 You're watching FJTN, the Federal Judicial Television Network. Hello everybody and welcome to today's program, Progress Report Implementing Monograph 109. I'm Kate Lyna, the senior education specialist with the Federal Judicial Center and I welcome you to this program. Monograph changes were approved by the Judicial Conference a little over a year ago and every district has been out there trying to implement those changes and one thing we know is it has been a process. Each one of you has had your own challenges, your own issues to deal with. You've been finding some very creative solutions and you've had some great stories to share and tell about the results of your implementation efforts. We're here today to talk about some of those challenges and solutions with three people from different districts who've gone through some very interesting times with all of this and we're also going to talk with Barbara Meyerhofer who's a senior policy analyst from the Office of Probation and Pretrial Services with the Administrative Office and we're going to have a pretty extensive question and answer period. So we look forward to this broadcast, stay with us and let me introduce the people to you who are on the set with me right now. I'd like to introduce Tim Musgrave who is a senior U.S. probation officer from the Southern District of Texas and Tim is Northern District of Texas. I am so sorry, he is a Northern District of Texas, I knew that and he is also a mental health specialist. Next to him is Tom Ogden who is a deputy chief U.S. probation officer from the All-Encompassing District of Utah and to my left is Ron Golden who is the supervising U.S. probation officer from the Western District of Kentucky, correct? Got them all. Okay, they are here to talk to us about again the challenges and solutions that they have come up with. So let me turn right now to Tim to start talking about some of the challenges that he's had and some of the neat things that have happened as a result of all of this. As you know, one of the things that every district has tried to do is change the relationship between the officer and the supervisor, make it more of a collaborative professional effort between those two people working with the cases under supervision. And so I'm going to turn to Tim because he has a good story to share about one of the cases that he has in his district, Tim? I had supervised a lady named Cynthia, my supervisor at the time was Steve Oliver and we had gone through the case planning where we identified some strengths and weaknesses, set out some goals and objectives. About the next week, Steve and I were out traveling in the field. What happened to be the day Cynthia was going to see a psychiatrist at an MHMR, we went, it was about a 45 minute interview. My lady was on a certain medication regime and she was real convinced it was working because it worked well in the institution. She cried the whole time. She was a real distraught and the psychiatrist finally said, well, what makes you think they're working so well? You've cried for 45 minutes and so they tweaked some meds and she did a little bit better. She really saw us as advocates and as a part of that interview. We'd interjected a few things along the way. About a week and a half later, Cynthia's in my office, we're walking down the hall and Steve is in a different room at the fax machine or Xerox and he hollers through the doorway as he sees her high Cynthia and gave her some personal acknowledgement. By the time we got back to my office, she sat in a chair a little straighter, a little more common. Somebody had acknowledged her, had recognized her. Steve did not know she was coming in. So there wasn't any preparatory work we could have done. But what that did for her, the power in identifying her and so that whole collaborative thing of Steve having reviewed the file, seen her in the field and it was able to just, you know, spontaneously acknowledge her presence there in the office was really, really strong. The other thing about working with a supervisor, I've had, I'm into my second supervisor since Steve and I think with everybody, they have gotten to know me better as an individual, as an officer and certainly in my case it's a little bit better. Okay, which is great and I think part of that story for me, the real power of your supervisor and you again being viewed as advocates for her of the power of two with her. I had shared with Tim before that I have a niece who was institutional, was in a hospital for a period of time, very short period of time but she said her greatest fear was that she would become invisible and for people who were institutionalized for a long period of time in the prison or in a hospital setting really can feel that way, that they are invisible. So having somebody really acknowledge them and one of the things we do know with supervision is just the power of being connected to people or feeling connected to them and what that does to yourself worth and going back to one of the values we hold with the charter of excellence of just treating people with dignity and respect and what a difference that can make just in your relationship there. The other thing you had talked about, if I can just do this for a minute, her medications that she had in the institution weren't working for her out on the street. In a structured setting where you're told when to get up, when to go to bed, where to go to work, what to do during the day, a certain medication regime may work really well in that regard, in the community whole different set of stressors of choices of decisions to make and that kind of thing and so things can really fall apart sometimes out in the community. Life can be much different. Yeah, so really the getting connected with somebody before they come out and just because those transition issues are just so huge, which is going to transition me to Tom Ogden and we'll get back to Tim in a minute but for Tom, there are a couple of issues for your district. Transitioning Tim frequently doesn't get people from CCCs, gets them from the institution but the district of Utah has been so involved in working with your halfway houses which is of course one of the strengths you brought to the monograph in the district of Utah and the work your district did on the monograph but can you talk a little bit about your experiences with the CCC? Yes, five years ago we placed an officer, a single officer inside the CCC and he had constant