sipes: Childhood sexual assault.

Marcia Davis: Right. They’ve also been sexually assaulted as adults. They have a history of trauma. They have serious chronic mental illnesses. They are homeless.

Len Sipes: Yes.

Marcia Davis: They have low education, low appointment.

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: They’ve been separated from their children. Their self-esteem is low.

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: But with this population, the collaborations between the different agencies, with CSOSA, with the Core Service Agency, with the treatment staff, with the faith-based mentoring staff. If we come together and we work as one, we can see how those collaborations work. Just yesterday, we had a case, a high-risk offender who has a serious mental illness. She is 7-1/5 months pregnant. She is using substances and we had a team, a multidisciplinary staff, and where we had her Core Service Agency case manager, we had our mental health administrator, Ms. Ubux, we had the CSO, we had the individual from our central intervention team who provides substance abuse treatment, and we had our mental health treatment specialist and together, we came up with a plan to help this individual. So we see as – if we work together it’s so much better than each entity trying to do it alone in this –

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: It takes away from the offender’s ability to play one agency against the next because working together we come up with one plan. We’re all on one co-work and it just works out better for everyone involved.

Len Sipes: I do want to point out to our audience that we do have a variety of special emphases. Am I correct? Saying that am I grammatically correct in terms of three groups. Number one, we’ve reorganized around women offenders, we’ve reorganized around high-risks offenders and now, we’re in the process of reorganizing around young adult offenders.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Marcia Davis: Right.

Len Sipes: And, we’re finding mental health problems in all three groups.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: And with – especially with the high-risk offenders and especially the young adult offenders we’re finding real problems in that group with both recidivism and mental health problems. We have to prioritize…

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Len Sipes: …what it this we do to the highest risk offender. Correct?

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Robert Evans: Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to also go back to your point because I think it’s really important to really highlight that even in my serious case, her community supervision officer was the one that orchestrated all of that.

Marcia Davis: Yes, because –

Robert Evans: Because, you know, when the offender comes home, they’re reporting to the CSO and the CSO is between them and the releasing authority and that’s the freedom right there. So, now, it’s up to that CSO will be the one that can try to connect…

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: …with all these other people .

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: And so, like you said, that community supervision officer is a lifeline…

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: …in most cases.

Len Sipes: Well, I have talked to a wide variety of people in going on 10 years now with the core services and the federal supervision agency, they’ve been – women offenders, Marcia, you and I have talked and the people under supervision have talked and I’ve talked to more than just a couple who are on the mental health program and they basically say, you know, Mr. Sipes, if it wasn’t for that CSO, again, community supervision officer, I don’t know where I’d be.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: He’s the one – she’s the one who constantly says, are you taking your medication, show me your medications, show me that you have your prescription in hand, show me that you’re not abusing this drug, are you going to counseling, or are you hooking up with your faith-based mentor, where are you on your life. And that provides a lifeline. Again, I’m making the same point twice but I do want to reemphasize it. The employees of this organization become sometimes the lifeline…

Ubux Hussen: Yes.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: …in the life of that individual and becomes the major difference as to whether or not that person succeeds or does not succeed.

Robert Evans: Right. And that’s gonna be really heightened when you’re talking about the young population because this is a population who’s in a predicament and most likely because their family may not be there…

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: …or they have turned their back on them.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: So, now, you have somebody who is playing that role in addition to authority but now we have the sort of kind of train you up, you know, and teach you to be an adult. You know, so that…

Len Sipes: It’s cognitive behavioral therapy, restructuring how they think about things in life.

Robert Evans: It’s all [indiscernible]

Len Sipes: Do we do group therapy with some individuals in the mental health unit?

