 And I told her, I said, well, you're telling me I shouldn't do this, and I shouldn't do this and do that. You know, I said, but help me. Help me. How are you going to help? Show me how I can help myself. Yes, people do make mistakes, but they can rectify it if they have the right support behind them. And from whom are they going to get support if not the probation officer who's supervising them? You're going to need to have probation officers, you're going to need to have people who work with people to try to help change the thinking and change their behavior. You know, for somebody like me that's really trying to be successful, it helped a lot to have an agent that wanted me to be successful and was willing to actually do some extra work to do it. That makes it worthwhile because it's about helping people change their lives and by doing that, protecting the community. Someone once said, if you think it's hard to get other people to change, try changing yourself. Wishing doesn't make it so. Change takes thoughtful work and a lot of it. Helping defendants and offenders change their lives is an important way that probation and pretrial services officers carry out the system's mission as stated in the Charter for Excellence. One of the Charter's tenets is to make a positive difference in the lives of those we serve. Those served include communities, victims, defendants and offenders. Officers can have perhaps the biggest effect on communities and victims by helping defendants and offenders change their lives. The court of course sets the broad picture of conditions of release and conditions of supervision. But it's the officers who work to help defendants and offenders meet those conditions. Officers put in place structures and controls and provide resources and support that allow change to happen. But that's the jargon. Doing the work and its results are more dramatic and rewarding. At the Probation and Pretrial Services Office for the Western District of Wisconsin, Kent Hansen believes that officers who supervise defendants and offenders have a mission. We're trying to interrupt the cycle of dysfunction. We're not just trying to see people through a period of supervision. And the truth of the matter is we cannot lock up everybody who commits crime. They won't be locked up forever. You're going to need to have probation officers, you're going to need to have people who work with people to try to help change the thinking and change their behavior to be law of body. The approach in dealing with offenders is about placing the value back on the individual. It's about an individual's worth and giving them back their dignity. It goes from enforcing rules and invoking authority to something much bigger. It becomes a mission that you're working with every day. Several years ago when Officer Rick Badger supervised Gloria Far's release on a fraud charge, he discovered that she was a crack cocaine user. His reaction was typical of how he deals with defendants and offenders. I needed to treat her with dignity and respect. She was already skeptical of the system and a little suspicious. My myth or understanding about the system, they really didn't care, they were a bunch of controlling people so that they would come in and force you to do something. I try to let the people I work with know that I do care about you, that I am involved. I want to see you successful and hopefully you want to see you successful. A year later she had to realize that I wasn't out to get her, that I'm not her enemy. As a probation officer I wanted to see her make it. I realized there wasn't not a lot of people that wanted to, that I thought wanted to really help. We would rather have persons have their addictions dealt with instead of just locking them up and not addressing it. What he treated me as that I was an individual who made a mistake that I can do better. If you approach the individual from a helping standpoint you're not as apt to run into resistance as trying to invoke power and authority. One of the key things is to not be judgmental and it's so easy to just stereotype offenders especially if they have a long criminal history thinking that oh boy here it is, they're not going to change. All offenders don't tell the truth, all offenders are negative, all offenders can't change, this is the way they are. Yes people do make mistakes but they can rectify it if they have the right support behind them. So I wanted to try to instill some hope that this does not have to be your life, that you can make some differences. I had a choice. I believe he always let the door open that I had a choice. He wouldn't give up. He stuck it through. He was just really stern, persistent and maybe irresponsible. Not every offender will buy in to this approach and that is one of the functions or one of the skills that comes into play with the officer is being able to tell whether or not you're being kind. I'm going to evaluate them on what they do in our relationship. Are they following their conditions? Are they setting a positive goal for themselves? But that doesn't mean that the officer won't get occasionally burned and that's where the disappointment comes in because people will disappoint you and you have to be willing to pick up the pieces and start all over again. When she had those positive UA's and she found out that my first response was not okay you're going to jail but my first response was to offer treatment. I think that made a difference in our relationship. Officers are special. You have to be willing to get involved in people's lives. The officer needs to be a diagnostician. You have to be able to tell at what level the offender is at, what they're ready for and how best to approach that individual so that he'll buy into a system of successful living. When I had relapsed, he gave me an opportunity to seek help. He didn't say okay you go straight to jail. He worked with me and so with that that made me more motivated to seek treatment so I never stopped. If we can't make someone change, we can only provide the atmosphere for them to change. We provide guidance, we provide structure so that a person can change. I look at him as a teacher, he put the information out there, he gave me avenues to try options to look at and when I messed up he allowed me to pick it up. He was there to support it but he allowed me to choose my role. After she got in the treatment program and started to see the positive potential that could occur, I think she wanted to be drug free and to beat this problem so that she could even be in a position to do what she's doing now which is helping others get off of drugs. Ujima is a counseling service for African American families in Madison. Far once came here as a client. Now she's the director. I think that's really what this is all about my goodness, it couldn't ask for a better outcome where she has been able to use her skills, her education, her determination. The moms can be there with children until