 You're watching FJTN, the Federal Judicial Television Network. I think if we're really going to take a step out there and assume a role in our community's public outreach is the key to doing this. I think we're very fortunate in the federal system that we have many resources that are unavailable to some of the local agencies in the community. I think we have a responsibility to play a role, to take the lead in reaching out to the community, reaching out to some of our fellow criminal justice agencies, engaging in partnerships with them. There's a lot of misinformation out there and I think a lot of people formulate their opinions about criminal justice and community corrections about what they see and hear on TV, and many times that's a distortion of what we really do. In the nature of our work, which is working with defendants and offenders, we need to be resource brokers. That means we need to connect with other people and agencies in the community, so we need to do outreach so we can be more effective in making connections. I believe that public outreach is important to the system because it's a way for us to get feedback from our constituents, from the public, about their expectations of us and how we're doing our work and what they want us to be doing. In our involvement in community services, we open up avenues for development of additional resources that we may not know that are available, which help us in the supervision efforts. Day in, day out, my officers are changing lives and nobody knows about it. And so it's important, I think, that we let people know what positive things are going on. The Federal Judicial Center in Cooperation with the Administrative Office of the United States Court presents Public Information and Outreach, Probation and Pre-Trial Services. And now your moderator for today's program, Bob Began. Welcome to today's broadcast on Public Information and Outreach. Probation and Pre-Trial Services are increasingly engaged in community service programs that educate the criminal justice family, service providers, and the general public about its functions. This leads to a better understanding of the impact probation and pretrial services have on public safety and aids in developing trust with the community. Today in Cooperation with the Administrative Office of the U.S. courts, we're going to take a look at some of the key issues and challenges probation and pretrial services face when performing information and outreach activities. Through discussions with panelists both here in the studio and at our field sites, we'll learn about effective practices that individual districts develop to meet those challenges. The districts participating will tell us what works for them. These same practices may or may not be effective for you. That's for you and perhaps your judge to decide. As we saw in the opening, the challenges are numerous. We have quite a bit to talk about. Our hope is that by the end of it, you will have a working definition of public information and community outreach as it applies to probation and pretrial services. Understand the role of the district in cultivating the mutually dependent relationship with the criminal justice family, service providers, and the general public, and finally, to become familiar with effective programs that help promote better understanding among the criminal justice family, service providers, and the general public. At our website, we have materials that include many references and websites plus a roster and program evaluation. Now on to today's agenda. To help define public information and outreach, we're going to start with an interview with David Sellers, AO Assistant Director for the Office of Public Affairs. This will be followed by our Getting the Word Out panel discussions. We'll cover community programs that districts have sponsored alone, with other criminal justice agencies or service providers and the public. After that, our community outreach panel discussion will focus on crime prevention initiatives and efforts of districts in reaching out to service providers and schools. Next, our panel will discuss the challenges and benefits of investing resources in community outreach program. Finally, we'll hear from John Hughes, AO Assistant Director for the Office of Probation and Pretrial Services. We'll then have a short wrap up at the end. As mentioned before, probation and pretrial services are increasingly engaged in community outreach programs that educate the criminal justice family, service providers, and the general public about its functions, leading to a better understanding of its impact on public safety. We'll cover a small sample of community programs that districts have sponsored alone, with other criminal justice agencies or service providers to provide increased services to the community. Before we get into our panel discussion, we're using the following model to explain to you what we mean when we say community outreach. Probation and pretrial services interact with a variety of different communities. The first community, and the one closest to us in doing our job, is the criminal justice family. This consists of judges, attorneys, law enforcement agencies such as FBI, DEA, INS agents, marshals, and BOP. It also includes local law enforcement authorities. Service providers make up the second community group. These would consist of sex offender and substance abuse facilities and counselors, halfway houses, treatment centers, employers, and alternative schools. The third community, and perhaps the most important, is the general public. This would include Congress, schools, churches, synagogues, mosques, neighborhood groups, and of course, the taxpayer. It's important that we get the word out about what probation and pretrial services do that contribute to keeping the public safe. This can be done in a variety of ways, providing education about probation and pretrial services roles and functions for new attorneys and judges can smooth the way to a more cooperative working relationship. Aligning our districts with treatment providers to establish a network of services may open up needed resources. Educating students about the consequences to breaking a federal law helps in crime prevention. Students tutoring students provide an opportunity to establish a meaningful relationship between students at risk and a good adult role model. Investing in community outreach activities is always a worthwhile endeavor. As the three community groups begin to realize how the work of probation and pretrial services supports their needs, the investment we make will all come back to us. It will come back to us not only by feeling that we've done something worthwhile, but also in the form of new partnerships established where none had existed. It will allow for better cooperation among the various criminal justice family members. And more importantly, the general public will see that probation and pretrial services are not invisible government agencies using up taxpayers' money, but rather active criminal justice agencies helping to keep the public safe. And now to introduce us to the field of public information and outreach, my colleague David Leathery sat down with David Sellers, AO assistant director for the Office of Public Affairs to discuss basic definitions and concepts regarding public information and community outreach for probation and pretrial services. David, thank you for joining us during this telecast. Let's start by with a question of a working definition of public information and outreach and what that means in relation to the judiciary. Sure. Outreach in the federal judiciary is really very different than the term in the state judiciary or even the term in the executive or legislative branch. It is a somewhat conservative educational approach to sharing information, to building relationships, to taking those relationships that are in place and expanding them and to heightening visibility. And in the federal judicial environment, that's something that's a relatively new concept, but I think the time has come and that judges, clerks of court, probation officers, really all members of the federal court family are starting to embrace this effort. And from your perspective, why do you feel it's so important to the judiciary? Well, I think there's a common perception, and I happen to agree with this, that you can't support or can't trust something that you don't understand. And I think there is a great amount of misunderstanding or misconceptions about the federal courts. And I'd have to say that that applies even more so to the probation and pretrial services portion of the federal judiciary. As you know, about 25% of all people who work in the courts work in this area, but I think there's a lack of knowledge not only within the courts themselves, but certainly within the community, within the news media, within our legislatures about what these people do. And how does your office support this function, this initiative? Of the 30,000 people in the federal courts, I'm sorry to say there's only one who has the title community and educational outreach manager, and that person is Rebecca Fanning who's