contact with both the offenders living there plus the staff. During the time the monograph is being developed, the new one, we were also developing new supervision space. We were fortunate enough to get the building 50 feet away from the halfway house. So now we have all the supervision officers out there who are having daily contact with both the residents and with the staff. There are contract, we're the customer, they're learning what our needs are through better communication and it's very efficient as far as our travel time to do our contacts. There's not an expectation that every district out there is going to be able to have their supervision unit right next to the halfway house but again that connection, the continued connection with the halfway house I assume has made a difference and have you seen results or differences in what happens with people coming right out of the CCC and how smooth the transition is? We have with the new pre-release requirements, we're seeing them the day they land at the halfway house and again it's only a 50 foot walk for them and we're having personal contact to discuss their jobs, their family reintegration, all the things that are going to occur when they're fully back out on the street on supervision. It also accommodated it to ask officers to make a lot of changes, they had to get used to this contact with the CCC staff. Putting us right next door we've created an environment that doesn't make that too strenuous on them. The other thing that I want to talk to Tom about pretty quickly is you're the deputy chief in your district so you have as I understand it four supervisors under you who report to you and what are some of the things that you've done to make sure because we know this is an issue of are all the supervisors doing the same thing but what have you done in your district to help that along? The best part implementation is make sure upper management really supports what you want to do and they're talking the talk and walking the walk and that the supervisors are going to be relatively consistent with how they do the new case staffings or how they treat the new monograph. Actually I only have three supervisors. One of them is home on maternity leave right now so I am acting as supervisor and deputy chief and I'm doing case staffings every day. And meeting with your supervisors. We have weekly meetings, we're into this almost two years because we had a little bit of a head start with the work our supervisor Dave Christensen did with you and then my part in reviewing the monographs early on. Even into a two years you have to get out there as the main cheerleader and have weekly meetings. Why are we doing this? What do we have to change to be consistent with the new tenants of the monograph? Okay, thanks Tom. And I would also say that Sandra Fry from the northern district of Texas, Tim's deputy has also been involved in the training over the past year on these monographs and was part of the work group also. Before I go to Ron Golden who is sitting next to me I want to show you a piece from our last broadcast in March of 2003. If you just watch that for a minute and then I'll go to Ron Golden. Thanks. All right, we have another fax and I'm sorry I really don't know who this one came from. But this says that the specified number of individual contacts, personal collateral, etc. appeared to be omitted in the draft monograph 109 that was released around March of 19 or 2002. I'm in the wrong century, sorry. Our district believes that a minimal number of contacts should be included in the plan based on the assessment and officer's opinion and experience as to what it would require to achieve the desired outcome. Would there be AO audit repercussions for our district maintaining a required number of minimal contacts in our plans? We discussed this at the break and I think almost everybody has something to say on this. And I understand through the magic of technology here that that question actually came from Kentucky western so we do appreciate your question. And not only did that question come from the western district of Kentucky it came from exactly the gentleman sitting next to me, Ron Golden, and we found that out just before we were trying to find people for this broadcast. So I'm going to turn to Ron. That was your question. You were really concerned about these changes and talk to us a little bit about what happened over the intervening months. Exactly, Kate, that was my question. I take ownership of it at the time. I think that question is insightful as to where I was coming from then and my feelings about a change. I was pretty resistant. We in the western district of Kentucky had been following the original monograph 109 for a number of years as you know and I thought we had supervision nailed. I thought we were doing it as best we could. And I was very concerned as the question illustrates about certain offenders perhaps sliding or falling through the cracks as well as what AO auditors might think in a change that we were implementing. And so where have you come from there? What's changed for you? A long way. Unlike Tom's district though, we've only been involved with the implementation for about eight months. However, as Tom was saying, I think that the commitment to change had to be from the top on down. We've always been a district that went by the book and because there were certain people, myself included, that didn't really like portions of the new book, we made a commitment initially with the administrative staff to go by the new book. And I think that commitment carried on by the chief in his appointment of staff to be on an implementation committee really went a long way for those people buying into the process. One other thing that we did in our district was to actually think about the change being a gradual one. It's not going to happen overnight as I said, we've been in it eight months. We're not to the point we need to be yet, but we're working on it. Because of budgetary constraints, didn't train people in our customary way. Usually when we got a new monograph, the supervisors were given the job of teaching a class to the officers. We reversed that process and gave the officers the draft monograph and told them to learn a portion of it and teach it to the other officers. And that produced such a buy-in that is still overwhelming to me. So that's what our organization did along the way though, personally, in really giving this 100% effort, I