Parole officers feeling the heat

On any given day, a parole officer in the Little Rock area is expected to know the whereabouts and activities of the 140 to 150 men and women under his supervision.

Even for the most dedicated and diligent officer, a caseload that size is difficult to manage.

“It’s been said that if you can survive the Little Rock area, you can do anything in law enforcement,” says agent Arzo Johnson. “It’s a lot of work, but we take pride in what we do. It’s been tough, it really has. But at the end of the day, you did your job. That’s all you can do. You can just do your best.”

The daunting caseloads in Area 7 - which encompasses Little Rock and North Little Rock - are now one of the most significant concerns for the state Department of Community Correction.

The agency - under investigation by the governor, Arkansas State Police and lawmakers after a parolee was charged in the murder of a college student - already has made several changes to its policies and procedures. And a new law mandates that any parolee arrested on violent or sexual felony charges remain jailed until a parole-revocation hearing is held.

But to successfully implement those changes, more manpower is desperately needed, Community Correction Department officials say.

In Area 7, the turnover rate for parole and probation officers in June was 49.5 percent. By June’s end, 11 positions remained vacant. The department has since added 10 officer positions to reduce the overwhelming caseloads.

That’s a total of 21 positions to fill.

By the end of last week, four people had been hired, and two officers made lateral transfers to fill two positions. Meanwhile, five applicants are undergoing background checks. The agency also has selected eight applicants who will undergo background checks once paperwork is completed.

But all of those new hires will have to go through six weeks of training before they can be assigned cases. And Johnson estimates that it takes two years for an officer to hit his stride.

“Our goal, by year’s end, is to have hired and trained all officers. And retain them. That’s critical,” says Community Correction Director Sheila Sharp.

The job is stressful, especially when caseloads are so heavy. Few people dread the nightly newscasts or morning newspaper more than parole officers. That’s when they often learn that one of “their guys” committed another crime - if, of course, they haven’t already been awakened at 2 a.m. by a phone call from a police officer.

Aside from keeping an eye on their assigned parolees, officers also are expected to collect at least 80 percent of the supervision fees owed to the Department of Community Correction each month.

That means they must persuade their assigned parolees - many of whom are unemployed - to come up with the money. Failing to meet that 80 percent requirement can get an officer suspended or fired, which means others will have to deal with the caseload left behind.

Officers say the heavy caseloads and the 80 percent requirement are the most challenging elements of the job. But even with the high stress level, many find their work rewarding. All have bachelor’s degrees - a requirement for being a parole officer - and many have master’s degrees. All are certified law-enforcement officers.

Most - even the toughest among them - harbor streaks of idealism.

Take Johnson, for example. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps. He earned a bachelor’s degree in social work from Philander Smith College and worked as a substance-abuse counselor. More than 70 foster kids - many of them deeply troubled - have at times found refuge in his home. Johnson and his wife have adopted four of those children.

Johnson joined the Community Correction Department as a probation officer in 2005.

He applied for the job after meeting several probation officers who were knocking on doors in his neighborhood. Intrigued by their descriptions of the job, Johnson wondered if he had stumbled across his ideal career.

When he first took the job, officers were designated as either probation or parole supervisors. Not until later were they expected to supervise both types of offenders. (This policy has changed again under Sharp’s leadership. Now officers supervise only one or the other.)

During his training, Johnson focused on two bits of advice offered by his supervisor: “There’s three sides to every story: his, hers and the truth.” And “a good officer knows something about every one of the offenders on his caseload.”

These days, Johnson focuses on parolees. He’s part of a four-member team that tracks down and serves warrants on absconders. Absconders are parolees or probationers who have failed to report to their officers or have left the area without permission.

Johnson works out of a small room that sports a bank of computers and a bulletin board dotted with mugshots of the absconders considered to be the biggest threats to the public.

Many of the people who end up on the board share several traits that Johnson believes make them more likely to reoffend: They entered the prison system young; they did their time at the “hard” prisons; and they became violent sexual predators while incarcerated.

But it’s not catching those elusive and often dangerous offenders that keeps Johnson working for the Department of Community Correction. It’s focusing on the parolees who can still make something of their lives, he says.

“The thing that I like doing is building hope in a person who, for whatever reason, has lost it. There is nothing like getting somebody to see the possibilities in life.”THE IDEAL CASELOAD?

After Little Rock, Fayetteville has the second-heaviest caseload, with each officer supervising an average of 140 offenders. In Conway, officers average 126 cases; in Searcy, 98; and in Harrison, 70.

For years, the American Probation and Parole Association has struggled to come up with a magic number when it comes to caseloads.