Ubux Hussen: We do. There are – we have two types of groups. We have mental health intervention groups, for example, where Marcia is located. There is a trauma group that targets women and then we do what are called sanctions groups which is for technical violations of your supervision agreement.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: We’re now restructuring ourselves because at the base of everything – what you were saying earlier about people raising themselves and so forth – is underlying trauma that hasn’t been addressed.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: And so we’re reconfiguring the group so that we’re offering more treatment-oriented groups and fewer sanctions groups.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: You know, it’s interesting, the average person listening to this program especially if they are familiar with their parole and probation agency and people are more than welcome to write me, leonardsipes@csosa.gov, leonard.sipes. Call me, send with a nasty letter, do what they will but what we’re talking about is unrecognizable to them because: a) we have a ratio where we come in of community supervision officers, a lot of parole and probation agents and people under supervision of somewhere in about ballpark of 50:1. For mental health teams, it’s less than that but we come into contact with individuals at higher levels of supervision at least four to eight times a month, two of those have to be community contacts and, at the same time, they have all the mental health contacts. Most parole and probation agents in this country, you know, at the highest levels, come into contact with that individual two times a month and when it comes to mental health services, they say go to your mental health clinic and report in. That’s it. That’s most jurisdictions’ response to people with mental health problems. What we do here at CSOSA as cumbersome as it is at times and as frustrating is at times is generally leaps and bounce better than most parole and probation agencies. Now, am I right or wrong?

Robert Evans: You’re absolutely correct and it’s unacceptable if we see anything less.

Marcia Davis: Right.

Robert Evans: You know, because, you know, the bottom line is the consumer. We’re thinking about the offender, you know. We say that but really we’re looking at them like the customer and our job is to assist then through the process. We’re trying to help them get the supervision so that they don’t come back.

Len Sipes: Well, we’re trying to protect public safety.

Robert Evans: Exactly.

Len Sipes: If we get them through supervision that means they’re not out there committing crimes.

Robert Evans: Exactly.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: It means they’re not a burden to society.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Marcia Davis: Right.

Len Sipes: That means they’re no longer tax burdens and they’re tax payers.

Robert Evans: Exactly.

Len Sipes: So a lot of people have a lot of investment in making sure that that person succeeds under supervision including us.

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Robert Evans: Absolutely.

Ubux Hussen: Right. Not the least of which the one million children whose parents…

Len Sipes: Yes.

Ubux Hussen: …at various times are involved with criminal justice systems. So it’s really in societies enlightened self-interest at some point, budgets are finite, and people have to come home and –

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: I’m sorry. Finite and declining.

Ubux Hussen: Finite and declining and so people have to come home and we have to be able to, in terms of those of us charged with public safety, be creative in identifying the reasons for how you got involved in the criminal justice system.

Len Sipes: Okay. But you say creative and so many of us in the criminal justice system, people sitting all throughout the country, listening to this program going creative shamative [PH]. It takes money. It takes resources to do this and – and that’s – that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Ubux Hussen: Yes.

Robert Evans: I would say that’s false. I would say that, you know, when we talk about being creative, we’re talking about being evidence-based and what the evidence says is that you don’t need money to show empathy.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: And so – and that is what our unit is all about. You know, we train people to be able to build a rapport. A big huge part that you were talking about is this person sitting in front of me has to build trust.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: So we’re all about trying to make a connection with this person so that this person will respond to what we’re trying to put in place for them to be successful.

Len Sipes: But this is a difficult population to supervise because I’ve did what you’ve done with your lifetime and they come out of the prison system in many cases and I do note that 65% of our people on our supervision are probationers, not coming out of the prison, but those who would come out of the prison have – what I say a chip on their shoulder the size of Montana.

Robert Evans: Big time.

Len Sipes: And you add mental health to that. You’re breaking through that barrier and so to the point you can get them to point – that person to the point where you can help them is a monumentally difficult task. How you break through that barrier?

Robert Evans: You don’t personalize it. The biggest thing that I’ve learned is to not to personalize it, you know. Just to give you a real life example, a young guy, you know, they – like you said, the chip on your shoulder, I’m seeing that more and more with the young population.

Len Sipes: Yep.