noticed that there were some significant changes going on. One of which, I guess early on I was involved in a case planning session with an officer and she had actually gone a little overboard about the supervision activities for the supervision issues that she had identified with the case and I said, what's going on here? Why are we doing all these things? And she said, well, I thought that's what you want. Light bulbs went off. That's not what, now we're changed, you know. And it made me realize they were doing possibly plans to please me. And now we're doing plans because we're doing what's right by the offender. Right. A big difference. Right. So you're working the supervisor or you're working the case? Yeah, it's going to happen. Exactly, okay. Quickly, I'm going to go to Tom just for a second because Tom, as much as you've been into this, you too had your own issues with counting stuff. We all agree and probably still agree that supervision can't be completely done from behind the desk. I had implemented a policy about the number of hours you have to spend out in the field, which may be a good idea. There's a certain amount. But when you start counting just the hours and not looking at the subjective nature of the contact and are we, do we have a desired outcome, what in the end happened is a few people short of hours would say, well, let's drive out to that trailer two and a half hours from here. And by the time we get back, I'll have my five hours in and they left the court on the trailer door with no contact or no real purpose. I think managers have to give up some of their old control of counting boxes and get more into the nature of the subjective stuff of why are we doing this, what is our desired outcome. Right, okay. I'm going to stop this segment of the program because I want to get over with Barbara Meyerhofer and again, as I said, we have hopefully a good question and answer segment coming up, so I want to get to that as quickly as possible and give these gentlemen some more time to talk to us. So in the meantime, I'm going to move from one end of the studio to the other. And I'd like you to watch a segment that we taped from a National Institute of Corrections broadcast where they're talking about implementing evidence-based practices and pretty much the same thing that we're talking about. And they're talking about it at the state and local level. So there's a lot of similarities going on throughout the criminal justice system, again, at the state level and at the federal level. So please watch this and it's followed by some quotable quotes that people sent us from around the country and take a second to watch those. We'll be right back. Thank you. Some people emphasize our business is not rocket science. And my response is that it's more complicated than rocket science. Thoughtfully, consistently moving people to exercise personal responsibility and discipline, which takes them out of conflict with the law, is a demanding challenge. There's increasing knowledge from a variety of human sciences that increases the likelihood of bringing about the desired change when we implement our business in a thoughtful, disciplined manner. One difficult challenge is understanding that our improved performance is dependent on our changing what, why, and how we do business in order to more effectively impact the people we supervise. What you've seen today is the initial framework intended to stimulate thoughtful change in our industry. It's long, hard, but doable work. And NIC is in the process for the long haul. And welcome back. I'm sitting with Barbara Meyerhofer from the administrative office, office of probation and pretrial services. And as many of you know or should know, Barbara is truly the architect of Monograph 109 and 111. And she is here to discuss some of the policy issues from the administrative office and to answer some of your more specific policy related questions. So we will get to those shortly. But Barbara and I have been the two, the two some that's been out on the road all over the country from sea to shining sea, literally talking to the supervisors and deputy chiefs on the changes to the monograph over the last year. So it's truly an honor to have her. We're here with us today. So let me get to some questions for Barbara. First and foremost, changes to the monograph. It's only like 14 months old and already you're making changes. Can you talk about that? Certainly. We do have a commitment to keep the monograph current. And so the first set of changes were released in March of this year, right after they were endorsed by the judicial conference. Okay. And where can people find those changes? The changes are up on the JANET. The monograph itself is up on the JANET. And we also put together a packet of summary materials talking about what the changes are, why they were made, and also has pages on which the changes were made. We email those to the probation chiefs and to our supervision points of contact. And that packet too is up on the JANET. Okay. And one of the real joys of working with Barbara Meyerhofer is if there's anybody who can write succinctly and clearly it's Barbara. So those materials will be up there, so look for them. And I know this answer, but I can ask Barbara for all of you. If they have questions, please keep sending them in. That's the way we know what changes are needed in the monograph. If we don't get your feedback, then we really don't know things that we need to clarify. Okay. So I appreciate the fact that the administrative office really is being responsive to the issues out there and to the questions that you have. So this is coming to a desktop near them, not in a binder to them. That's the case? That is correct. The AO is no longer issuing hard copy monographs or updates to monographs. Okay. All right. That's one issue. And let me go on to our second issue, which talks about district reviews, program reviews. And John Hughes just sent out a memo to everyone saying that, again, because of budgetary constraints, the administrative office will not be doing routine district reviews out in the districts. So that whole process is on hold for right now. But Barbara has some information about the updated district review instruments for you. So all right, we have not stopped our efforts to update the district review instruments. As Ron indicated, it's very important that the AO reviews be focused on the changes in policies in the revised monograph