Overburdened
Community corrections officers wrestling large case loads and a balky computer system are at a distinct disadvantage in trying to supervise offenders who are on the street.

By Julie Sullivan
The Spokesman-Review

At left, Wiggs and Spokane Police Officer Tracie Meidl use the drug dog Jasmine to search a house for crack cocaine. Officers fail to find any drugs. But they do find $3,000 in cash in the home of a married couple, both on supervision, who are on public assistance.

The woman, convicted eight times for drunken driving, is about to be arrested for drinking again. Two officers approach her door.

On the right: Spokane Police Officer Max Hewitt wearing an electronic pager, a police radio, handcuffs, a Leatherman pocket tool, a flashlight, pepper spray and a 9 mm Glock semiautomatic pistol.

On the left: Community Corrections Officer Bruce Woods, wearing Dockers and carrying a cellular telephone that just went dead.

In the war against crime, few troops come to the fight less equipped than field officers from the state Department of Corrections.

More than 530 officers - who used to be called parole and probation officers - supervise about 85,500 offenders in Washington. About 50 officers in Spokane County supervise 12,000 offenders.

Two-thirds of those cases are active, meaning offenders are in contact with state staff. More than 5,500 report only by phone, some from other Eastern Washington counties. They are supervised in that they must report and pay court fines and restitution. Another 880 are in jail.

The most closely watched are 1,300 ex-felons who live in Spokane County and are supervised face-to-face. Visiting ex-felons at home and work is considered critical.

"Anyone who has this job knows the most valuable contact we have with offenders is in the field, unannounced, in their environment. There's no way around that," says Scott Hepler, a community corrections officer in Spokane.

But a lack of equipment, a confounding computer system and the law itself get in the way.

Field officers in Spokane County approach convicted murderers, drug dealers and rapists every day without radios to contact each other or police. Officers share late-model cell phones, which often don't work. They can carry pepper spray -- for dogs.

Yet, in March, people under supervision or recently under supervision shot and killed an Omak police officer; drove a stolen car down the wrong side of the interstate near Olympia and killed three people; and went into a Seafirst bank in Auburn and took six hostages.

Ex-felons also threatened to bomb a community corrections officer's home in Stevens County; to put a gun to an officer's head in Seattle; to torture a Vancouver corrections officer before killing his family; and to come after an officer in Spokane after the offender's own parents are "destroyed."

"I think if most people stopped and thought about it, we would never come to work," says Pam Madill, a field officer in downtown Spokane.

A 1997 state worker safety report concluded that more than half of Washington community corrections staff had been threatened in the previous year, and one in 10 officers had been assaulted. That average was higher than in comparable states.

"When a majority of field officers report being targets ... there is a significant problem!" concludes the report by consultant William Parsonage.

This month, after a 10-year effort by officers, the Department of Corrections approved a $517,000 statewide spending package that will give officers the option of carrying a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. It also provides for some bulletproof vests and pepper spray.

But it does nothing for their biggest equipment headache: their computers.

Washington got its computer system, the Offender Based Tracking System, from the state of Florida in the 1980s for free.

"We learned the hard way that there is no free lunch," says Deputy Director Dave Savage. "It's not user-friendly for us or the people who want information out of us."

The computer manual lists more than 750 different codes that officers must use or be familiar with. The time it takes to enter new information, and the sheer amount of information officers are required to record, has made them virtual desk jockeys.

"They're spending 60 to 70 percent of their time doing administrative data entry in the office and are not out monitoring offenders and protecting the community like they'd like to," says Tim Welch, director of the Washington Federation of State Employees.

Yet, despite all the time officers spend on the corrections department's information highway, there is no "on ramp" to the county sheriff or police.

As a result, if an ex-convict has been arrested, his field officer usually learns about it from the man's own family or by calling the jail and asking -- usually after the ex-convict misses an appointment. If an offender dies, the field officer usually finds out about it from the newspaper.

Officers monitor sex offenders who increasingly use the Internet to get and transmit pornography. But field officers don't have Internet access and aren't trained to use it.

Yet if someone commits another crime, officers feel increasingly liable.

Earlier this year, veteran officer Barbara Nelson was fired in Tacoma after three offenders under her supervision committed murder. In one case, Johnny Eggers killed a 17-year-old cheerleader. The state admitted liability and paid the girl's family $6.3 million.

Outside consultants analyzing the Nelson case found morale among field officers statewide at an all-time low because they feel like any day they may be "the last person holding the dynamite."

Part of the problem lies with the law.

The Sentence Reform Act of 1984 was meant to simplify the state criminal justice system and get tough on crime. It lengthened the minimum prison time for all new offenders by nearly two-thirds and abolished parole -- early releases -- in the belief that longer prison terms would eliminate the need for post-prison supervision.

But beginning in 1988, and continuing nearly every year since, the Legislature has amended the law, placing offenders on supervision for longer periods of time based on their crime and when it was committed.

The result: Instead of four kinds of supervision that existed before 1984, there are now 27 kinds of supervision. Community corrections officers, who must have a four-year college degree, need several years in the field just to understand the requirements.

Despite constant tinkering, the law still has problems. Because supervision is based on sentence and not on risk to the community, one offender may be required to report only by phone while someone with no history of violence may be under face-to-face supervision for years.

The law also allows a chronic habitual offender to commit new felonies while under supervision and never receive more than 60 days in the county jail for the violations.

Corrections officials have hired a consultant to upgrade the computer system, including adding links to local police. They also are undertaking a workload study. But it will take judges, prosecutors and legislators to go much further in tracking ex-felons in communities.

"This is bigger than the department," says Joe Lehman, secretary of corrections.

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