The problem is that not every offender requires the same type or amount of supervision. Rather than come up with an ideal number of cases assigned to officers, the association encourages the “workload model.”

The association’s website offers this example: “A case with a high priority would require 4 hours per month, equaling 30 as a total caseload. Medium priority would require 2 hours per month, equaling 60 as a total caseload. Low priority would require 1 hour per month,equaling a total caseload of 120. This is based upon an officer having 120 hours per month to supervise offenders. The balance of the hours counting for leave, collateral duties, etc.”

But even this concept isn’t foolproof, the association acknowledges, saying, “the difficulty comes in the diversity and pluralistic nature of the probation and parole field. The policies and procedures of probation and parole agencies across the U.S. varies so that there is not enough consistency of practice to support national workload standards.”A TYPICAL DAY

The probation and parole office that serves the Little Rock area is in what used to be a bowling alley on Pike Avenue in North Little Rock. Vestiges of the building’s former incarnation remain, primarily in the form of the sloping hallways that used to be bowling lanes.

On a weekday morning in August, the lobby is packed. Some people are waiting to meet with parole or probation officers. Others clutch the packaged materials for a drug test as they stand in a line that snakes through the lobby. Snippets of conversation focus primarily on the long wait to see officers or comparisons of substance-abuse counselors.

The phone rings incessantly. Another line forms at the receptionist’s window.

Behind a locked door, probation and parole officers are in constant motion. Most wear khakis and polo shirts, with weapons holstered to their hips. Some visit with parolees in their offices. Others are heading out for home visits. Still more are waiting to participate in revocation hearings.

The parolees for those hearings wait in a holding cell. All wear jail garb. All were picked up and transported there by officers. Among them is one from Mountain Home who is slumped against the holding-cell wall.

Often, just one transport can tie up an officer for a whole day, Johnson says.

The hearing examiner for the day’s revocation hearings is seated in a large conference room. In each case, she hears from a parole officer, who plays the role of an attorney for the state. It’s up to the officer to subpoena witnesses and to put together a case for revoking parole.

At the hearing, the officer explains why a parolee should return to prison. The parolee may have an attorney of his own. The hearing examiner will decide whether to revoke the parole.

Regardless of whether parole is revoked, the hearings serve a purpose, Johnson says. They allow an officer the opportunity to let his parolees know that he’s aware of what they’re doing and that he will act on that knowledge.

Johnson recalls the time he tracked down an HIV-positive absconder who was a Level 3 sex offender.

“On the way back from another county, he was telling me that he met this girl and that she was like him. I said, ‘What do you mean, she’s like you?’ So he says, ‘She’s HIV-positive like me.’ I asked him how long she’d been positive, and he says, ‘Ever since she’s been with me.’

“I put it all together. He infected her. At the parole hearing, I let the examiner know what he had said and that this guy had a reputation for getting out of prison, going to other counties and having sex. I wanted to let [the parolee] know I was on to his game. We are the eyes and ears out there. It is a serious job. You have to be on top of your game daily. These are the kinds of things we encounter at just a regular day at the office.”

Sex offenders on parole are often an officer’s greatest challenge, especially given today’s technology. While such offenders aren’t supposed to have smartphones, many of them ask friends or family members to get phones for them, Johnson says.

He recalls a 4 a.m. phone call from police officers, who told him that they had picked up a sex offender on parole.

Johnson learned that the parolee had met a woman on the online-dating site Match. com, and the pair had agreed to meet at a motel. Once at the motel, however, the man told the woman that he especially liked 9-year-olds. Alarmed, the woman called police.

“That’s the thing that will keep you up at night,” Johnson says. “Those case files, man, that’s a different beast.”TOO FEW OFFICERS

When a parolee leaves prison, he does so under a set of rules designed specifically for him. The rules are created by the prison staff and parole officers stationed at state prison units.

After an inmate’s release, his parole officer has 14 days to make a home visit and approve the parolee’s living conditions. The officer also must verify contact numbers for the parolee and his employment, as well as ensure that a parolee is following other conditions of his release. Some parolees are required to get substance-abuse counseling, for example. Others are ordered to enroll in anger-management classes.

Next, a schedule is set up for the parolee’s office visits and drug tests, which are done at the parole office. If a parolee is considered high risk, his officer must visit him at home once a month. Some high-risk parolees are required to visit the parole office weekly.

Each officer must do all of that for the 140 to 150 parolees assigned to him. Factor in jail transports to far-flung places, lengthy revocation hearings and middle-of-the-night phone calls from police, and it’s easy to see why officers sometimes feel overwhelmed, Johnson says.

Until recently, officers also had to check electronic-monitoring data and figure out which blips were because of gaps in coverage and which were caused by a parolee who had strayed. Sharp recently contracted with a company to take over this responsibility.

