Don't Believe the Stereotype

There are stereotypes of who probation officers are and what they do... Those stereotypes used to bother me earlier in my career, but now, 13 years later, when a probationer tells me that “it’s just all about the money” or that s/he “heard in jail that you guys violate 90% of people on probation”, I just chuckle... If only that person knew how many times I’ve requested that the Court find someone indigent at the end of their probation and make hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of fines, costs, and fees disappear... And since I do a lot of the statistics of the office, I can say with authority that year after year, without fail, we successfully discharge 80% of our probationers...

Because of those stereotypes, though, some people enter their period of probation with an inaccurate view of the probation officer’s goal... It’s a hurdle that we constantly attend training on how to overcome...

I’ve dealt with two people in recent months that have been a reminder of why this career can be so frustrating and disheartening sometimes...and also a reminder of why I do what I do...

The first is a young lady who posted several photos on Facebook of herself with her friends on a number of occasions, violating her conditions of probation in a variety of ways... A couple days after she was released from jail on the probation warrant, a young man from our community was killed in a one-car accident where the driver was allegedly intoxicated... I recognized the deceased man and the driver from photos I had seen on my probationer’s Facebook page... My hopes were that my probationer might see that while she likely thought the probation violation was unfair or trivial or just fulfillment of the stereotype, the true purpose of it was to bring her behavior to her attention in hopes that she could get some help in correcting that behavior before she wound up being the next blood stain on a rural highway in the middle of the night... She, of course, missed the entire point of it, even with the death of one friend and the serious criminal charges pending against a second friend still fresh in her mind...but I continue to hold out hope that the message will eventually sink in as she continues to deal with another PO in our department over the course of the punishment phase of the probation violation...

Interestingly, the driver in that fatal accident had been discharged from probation about two weeks prior to the wreck... I imagine his PO is wishing that his probationer had taken the message to heart, too...

The second person I had been dealing with, unfortunately, lost their life...

These are the types of things that shave years off of a PO’s career... They jade you... It’s part of why burnout is such a serious and prevalent problem in this career (and, likely, in other careers involving law enforcement)... If they don’t affect you as a PO, you should have moved on to a different career before you stopped caring... If they do affect you, you have to hold out hope that what you do makes a difference during those times when you want to choke your probationer, beat your head against your desk, and/or cry...

Every now and then, though, you get that reminder, and it’s all worth it...