Robert Evans: He comes in. He’s cussing out his officer. This officer called me. Mr. Evans needs you. He came to the cubicle. He’s cussing me out.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: So he said he was done. I let him walk out. Ten minutes later, he came back.

Len Sipes: Uh-huh.

Robert Evans: And he had a different attitude. Now, a typical person may have taken it personal, may have said, you know, what? You walked out, we’re done. But we have to not personalize that process and we have to realize that he is here, we’ve got a body to work with, and let’s rock and roll.

Len Sipes: That is I think the only way it can be done in terms of breaking through. If we do not break through their lives as individuals, we might as well just give it up. We might as well just send them back to prison.

Robert Evans: Right.

Marcia Davis: Now, when it comes –

Len Sipes: Go ahead, either one. We have one minute left.

Marcia Davis: When it comes to female unit, the females appreciate the programs that we have developed on the female unit that are geared and unique to addressing their needs. So they’re participating in these programs and they’re saying that, okay, finally, our needs are being addressed because, for so many years, their needs were never addressed and they haven’t been able to address the issues that they need to address in order to stop the cycle. So just then seeing that we’ve taken the time to develop these programs that were develop for – specifically for females, they appreciate that and they see the direction and appreciate the direction at the agency is doing.

Len Sipes: And I am – never in my 42 years in the criminal justice system have I been as impressed with anything as impressed as I am with the women’s unit and the fact that they come out with so many strikes against them but yet, at the same time, they succeed in greater numbers than I would ever expect and considering the efficiencies that they have to deal with. All of you, who deal with the female population, should be congratulated and all of you who deal with the mental health population should be congratulated. Ladies and gentleman, this is DC Public Safety. I am your host, Leonard Sipes. Our guests today have been Ubux Hussen, she is the Mental Health Program Administrator; Marcia Davis and Robert Evans, they’re both Supervisory Community Supervision Officers. Ladies and gentleman, again, DC Public Safety. We appreciate your letters. We appreciate your e-mails. We appreciate your phone calls and all of the suggestions in terms of new shows, even criticisms, and we want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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GPS and Offender Supervision in Washington, D.C.-DC Public Safety Radio

May 31, 2013 by

Welcome to “DC Public Safety” – Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

The portal site for “DC Public Safety” is http://media.csosa.gov.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2013/03/gps-and-offender-supervision-in-washington-d-c-dc-public-safety-radio/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Today’s program ladies and gentlemen, Global Positioning System Tracking in Washington DC. What we do to electronically monitor offenders under criminal supervision on the case load for my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Our guest today is Carlton Butler. He is the program administrator for the GPS program. The website is www.csosa.gov. There you will find links to our radio and television shows and there you will find previous radio shows on GPS tracking of criminal offenders and television shows. We also have an article summarizing all of this. Carlton Butler, Program Administrator for the GPS program, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Carlton Butler:  Thank you for having me Len.

Len Sipes:  All right, Carlton, let me do some summation. 500 to 600 offenders on any given day are being supervised, tracked under GPS and global positioning system tracking, satellite tracking, since the program’s inception, somewhere in the ballpark of about 20,000 people have been part of the GPS program here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Somewhere in the ballpark of 1,600 offenders every year are a part of the global position tracking system. So that’s a lot of people.

Carlton Butler:  It is a lot of people.

Len Sipes:  I mean CSOSA, my agency, your agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, we have invested a lot of effort, a lot of money and a lot of time into GPS tracking of offenders.

Carlton Butler:  That’s correct.

Len Sipes:  Okay, and one of the reasons why I wanted to do the program today Carlton is this, is that I get these news summaries from around the country and about crime and the criminal justice system and I am seeing a lot of articles from throughout the country that this offender or that offender was arrested and they had a GPS tracking device and within those newspapers, there were questions about the global positioning system program in those particular cities or in that particular state and I have spoken to a couple of reporters who said, “Well my city oversold GPS tracking. They made it seem as if they’re going to put a huge dent in terms of recidivism and/or technical violations and/or return to prisons”. And one of the things that I do want to start off the program with is at the research. There is now about five significant reports out there that basically show just that; that people on GPS, global positioning system, satellite tracking, ordinarily have fewer arrests,  have fewer technical violations and fewer of them are returned to prison compared to those people not under the GPS program – true?

