Some see tipping point for crime in parolee overload

By Jeff German

Friday, Dec. 19, 2008 | 2 a.m.

To protect the public, the justice system is supposed to clamp down on parolees and probationers as soon as they stray from the straight and narrow. But the odds of success get worse as the tally of cases assigned to each parole and probation officer goes up.

In Nevada, the number of parolees and probationers has risen by more than a thousand since July 2007 while the budget of the agency responsible for monitoring them has been cut by $5.6 million. The budget slashing and a state-imposed hiring freeze has left 98 positions vacant in the Parole and Probation Division — about 21 percent of its staff, Kevin Tice, deputy chief of the agency’s southern region, said this week.

“We’re hitting a point where we really can’t supply adequate supervision for some of these offenders because the caseload is so high,” Tice said. “The fear I have is that these offenders will hurt people and victimize people in our community.”

“It’s a dire situation,” Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said. “To me, they’ve already been cut to the bone. Any further proposed cuts and I think we’re putting the public safety at risk.”

State Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, says we’ve been at risk for more than a year. That’s how long he has been urging Gov. Jim Gibbons to set aside funds to hire additional parole and probation officers.

A legislative audit in March found that Parole and Probation was lax in supervising high-risk offenders, including those who served time for sex crimes. In nearly one out of every three cases examined, the offenders did not have timely initial assessments, and in three out of four cases, reassessments were not timely, the audit concluded.

The audit also found that the division regularly failed to make monthly visits to high-risk offenders, visits that the audit said are critical to preventing the offenders from committing new crimes.

Parole and Probation officials contend many of the problems were the result of the division’s staffing shortage.

Coffin said it’s just a matter of time before some parolee commits a high-profile murder or other serious crime, such as a sexual assault, that would have been prevented if the parolee had been properly monitored by the state.

Tice, in fact, acknowledged that some offenders under Parole and Probation supervision have committed serious crimes in recent months, including murder, sexual assault and kidnapping.

“There are thousands of people who have not been supervised at all,” Coffin said. “We should have pushed the governor on this a long time ago, but the Legislature would not act.”

Ron Cuzze, president of the Nevada State Law Enforcement Officers’ Association, described the current system as “unbalanced” and on its way to becoming “totally dysfunctional.”

“If we stay on this track, they’re going to be supervising people on paper only,” he said. “When you can’t supervise people properly, they’re going to re-offend. In the long run, it’s going to cost the state more.”

Gibbons spokesman Dan Burns said the governor has made public safety a high priority and will do his best to take care of the Parole and Probation Division.

“It’s clear to the governor that there are severe budget issues all over the state, but especially with Parole and Probation,” he said. “We will try to find a way to find them more people.”

Nevada Public Safety Director Jerry Hafen has asked Gibbons to set aside money in the state budget for another 30 to 50 officers to keep pace with the rising number of parole and probation cases.

But despite the difficulties, the division has been doing a good job of minimizing the threat to the community, Hafen said.

It has also been creative. A few years ago, the division put the lowest level felony and gross misdemeanor parolees, the ones who require the least supervision, into a separate pool of cases. Today, there are about 3,000 offenders in that pool, which Hafen said is effectively overseen by a half-dozen officers.

Parole and Probation has been able to keep the ratio of cases for those who handle high-risk violent offenders to 30 per officer, an acceptable level, according to Tice. Officers who deal with sex offenders have been getting roughly 45 cases each, which also is an acceptable level, Tice said.

But the division has run into problems keeping pace with acceptable levels when dealing with the rest of the parolees and probationers, the largest category of felony offenders released into the community, Tice said.

The division, Tice explained, strives to limit those cases to the recommended maximum of 70 per officer, but because of budget cuts and the manpower shortage, the ratios are averaging more than 120 cases per officer.

“This is an enormous concern,” Tice said. “We worry about what that means to the public and the safety of our officers.”

Cuzze said parole and probation officers now have less backup support when they make potentially dangerous visits to the more violent offenders.

The staffing shortage also is causing problems for the courts because the division’s other main mission is preparing pre-sentencing reports for judges. Judges must review those reports before sentencing defendants. Because the pre-sentencing reports aren’t getting done on time, sentencings are being delayed.

Clark County Public Defender Phil Kohn said his attorneys lately are receiving letters from the Parole and Probation Division seeking extensions for submitting reports in nearly every case.

The delays, he said, are keeping defendants expecting to be placed on probation behind bars at taxpayer expense for as long as six additional six weeks.

“It’s horrible for them, and it’s very expensive for the criminal justice system,” he said.

Kohn said there’s also a perception in his office that the overburdened Parole and Probation Division has been going out of its way in recent months to spur revocations of probation or parole because that helps whittle down the division’s caseload.

“We get the sense that sometimes people get (revoked) who might not be in violation because Parole and Probation doesn’t have enough people to supervise them,” Kohn said.

Tice, however, denied the allegation.