located in the Office of Public Affairs. So she is a very energetic, dynamic person who is committed to working with anyone in the court family who is interested in outreach. I know she's worked extremely closely with the Office of Probation and Pretrial Services at the AO. And I think Rebecca and Nancy Beattie and John Hughes and others who are committed to this will take a phone call, will take an email, will talk about outreach. And Rebecca has a history in this area, as I say it's a relatively new one, but she knows the success is working with judges, working with clerks of court, and I think all you need are a few successes and you can build from there. And what are the benefits you see from a proactive outreach program? It's difficult to take any measurements in this area to see anything that's concrete. However, there have been surveys that have been done. There was one in 1999 by the Hearst Corporation that said, the more people understand about their courts, the better they feel about them, the more they support them. One of our goals is to try to get students who will soon be jurors to appear when they get their jury summons. So a lot of our effort is focused on exposing high school students to the federal court process. So they understand their responsibilities not only as jurors, but now that probation and pretrial services is part of this effort. That they can understand the consequences of committing a crime. So I think that the payoffs while they may be difficult to find in specific situations are certainly there and I think we'll begin to see them more. And what advice might you have for districts who are looking to undertake a public outreach initiative? As I said earlier, I know this is a relatively new effort within the federal courts. I also know that every single court is very busy. So I think they need to focus on what they can and what they can't do to identify a particular program, Fed Facts, which is a new CD that has been made available to each office, each probation and pretrial service office around the country, is a pre-packaged way of teaching about this. And that may be a good way for some offices to get into this. Others may choose to invite school students in. We have a national program we're promoting in my office called Open Doors of Justice. Fed Facts is part of that program and part of that is to have high school students visit courthouses around the country and get to meet not only judges, clerks of court, but also probation and pretrial services officers. So if courts can pick one or two initiatives a year, try to focus, try to share ideas with other courts so we're not all reinventing the wheel, I think that's a good way to get started. Well, thank you so much for joining us during this telecast. Thank you very much. Armed with that background and public information and outreach, we'll head into our first panel discussion, getting the word out with the criminal justice family. Joining me in the studio is Elaine Turenzi, Chief Probation Officer of the Middle District of Florida, who has a lot of experience with community outreach programs. George Walker, Chief Pretrial Services Officer, the Central District of California, has recently created a community information and coordination program specialist position in his district. And Joe Giacobi, Chief Probation Officer of the Western District of New York, is a recent recipient of the AO's Director's Award and is also very much involved in public information and community outreach programs in his district. George, I want to turn to you first. You heard what David Sellers had to say about the importance of public information and outreach programs. What else would you add to David's comments? Well, Bob, I think it's important to underscore the fact that probation and especially pretrial services can have a lot of misconception out in the community and a good program, a good public information program, can help us build important relationships both with our court community and with the community as a whole. So anytime we get an opportunity to put our best foot forward and to get out to the community and show them who we are, what we do and what our successes are, it's a wonderful opportunity for us. And we're going to talk a lot about the different kinds of relationships. That's really one of the main points of this particular program. Joe, I understand that at the chief's conference held this past August. The chiefs indicated that there was a need to work more with the community. Tell us more about that. Well, Bob, it was actually at the last two chief national workshops, we held a series of future search conferences. And the chiefs participated in these conferences and developed and identified some goals and aims that we wanted to work toward. Then we had an interactive voting process at the end of each day of our workshop, and we came to a common ground and identified some important factors, a consistent theme rose. And that theme was that there was a need for us to get out into the community and supervise and take advantage of the resources available in the community. So to speak, get out from behind the desk and become active in the community to build relationships. So the chiefs saw that as really kind of a high priority area? Absolutely. Elaine, what do you think some of the challenges are that districts might expect when they go about the process of implementing a public information type program, an outreach program? Well, I think that the first challenge is just to overcome our own reticence. Generally, when we step out into the public arena, into the media, it's often not good. It's in response to something that's happened because one of our offenders has done something or something has happened on supervision. So I think overcoming our reticence and being willing to take the risk is the first. I also think that it's challenging to find the right opportunities. So find the opportunities for meaningful outreach, because it's not just outreach, it's outreach for a purpose. And then I think that the other great challenge is balancing our core responsibilities with a sustainable outreach program. Yeah, those are challenges. And in fact, a lot of choices to be made. I'm going to talk also about some of those choices, since we'll hear a lot about various programs. Let's take this opportunity here from a chief about one of the district's community outreach programs. We found over time that there's a significant degree of understanding difference about what it is we do, what our role and responsibility is. And specifically as they relate to law enforcement agencies at the state, local, and federal level. I would say the program that I would want to talk a little bit about is our training exchange information with the New Hampshire Police Standards and Training Academy. That's the academy that trains all law enforcement personnel for the state of New Hampshire. And we have a couple of people on our staff who have been trained as instructors over there and a number of different law enforcement subjects. And when the academy needs instructors, they'll often call us to see if we have our people available to help them out. And in return, we get the resources and the expertise of all of their trainers and many, many different subjects across the board as far as law enforcement related type training. So it's accomplished two things. It's exposed us to a lot of good training free of charge. And I think it's helped us to understand and helped us to convey our message to the actual students in the class where we have our trainers about what it is we do in the federal system and what our role and responsibility is. That's really an excellent example of what a district is doing and getting the word out to the criminal justice family. Joe, I want to turn to you first. What are some other ways that districts can communicate to the criminal justice family about the role of probation and pretrial services? Well, Bob, we seem to have an easier time relating to law enforcement officers and agencies because we have a lot of things in common with them, crime prevention, crime detection, what the hot drugs are in the street and what the hot unique weapons are in the streets. We have a mutual assistance group where we officers in our district meet with law enforcement community on a regular basis and collaborate and share information. We have a cyber crime task force, career criminal task force groups developed by the Department of Justice. A new program, which was a spinoff from Project Exile, is called SEXY, and it stands for Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiatives. We have officers assigned to this group and this group is made up of law enforcement, clergy representatives, family, victims of family, I should say, prosecutors, mental health correction types. They go to the community and meet with high-risk young adults and tell them what they're in for in the event they get involved in criminal activities, mainly using weapons, and we try to reach them in that manner. So this is an effort to reach out in a collaborative style, again, in mass and with a lot of help and with part of the law