making-overseers-into-advocates
Michelle Alexander
The fact that this simple idea is met with so much resistance demonstrates that our criminal justice system, as it is currently designed, functions primarily as a system of racial and social control -- not a system of crime prevention and control. If we, as a society, were truly committed to creating safe, thriving communities in our poorest and most segregated neighborhoods, this author's idea would be a no-brainer. As he writes regarding the current system of probation: "The simple change that . . . is both necessary and inevitable for creating a just system of community supervision, is to change probation offices from places of control and enforcement to places of support and encouragement. It’s an idea that makes most current probation officers gag, but younger POs are more open to the concept and there are indications that things will go this way whether POs like it or not. . . . .The goal should be to transform probation officers from overseers into advocates, from rigid authoritarians into compassionate navigators who walk their probationers through the system, offering support, connecting people to needed resources, encouraging them to change and maintain the change that will keep them from returning to the system. Basically, everyone in the probation office should do what I do here as a social worker, except that my caseload is limited to people who have been diverted before going to trial rather than convicted and sent to a PO." This is an obvious, but radical idea given the nature of the current system. Instead of overseers, we need compassionate, committed advocates.
A social worker’s take on the misery of probation.
Michelle Alexander
The fact that this simple idea is met with so much resistance demonstrates that our criminal justice system, as it is currently designed, functions primarily as a system of racial and social control -- not a system of crime prevention and control. If we, as a society, were truly committed to creating safe, thriving communities in our poorest and most segregated neighborhoods, this author's idea would be a no-brainer. As he writes regarding the current system of probation: "The simple change that . . . is both necessary and inevitable for creating a just system of community supervision, is to change probation offices from places of control and enforcement to places of support and encouragement. It’s an idea that makes most current probation officers gag, but younger POs are more open to the concept and there are indications that things will go this way whether POs like it or not. . . . .The goal should be to transform probation officers from overseers into advocates, from rigid authoritarians into compassionate navigators who walk their probationers through the system, offering support, connecting people to needed resources, encouraging them to change and maintain the change that will keep them from returning to the system. Basically, everyone in the probation office should do what I do here as a social worker, except that my caseload is limited to people who have been diverted before going to trial rather than convicted and sent to a PO." This is an obvious, but radical idea given the nature of the current system. Instead of overseers, we need compassionate, committed advocates.
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