Carlton Butler:  It is very true and I have read at least three of the reports and the three reports all were very favorable on the technology, the use of the technology. Very well.

Len Sipes:  And so that provides a certain significance I think to those of us in parole and probation to use this and we have been a pioneer in terms of the use of GPS. Again, we have been at it since 2003. I mean quite frankly for many years, until the use of GPS picked up around the country we had more people under GPS tracking in Washington DC than a lot of states had people under GPS tracking.

Carlton Butler:  That’s true. We were the second largest user in the nation actually, California being the first.

Len Sipes:  And since we have been surpassed by Florida and I think a couple of other states but we are still one of the principal jurisdictions in terms of the use of GPS.

Carlton Butler:  Yes we are. We are still one of the principal users of GPS.

Len Sipes:  Okay. So I want to have a very frank conversation about our use of GPS here in Washington DC. We are not, even though the research consistently, powerfully and in terms of research on people under supervision by parole and probation agencies, there is, you know, there is not a lot of uniformity in terms of the results of a lot of the research. Some show reductions in recidivism, some don’t but GPS supervision across the board shows reduction, so there’s promise there, but it is no guarantee that a person is not… under GPS supervision… is not going to commit a new crime.

Carlton Butler:  That’s true. It’s not a panacea. It doesn’t replace the good old fashioned parole-probation supervision model with regards to supervising offenders that require the supervision. It is however a tool that can be used and once used correctly, it can aid and assist the supervision bodies with supervising individuals while on whatever condition they are on.

Len Sipes:  Now, the other point that I wanted to make is that not everybody goes on GPS supervision. We either put high risk offenders, sex offenders or people who are having problems under supervision – say they refuse to get a job, they are not going to drug treatment, they are not adhering to the conditions of their supervision, those are sort of the two general categories of people that we have under supervision – correct?

Carlton Butler:  That is very, very correct and some of it is modeled off trying to control some of their idle time and making sure that we have some notion of where individuals are when they have that bulk of idle time.

Len Sipes:  Right, so if the person comes to us and said, “Well gee, I missed going to my drug treatment program because work held me back” and the GPS system showed that he was at the house, that’s a defacto lie and now he knows he can’t use that excuse because he is being tracked in real time.

Carlton Butler:  Well that’s very true but one of the nice attitudes to that is that through the GPS program we actually have the ability to get an alert or an alarm letting us know that an individual who should have gone to a particular location as been instructed, the system – we can have the system to alert us that he or she did not go to where we told them to go to.

Len Sipes:  Right and the other nifty thing about GPS is that it provides a lot of options for us. We can restrict that person to the city. We can restrict that person to part of the city. We can restrict that person to a block or we can restrict that person to house – not house arrest – but home curfew. We can keep that person in their home and track immediately whether or not they leave their home – correct?

Carlton Butler:  Yes we can but in addition to that we can also bar them from areas that we do not want them to enter for whatever reason.

Len Sipes:  Right, especially domestic violence cases and especially in terms of having a stay-away order and if they are told to stay within – you know, they cannot be within a thousand yards of that house or the victim, that’s one nifty way of enforcing it and knowing for sure as to whether or not he is obeying his stay-away orders.

Carlton Butler:  Well that’s very true but we have also found the technology to be useful as well for exonerating individuals. There’s often times when we may receive reports that a particular individual was at a particular location and we were able to say that he or she was not there based on the GPS technology.