enforcement community. Yeah, and it's also an excellent opportunity to communicate roles and responsibilities so everybody has a real clear view of what those roles and responsibilities are. George, why do you think the criminal justice family is such an important community group to focus on when we think of implementing public information outreach programs? Well, Bob, I think it's vital because good communication starts in the home, I think, and our home in this case is the court family, and the court family is a diverse family and we should work very hard to continually get our message out to our judges, to the U.S. attorneys, to the public defender, to the agents, you know, just what it is that we do, what we can do, what we can't do, and where we're effective and where we're successful and also especially I think where our challenges are. And I don't know that we always do such a great job of that, but in recognizing that that's where we need to start, we do a good job and that it prepares us for getting out into the general community and spreading our message. Yeah, thanks. Elaine, I know you have a wonderful example of partnering with a criminal justice agency and to produce a CD that I understand is used to educate students about the legal consequences of being found guilty of drug prevention. We're going to talk about that a little bit later, but for now, if you can give us some other examples or different examples of getting the word out to the criminal justice family. Well, I think that we can do this, find the opportunities as a natural extension of our work and look for those that are not comfortable. For example, the criminal justice community, the agents, the U.S. attorneys are often very comfortable with that particular group. But let's look at some of the groups that maybe we're not as comfortable with, that perhaps we're put in a different role with. The Federal Public Defender is one that was mentioned that I think is very important. That may take a little bit more effort on our parts to reach out to, but it's very, very valuable. And we can do that both formally by training together with them, by inviting them to our training forums as well, maybe using the FJTN. Maybe they're ones that they might be interested in sitting in on. And also informally, by making a discipline of calling them and inquiring, not only do you want to be in the interview, but inquiring about are there any departures that you're aware of that you might want us to investigate or look into. So I think that reaching out is very important. We also had a wonderful opportunity in our district. We are part of, we have officers who are part of the Coleman Community Board. And one of our supervisors established a program for the case managers from the BOP at Coleman to ride along with our officers during pre-releases. What a wonderful way for them to see our frustrations in trying to plan for an offender who may have an inadequate plan. So I think that there are a lot of opportunities available if we just look at the natural extension of our work. Once again, great opportunities to communicate. And in addition to that, especially with folks riding along, it's just a good idea. They get to see the bigger picture. Yes, I think that's important. Which I think is so valuable, yeah. Well, thank you, Elaine. And now we'll move to our next topic. We just discussed the importance of getting the word out to the criminal justice family. Now we're going to focus on getting the word out to the service providers. On the Indian reservations, we have a number of sex offenders, unfortunately. And two of our officers in the Tucson office decided that they wanted to do something about some of the victims of sexual abuse that are children. And so they brought together folks from both the federal authorities and the Indian nation to work together toward working with sex offenders and their victims. They brought together tribal judges, federal judges, treatment providers on the reservation, victims, counselors, anyone that they felt could help. And they developed an alliance and they called themselves the Effective Sex Offender Treatment Group. I think this is an important program because this is a program that was started by two federal probation officers but will continue to provide services in the future to victims and to offenders and their families. I started researching through the internet finding out what had happened in different districts regarding education and employment. And really, there hasn't been a whole lot that happened for offenders. And then people had mentioned that job fairs occurred inside prisons and I started thinking, why not do one outside a prison? That thought led to Cleveland's extremely successful community corrections job fair, the first of its kind in the country, an event so successful that it can serve as a model for joint projects between federal courts and local community agencies. So then I started thinking, you know, Kygo Work and Training, which is a county agency, they're the ones that are experts at this. They've been getting people off welfare and putting their work. We really need to get them on board. These are the people that know the employers. I know some employers that will hire offenders, but they're the people that know the employers and can tell us how we can get employers to it. They paid for the convention center. Because there's 17,000 people on supervision, we needed to use our convention center. It was one of the few facilities that were big enough to hold the event. We had our local newspapers were there, as well as, I mean, all our little community newspapers were there. In addition to every TV station that covers the events, and Cleveland was there, as well as the USA Today put an article about it and it just hit the media once they found out how many people were there, which just raised all the awareness on the issue, which was part of our point, get people jobs and raise the awareness. Ohio has found this job fair initiative to be so successful that they have held a second job fair with over 4,800 participants, and I understand they're planning a third job fair. George, we heard a little bit about getting the media involved. Why do you think it's so important to get media coverage for some of our public information outreach programs? Well, Bob, it's very important to use the media whenever you can. However, that can be kind of a scary kind of thing because you're never quite sure how it's going to come out. However, it's the quickest way to get the word out. If you can establish a rapport with the media, if you've got a really good program going and you can garner the interest, then the media is the way to go. As you say, it can be somewhat chancey, especially if there's a misquote, so... That's exactly it. And they will, you know, take information and sometimes, you know, divvy it out the way that they want to, but we shouldn't be afraid of that. We should put our best foot forward, as I've said. The idea is to get the word out so, in fact, you can control the word if possible. Hopefully, yes. Elaine, we just heard two very different examples, if you will, and what's the value of these different kinds of approaches to public information and outreach? Well, if we look at our offender population, our defendant population, they're very diverse, especially within our system, within the federal system. The diversity of the kind of offenders that come to us and the diversity of their needs is just tremendous. So when we were, in fact, when we were at the chief's conference this year and we started to design the Charter for Excellence, one of the things that we looked at is what makes our profession so unique? And I think that that's it, our officer's ability to do so many different things. And we do so many different things. I love Julian Du's comment at the beginning. You know, every day we are changing people's lives and we do it quietly and people don't generally see that. But because of the diversity of the needs of our population, sometimes we just can't do it all. Sometimes we don't have the money to broker it all and we really do need to reach out to other agencies to partner with them in order to meet all of these diverse needs. There's also so many agencies out there whose mission really complements our own and that we have a mutual mission. And if we can capitalize on that, we can just get more accomplished and really be more effective. So I think that there's two issues here. One is why do the outreach? Because we need to. And the other is why take the chance of having it publicized? And I think that's because people don't know, like Julian said, we do good things every day but people don't see that. If we can change that perception, I think that has a value as well. This partnership with service providers is so important. As you say, it's such a diverse population that we're dealing with and the service providers are so diverse, each with, if you will, their gifts. So it's really important to make that connection and get that partnership going. At the community board meeting, for example, we met with the U.S. Attorney from who was representing weed