and that everything we do support districts in their implementation of that. So we actually have a very significant revision of the post-supervision, post-conviction supervision case file review instrument that is currently out for an informal field test. And we hope to be posting that revised instrument probably mid-June. Okay. And in the meantime, what can districts do? Well, we are hoping actually that the instrument that we'll be posting will assist them. One of the reasons we're posting them, even though we're not going out in the near future on routine program reviews, is so they'll have an idea of the kinds of things that we'll be looking at and hopefully they can use that in their own self-assessments. Actually, Tom, I think the district of Utah has been doing a lot of self-assessment and also I believe you folks were scheduled for a program review in August. Isn't that true? Yes, we were Barbara. We were looking forward to that but everybody understands the current budget problems. We already ran in our supervision unit what I call midterm report card that concentrated on the major changes from the 109. I've now received your new draft and I've handed that out to the officers so they can start to look at their own cases and say, where would I stand if somebody else would come in and look at my cases right now? I would like to enter into a collaborative effort in this tight budget and maybe get the district of Nevada or some other close district to come in as a team and be honest with us, use that instrument. We could reciprocate and send a team down and tell them how they're doing and get into those kind of relationships. The important thing is look at the instrument and see what behaviors you need to change to be doing the right thing in the 109. Our district, too, does an internal audit on an annual basis and I think just having the instrument that the AO is going to use really goes a long way in our preparation for that and reducing my own personal anxieties about what's coming. Tangential to that. Mike Laughlin and Robert Fino of our office as part of their leadership development program had solicited some ideas from officers all across the district about how can we do supervision better kind of dovetailing in with the new monograph and I read a draft of it and a lot of officers had some great ideas about, you know, things to do to fit right in with the new monograph. So thanks gentlemen and actually I read a draft copy of that and I would also say the Northern District of Ohio has done a similar process sending out a survey to all of their officers and thanks to Carmen and Lenora and Susan and the whole crowd up there and to John Pete for sending that down to us. They did a really terrific review of their district got some good input from their officers so that they can look at what they need to continue to do for the supervision implementation effort. So kudos to all of you and thanks for doing that. Thanks for sharing that with us because again that's the way we know what needs to be changed. Right, thanks. Okay, on to one of the things that is one of the true hot topics out there and we know this from the trade we've known this for well over a year but Pax ECM 3.0 is coming to a again a desktop near you but it's coming when Barbara? The last week in June. Okay, won't we be excited and all your chiefs will be out at the chief's conference so have at it gang but anyhow it's coming to their desktops what kind of support training support can they expect for this? Well the training plan actually has been a really collaborative effort we're going to have all of the traditional training elements we've got the Texas Support Center they're developing electronic learning modules and we're going to have the technical documentation and release notes but we're also working on developing training that will specifically help officers and supervisors understand more about what the system can do how it can work for them rather than sort of being a slave to it. Okay, which is a really big point one of the things we knew with the original monograph 109 was that the forms themselves started driving the supervision process and people were more concerned about what box does this thing go into or this piece of information go into rather than figuring out what pieces of information needed to be gathered so that got to be a real problem frankly but the whole notion with the PACCCM is that it should help again support the supervision process rather than have automation derive the supervision process and one of the biggest things that's going to be in there that everybody's been looking forward to is the K supervision plan which will be automated can you just talk about that just for a minute? Well the plan itself it will basically automate the plan that is in the appendix of the monograph though there will be some significant changes in terms of guidance and on common objectives common strategies that people can shorthand into document the strategies and objectives that they themselves have already chosen. Okay, thanks Barbara and again this will be coming to your desktop soon so look forward the end of June it really really really is coming so okay I know everybody will be happy about that. All right let me start with our question and answer period at this point because we do have several issues and we have a lot of facts that have come in and I think I haven't said this yet for this podcast we ask the points of contact to send us questions ahead of time so I do have some of those Barbara will be able to answer some of them and our three guest panelists will answer some of them but we would urge you to please continue sending in your faxes to us at any time during this broadcast the number should be appearing on your screen as I speak and if we cannot get to your answer right now or if you don't think you've got a full enough answer somebody will get back to you after the broadcast but please send those faxes in because that really does help us answer your questions and know what you need out there okay so let me get to the first question and this is sort of a composite question that came from several districts so I've sort of shorthanded what you all said and I'm going to send this over probably to Ron as our resident supervisor over there first but let me give you the question this comes from Bill Casalas from the Southern District of Texas along with Jeff Gill from the Virginia Eastern and Ken Kahl from