Probation and Parole Officers Speak Out-Caseload and Workload Allocation

Summary

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Of course, community corrections officers are not singly responsible for achieving the goal of public safety; rather, probation and parole outcomes are embedded in a larger multi-organizational justice system that incorporates law enforcement, institutional corrections, and courts, as well as non-justice agencies including victims of crime, treatment providers, and others. Probation performs several functions to properly supervise offenders (e.g., home contacts; surveillance; drug testing; collection of restitution, fines, and fees; community work service; monitoring of curfews and travel restrictions; intermediate sanctions; and revocation) and offers offenders adequate treatment options (e.g., assessment and treatment referrals, motivational interviewing, employment and educational assistance, and support and mentoring) (Paparozzi, 2003).

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Probation and Parole Officers Speak Out-Caseload and Workload Allocation

COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS populations have experienced tremendous growth for the past two decades. The Bureau of Justice Statistics Correctional Survey (http:// www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/corr2tab.htm) reveals that probation and parole populations have grown unabated since 1980. This growth has serious implications for probation and parole agencies regarding how to make caseload and workload decisions. It is important to consider differences between caseload, which is the number of offenders supervised by an officer, and workload, which is the amount of time needed to complete various tasks. While caseload size will grow as offender populations increase, workload per officer is a more stagnant figure, as there are only so many working hours available in each day, week, month, or year for each officer.

These issues related to workload allocation are further complicated by two additional trends in community corrections. Probation was once assigned almost exclusively to relatively low-level offenders who posed little threat to public safety and were mostly in need of pro-social steering (Petersilia, 1998). In an attempt to alleviate jail and prison crowding, however, probation caseloads are being populated with offenders who potentially pose greater community safety threats. This is a point made by Taxman, Shephardson, and Byrne (2004: 3) in Tools of the Trade, in which they mention that "probation rolls increasingly mirror the prison population." Ta...

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