and seed. We didn't realize that the weed and seed program had grant money in many of the communities where we had our greatest needs. I mean, a perfect opportunity for partnership. And we only found that out through the community board meeting. That's the real value of it. Joe, would you like to add something? Yeah, I would. Bob, I want to bring in the staff's perspective because it's the staff that are going to drive these programs, obviously, and we have to generate interest. And we're lucky in that our staff, they become interested on their own more often than not. So I asked them why a couple of the people involved in their employment program, why did you get involved in this program? And they said, well, we wanted to make a difference. And then one of my relatively new employees said, it wasn't too long ago when I was unemployed, I want to be able to give something back because I know what that person is going through. I thought that was interesting. And the bottom line is by getting people involved in the employment, job readiness program, or getting them jobs or educational programs, we're meeting our mission to make productive citizens out of the individuals under our supervision, get them working, and hopefully they'll stay crime-free and drug-free. So again, make a difference was one of the themes that came through from the Chiefs National Conference. So here we have staff thinking along those lines, along the same lines that our Chiefs are thinking across the country. I just think that's important to note. Yeah, I think it is. And again, it goes back to Julian Dew's statement. It's a wonderful statement. Makes staff feel good about what they're doing. Absolutely. That's true. You heard Magdalene Jensen describe the effective sex offender treatment group. We have on the phone with us one of the officers who worked on this program, Jennifer Sunshine, who's currently a supervising probation officer in Tucson. Jennifer, please tell us a little more about how you got started in the program and what benefits you see. Well, Bob, Adria Sanna and I recognized the devastation caused by sexual violence throughout the Indian communities in southern Arizona. So we created ESOM. ESOM members are tribal members and federal professionals who work with sexual victims and offenders. We had no funding, but we set out to design culturally appropriate strategies for sex offender notification, community education, and treatment of perpetrators, victims, and the families of both. Our tribal leadership conference provided training and the attending tribal leaders created action plans for ESOM's future efforts. We also provided line training for the staff out on the reservations. We held community meetings to win support for sex offender notification and changed tribal law to permit this through an open election. We've attained grants and hired a research assistant. One benefit has been an increased reporting of sex crimes to tribal law enforcement. It seems the community now has a new trust in the federal system and ability to appropriately manage and treat sex offenders. Maggie Jensen supported this unusual program. It's illustrated that innovative projects are valued here. I believe this will encourage other community programs designed by other federal probation officers. Thank you so much, Jennifer. Why do you think service providers would be interested in partnering with probation and pretrial services to provide a community outreach program such as the one in Arizona or in Ohio Northern? Elaine, let me ask you that. As I said earlier, our missions really, we do have mutual missions. We are not the only people invested in offender success. I think there are a lot of community agencies, domestic violence agencies, that are trying very hard to break the cycle. There are education agencies, English and second language agencies. There are many whose missions really fit well within our own and they're willing and able to work with us to meet our mission, which is also to help offenders succeed and do well in the community and not re-event. George, can you share with us how some pretrial services officers have implemented community outreach programs with service providers? There are a variety out there, and I think pretrial services starts out a little bit on the short end. They'll have some idea of what probation is, or at least what it's about. You say pretrial to them, and most of the time they have no idea what pretrial services is. And I think the community would be very surprised to find out that during the pretrial stage that defendants under supervision are receiving services, that we're brokering services to them, that our officers are out there meeting with case managers, that they're trying to hook up defendants with employment services. And that an employer would want to hire somebody who might be going off to federal prison in six months or a year, but they're out there. And so we have successes like that all the time. So many of the pretrial services agencies throughout the nation from what I've seen have a lot of programs going on interfacing with the community, and we can do a lot more. Joe, how does working with service providers help in achieving the overall mission of probation and pretrial services? Bob, we're more than a NALM and GLM organization. This is an opportunity as Elaine has indicated for us to exercise our mission and reach our goals. And by developing employment programs, for example, we are building relationships with the offenders, defendants, and pretrial defendants and giving them to be to a level where they're contributing to their family support or fine and restitution or co-pay. On the other side, the officers are feeling enrichment from their jobs by getting involved in programs and they're exercising some of their leadership skills and by making decisions and having exercising autonomy by getting involved in these programs and getting recognition from their involvement and that's important from an officer's perspective. So it's twofold. It's benefiting the officer as well as the people we're supervising. I really want to emphasize, we keep on going back to Julian Du's statement, but it is such an important fact that they feel good about what they're doing and the public tends to see them also in another light if you will, an alternative light that is not just the NALM, JALM kind of thing, but also with some folks who are really interested in helping. In the long run, we have more success cases than we do failures and that's something that we have to focus on. Well, thank you, Joe. Now let's move to our next topic. Let's move on to the third community highlighted on the model, the public. As you recall, the public would include Congress, schools, churches, synagogues, mosques, neighborhood groups and of course taxpayers. Most folks have not heard of pretrial services. They don't know what it's about. Most folks think that it's part of the Justice Department as they do many of the court units. They all think we are not the third branch of the government, but rather are part of the United States Attorney's Office or Justice Department in general. We just started an online job application program on our internet site and an employee or a potential employee can go to our internet site and all of the vacancy announcements are located on the site. A potential candidate can read the announcement and if interested and qualified fill out the application online and then transmit it electronically and that information is used by us then for ranking and screening purposes. But that whole process in just researching the job announcements also links the potential candidate to information about pretrial services specifically in the federal court generally. So it's a good way of conveying and disseminating information about the federal judicial system and specifically the United States pretrial services office. Most districts have set up websites for both internal and external use. How effective is it to set up websites on the internet to be used both internet and the web by the general public? Elaine, let me ask you that question. Well, I think that all we have to do is look at our own habits to realize how incredibly effective the internet is as a means of getting information out. It is often our first source for information and we like most of the other districts in the country have a very rich intranet site and we've always been a little bit hesitant to go out on the internet too much because it is so immediately available and if you're concerned about that. But we're going to take the plunge. Right now we have a committee, a really exciting committee they're doing such tremendous work. A committee working on putting together a real public internet site for our defendants, offenders and their families as well as the general public and they started by writing a questionnaire that went out to offenders to find out would you use this tool? If you use this tool what kinds of things are you interested in? What services would you be interested in? What kind of information can we pull together from other sources for you to help make you more successful and supervision? And