Alabama Southern so I think we pretty much have almost banned the entire continent here with this one question so in case sometimes you think you're all alone out there with issues you're not everybody has mostly some of the same issues that you're struggling with okay here's the question basically what ideas are there to address record keeping by the supervisor pertaining to work that needs to be done in the case are districts employing any kind of critique tool to be used during the periodic case review process to capture their observations for future evaluations and how is the supervisor making note of corrections and issues so it's really record keeping by the supervisor because Form 55A no longer exists so I'm going to turn this over to Ron first and anybody over there who'd like to add on their comments please do so so Ron Kate it's interesting that you gave me that very good question right off of that I hope that's not a payback from last time but as I said earlier our transition has been quite planned to be quite slow and one of the things of course that we did was to eliminate that Form 55A you don't see that in our files anymore fellow supervisors in the western district of Kentucky we are a form-driven agency sometimes will admit created another form a brief or shorter form for supervisors to take notes during case planning sessions this works really well for me I just jot down a few notes and when the planning session is over I go back to my office and set up my computer and then I use a computer generated performance note to make those notes for future evaluations I think Tom you had some other input in your district about how you handle that well what I'd like to add is we've been doing that a little longer we started the case staffings with the officers face-to-face prior to the 109 coming out we did have advanced notice because some of the work we have done back here but I think what managers will learn is the more that you sit down with officers talk about their cases and understand their strengths and weaknesses and training needs the easier your evaluations are going to become now following up on what needs to be done in the case the more you get used to better chrono entries and your listing objectives and strategies in those chrono entries the subsequent chrono should be supporting that and I think you can get a feel for at least for evaluation purposes much quicker than you think Tim as the line officer who is the person who's being evaluated on a regular basis how you're working that out with your supervisor I'm not sure what kind of notes he's taking when Steve was my supervisor I didn't see any direct note taking there were some when we did case reviews and but otherwise he had he had a lot of little sheets of paper stuck in a file in his drawer candy did the same thing I don't know where the pieces of paper came from or what they said but they were collecting them throughout the year and and my my personal review came back with very detailed about specific events and happenings Okay one of the things that we know and that Barbara and I had talked about all over the country for every circuit that we went to was that whatever the notes the supervisor is keeping on what needs to be done for the case as you all know should not appear in the offender's file and that's one of the most important pieces to all of this and we know why this really is a huge change for people because a 55A used to be in the offender's file and is now not in the offender's file because it is the offender's file not the officer's personnel file that's why it shouldn't be there so Barbara some of the the feedback that you'd give people on this that the AO would be looking at actually with a district review right there are actually two things one I know people are tired of hearing of what version three will do for them but one of the things that will be in version three is an internal tickler system that can be used to generate entries for an action list and that should help both supervisors and officers keep track of the individual things that they have to do and that action list will also incorporate things that you don't automatically enter things like if it's a sex offender it will tell you if you have not at least entered into PAXA date where you have verified that sex offender's registration so we're hoping that 3.0 will provide some more tools to help keep track of these things because it really and that really will be the activity list that I think really will help all of you again as an automated tool but I'm going to send this back to our panelists again for a minute just your response on this because I think I know what the answer is but here we go for the for those of you who are supervising officers and again as an officer Tim this whole new process of the supervisor doing the case staffings with you actually sitting down talking about your cases going out in the field what we've heard is that this gives the supervisor a much better understanding and I just want to reinforce that notion a much better understanding of what the officer's real performance is and a better sense and trust of what is being done on a regular basis so if I can send that back to all of you I think just for me personally going out in the field sitting down with the officer and doing a case planning process is beginning to show positive effects the fact that I know the case just a whole lot better rather than taking the file home and reviewing it from the television while trying to watch a football game is to me one of the more positive things about the whole process that we're doing now I think the case staffings and the general staffings the more you sit down and act like we're the two professionals here we're going to put our heads together and do the right thing for this offender's plan you do learn a lot I mean that's much more than looking at a paper file we supervise people we don't supervise files one thing also that we've had happen is again I mentioned a commitment by our chief and also our deputy chief as well they have came out into the field to be in case planning process originally just to observe but that doesn't happen what we've found is they're in there involved in the collaboration of the case plan themselves Jerry Richey our assistant deputy chief drove with me in the field like it's been a month ago now but after we finished he provides some good feedback on some safety issues and that kind of thing