A Beacon of Light

As bleak and dark as my professional life has been lately, a beacon of light appeared yesterday.

A little background first. I supervise all the probationers in my county who transfer in from other states. I also transfer any out-of-state probationers sentenced in our Courts. There is a nationwide protocol called the Interstate Compact that governs transfers from one state to another. Any sort of detailed explanation of it would immediately put you to sleep. Suffice it to say that it is rather complex, full of regulations and time constraints, and I've yet to talk to a probation officer anywhere who enjoys it. There are supposedly heavy sanctions for not following the Compact's rules, yet I constantly see violations of those rules, ranging from minor to blatant, and nothing ever comes of it.

It may seem counterintuitive, but it's actually much easier to transfer felonies through the Interstate Compact than it is to transfer misdemeanors. There are so many more misdemeanors than felonies that the Compact chooses to focus its efforts and resources on regulating the more serious offenders, rather than getting bogged down by every shoplifter and public drunk in the nation. So there are only a very few misdemeanors that can be transferred.

If a case meets certain criteria, the other state is required to accept supervision. If a case doesn't meet all the criteria, though, the receiving state has the option of rejecting supervision. And I can count on one hand the number of times a state has accepted a transfer that they weren't required to accept. It's extremely rare. (Hawaii, Oklahoma, and Georgia, you guys rock!)

In the vast majority of states I have dealt with, they don't want the extra work, so supervision is rejected. Who cares what's best for the probationer, right? As long as the receiving state is getting out of doing work.

I really hate that. At an indescribable level. It goes against everything that we as probation officers are here to do: assist probationers with their rehabilitation.

As a result, I have some probationers living as far away as Colorado who are basically unsupervised, since the receiving state isn't willing to do any work that they're not absolutely required to do. That doesn't do anyone any good. The probationer doesn't know where to receive services there, I don't know where the probationer can receive services there, and I can't do home visits and breath tests and urine screens and all our other neat little tricks of supervision when the probationer is 2000 miles away. I absolutely do not understand why a probation officer wouldn't take that into consideration when deciding on whether or not to supervise a case.

So fast-forward to yesterday. I was just assigned to a guy who was convicted of a misdemeanor in one of our Courts, but who has a lengthy and violent criminal history. I haven't even met the guy yet, but his criminal history is literally 19 pages long, so I know he's a career criminal. Most of the time, a probationer's criminal history is a page or two long. Maybe three pages. So this guy is probably not going to get the key to the city anytime soon...unless he shoots someone and steals it. Which he just might do.

The problem is that he lives in Illinois. Illinois isn't going to be required to accept supervision through the Interstate Compact because it's a misdeanor. Even my two-year-old daughter could figure out that this guy is a drug dealer, so I really don't want him running around Illinois without someone keeping a thumb on him. I can't imagine that the local authorities in the city where he lives would want that, either.

Fortunately for me, I know a probation officer from his county in Illinois. I've had several positive professional dealings with her over the years. There is a major interstate that runs through each of our counties that has become a rather busy drug pipeline. Our local law enforcement knows this, so they frequently sit out on the interstate and hunt for bad guys hauling drugs from Indianapolis to Illinois and back. They often catch them. As a result, this isn't the first time that one of my probationers has lived in this particular city in Illinois.

So I send the Illinois probation officer an e-mail, filling her in on this guy, and asking if her department has ever dealt with him before. Her response gave me hope again for my profession.

Her department hadn't supervised him in quite a long time, but she quickly provided me with several local police reports from the past few years involving this guy. She also said that her office prefers to supervise the people in their community, even if the probationer isn't eligible for transfer through the Interstate Compact. (I wanted to cheer out loud when I read that. Someone else thinks like I do! It's a miracle!) So if I'll send his file to her directly, instead of messing with the Interstate Compact, she'll supervise him for me.

I was floored! She voluntarily took the time to provide me more information about the guy, she identified the problem of trying to transfer supervision through the Compact, and she volunteered to solve the problem! She wasn't trying to get out of work, or do as little as possible to avoid rocking her boat. She did EXTRA work, and she volunteered to do even more extra work for me for most of the next year! She went out of her way to help out a colleague from another state who she has never met. It's almost...dare I say it...like we are ON THE SAME TEAM, WORKING TOWARD THE SAME GOAL! What a novel concept!

This isn't the first time she has pleasantly surprised me with her work ethic, the way she thinks, and her willingness to provide and share information. I've gotten cases from her in the past that include so much additional information in them that I feel like I know the probationer before I even meet him or her (and that's a very, very good thing).

In today's world where screw-your-neighbor is the standard operating procedure, this probation officer from Illinois chose to help her neighbor, instead. And for that, I am very appreciative. Thank you for your help on this case, Illinois probation officer, and for renewing a little bit of my faith in humanity and our profession.