that's what we started with and then the committee got together and they have now drawn out what we call our storyboards of how the internet site and we've added frequently asked questions in a place for people from the public to ask questions to us, information about the pre-sentence phase and what a family can expect from the investigation, that investigation and how they can help in the investigation as well as a tipster section so that people can provide anonymously information if they choose to. So we're going to try and pull this all together and look at our site in about three months because now we're getting ready for it and it'll be at www.usprobation.com or .net and so we're ready to go. We're really excited about it. I think so, Gary are you listening? I hope that that'll be done but the work that they've done so far is just amazing. Well there's so much information now that's coming over the internet that in fact we mentioned before that we have included as part of the downloadable materials some websites that you can take a look at as for examples of what various districts are doing to get the word out. It's more than just vacancy announcements, there are mission statements, various statements for the public, just to give them a general explanation if you will about probation and pretrial services and one of the districts I believe it's Virginia Eastern also has a translation function in recognition of the diverse population that it deals with you can get on there and you can translate anything on there to the language that's appropriate for you. So that's these examples are out there but that's not the only way to communicate with the public office. Joe let me tell you my story. We had six individuals a few months ago arrested from our Muslim community and charged the acts of terrorism against the United States and this became a sensational case, newsworthy nationally, internationally we had the arraignment and three days of detention hearings and gained a lot of public interest and part of the group that was showing up on a regular basis were supporters of the six defendants family members and friends from a very large Muslim community that we have in our neighborhood and we really don't know much about the Muslim religion and so at a certain point of the detention hearing felt that there may be a possibility that one or more of the defendants would be released on bail. So in order to possibly gain some assistance in the supervision process as Elaine indicated we took the initiative to reach out to the president of the Muslim society he was very receptive to us and we arranged to have a meeting in their society hall one evening. So I brought 15 of my staff and we had 30 of their community leaders and members of the six defendants, members of their family were also present and we provided an orientation just telling them what our roles and responsibilities and our parameters are as it relates to pre-trial, pre-sentence investigation and post-sentence supervision and I think we reduced some of the fear that they had of law enforcement in general following this experience in their neighborhood and we were met with open arms and they were a very friendly group we gave the orientation for an hour and then we listened to a one hour PowerPoint presentation from the president of the society on the Islamic culture and Muslim religion so it was a learning experience for both of us again we built relationships we opened up doors we feel that we will be able to effectively supervise the individuals if and when released and eventually they will be released they're not going to be locked up forever what a great opportunity though for both to learn and to get the word out it's just a wonderful opportunity George what other ways can probation and pre-trial services reach out to the public? well I think it's important to note that there are ways available to agencies who just want to start out and refer to a couple of different ways passive and active the active approach is to get out into the community and kind of spread the word and do the variety of things that we've talked about already the passive way is actually produce materials such as brochures and newsletters and we do a lot of things back in our district in-house and we also do some things that are for out-of-house to get out to the community a local brochure on our agency a local brochure on our electronic monitoring program so we've started out kind of in that way and then hopefully one of these days we'll get our staff involved and we'll take the active approach to getting out into the community you're not exactly describing a passive approach it's getting information out to the community which is active Elaine do you have anything to add? when Joe was talking it reminded me of a situation we had had in New York during the early days of electronic monitoring we had gotten quite a few challenges about wearing the electronic monitoring equipment over the weekend from the Hasidic which is a very religious Jewish community in Brooklyn and on religious grounds that they couldn't wear the electronic equipment nor could they answer the telephone during that time and what we did was we met with an offender and we established a meeting with the Rebbe of the community and we were able to bring the equipment there and show the equipment explain how it worked and what the benefits were for the community to have this equipment available to help defend our in the communities continue to support their family which is very strongly valued within that community and the Rebbe reduced the resistance for us for using the equipment and the challenges really did go down so that was very helpful and it kind of reminded me of taking that step out that Joe had mentioned also we had talked about the CD a little bit and the organization with whom we partnered to create that was the regional community policing institute as part of the COPS program that's funded through congress and they are all over the country training all over the country with local law enforcement they do joint training for lots of variety different agencies they also train provide training opportunities for the general public on community policing but also on some other hot topics one new area that they're doing right now is terrorism so they have like this hour and a half small pre-packaged training they're trying to get out to community groups on terrorism and they're looking for trainers for us to go in work with the RCPI become trained as trainers for those who are interested in doing that and then going to the neighborhood associations these are people that we normally would not have contact with they may not ever have had someone in their family on supervision and so here's the information from the RCPI but also I'm a probation officer this is what we do these are the kinds of things and so it it kind of gets the information out and to let the people in the neighborhood know what does it mean to me when the president says we're on alert what does that mean and what should I be vigilant what does that mean to me it's tremendous information sharing and you're learning so much about the different communities it reminds me of a definition of effective communication that a fellow by the name of Larry Liberty advanced and in it he talked about communication not just simply being listening or speaking but trying to understand the perspective of the other individual put yourself in their place when you do communicate and as such it takes courage to do so and every one of these programs we're talking about in fact it takes courage thank you let's move on now to our next segment one of the major objectives of public information and outreach programs is that it will prevent crime listen to how some chiefs describe programs that are doing just this it's important to help young people to make better choices in life also we're educating them about our role the partners in education program we're involved in their career program and usually when we speak to you know the students we explain to them our role in the federal system they we talk about the knowledge and skills that are needed to to be successful in the workforce the activities can range from mentoring students tutoring students and also serving as guest lecturers to the students in their respective schools the program is really the brainchild of one of our district court judges said he decided to have a mock trial and he solicited the cooperation from the U.S. Attorney the federal public defender the FBI the Drug Enforcement Administration and our office and others in the court family and challenged us to put together a program and we were able to get about the task of putting it together at the mock trial and it was felt it would be a good idea if in some way we could connect the staff with the community in a different way than their official capacity to make that connection the probation officers of Illinois northern sought out low income Chicago neighborhoods like these home territory to much of their clientele as challenging as conditions are here for adults they're even more difficult for children it's been an