we can find a foresees person that we can actually pay. Chief Anson says the message is simple but powerful. That offenders can change, that there are success story after success story out there nationwide. In the western district of Texas, officers are having success with high risk, non-compliant offenders. I've spent almost all of my adult life, the majority of my, you know, young life in jail at one time or another and I was just tired of it, you know. I knew something had to change. I was tired of spending time in prison. Armando was having a difficult time staying away from the friends and the drugs and the use. I was attempting, you know, to work and to do things and I would become so stressful because I would get so stressed out man because it was like, man this is impossible, I'm never going to do it, I'm never going to do it. And then I would go like into a depression. This offender is a high risk offender and our target group are high risk offenders because those are the ones that we're going to see most significant change. But when I got the second dirty, I said, okay, let's find out. And I told her, I said, well you're telling me I shouldn't do this and I shouldn't do this and do that. You know, I said, but help me, help me, how are you going to help me? Show me how I can help myself. And she goes, okay, I'm going to put you in this program. The program is called SATS, Substance Abuse Treatment Services, intended to help non-compliant offenders. SATS uses cognitive behavior restructuring. It's an in-house program that builds on the Bureau of Prison's 500-hour Substance Abuse program. This program is geared towards giving offenders responsibility for their own behavior, having them take ownership for their own behavior and knowing that the choices they make are there. We're moving everything to the new house, so it's really been hectic, you know, and that's how I was a little late this morning. That's great. You were working on that and you finally got what you wanted, huh? She did it because she really wanted to help me. Once I noticed that she wasn't out to get me, you know, and that she was really trying to keep me from going back into prison. The officers themselves lead weekly group sessions with offenders for 21 weeks. Especially doing the SATS program does take time away from our families and from other activities because it's something that we do after hours in most cases. This is a voluntary program. There are times when you think, you know, it's the end of the day, you've worked all day and now at six o'clock and you have to go to a group until eight o'clock that night and, you know, it sounds tiresome, but once you get into the group and you have that energy in the group, it's energizing, it's revitalizing. You'll occasionally see the light bulb go off in these people, you know, those sunnies. You'll see it in their eyes and their face that, oh, yeah, I understand now. And you finally have reached that point and then you can begin that process of change. If it helps even one person make a change in their life or make them think about things differently, then that extra time is not lost. That makes it worthwhile because it's about helping people change their lives and by doing that protecting the community. One of the hardest things is trying to remember at that moment in time before you react that you have to use these skills. The most satisfying part of working in a substance abuse program with the offenders is to see that there is some change in their attitude, the way they make their decisions. Knowing that you're not only affecting an offender, but you're also affecting his family and in turn affecting the community. Everything that he touches with his new thinking skills and his new behaviors has a positive effect. You know, I have all these positive things that have happened and I just improved all my self-esteem. The officers who get involved have to be committed officers. They have to have the commitment to want to do this for the offenders. Commitment sometimes takes the form of innovative ways to deal with difficult recurring issues. The Northern District of New York had a high rate of pretrial detention. We knew we had a high-risk drug-defendant population that couldn't be released safely to the community and we said how could we address that. The district developed a jail-based program called HIPP, which stands for High Impact Incarceration Program. This designed for drug-dependent pretrial defendants, who would have been released if they had not presented with a substance abuse problem. I have a new referral for the HIPP program. Probation officer Becky Doyle has the primary responsibility to make the program work. I think the biggest challenge is developing a release plan that meets the individual needs of the defendant while still assuring the safety of the community. Officer Doyle makes all of the officers' evaluations and referrals to the treatment agency. Hi Diane, what do you have? Okay Becky, I just did a pretrial service report on this arrest this morning, Mr. Maldonado. He appears that he does have a problem with marijuana and cocaine and he might be a good candidate for the HIPP program. Does he have any violent criminal history? The office contracts with the local treatment agency to operate the program in the county jail, where federal defendants are held pending trial. It's chemical dependency treatment, 12-step work, alcohol and drugs, dead in their feelings. The core of what I do is help the person to feel. You know the false images that I have always protected myself against from people who I'm afraid to let know of me. And once they start that process, then we're able to go on and look at things. Defendants receive chemical dependency treatment three hours a day, five days a week. And there's more. They have work details, if they don't have a GED or a high school diploma, they go to school. If they do, they work in the kitchen or in the laundry. So they're busy the whole time they're in the program. Officer Doyle and the treatment counselor evaluate each defendant's progress. How's his attitude? I know it wasn't very good when he started. Attitude has changed dramatically since he's been in here. I think when he first came in here, like most people come to the program. Doyle decides whether to recommend that the court grant pretrial release and impose an ongoing treatment plan. The HIP program is not in and of itself a cure-all. It provides a firm foundation for the defendant to build upon once he's released from HIP and goes on to further treatment. Doyle also is the liaison to the Marshall Service, the U.S. Attorney's Office, and Defense Counsel. She follows each defendant's progress in the program and develops release plans and updated bail reports with recommendations for the court. Need an eternal optimist officer who believes that the program can produce benefits for a pretrial defendant. For defendants who successfully complete the