as a line officer I've appreciated the feedback having the other officer there having my sussbow around and just getting things from a little different perspective after we finish a visit or if we're staffing or something it's a lot more fun out in the field than it is for all those other deputy chief duties we've heard that from more than one person out there that the reason you got into this business to begin with was not to sit behind a desk and do case reviews on you know and do the grammar gremlin kind of stuff so okay let's go on to another question this one is from Bob Lynch who is another deputy chief from the Southern District of Texas and this one I know I have right anyhow thanks Bob for your question have districts recognize the need to educate CCC staff on transitional service issues to ensure a clear understanding of our respective roles in the process and Tom we'll go to you on this I think your your last couple words there is people understanding each other's roles when you're working with the CCC you are the customer I know it's I don't want to sound odd that the the offenders not but really the courts in the United States probation office is the customer the offender is kind of the the issue that we're all working around by the more staffings that I have with them we have a greater understanding from each other of what their rules are to control the halfway house residents and what our goals are for both their housing and employment both why they're in the in the halfway house and after they leave I just think if managers set up an environment that allows this kind of communication all the services and the desired outcomes will improve what we did in our district to answer that issue was to in our initial training done by the officers was to invite the Bureau of Prison CCC staff to that training and I think that helped to quell any rumors that may have existed about probations taken over our job or things like that and right from from that training session the word was out that it's a cooperative venture you know with VIP hanging on to to most of the things while there's still inmates there a senior USP or Ray Warren is our liaison person that you know handles the people at the CCC and he does allow that interim work with the staff there and helping you know smooth the transition coming out as a mental health senior I still get to interact a lot with the staff when they've got a specific mental health case getting them into local mental health you know facilities or med management issues or something like that but getting them to the mental health agency right from the CCC and their transitioning on to supervision is really a plus to get that relationship started then has been real important yes and it is so much about relationships isn't it Tim I'm going to stay with you on this because although we're talking about the CCC staff and working with them on the transition issues you have a lot of people by virtue of the caseload that you have and we know a lot of people out there are in the same situation who don't go through a halfway house so what are some of the things that you do in terms of helping them transition and prepare for coming straight out to the street very often very probably more than half the cases that want a relocation to the northern district or that are just releasing out if there's any extra conditions we want to do we'll send a probe 49 one of those waiver forms and have them agree to a litany of extra conditions invariably be a sex offender with a couple of conditions and that's it and they want to come to our district and I'm not going to happen so we'll start with extra conditions when we do accept the plan there are times that I'll ask them what is your community safety plan how are you going to do better this time out in the community and not get revoked again or whatever their issue was if they're a substance abuser what how are you going to stay sober out in the community I'll elicit feedback from them one of the things I saw Rich James one of our officers doing the other day and he's doing an initial interview mom dad the brother they were all in there he had his hands all over that case because he had other eyes out there in the community helping that transition to happen Tim do you have the opportunity to interface with the person while they're still an inmate at the Bureau of Prison's facility usually it's just done in writing I'll ask them to send me something like that the other day though I got a phone call from a case manager at Fort Worth and had an offender there had some questions and within my supervision area so I just drove out and you know spent an hour half of my day and just visual with him he signed the 49 not a problem his relocation case family lived here he just got caught somewhere else those cases that show up without the advantage of the halfway house transition just remember you have to do a lot of general staffings pull in your your suspos your other peer people other people in the community and you may have to change the plan five times in the first five months it's a collaborative effort get everybody involved right one of y'all mentioned that y'all have like five contacts and when you're out in the field you ought to know five people involved with that case that you can talk to you know you got parents therapists or whatever but I think that was an objective of the original draft that we read and some officers really question whether that would be possible but I'm finding that in a lot of cases it is possible to have five collateral contacts it's really not that hard with rising case loads that is imperative we've got to have the extra eyes out there helping to sound I think from both the correctional and the controlling aspect that that helps you know with those goals and objectives okay back to us we were we were we were having listening to you okay we'll get back to a real question here but just a follow-up question but I do think it's so important one of the things that that Tim was saying was just having you know bringing that whole family in and and something that I think was a conversation we had probably prior to this broadcast with Tim and Tom and Ron and Barbara and me was just talking about looking at what the offender needs are that was one of the things Ron had alluded to before is that what the offender needs as opposed to what the supervisor needs but also looking at the offender's strengths who's out there what