“What really stresses out a lot of officers are the high numbers on their caseloads,” Johnson says. “You are responsible for knowing where this person is, so when you have a bunch of them - that high number - well, you can only see so many people in a day.”

That’s especially a problem, Johnson says, “if you’ve got a lot of people who are still getting high or using alcohol or doing other illegal activities.”

Records from the Department of Community Correction show that parole and probation officers’ suspensions are more often because of failing to keep up with their caseloads and fee collections than for making mistakes in supervising offenders who commit serious crimes.

Since 2008, there have been 64 disciplinary actions or firings involving 51 sworn parole and probation officers, according to records obtained in late July by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

Of the disciplinary actions, 52 involved either failures to keep up with caseloads or not collecting 80 percent or more of the supervision fees due from their parolees and probationers.

During the past five years, 17 officers were fired. The majority were because they failed to keep up with their workloads of making home visits, filing timely violation reports and keeping the department’s offender-tracking system updated.

The Community Correction Department uses various audits to keep track of its officers’ work. The most commonly cited concerns in the disciplinary records are fee-collection percentages and whether the officer has more than three pages worth of offenders who require some action by the officer.

Rhonda Sharp, spokesman for the Community Correction Department, says the number of offenders in three pages’ worth of “office-actions-due” reports can vary from one name per page, involving several actions due, to 15 to 20 names per page with one action due per name.

The three-page threshold “was a policy decision made many years ago based on the knowledge of an officer’s caseload and realistic expectations of what an officer can achieve during the work hours,” she explains.

But for a parole officer balancing hundreds of cases, the inflexible threshold that triggers disciplinary action can be frustrating, the disciplinary records show.

For instance, one officer was given a written reprimand in June 2012 for having six pages of officer actions due and not being in contact with one of her charges for more than 90 days.

“I was off for a week!” she wrote in response to a letter from her supervisor. “I should have been given a chance to fix this because I always have my actions-due below three pages.”

Sheila Sharp says she’s making numerous changes that should lessen the officers’ stress. Some of the changes involve streamlining and automating duties to lessen the amount of time spent on paperwork.

In recent weeks, lawmakers have questioned the policy that requires parole officers to have college degrees. Sharp says that practice was initially implemented as a way to raise salaries. The department quickly learned, however, that college graduates are better prepared for the rigorous training and studying that the job requires, Sharp says.

She says she’s willing to consider legislators’ proposals that she make exceptions and hire retired law-enforcement officers to ease the staffing shortage. “The problem is, that might set the agency up for lawsuits,” she says.

Exit interviews filled out by employees who quit the agency show that most believe there is no potential for career advancement. Sharp has created a plan that would allow officers who start at $30,000 to reach $40,000 within three years.

“I think we’re going to have some people come back to us,” Sharp says. “My goal is to get that office stabilized. I think the best ideas and the best solutions are going to come from the bottom up. I feel good. We have so many good people out there.”DIFFICULT DECISIONS

Much of a parole officer’s job involves trying to predict what someone will or won’t do. While officers rely on a matrix - a set of guidelines that suggest what type of punitive sanctions should be used to address problems or criminal behaviors - officers have some discretion.

For example, a parolee who has a job might do fine during the week but gets into trouble on the weekends when he has too much free time. The best option in that case is to require a parolee to spend weekends in jail so he can keep his job, Rhonda Sharp says.

In the case of a parolee who has no car and no money for transportation, per the Community Correction Department’s new policy, if that parolee fails to report twice, he’s deemed an absconder and is jailed.

“My concern is that we may have gone overboard on the ‘two-times’ if there’s another way to get their attention,” Sheila Sharp says.

Dan Roberts, the director of parole and probation services, agrees. “A day in jail might work better than holding that person for a revocation hearing.”

Often, however, parole officers are afraid to deviate from the matrix. Better to follow the rules than risk being second-guessed and fired. But Johnson says he’s gotten creative when he has felt that the matrix’s sanctions would do more harm than good.

“There have been days I’ve put my job on the line,” he admits.

Once, upon hearing a commotion in the parole office, he found another officer preparing to take a parolee to jail. The parolee had a job at the zoo. He appeared to be doing well and was following the conditions of his parole.

The problem? He owed $70 in fees. Per the matrix, that meant two days in jail.

“Let’s give him a chance,” Johnson said to the officer.“If they come in on their own, and they’re not running from you, let’s just give them a chance.”

Another time, a parolee working for an auto dealer fell behind on his fees. Again, Johnson interceded, telling the officer, “if this guy goes to jail, he’s going to lose his job.”