HIP program, they have the opportunity to be released to pretrial supervision. They can reunite with their family. They can assist their attorney in preparing their defense. And ultimately, if they do well in aftercare in the program, they could get a downward departure in their sentencing guidelines. It gives the opportunity to the defendant to prove to the court and to prove to everyone else that they can deal with a problem, that they can correct their conduct, whatever it might have been. The payoff for the probation and pretrial services office is a lower detention rate and also credibility with the court in being able to provide a viable alternative to detention. If your pretrial toolbox only contains a hammer, everything you look at will be a nail. And we'd like to think there are other alternatives out there. And how often do you use marijuana? Every day. The program has been so successful, it's now being used for post-conviction supervision too. Seeing an individual address their substance abuse problems successfully and become motivated to make other positive changes in their life and to know you had a part in guiding them through that is very rewarding. Providing guidance takes many forms. In cases where employment is a condition of supervised release, guidance means more than simply telling offenders to find work. Having options after incarceration is a big issue with former offender Tony Delgay who served more than six years in federal prison for distribution of cocaine. I don't think that I can stress enough, especially when you first get out how limited your options seem to be. I mean, I just, you know, I had a lot of things going for me, computer skills, language skills. It was still hard for me to go out and get a job. Delgay is now an attorney, most often representing defendants. I'm really optimistic because they have some new programs here. If you don't immediately start working with people to, you know, make sure that they have the options and the vision of the future, you're putting them in right in the middle of temptation and telling them, okay, go out and get a job and, you know, report back to me and do well. Delgay says that kind of minimalist effort with offenders who are released from incarceration comes at a price. If they've had all of these things and then you've taken all of that away from them and given them and not helped them to generate other options for their future, I don't think that you should be surprised when they fail. They need support and from whom are they going to get support if not the probation officer who's supervising them. Janine Frank was Delgay's probation officer for about a year and a half of his supervised release. And we have to support them in such a way that holds the person accountable and protects the community. Delgay had experience with two probation officers, the first who said, My job is to make you follow the rules as a parent to Janine who was more like my job is to help you be successful. If we can't be helpful to persons in making that change, we're not helping them get themselves out of the situation that brought them to prison to the criminal justice system in the first place. Delgay says the frequent conversations he and his wife had with Frank are one way she helped him. We weren't talking about what are you doing next week, Tony. We were talking about what are you doing next month, next six months, next year down the road because one of the problems that people have is the same problem I had before. Their horizon is just a couple of months down the road. They're making decisions about what can I do for the next two months instead of what can I do for the rest of my life. I know in this case with Tony, he and I had lengthy discussions about what he wanted to do, why he wanted to do it, and what he hoped to accomplish. A lot of people say we can't be a lawyer because you were in prison. I had this dream and then Janine helped me talk about the steps I had to do to do it so that we could do the things that needed to be done. Well, certainly one of the skills that I think are absolutely necessary is to be an active listener, to be engaged in conversations with people, but listening so that you can hear more than just the spoken message. An intuitive listener is someone that's able to pick up on the subtleties. The reading between the lines would probably be the best way to describe it. One of the things that we try to do is to get involved in people's lives to the extent that they allow us to be. And sometimes, even beyond that, sometimes you have to force yourself to be involved in a person's life. Tell me about the process. Did they just send you a letter of rejection, or how did what happen? No, they never sent me a letter of rejection. They kept sending me letters asking for more information about various things. You've got your finger on the individual's pulse because of your involvement in life. You can see him taking steps to improve his life. And in that respect, you're protecting the community, you're fulfilling the court order, and you're making your job a lot easier. Actually, talking about what you're trying to do helps you set goals. And she did that pretty regularly. There were a couple of times when she stayed for quite a while and talked to myself and my wife. She was just genuinely interested in what we had to say and what our future held. I think one of the best skills I have is that I listen to people. Because the US Attorney had told me that, you know, they'll never consider those state support systems. The secret to listening is to talk less. And I don't try to force my ideas and beliefs on people. I try to work with them within the scope of their own belief system. She really worked with me around final exams times and things like that. You know, she actually scheduled things around my schedule. At the time, I was working three jobs and going to law school. That made a difference for me. I was able to monitor his adjustment in the community. I was able to determine that. In fact, he was being law-abiding. I spoke with his professors. I knew how he was doing in law school. I knew what he was involved with. And what this allowed me to do was when Tony needed an advocate, I could be that person for him. To help clients to see farther into the future, to get them the basic skills, help the education, help the mental health, that kind of thing, I just think it's critical. Helping others change their behavior isn't easy. If I want Tony or other people to succeed, sometimes I may have to go the extra mile to help them do that. And as Officer Badger emphasizes, making the effort to help others change takes commitment. I shouldn't be in this job if I don't believe people can change. There'd be no need for, I'd just be taking up space. But the result can be powerful. I don't try to ignore the past. We have to deal with the past. But try to give that person a chance to write a new slate. To write a new history.