Legal Commentary

Infrastructure Spending Should Include Funding of Probation Offices

By TChris

Good probation officers help offenders avoid a return to criminal behavior by assisting their efforts to find housing, jobs, mental health care, and substance abuse treatment. Bad probation officers do everything they can to get offenders revoked so they have one less person to supervise. Good or bad, probation officers who provide meaningful supervision of probationers help protect the community.

That's why it's short-sighted for states like Arizona, in their efforts to cope with budget deficits, to cut probation staffs.

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Last week, court administrators released a memo saying the state is cutting court budgets by $10 million dollars. As a result, it was almost a foregone conclusion that some probation officer's would be laid off. On Monday, court officials sent a memo to the staff stating that they are only facing $7 million in cuts, not the $10 million mentioned last week.

It typically costs at least ten times more to imprison an offender than it costs to supervise one in the community. Investing in probation officers, treatment and job training programs, and halfway houses is more cost-effective than slashing those budgets, only to see prison costs rise in later years because offenders who would have stayed out of trouble with help and supervision are left to their own devices by understaffed probation agencies.

Arizona should look for other places to cut spending. In fact, as states begin to ask the federal government to shower them with funds for infrastructure improvement, they should remember that transitional housing and treatment programs and community supervision are all part of the infrastructure -- they all contribute to community safety and to the economy by helping offenders become productive working taxpayers. That's just as important as fixing potholes or building new additions to airports.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 11, 2008 (boomark / email).