arrangement from which everyone benefited and everyone learned even the school tutoring the it was a learning experience for me I didn't realize that there were so many kids in need of some assistance it showed to them that there are people who do care even on the law enforcement side many of the officers were surprised at the depth of the bonds that formed as the relationship grew they organized holiday parties for the students and field trips to the courthouse where they could meet African American role models from the judiciary we owe those kids the community and ourselves the best work that we can do so that we then hopefully won't be seeing them later on our staff wants to do this and I think our system the probation system attracts a lot of people that take this job or come to this job because they want to make a difference and I think in our office our mission is to try to help people change and protect the community if people don't change either way it goes we make a difference yes we do make a difference and those are two very impactful programs that we just saw Elaine we mentioned earlier that you collaborated with the regional community policing institute in Florida to produce a CD that teaches young children about the consequences of drug involvement can you tell us a little bit more about that this is my time for my advertisement the fed backs the real deal we had started by doing a lot of drug education and I think that's been done all over in many districts across the country because of the concern that if the drug laws and the sentencing guidelines are so strict with respect to drug trafficking and drug involvement as a deterrence that's the purpose of it then it's not helpful if the first time that somebody hears about that is when they have the deer in the headlights look as they're standing before a federal district court judge being sentenced so we wanted to get the word out about how risky it was not only to use drugs not only to deal drugs but to really be involved and around people that do those high risk activities so we started we've been doing it for a decade with paper and pencil and chalk boards and schools and wanted to really step it up a bit and make it more contemporary we went to Haida first the high impact drug trafficking area committee and locally they loved it they said this is a great idea we'd be willing to give you money to do this and then nationally said well really we're focusing more on interdiction we didn't get the money the following year we went to the RCPI the regional community policing institute and they said if we get funding we'll do that program and it was a wonderful partnership because our staff had all of the expertise they wrote the curriculum it was a curriculum they were very familiar with and then they started to do it but the RCPI really had some technical knowledge they had done this kind of thing before so each brought different skills to the table what we did was we wrote five scenarios and our staff wrote the scenarios he said this, she said no each scenario it was really a lot of fun to watch the process but each scenario involved a different aspect of the law with respect to drugs so one scenario for example teaches conspiracy and what a conspiracy is another one focuses on the enhanced penalties and guideline issues and mandatory minimums surrounding trafficking at schools specifically one involves just the dangers of ecstasy and GHB some of the club drugs because kids had a lot of misconceptions about club drugs would get a lot of questions well that's not really a drug well yes it is and even in some situations each scenario has very culpable clearly culpable defendants and some who are not so culpable so we start with the crime and then it goes on and there is the law explain what the law is then there's the jury and the jury is a peer group and the jury has a lot of scenarios talking about them and responding to them and then we have the conviction and you kind of go over each of the players in the scenario and it says what they were convicted of and finally we have the real deal and the real deal is the judge explaining the law as it relates to that specific scenario the kids love it because it's like watching TV it's very fast paced it's very contemporary it's got a lot of music even people who are not comfortable getting up in front of a group can use the CD to present to a group or they can use it as a stand-alone in a classroom and because we did it through the RCPI rather than independently it's free to all of the schools and community groups across the state of Florida and through the RCPI's to other areas in the country as well so far now it's gone to all the probation offices in the country and pretrial offices so your chief should have a copy if you wanted to begin a program it also went to all the U.S. attorney's offices through their Safe Streets programs and it was featured at the RCPI National Conference and recently at a conference for women legislatures held in California actually with I believe 700 women legislators from throughout the country so it's really it's really been well accepted it's interesting too it's not just lecturing at somebody but it shows that it's being discussed by the jury of peers if you will so it is such a valuable the idea was not to necessarily frighten kids into if you do this this is going to happen but really to give them information, accurate information that they can then use to make better choices and that's kind of the way that we go into the schools we're not here just to scare you to frighten you we want to give you information that you can use in making decisions and of course in the process we spend time talking about probation officers and this is what we do and can I tell you about other careers within the criminal justice profession so the kids ask a lot of questions this year our staff reached directly 3,000 kids and that's directly in addition we presented we're getting you can't get out there that much we do have our core work to do as well so we started to train the student resource officers who are the police the community based police that are in the schools on the cd and on federal because they really are not up on oh no this prison that's not an offense well it may not be an offense on the state it is an offense in federal so we had to train them and the teachers so they can take it back and reach even more kids and available to everybody available to everybody and it's already gone out to copy to each of the districts in the country I've never sat at a table with the author of a bestseller have you our staff you had to see this committee they were tremendous they did such an outstanding job and a great example again of cooperation a partnership with with another agency that you brought different skills to the table and produce such a wonderful product and another example that really is impressive going back to that program the strategic approaches to community safety again the goal is to advise young adults who are high risk to stop their criminal conduct you know and it's hard to measure whether that's a successful program or not the point is this collaborative group they're together they're making the effort to tell the individuals if you use a gun and a crime you're going to do long federal time and that's the message they're trying to get across to the individuals and it's just a sense of awareness that's being made by this group and the goal is that the message will get across to these individuals and that they will turn their lives around the collaborative group offers individuals from their community who will help them turn their life around and hopefully the violence will stop but it's also an indication from this group from the community that they're sick and tired of burying their debt and so that's the point they're getting across and you know they're hoping that this will prevent violence in the long run George any advice to chiefs about developing outreach programs to the public well Bob I think it's very important that agencies out there chiefs understand that they don't have to reinvent the wheel I think as the result of the research done for this program and what's probably going to pour in after it's done we'll have a whole onslaught of models out there to follow where chiefs who are currently not necessarily doing anything for community outreach or public information can kind of pick and choose and then adapt it to their own local community and then but I also know there are just a whole host of agencies out there who have been doing wonderful programs and of course you know Elaine's is just fantastic I know there are others out there and things such as chiefs who support their officers going out and doing community service just you know whatever they feel is a good place for them to go and so that kind of support is very important because that's again kind of the passive that active kind of thing where you're not doing anything necessarily that is directly related to probation and pretrial but you might be out there helping a homeless shelter or something else to do its job and in the process you're saying well I'm Joe Smith