Johnson asked the parolee to call family members, who said they would cover the fees. Then he sent the parolee on to work and prayed that those relatives would come through.

They did.

“He came in a few months later,” Johnson says. “He told me, ‘Thank you for what you did.’ We have days like that, where you want to do things right. I don’t think the matrix was set up just to punish people.”

On another occasion, Johnson served a warrant on a man who was an HIV-positive cocaine addict. At that point, Johnson had to make a decision - take the man to jail or to a rehabilitation facility.

“I got him into treatment the day I arrested him,” Johnson says. “The last time I saw him, he was still in recovery. That was three years later. He told me, ‘Mr. Johnson, you sure saved my life.’”

This, Johnson says, is what he loves about his job.

“My degree is in social work. I know who I need to talk to, and I have the resources in the community. As probation and parole officers, we actually get a chance to know these guys. I’m in a good place to help them. I think that’s what we do well, for those who let us in.”

A DANGEROUS PROFESSION

But the job is just as much law enforcement as it is social work.

Officers are armed and trained to deal with dangerous offenders. Getting a phone call from a woman who says her parolee boyfriend just shot up her house means the officer must visit someone who’s already made it clear that he will use a gun.

“I’ve been very blessed,” Johnson says, adding that he often calls on Arkansas State Police or federal marshals to assist with arrests that may turn violent.

“I’ve run up on situations where we couldn’t get a tactical advantage on a person,” he explains. “There have been times I’ve had to walk away and wait. We don’t like to do that, but we don’t have assault weapons, we don’t have shotguns. We have Glocks.”

Often, parole officers are asked to assist local authorities in arrests. Johnson recalls a time when a SWAT team surrounded a house where a parolee holed up inside had brandished a gun. When the team finally got in, however, the man was gone.

Johnson knew the parolee. So he called the man’s family members and asked them to let the parolee know that Johnson was looking for him. The parolee called Johnson and agreed to surrender to him.

“We just try to take all the sting out of it,” he says of such arrests. “When you catch somebody when they’re having a moment and you help them through that moment, they remember you for that.”

Once, Johnson was called to another officer’s office where a parolee had become violent. “I put handcuffs on him, and he just dropped his head on my shoulder. I patted him on the back and said, ‘We’re gonna get through this. We’ll help you through this.’”

After the man calmed down, he told Johnson, “I’m so glad you came in there. I was gonna tear that office up.”

TRACKING ABSCONDERS

In recent meetings, members of the Board of Corrections have noted that the Department of Community Correction isn’t solely responsible for the release of parolees who have been arrested and jailed.

Board member Buddy Chadick, for example, wondered aloud over prosecutors’ failure to take parolee Darrell Dennis to court over the years, especially given the number of felony charges Dennis had accumulated. Dennis is accused of killing college student Forrest Abrams in May.

At an Aug. 1 hearing held by the Legislature’s Joint Performance Review Committee, Sheila Sharp noted that multiple entities - as well as overcrowding at lockups - play a role in the arrests and sub-sequent releases of parolees.

“Darrell Dennis had charges that were never processed against him,” she told lawmakers. “He was let out of jail because we don’t have enough beds. … We have communication issues that need to be fixed with all law enforcement. … If I don’t do everything I can in the future to make sure that happens, it will be my responsibility.”

She says her agency is working toward linking its internal parole records with those of city and county law enforcement agencies, but she said that will take time. Also, prosecutors will soon have access to a website that allows them to see which parolees have picked up new charges since their releases from prison.

The recent public criticism and anger from lawmakers has been tough to take, Johnson says, but he still takes pride in being on the team that pursues absconders.

“We’ve got good people who are committed to high standards,” he says, rapping a table for emphasis. “I have never been on a sorry team. I was in the Marine Corps. I am not going to be on a sorry team.”

Most of the time, the team gets its man, he adds - as in the case of a Level 4 sex offender released in 1988 who was eventually tracked down in California. “He never reported,” Johnson says. “We found out he was using three different Social Security numbers, three different birthdays and three different names.”

The man was extradited back to Arkansas.

“I had a guy here” - Johnson points to the bulletin board - “who left the state after his release. It took me a few years, but I kept him on the wall, and I kept checking. Turns out he was homeless in California. He’s now back in the state.

“We do not let people go,” Johnson continues. “When somebody’s an absconder, we do not want to let him go. They still owe the state of Arkansas time. We don’t give them passes.”

As for the heavy caseloads, Johnson is matter-of-fact.

“This is the hand we’ve been dealt. We don’t do a whole lot of complaining about it because it doesn’t really change anything. I’m proud of what we do. I’m proud of what we are. I know that when I go home, I did my best.” Information for this article was contributed by Chad Day of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.