do they have going for them that you can really focus on and really capitalize on as an officer okay let me go on to another question here from Ken Cole and his gang down in Alabama Southern and again thank you for your questions another question from them was would you give us some examples of what is expected in the objectives and strategy section and another person had written an anonymous email which was fine should they say something that's more than just compliance with the conditions or I'm going to monitor their activities and I'm going to send this back over to the gentleman and Tom you may want to start with this well I think when you talk about objectives you have to kind of step back a hair and talk about this understand what the person's capable of what the defendant is capable of don't make a lot of pie in the sky objectives make something that's reasonable and can be attained and build off of small successes I think people from our educational background and professionalism what we think is trivial may be a big step in some of our our cases lives and let's make it reasonable maybe just getting their first checkbook or getting their teeth fixed and however we can help to refer those things or accommodate those are bigger events for them and as trivial as they might sound in our mind I think it's important that we recognize that and we affirm that whenever they do have those kind of accomplishments along the way I think in setting objectives and strategies and things from the line officer for treatment cases in particular you know you've got attending complete treatment at XYZ agency you know we'll do you know if it's a conditional release case we'll be doing pill counts on almost every home visit you know I'll ask to see their pill bottle do a pill count so they need to be very very specific I'm glad you mentioned something as specific as a pill count to walk out and say I want the person to remain drug free or crime free any lay person could have come up with that plan we're the professionals and the technicians when we talk about the activities that we're going to spend public money to go out and complete we want them specific to that case if it's pill counting if it's any anything as specific as making sure that they get the right dental referral we want them very specific to that case this is something though I think we have somewhat struggled with we've in the past been very good about identifying supervision issues but when you try to translate that to actual offender objectives it becomes a little bit of a of a language problem perhaps can best illustrate by by recent case that I was again involved in planning with an officer and we were looking at a young man who had been convicted of a drug conspiracy everybody knows those of course and one of the supervision issues was of course criminal associations this young man was feeling quite isolated coming out of the institution and we were in essence setting them up to say you can't run with your old buddies stay away from the motorcycle gang you know that you used to hook up with well he had nobody else and what the officer and I did in the planning session was just a a little more of a client centered here's where it might fit into his framework and say he needs to develop appropriate friendships you know he bought into that as a helpful tool that we were trying to work with him on rather than stay away from the bad influences you know conducting the offender objective interviews I've done some myself and when they're first pulled in you can see some of the defendants being taken aback saying why is this guy concerned about my life really and it may be coming from a different frame than they're used to and they well respond I mean they're so pleasantly surprised that they're not being told and you must do this and you must do that and you must do this and then we're back to actually showing some concern and asking where their strengths are the war stories they hear in prison or at the halfway houses are plentiful if you consider the source of where they heard them somebody that screwed up in the community got sent back and you know yeah they didn't like their P.O. because they're not going to accept the responsibility just lay it off on you know the guy who sent me here and so if if they will consider that that'll certainly help but it is a surprise for most of them okay let me go back to Barbara here for a minute and have her talk a little bit more about what Pax is going to do for you in terms of those objectives and strategies and some comments that she has for all of you on this well I think the most important thing is that Pax will include some very common objectives and strategies but it does that for the purpose of preventing you from having to write things down that you are going to be writing down in a lot of cases it's not a substitute for thought and the most important thing as the gentleman over here I have to have talked about is that they must be individualized to this case and there are going to be some cases they're not going to have any objectives and it's not as I loved what Tom said you have to individualize it to what this person needs based on the professional assessment and so what that comes down to is some of our people are not going to have a whole lot of risks and needs and that's how we start working smart we are trying to get away from you know routine going through the motions in every case so that we can start targeting the supervision resources on the cases that need our intervention to succeed and do we want to talk just a minute about early termination at this point give your plug for that early termination is the culmination and what the monograph says is that the transition off of supervision is a process early termination is a tool that we can use to be sure that there aren't any of these just sort of technical things we're doing because we do have a responsibility to remain informed get them off of the caseload and hopefully it will be a reward for their good behavior and their future success okay thanks Barbara we have another question from Bill Montgomery from Indiana and Northern thanks Bill regarding the preparation of the initial supervision plans through implementation and subsequent evaluation unless the case is earmarked for early termination of course as Barbara just talked about are you finding supervisors or officers requiring more frequent evaluation beyond timely issue driven