The information for this section was taken from an article in the Summer 1999 issue of the National Association of Probation Executives Executive Exchange. Click to link to the Correctional Management Institute of Texas's Web site. CMIT is the Secretariat for the National Association of Probation Executives.


The department is involved with a national movement known as reinventing probation, which began in 1997. John J. DiIulio, Jr., formerly of Princeton University and now with the University of Pennsylvania, and who is affiliated with the Manhattan Institute in New York and Public/Private Ventures in Philadelphia, spearheaded this initiative with Ronald J. Corbett, Jr., Deputy Commissioner of Probation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a member of the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. The initiative began with dialogue between these two, and a subsequent meeting at the Manhattan Institute, under the auspices of the Center for Civic Innovation, in New York. The initial meeting, attended by probation professionals from across the country, was to discuss best practices in the field of probation and to brainstorm about improving probation services. This meeting produced ideas on problems with probation and strategies on how community corrections could be improved.

Problems. The national group determined that some of the problems facing the field of probation today are:

         The profession has become too focused on spending time in offices rather than supervising offenders where they live, work, and recreate;
         As evidenced by crime polls, there is a lack of public confidence in probation as a correctional sanction;
         Probation is not visible in the community;
         Conditions of probation are not rigorously enforced;
         There is not enough emphasis on probation's role in public safety;
         Probation needs to do a better job of developing real interagency cooperation and partnerships;
         Paperwork is too big a part of the job;
         Too much time is spent on crisis management and not enough on long-term planning; and
         Probation does not have a successful marketing strategy because the product is not exciting to the public.

Process. The national group adopted the following process:
         Identifying "best practices" in the field;
         Clarifying what probation really is and what it ought to be;
         Learning from community policing;
         Determining how to bring about change;
         Developing a strategic plan to advance a reinvented probation; and,
         Generating support from a wide array of individuals, organizations, and groups.

As part of the process, the Texas Reinventing Probation Strategy Group was put together by Dan Richard Beto, Director of the Correctional Management Institute of Texas to advance a new product. The Texas group included representatives from the Correctional Management Institute, the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, the Community Justice Assistance Division, and the directors of juvenile or adult probation departments from Brazos, Bell, Harris, Dallas, Jefferson, Montgomery, Tarrant, and Williamson Counties.
Product. The product envisioned by the national group is as follows:

         A system driven by clear cut values;
         An emphasis on public safety first;
         Probation supervision delivered in the neighborhoods and community rather than in the office;
         Meaningful supervision, a strong enforcement of the conditions, and a rapid response to violations;
         Partnerships developed with the police, courts, treatment providers, and other social service agencies;
         An embrace of faith based initiatives;
         A rational allocation of resources, focusing on problem areas; and,
         Fully embracing a "war room" mentality when dealing with the criminal element, employing available technologies.

The Texas group specified the following product:
         An emphasis on public safety;
         Offender assessment, leading to a rational allocation of resources;
         Meaningful supervision and a more rigorous enforcement of the conditions of supervision;
         Accountability for the offender and the department;
         A rational approach to data collection; and,
         Avoidance of doing things just because that is the way they have always been done.

The national and Texas groups agreed that the blueprint for revitalizing probation found in the 1999 Center for Civic Innovation's report entitled A "Broken Windows" Probation: The Next Step in Fighting Crime was a strategy worth implementing. The "broken windows" theory postulates that major disorganization and crime do not just spring up in neighborhoods; rather, it begins with things as simple as windows being broken out and not fixed. When the criminal elements sees that no one in the area is interested in fixing the small problems, more serious crimes are progressively committed in the area. If small problems are addressed when they occur, the escalation to more serious offenses does not occur. This theory can be applied to community supervision, in that if offenders are allowed to commit minor violations of their supervision unchecked, they will progress to more serious violations. (Click to link to the Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute's Web site )

Several Texas CSCD's have begun implementing strategies associated with the reinventing literature. The Brazos County CSCD is committed to the "reinventing" concept, and as a result, has implemented a number of staff-driven changes in how offenders are supervised. As of June 2000, the department is focusing efforts on supervision in the field, especially among the highest risk and need offenders. An intake and assessment team will conduct the assessment process to better identify problem areas and needed referral sources for offenders to address their needs more quickly to better protect the community from acts committed by these offenders. Officers have been appointed to write memorandums to the courts, advising the prosecutors and judges of violations, and requesting that swift action be taken in response to those violations. The Bryan Police Department and the CSCD are now partnered in conducting field visits for the highest risk offenders, and have found the partnership mutually beneficial in protecting the community. Additional police departments will be added to this initiative at a later date.
We are working with Texas A&M University to evaluate programs to fully utilize resources, and continue to be involved with the Community Partnership Board, which grew out of a group of concerned and committed people who came together to examine the barriers faced by families seeking assistance to improve the quality of life for their children. From the initial group arose Project Unity, which developed a holistic process that eliminated duplication of services for families, mountains of paperwork, and a lack of communication. Their mission is to increase the abilities of families to successfully nurture their children by helping them to access resources across education and health and human service agencies. The top priority is to focus on the needs of the families, not the needs of the agencies. Working with the Community Partnership Board and Project Unity has allowed the CSCD staff to meet staff members of other agencies who provide services to many of our offenders, and to learn how those services work. The reinventing probation effort will continue to provide these types of opportunities for our staff members, will enable us to provide better services to offenders, and to better protect the community.

We are committed to offering opportunities for offenders to improve their lives by learning non-criminal behaviors and asking the courts to sanction or remove from the community those who choose not to do so, thereby assisting in making our community safer. The reinventing effort will improve our success in this effort.