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From the Los Angeles Times

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Probation's problems

The department must take over supervision of state parolees beginning Saturday. It also faces an Oct. 31 deadline to meet the terms of a Justice Department review. It's not ready to do either.

September 27, 2011

In less than a week, California inmates who until now were released to the supervision of state parole agents will be assigned instead to county probation officers. Counties, the thinking goes, will do a better job than the state of preparing nonviolent, non-serious and nonsexual offenders for responsible and productive lives in society. Counties will be better equipped to provide the services that former prisoners need to ensure that they don't violate their terms of release or commit new crimes. Counties will provide drug treatment, anger management classes, job training, mental health evaluation, medical care, housing, support and counseling. In theory.

The transfer of responsibility for adult prisoners from the state to counties is known as "realignment." The process of making inmates ready for society — a process at the core of any effort to keep the prison system from being merely a publicly funded revolving door — is generally called "reentry."

In 2007, California began emptying its state juvenile prisons (although youth incarceration relies on comforting euphemisms like "camps" and "ranches" to describe places of confinement). A lawsuit over inhumane conditions in the California Youth Authority's network of prisons resulted in a settlement under which youth in state custody went to county probation camps where, again, they ostensibly would be provided the tools for living productively in society. Many youths that already crowded county juvenile halls and camps were to be sent to their homes for local monitoring and rehabilitation programs. That process too is reentry.

But at the Los Angeles County Department of Probation, reentry means something else altogether. Here, in the nation's third-largest youth incarceration (and, supposedly, rehabilitation) agency (only two states have larger systems), hundreds of deputy probation officers and other employees fail to report for work. Many are out on workers' compensation claims. Others are waiting for department clearance. And others, for all anyone knows, just don't bother to show up. Reentry here has little to do with the thousands of troubled and lawbreaking juveniles the county is supposed to serve, or the thousands of adult state inmates who will become the department's responsibility beginning Saturday. Here, it means a process approved by the Board of Supervisors and crafted by the Sheriff's Department to get probation employees to reenter their workplaces to do their jobs.

Reports in The Times over the last several years of thieving employees, inept supervision, lax record-keeping, fake education programs and abused juveniles are mere symptoms of a dysfunctional department culture. In February 2010, the supervisors brought in former Alameda County Chief Probation Officer Donald Blevins to fix the department, but either it just has too far to go to be ready to carry out its mission or Blevins is not moving it fast enough, if at all.

Deadlines loom. In addition to the Oct. 1 start date for adult prisoner realignment, the county faces an Oct. 31 deadline for meeting the terms of a U.S. Department of Justice review. If it fails the review, the county could well find itself party to a consent decree under which it loses operating control of the Probation Department and its budget. That would no doubt be bad news for county government and department employees. But county residents and taxpayers, as well as the supervisors, must begin to ask whether it might be better for the juveniles and adults we are supposed to be rehabilitating.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-probation-20110927,0,6412421,print.story

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From Google News

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New York

SNUG deserves a chance to work

Here's Operation SNUG, stripped of state funding after only two years. The money dried up not because of any apparent failing on the program's part, but because this $4 million anti-crime effort didn't rank high enough in the priorities that shape a $131.7 billion budget.

With SNUG relying on funding pushed by the heavily urban Senate Democrats, it also didn't help that control of the Senate shifted to the largely suburban and rural Republicans.

Yet, no matter who's in control, a Legislature that is still sitting on $124 million in discretionary funds, and spending the money on things like a zoo tram in Binghamton and a music festival in Westchester County, ought to rethink its priorities.

To be sure, SNUG is not a panacea, and its brief track record is mixed. The 22 shootings Albany saw in the first seven months of this year are on par with 2009, the year in which SNUG was first funded. But compared with 2010, shootings are down by about a third. In other cities where SNUG was also implemented, they're down by 5 percent in Buffalo, 40 percent in Rochester, and almost 42 percent in Yonkers. They rose, however, by 18 percent in Syracuse.