staffing and I'm going to send this back over to Tom or Ron and then you can all talk about it if I understood the question other than what we call general staffings of issue driven staffings if there's going to be more than one plan within an annual period I think what we have to find in our behavior is that if you're going to work on a general staffing very often you're doing something different when that person's plan so you actually are doing a plan staffing if you're going to make a major change in treatment or in any other kind of risk issue or in maybe placing someone in the halfway house for a period of time things like that even though it's not their scheduled time for a plan staffing you've just done a plan staffing so many cases could have four, five, six or seven in a year other compliant cases may only have the one I also think it's important not to leave the newer officer just out there hanging and so for me my preference is to have more of those staffings with the with the younger newer officer rather than your your veteran who probably knows a little more about what's going on with the case right from the get go so those with the newer officer are are scheduled you know and if a situation arises of course we can although we haven't been doing it like Tom suggests I think it's a very good idea don't become a slave to the six month schedule yeah if the if the plan staffing was doing in June and you have the file out and you're doing a lot of work in May and you're actually changing the plan well then that's what you've done yeah you've done a plan staffing I think we use seniors quite a bit in our office you know doing some some issue during staffing you know bad UAAs or you know we need to be looking at the halfway house kind of things but we'll use our seniors a lot of course before that would ever go pour a court well it goes through our sussbows but we're we're very fortunate to have a number of seniors to tap into and give yourselves credit when you're when you're doing these general staffings and meeting chrono that chrono document that we talked about this case and we're working on a better plan I think that's important the plan yeah okay we have too quick Barbara had something to add to this for packs right I was just going to say that version 3.0 packs I've got a lot of got a lot of questions on this it will support the monograph planning deadlines and included in that though is complete flexibility in the ability to schedule the next planned update based on the needs of the case very similar to the issues that that they were discussing okay and that what whether or not packs would track the updates was another fax question that we had here and the other point to that and I think Ron was saying that you're not going to leave your new officer hanging you certainly are going to give more guidance and more support to the new officer and you were also not going to take the worst case that you have that has the potential for hitting the front page of the New York Times tomorrow and not give that constant attention from the supervisor and the officer but this process really allows that flexibility so that's a good thing another question we had which I think we covered I'm not sure again from Ken Cole will version 3.0 calculator no that wasn't it sorry well what will the probation supervision plan include in packs version 3.0 I think you covered this but it's do it again okay other than the sections on the objectives and strategies that we talked about that will provide a little more help in the documentation it will pretty much mimic exactly what that plan looks like in the appendix to the monograph obviously with a lot there'll be a lot more features it will be pulling a lot more information but the end result will look like the one in the appendix okay all righty we have one more very quick question from David Kinsman from the Western District of Michigan and we thank you for this David while an offender is at the halfway house can they begin to work on community service hours or did it as a condition of supervision Barbara I think it is important that everyone understand that when someone is in the halfway house and we have not yet received them from supervision the conditions of supervision are not in effect and may not be enforced however that doesn't mean that in terms of trying to get people to start paying fines and restitution and community service that if that can be worked out with the halfway house staff as part of this reintegration planning with the offender with the halfway house staff there would certainly no reason I can think of right offhand but the legal eagles please come slap me in the face if I'm wrong on this why they couldn't begin to do some of these extra things okay and the ccc staff of course would have to agree to all of that anyhow so I think we have covered the questions I think we've covered pretty much most of what we wanted to talk about we have one minute and I'm going to ask Barbara to quickly talk about what we're going to do with what basically she's going to do I'm going to hang in there on the phone with her with the points of contact meetings that again also had to be suspended due to budgetary constraints so what we will be doing we'll be holding four four hour sessions that we're calling remote conferences as we speak cool name guess why well real original right but as we speak actually we have supervision points of contact signing up for these meetings and we're going to utilize a technology called net meeting that hopefully will allow us to supplement the telephone conversation with visuals we can all be looking at the same thing at the same time which would be very nice and we're going to hope to cover the content at least some of the general content of preparing for packs from a managerial standpoint but also trying to set up a real supervision point of contact network so that you folks out there who are doing this work can talk to each other okay and thank you and we thank you for the opportunity to have talked to you today so on behalf of the federal judicial center the administrative office represented by my good friend and colleague here Barbara Meyerhofer to Tim to Tom to Ron I thank all of you for joining us on this broadcast and for your contributions to this program and I thank all of you for sending your faxes in and keep going on with your implementation process out there and keep in touch thanks for joining us today and we're out