probation officer with the federal courts and that's very important kind of outreach to Right, getting the word out again Thanks George In one of our video clips George Wine from Alaska at his district in concert with other criminal justice agencies put on for students another district has been inviting students to observe actual sentencing of young offenders who've been convicted of a drug offense we have on the phone Mark Piskalich a probation officer from the district of Montana to tell us about this program Mark give us a brief description of your program and the impact it's having on the students who are involved Well the program was developed after the district of Montana came into a methamphetamine conspiracy case that involved about 13 fairly young individuals between ages 18 and 23 and Chief Judge Malloy wanted to share with the state's youth exactly what happens to people who get involved in this so what we did was do a little bit of education at the schools prior to sentencing and then ultimately cycled high school students through the courtroom during a day where we had seven of these offenders being sentenced and they actually came in witnessed the sentencing and then there was a presentation by the U.S. Attorney and by the Chief Federal Defender of the district kind of explaining their role and the judge even asked the offenders if they had anything they would like to say to the students and most of the offenders had some pretty spontaneous and fairly poignant things to say about the results of their actions and the ramifications of their actions it became the Montana project and we've since done it in other communities in Montana in Missoula and also in Billing and it has a very powerful impact we've gotten great feedback from the kids and the teachers specific to what we did in Helena a lot of the kids knew these people being sentenced and so it was very powerful to see what happens when you get involved in the federal system Thanks Mark. Tell me did the defendants know that they were going to be called upon to actually have some words to say to their fellow students if you will? You know they didn't and that was one of the things that really made it powerful but most of the defendants weren't aware that there were going to be students in the courtroom and you can see that in their faces when they walked in and there were 50 or so high school students sitting in the courtroom some of whom they recognized and then the judge asked them if they had something to say and invariably they said don't make these mistakes this is not a road to travel and so it was very powerful and it's something we're continuing and hoping to expand on to include other younger kids at various levels maybe not watching it exposing them to the court and what happens here Thank you Mark. Very impactful We have another call waiting. Rich Crawford North Dakota's North Dakota's district recently participated in an outreach program called Share the Fame Rich give us a brief description of your program and how it's impacted the students who were involved Rich are you on the line? One more time Rich are you on the line? I am on the line. Great. Can you hear me now? We can hear you. Go ahead and describe the program. Thank you to share the fame project a program came about as a result of our effort to increase community outreach programs in our Indian communities the state of North Dakota has four reservation communities and the Native American population constitutes about 50% of our supervision case load about two years ago Rene Green and Ron Dyson from office probation pre-trial services and Jim Iglin from the FJC research division came to our district and worked with us on ways to improve and to plan for better services in our Indian community Rene went back and coincidentally met a gentleman by the name of Patrick Byers who is a performing arts instructor from LaGuardia High School in New York City and together they talked about the possibility of using the arts as a way to connect with some students in the Native American communities in North Dakota and so we begin planning this effort on October 6th through 13th of the past year Patrick and Rene along with my staff and along with the four reservation communities and several people including schools and elders and others who took to start this project the project involved the juveniles from the reservations and we had about 300 participants overall auditioning and performing in their Native dance in their Native song and as well as doing artistic things including drawing and listening to educators and then doing poetry and the week culminated with kids being selected to go to Bismarck North Dakota and then being subsequently selected to participate in a project with the LaGuardia High School students that will come to North Dakota and then also will go to New York during the coming year and they will actually do a full performance of music that's choreographed by LaGuardia and will also involve intermingling the two cultures in the music of the cultures and all that was a tremendously successful outreach effort we had the media present our officers did a lot of public appearances to talk about federal probation and about crime issues in the reservations and we intend on following through with this with two more phases which we should have done by sometime in October the students must have really appreciated that needless to say we have had just tremendous feedback from the communities the press the schools the activities are still ongoing with radio talk shows between the kids from North Dakota and New York so we've been very exciting for our staff and again they see you in a totally different light totally different light yep we're involved in the front end instead of just in the back end that's great well that's terrific and again thank you Rich for joining us and let's now turn to our final segment let's go back to our community outreach model we've discussed getting the word out about probation and trial services to the criminal justice family the service providers and the public we also learned how many programs are geared toward crime prevention considering the time commitment that is required why would districts initiate a public information and community outreach program as you'll hear in the next segment despite the challenges being part of an outreach program is important because it all comes back to you I think that some of the problems that need to be overcome in developing an effective public outreach program deals with the fact that for years I think we were content to just kind of sit back and do our own thing we get so wrapped up in our supervision and our pre-sentence writing and our pre-trial work and it is so important to reach out to the community it's so important I think for other agencies and groups in the community and the public at large to understand that the federal court is a service agency as well as an enforcing agency I think it's incredibly important that the judiciary convey to the public and all of its users either direct users or indirect users what its statutory mission and functions are I think human resources the availability of resources is the largest obstacle in doing public outreach there are a number of obstacles I think the first is connecting with the public deciding who you would like to reach out to because there are a number of publics a number of constituencies I think it's important as we as stewards of taxpayer funds I think we need to move toward more results oriented supervision and management and I think that one of the ways that we can do that is through better public outreach we have made a connection to the community and anytime you make a connection to the community you develop additional resources that are helpful in carrying out our duties and responsibilities also it promotes teamwork in the office because you get everyone involved in trying to reach the goals and objectives of the program just that sense of giving that sense of accomplishment makes our officers feel very good as you just heard public information and outreach initiatives help the public understand what we do help us move towards result oriented supervision of offenders and defendants help us develop more resources and promote teamwork among our officers and as Julian do said they just make officers feel very good George what benefits do you believe districts will experience when they become involved in public information and outreach programs Bob I think we've already mentioned a number of those that can be seen is our partnerships and new relationships with the community and especially in this era of shrinking budgets less money available for services for defendants and offenders we can better tie into the community and the community based services we can take advantage of low cost or no cost programs we can hook people up and we can get a lot of support from the community and we can educate them we can help them to understand and we achieve more success from that there's also self-satisfaction in doing these kinds of things getting out, reaching out doing the prevention kinds of things that probation and pretrial