Based on an acclaimed Chicago program called CeaseFire, SNUG treats violence as a public health problem, identifying causes, potential shooters and likely victims. "Violence interrupters" try to prevent shootings, which are often retaliatory, before they happen. The local program, run by the University at Albany School of Social Work and the non-profit Trinity Alliance with support from the Albany Police Department, also seeks to change the mind-set that gun violence is a norm.

There is much more to be done, of course, in getting to the root of crime in poverty-plagued neighborhoods like West Hill. As Albany Police Chief Steven Krokoff puts it, "If you're growing up in a community where you have no hope and you feel it's almost your destiny to either be dead or in prison by the time you're 25 or 30, deterrence has almost no effect."

But what's promising about SNUG is that it appears to be the kind of program cities like Albany need as they shift from traditional law enforcement to community policing, and develop strategies that go beyond patrols, investigations and arrests. Participants in the program say there is growing community involvement, with more people showing up at public anti-violence demonstrations, a sign both that it is resonating with residents and that they are feeling a sense of safety in numbers.

While SNUG might well be able to operate on a leaner budget, the question for the city and the Legislature is whether they can afford to entirely abandon a program that has barely had a chance to try to help save lives -- not just the lives of people intentionally shooting at each other, but innocent victims who get caught in the crossfire.

It's the kind of program that could actually give pork a good name.

THE ISSUE:

State funds run out for a promising anti-crime program.

THE STAKES:

When it comes to spending priorities, it's hard to beat life or death.

http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/SNUG-deserves-a-chance-to-work-2190299.php

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From Yahoo News

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Bill to crack down on cyber-bullies introduced in New York

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York State Senator Jeffrey Klein introduced a new "cyber-bullying" bill on Monday, saying outdated pre-digital harassment laws fail to punish bullies who use the Internet and smartphones to torment others.

The New York bill is a response to several highly publicized cases of teen suicides in the aftermath of some form of online bullying. Klein, a Democrat from the Bronx and Westchester, argued that current state law had not been keeping pace with technology as life increasingly moved online.

"If people know there is a tough law on the books and they're going to be punished, they are going to act accordingly," Klein told a news conference outside the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, where he was joined by members of two anti-bullying organizations.

At least 30 states already have laws dealing with online harassment. At least five have laws dealing explicitly with cyber-bullying, which a study found last year may be even harder on the victims than physical beatings or name-calling.

Under Klein's bill, the crime of stalking in the third degree would be updated to explicitly include harassing a child using electronic communication.

To better reflect the nature of online interactions, the bill removes requirements that the offender initiate the contact and that the victim be a direct recipient of the communication.

Although it is already a crime to "intentionally cause or aid" another person's suicide, the bill would update the state's second-degree manslaughter statute to explicitly include cyber-bullying as a possible cause of such a suicide.

Senator Diane Savino, a Democrat from Staten Island and Brooklyn and a co-sponsor of the bill, said that although bullying has existed "since Cain and Abel," it has been transformed by the Internet and smartphone technology.

A taunting remark in a school playground might be heard by a few and eventually forgotten, she said.. But the same remark posted online can potentially be seen by anyone and linger indefinitely.

Anne Isaacs, whose daughter Jamie, now 15, had to switch schools because of bullies, said online bullying was also much harder to escape than other forms.

"When Jamie would go online to do her homework she would go online and be screaming because messages would come up," said Isaacs, who joined Klein at the press conference.

An attempt to legislate against cyber-bullying at the federal level foundered in 2008, and it has been left to the states to decide how to deal with the problem.

Mary Sue Backus, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma who has studied cyber-bullying, was cited several times in Klein's supporting arguments for his bill. She said in an interview she generally opposed the kind of legislation he was pushing for, which could fail to act as a deterrent and instead have the effect of criminalizing adolescent behavior.

http://news.yahoo.com/bill-crack-down-cyber-bullies-introduced-york-232811906.html

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