Len Sipes:  Right, and I have heard stories that people have asked to be placed on GPS, volunteered to be placed on GPS to prove that they, you know they were concerned about criminal activity that they have been part of a gang or they were involved in something and they want nothing to do with what used to be their friends and they want nothing to do with the crimes that their friends and former associates were involved in, so they asked to be placed on GPS to prove their innocence just in case something happens.

Carlton Butler:  Yes. We have had a number of cases where individuals have actually requested to be on GPS. One of the statements we have heard, one of the testimonies that we have heard from one of our participants is that it is easier for him to pull his pants leg up and show them that he has a GPS device and they automatically know, or for some reason they feel that we can actually, there is intelligence on them as well and most of the time they don’t want to be around that particular individual so it’s easier for them to separate themselves from those individuals when he wants to.

Len Sipes:  And I have heard that story. You know, you’re hanging out on the corner and you’re with your friends and somebody suggests something nefarious and his absence and his excuse is to pull up his pants leg and say I can’t, I’m being tracked and they are saying, “Oh, absolutely, we don’t want you anywhere near us!” So it is. I mean it’s a way of saying, “Look, I can no longer continue being involved in some of the stuff that you’re involved in and here’s my instantaneous excuse”. All right, but having said all of that, again I want to re-emphasize that just because you have the GPS tracking device on doesn’t mean that it stops you from committing another crime. I remember several years ago we had a case of a person who was sexually assaulting young girls in the North East part of the city and we were able to place that person at those crime scenes at that time and provided additional evidence in terms of his conviction and so we know, we have known from the very beginning that people under GPS tracking, satellite tracking for whatever reason they may be, shall I say stupid, probably not a politically correct word to say but if you’re going to commit a crime while under GPS tracking I wonder about your intellectual ability, but nevertheless it doesn’t stop anybody from committing a crime.

Carlton Butler:  No it doesn’t. It doesn’t stop any individual who would normally want to be involved in criminal activity or new criminal activity to really being able to prevent them from doing anything.

Len Sipes:  And we understood that from the very beginning and we haven’t said anything else but.

Carlton Butler:  No, we’ve been very clear about that.

Len Sipes:  And also, through the other radio and television programs that we have done, we do know that there are people on GPS tracking who do attempt to fool the system and I am not going to talk specifics but we do know that that occurs. We know that its been occurring throughout the country and we have, in terms of the equipment we use now, we get alerts because if they try to say wrap a substance around that GPS device we know and the alert goes immediately when that happens, is that correct?

Carlton Butler:  That is very, very correct. We know that there are a number of circumventing attempts or techniques out there. CSOSA has been on the front working very diligently with the company and coming up with ways to be able to circumvent or not circumvent or be able to detect efforts to circumvent the GPS technology and we have been very, very successful in doing so, so much so that we do have the ability to know when individuals have or will attempt to tamper with the advice.

Len Sipes:  You are part of a national effort through the Department of Justice of getting people involved in GPS programs to talk to each other. Was that correct?

Carlton Butler:  Yes we are a member of probably 34 people, last I count. People from all around the nation that meet, were meeting quarterly. From that we have put together a user manual and we have developed GPS standards, unlike ever in the entire nation ever been developed. Those are in the final stages as we speak. In fact we have a conference call tomorrow where we are going to be discussing some of the final stages and we hope that two documents will be released very soon. So I think as a GPS practitioner I am excited to see both the standards and the user manual because I believe that it would be very beneficial to anyone in the future with regard to GPS technology.

Len Sipes:  Right, but the whole idea when I spoke to the Department of Justice about this initiative was to get information passed back and forth, so if the folks in Idaho were having  a particular issue, they could reach out to you and if you had a particular issue, you could reach out to the folks in California.

Carlton Butler:  Well yeah, and the other good thing about that as well is that we are able to network and exchange ideas but not only that, we all come up with different challenges in GPS so we have the ability to reach out to each other as those challenges become.

Len Sipes:  Now I’m not going to give away the farm here but I do want to make it clear that even though an attempt to block a GPS device, there is another way and I’m not going to say what that other way is, but there is another way of tracking that individual electronically that they don’t know about – correct?

