The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

A recent consultant's report found Michigan needed 350 more probation and parole agents to adequately monitor the criminals they had as of last summer, when the review was completed.

While lawmakers continue to hammer out next year's state budget, the prison agency and the union that represents the agents agree they need more people to keep the public safe. But, the two sides disagree about how many agents are needed.

Barry Wickman, who oversees the agency's budget, said the Corrections Department wants to add 46 agents and a technology infusion to better oversee the growing numbers of people on probation and parole. Alan Kilar, the financial secretary for the United Auto Workers Local 6000, said the state should go along with the 350 hires identified in the February consultant's report

The state's supervised release program finds itself under greater scrutiny in the wake of the Patrick Selepak case. Selepak was paroled last summer and, despite apparent violations of his release, remained on the streets until he was charged with three slayings in February.

The prison agency has suspended five parole officials in Lansing and Macomb County while it investigates how the Selepak case slipped through the cracks.

As the Selepak case demonstrates, the stakes are high. Michigan has the eighth-largest parole population in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics. And, about half the people released on parole in Michigan wind up back in prison within two years, usually for new crimes.

Kilar said probation and parole agents find themselves doing more with fewer resources.

"They have to cut corners," Kilar said. "They may only spend five minutes with a parolee instead of spending more time with him and getting to know his situation better."

Adding an average of five extra cases to every agent over the past six years while cutting support staff only aggravates the problem, Kilar said. The Corrections Department has cut the support staff for probation and parole by 348 employees, or 15 percent, since 2000. At the same time, the number of case agents dipped to 1,053 two years ago and has peaked at 1,092 today.

Probation and parole agents help ensure their clients are reforming their lives. Typically, this means checking for additional arrests, collecting fines and fees for past crimes and checking for employment and substance abuse.

The 2007 budget approved in the state Senate, but not in the House, would add 46 agents next year and another 10 with specialized responsibilities, Wickman said.

Additionally, the agency intends to provide agents with laptops and put computerized kiosks in state offices to reduce routine clerical duties, he said.

The technological changes, Wickman said, will allow the state to add fewer than the 350 agents called for in the consultant's report to safely manage the probation and parole caseload.

"Hopefully, the 46 agents will be enough," he said, adding Patricia Caruso, the Corrections director, "wouldn't allow these changes to go if it wasn't going to keep the public safe."

But, the state's staffing estimates have been wrong before. Wickman said the state added agents after a 1991 review of caseloads. "We thought we were pretty darn close," he said of the changes made after that report.

By the time of last summer's review of caseloads, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency found Michigan needed 350 more agents. That's about 30 percent more than the state had at the time.

The review came about after the UAW and the Corrections Department agreed that a new workload review was needed.

Kilar wasn't surprised at the results. He said the Corrections Department has made other technological changes, but the systems have proven cumbersome.

"Technology has not shown itself to relieve the agent's stress," he said. Staffing for probation and parole is only a part of the budget consideration for the agency.

A decade ago, Michigan spent $1.3 billion on the Corrections Department, about 15 percent of the state budget. This year, the agency's budget is about $1.9 billion, or 20 percent of everything Michigan spends. Only the Department of Community Health receives more -- $3 billion this year -- than Corrections.

Probation and parole has been under special stress in recent years as the Corrections Department has looked to slow the growth of the prison population.

Today, Michigan has about 49,300 prisoners. The population grew 1.7 percent last year, the first annual increase since 2002.

Corrections officials expect the state will run out of bed space in March 2008. They are trying to push that back to 2010 by diverting more criminals into alternative programs and by improving prisoners' performance on release. Another tactic includes trimming the number of parolees sent back to prison for violating their release.

In 2003, the state sent about 3,200 felons back to prison for parole violations, records show. Last year, about 300 fewer violators went back to prison.

Selepak was to have his parole revoked, but parole officials failed to complete the process and, in January, he returned to the streets. Five weeks later, police found him and his fiancee napping in a truck with a frozen corpse in the back of their truck.

The department has not completed an investigation of problems exposed in the Selepak case, but Kilar and other agents interviewed by The Detroit News say high caseloads lead to lapses.

"My concern is that people are playing politics," Kilar said. "This deals with public safety. If our streets are not safe, new businesses are not going to come to Michigan. The bottom line is: hire more staff." You can reach Ronald J. Hansen at (313) 222-2019 or rhansen@detnews.com.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060403/METRO/604030374/1
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