both can do if we just take the effort to do that so the staff can feel good about it I as a chief can feel good about it and the judges will feel good about that because we're going to let them know that we're doing these things and that we're successful right thanks George Joe if I were an officer and I wanted to launch an outreach program how should I begin? Bob the chiefs have agreed again on a national basis that this is a goal that we should pursue so the chief is probably familiar with this opportunity that this does exist let me give you some advice officer maybe you should check with your supervisor what the needs are after you get your supervisor to agree or your deputy or your chief to agree to get involved in this determine what the needs are in the organization you don't have to reinvent the wheel as George indicated check with your regional administrator there's neighboring districts more than likely that are involved in public outreach already and that RA can give you some insight check with the FJC Michael Siegel the leadership development program he has a list of projects and I'm sure many projects involve public outreach and that's a great resource that is at our fingertips again you don't have to reinvent the wheel and start easy having a quick success is nice and get other people in your staff involved this is not an officer only driven project or program we have a lot of support staff and automation staff involved in our public outreach programs so again that would be my advice to an officer trying to figure out how they could get started there's a lot of information out there and we've just kind of scratched the surface we've heard about some of these programs Elaine any cautions for districts in selecting the right program I think the one big issue is time consuming so if you're going to select a project select one that has sustainability so I think that's pretty important another thing is to make sure that it is meaningful for the community that you're trying to reach so that it should be one that has meaning that reaches what your goals what you want to do what you want to accomplish and it doesn't hurt to have some passion behind it make sure it's something the officers try into and really do feel excited about because part of the benefit is the re-energized feeling that you get when you go out and you do something that you know is really worthwhile and you're doing something good and it takes you out of your day to day mainstream work and it is re-energizing so I think that those are the cautions is make sure that it's not too time consuming because there's enough staff backing so that it doesn't end up being a burden on just a few and that it's meaningful sustainability and choosing the right program is important because you really can't do everything so choosing the one that best meets the needs of the people that you serve and has that passion if you will to get those champions on board is so important they can take a life on their own too you don't the chief doesn't want to force this down an officer's throat and Elaine hit the nail on the head you let the staff generate the ideas and then the staff have ownership and buy in and before you know it the program is on its way and then there's other creative thinking going on concerning other programs thanks in a recent memo John Hughes AO assistant director for the office of probation and pretrial services announced the launching of public information and outreach as a new initiative of the probation and pretrial services system David Leathery spoke with John earlier about the importance of districts implementing outreach program let's listen to what he has to say hi John thank you so much for coming to join us here in the studio can you tell us why public information and outreach is so important to probation and pretrial services it's very important really for two reasons first of all probation and pretrial services work is so important to the proper operation of the court but hardly anybody knows that we only get attention when something goes wrong so we really need to reach out and explain who we are what we're trying to do absent the crisis the second thing is there's an old adage the best time to make friends is before you need them and it would be a good idea that officers knew who was in their community not just the law enforcement types but the community leaders school officials guidance counselors there should be some kind of relationship so that when you need to pick up the phone and ask for help there's already some understanding about why you're doing that so they shouldn't wait until they need a friend to make one very important point what are some of the payoffs that you see in probation and pretrial services in this process by reaching out on a very practical level the first payoff would be it's easier to get things done when you do have a name and a phone number on your desk written on your blotter you know who to call right away it's a lot better than starting with the yellow pages the white pages and the blue pages so on that level it's very practical if he or she has a lot of contacts out in the community can pick up the phone and ask for favor that sort of thing another payoff perhaps more important is that outreach programs especially those aimed at middle school and high school students can have the effect of deterring at least some of those kids who might have been on the edge from getting themselves into drugs or other crime that's quite a payoff and you may never know that you've had that influence but you probably did Sean, where can districts go for assistance? I would start with the people you've seen in this broadcast but I welcome calls at the office of probation and pretrial services here at the AO we've made this a major initiative for FY 2003 I've asked Nancy Beatty to head this up before that good things happen this year we want to give this a high priority she can be reached at 202-502-1649 and she'd be glad to point you in the right direction so please feel free to give Nancy Beatty a call word of mouth is a big way to do this too if you hear of somebody that does a good job at this call them up and ask them just get started that's the whole secret to this start small go to your child's school I'm planning to do that myself in a few weeks with the FedFACS program I mean start there and you have good intentions good things will happen just get going why has this been such an important initiative for you? I think it's important on two levels we are a very good program we should be very proud of ourselves we're very quiet about it we don't toot our own horn very often but we need to from time to time and this effort will give us some structure it'll remind us that that's an important part of the job to describe to the community to congress to the court even our own courts about the important work we do but also we can make a difference we can actually deter somebody from a life of crime perhaps or through FedFACS or some other program actually diverting them away from the system it's a very important work very important I agree and thank you so much for taking time from your busy schedule to come join us thanks for inviting me as John said we're a good system we should be proud of the work we do and indeed we can make a difference we're almost finished for today but I want to ask one more question Elaine speak for all of us what's the bottom line to keep in mind when developing an outreach program well just do it that's one of the things overcome the reticence and just do it community outreach really does compliment our core work we know we're valuable but we're not always perceived as being valuable and I think that it is an important time this is really an important time for us to get the word out about the incredible work that our staff does across the country good words to remember thank you Elaine thanks also to our other panelists today Joji Okobi and George Walker and thank you to our Collin participants for being so willing to share their experiences Jennifer Sunshine Mark Piskalich and Rich Crawford today we take a look at public information and outreach programs that districts have implemented out to the criminal justice family service providers and the public we've examined some of the challenges and practices proven to be effective for our panelists and Collin participants also we've explored how community outreach can play a role in crime prevention we hope you find the information in this broadcast useful let me remind you to please complete an evaluation that was part of our downloadable materials on the DCN we appreciate your feedback also we invite you to access the court operations exchange on the FJC homepage there you'll find information that districts have posted and are sharing with colleagues throughout the federal court system what a great resource finally I'd like to thank David Sellers of the Public Affairs Office and John Hughes from the Office of Probation and Pre-Trial Services for partnering with us in this effort keep an eye on the FJTN bulletin for other upcoming programs of interest to all court staff thank you for joining us today