Carlton Butler:  That’s correct. There are actually three ways but one of the most prevalent ways is…

Len Sipes:  no specifics

Carlton Butler:  … a technology – I understand – is a technology that allows us to still be able to track a movement of an individual, yes.

Len Sipes:  Right. Okay, so I do want to make that clear that even though there’s – they think that they’re successful in terms of wrapping that substance around a GPS tracking device, there are other ways that we can track that individual and they are probably not aware of the fact that we can track that individual. Let me get onto the next issue.  This is important. I haven’t even brought this up yet. A lot of folks in the law enforcement community, or anybody within the law enforcement community has access to the 500 to 600 people that we track on a day to day basis through the computers in their patrol cars – correct?

Carlton Butler:  Yes they do. We have what we call a crime scene correlation program.  Crime scene correlation program is a program where our agency offers limited access to our law enforcement partners that allow them to be able to have dual monitoring of certain offenders.

Len Sipes:  Right, and when I say law enforcement it’s anywhere from the metropolitan police department here in Washington DC, one of the best police departments in the country, anywhere to Housing Authority, police, anywhere to the United States Secret Service to the FBI.

Carlton Butler:  That’s right, we also have the Park Police, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County as well who are really big users of the program.

Len Sipes:  Okay, and so there are some people on this program because I do want to talk about the fact that we have active and passive and what that means, we do have some people either between our monitoring center, ourselves and law enforcement, we do have people who are tracked in real time.

Carlton Butler:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, we are half way through the program. I do want to reintroduce our guest, Carlton Butler, the Program Administrator for the GPS Program, Global Positioning System, Satellite Tracking Program here in Washington DC. Both of us are part of the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency, a federal executive branch, independent of the agency providing parole and probation services to the city, the great city of Washington DC. We are talking about GPS tracking and if you didn’t hear the first part of the program, I asked Carlton to come down and address this because I was again reading newspaper articles throughout the country where the GPS program in other cities where they were questioning the fact that this person who committed a crime was under GPS tracking and thereby questioning the GPS program itself and that is why I wanted to have this very frank conversation with Carlton about what it is that we do here within Washington DC. Carlton I want to go to… to continue this concept of offenders on GPS tracking trying to fool the system and we have already said that we know that it exists, you share that information with different people throughout the country. There are counter measures that we have in place that we are not going to talk about, that offenders are not going to know about, so even if they try to circumvent the system, we can still track them.  Now, but they can just cut the daggone thing off.

Carlton Butler:  Yes, that’s true they can; but again, if they attempt to do that as well, we get an alert letting us know that the device has been tampered with.

Len Sipes:  Right, and in many cases because the people that we have under our supervision are some of the higher risk offenders or people who are not doing well, we have this conversation with our law enforcement partners about this individual so word will go out to not only our own community supervision officers, what most people throughout the country call parole and probation agents, not only to our people to law enforcement as well that this individual, that John Doe cut his anklet, which means that John Doe may be up to something.

Carlton Butler:  That’s very true and one of the interactions that we have is that we often times have to call the police to notify of the tamper. In the District of Columbia, city council and the Mayor enacted an anti-tamper law. That anti-tamper law specifically says that if you knowingly tamper with your device or allow anybody else to tamper with your device and/or, intentionally failing to charge your device, you can now be charged with a misdemeanor crime.

Len Sipes:  That came as a result of the problems that we have been having and people throughout the country have been having.

Carlton Butler:  It has.

Len Sipes:  Okay, the other part of it is that we have people under supervision who simply don’t charge their GPS devices. Every individual has to charge it up when they return back to their house.

Carlton Butler:  That’s correct. They are required to charge twice a day.

Len Sipes:  Okay. And they are required to charge twice a day, if they don’t charge twice a day, the alert goes out.

Carlton Butler:  That’s correct.

Len Sipes:  Okay. Let me get down to this whole concept of supervision because I did say that of the 500 to 600 that we have under any given day, they can be tracked in real time and in some cases, are by our law enforcement partners. Now, people need to understand that we are not a 24-hour day, 365-day a year agency. These individuals are tracked by us, by our community supervision officers anywhere from 7 am and 7 pm, correct?

Carlton Butler:  That’s correct.

Len Sipes:  So some of our community supervision officers will take a high risk individual that we are really concerned about and track them in real time maybe even in the evenings. Maybe even in the weekends and watch those alerts or get alerts from the central monitoring system that we employ – correct?

Carlton Butler:  That’s correct and we also have as a backup another individual who works late in the evenings helping to monitor as well and of course I am available at any time.

Len Sipes:  Right. So I mean we do this, but the majority of individuals, the 500 to 600 on any given day are what we call supervision that from 7 am to 7 pm the community supervision officers are keeping an eye on their coordinates and/or the monitoring center that we employ, they get notifications.

Carlton Butler:  That’s correct.

Len Sipes:  Okay, if that person does violate and say a domestic violence order and if we are tracking them between 7 am and 7 pm or on a real time basis they can get the word out to police right away.

Carlton Butler:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  Okay.  Now, workload, and every piece of research that I have ever read, the parole and probation agents who are doing GPS will complain about the workload. Having a person under GPS supervision increases the workload dramatically, correct?

Carlton Butler:  Oh it does because of the usage of the technology.

Len Sipes:  Right and you will find all sorts of problems with GPS, for instance, they could be inside of a building and it won’t track them. They could be under a bridge and it won’t track them. It’s not a continuous tracking. We don’t have the science down to a continuous tracking. Now again, there are other ways of tracking that individual that I don’t want to talk about but from time to time in terms of satellite tracking or GPS, they do fall off the radar screen – correct?

Carlton Butler:  That’s correct. That is normally associated by way of the industry to environment conditions that do change from time to time.

Len Sipes:  We can track them in a car, but you know, if they’re underneath a 12-storey building I am not quite sure that they are going to be able to be tracked by satellite.

Carlton Butler:  No, you can’t track them.

Len Sipes:  Okay, now – and we get these alerts because if they go into buildings, we get these alerts because they don’t charge their device. We get these alerts when they are right on the edge of an area that they shouldn’t be in and that creates a workload problem so we significantly, not solved but we created an intervening measure. We took the company that provides this device and we have them now tracking individuals in real time and if there is a violation they get in touch with this individual. If they cannot resolve the issue, then they turn the information over to our community supervision officers, am I right or wrong?

Carlton Butler:  That is very true. We set all of that up through protocols and we pretty much outlined the intervention process that would go forward by the vendor in terms of the first, as a first responder.

Len Sipes:  Okay,  I do want to emphasize that, that GPS tracking, you take on an enormous amount of workload any time that you have a person under GPS tracking and we have recognized that and the standard recommendation of virtually every piece of research that I have read is that you really should have a central monitoring system and we have a central monitoring system.

Carlton Butler:  I agree, the monitoring center actually takes away a lot of the guessing component with regards to the supervising officer. By the time a supervising officer gets information on the alert, a lot of what he or she would attempt to sit there and try to figure out has been resolved for them. So it prevents them from having to spend long periods of time trying to filter through what might have occurred or what could have occurred. The monitoring center pretty much by the time they call them, there are experts on the other end, they pretty much can tell you what occurred and give you enough information for you to be able to make a decision.

Len Sipes:  In some cases where the individual did not charge the unit, it’s a matter of calling the residents and saying, “Why didn’t you charge the unit?” and that person saying, “whoops, I’m sorry, I forgot.”

Carlton Butler:  Well our protocols require that they call and instruct the individual to place the device on the charger for that period of time and in addition what they do is reinforce what the requirement is for the purpose of the charge to begin with and then report that out to the officer with regards to what they did and what might have been said during the time of the conversation between them and the offender.

Len Sipes:  Right and if there is any indication of slurred voice or angry or negative encounter, that’s reported back to the community supervision officer.

Carlton Butler:  yes but we also have all of that being recorded and they tell the individual at the time that the call is being made, that the conversation is being recorded and any kind of unacceptable behavior, we generate a copy of that recording to show what was actually said at the time to the officer as well.

Len Sipes:  Right, so again, one of the things I like to pride myself in terms of doing, whenever I do radio shows about our agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency is that taking a look at the national research and I think virtually all cases, we pride ourselves on being a research based agency and an evidence based agency and ordinarily, we employee the national standards which I think is unusual for a parole and probation agency. From what I have read from the GPS research and what I have read in terms of the results of the GPS research and in fact, I am going to have an individual from England who has put out a report who came in and observed what it is that we have done, I am going to have him on the radio show in a couple of months. We seem to comply with all of the suggestions in terms of the research.

Carlton Butler:  Yeah, but we are one of the pioneers. We are kind of helping to write some of the research as well because our program is one of those nationally watched programs in that we get individuals or groups that come in all the time to see our program and to talk to us about the success part of our program so…

Len Sipes:  Right, but the average person listening to this program may not understand. I don’t want to say that we have been pioneering, but we have. I mean I understand that a lot of people come to us but I just want to re-emphasize that you belong to this group. They are the US Department of Justice and whatever standard is out there we comply with that standard.

Carlton Butler:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  Okay and in the final analysis I think that most of the folks within the law enforcement community that I have talked to about GPS have been pleased with the program. I mean it is not fool proof. It is absolutely not fool proof. There is no way that you can say that it is going to stop people from committing new crimes but it does reduce the numbers per  research, per the national research, there are significant reductions in terms of arrest, technical violations and return to prisons and in fact according to national research, they may have the strongest outcomes of any intervention for people under parole and probation. So it seems to be encouraging is the point.

Carlton Butler:  It is encouraging but one of the challenges in the GPS program is making certain that all our law enforcement partners are fully aware what the technology has the ability to do but to also give them some insight of what the objectives are for your program.

Len Sipes:  Right, and there is no way by the way, for people listening, that you can keep a person on GPS forever. I mean there’s just no way that you can keep…. I mean for some sex offenders they are on for an awfully long time but we try to convince individuals that they can work their way off of GPS by… if they are not complying with their terms of their supervision, if they comply, they can come off.

Carlton Butler:  Well, that’s true, I have only recalled ever seeing one case where the individual was actually ordered by a judge into GPS, but for the most part, most of them are conditional and if they meet those conditions, there is a graduated process and they can get off, yeah.

Len Sipes:  Right, so the whole idea is to have those graduated sanctions. You increase – so again, you restrict them to the city, restrict them to a certain section of the city, restrict them to a block, you restrict them to their house. I mean there are graduated sanctions of GPS that can convince the person to fall in line if they pull drug positives or if they don’t go to treatment or if they don’t do the right thing.

Carlton Butler:  Yes it is.

Len Sipes:  All right. Anything? I think it’s a fascinating program Carlton.

Carlton Butler:  Well I’m excited about the program. It adds a lot of benefit to our ability as a tool to be used both by our law enforcement partners and as a tool for our  officers to continue to supervise individuals that they have in their care and custody;  it’s a good system.

Len Sipes:  My guest today is Carlton Butler. He is the Program Administrator for the GPS satellite tracking program for our agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency in Washington DC. We have prior radio and television shows on the use of GPS. You can see them at www.media.csosa.gov. There is also an article if you go to the blog on that website, or the general website – you can reach all of our media materials. www.csosa.gov. We appreciate your comments, we appreciate your criticisms, we appreciate your suggestions for new programs and we want everybody to have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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Filed Under: Audio Podcast, GPS, Interviews with Staff, What Works
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