"Everybody I know has committed a crime," says Robert, a 31-year-old father of three, who is among the nearly 80,000 adults on probation in Illinois. An admitted drug abuser, Robert is serving a 30-month court ordered probation for delivery of a controlled substance in January 1991. He received a second order in April 1992 to serve an additional two years probation for illegal possession of a gun. That conviction made his third felony offense in four years. In 1988 Robert killed a man (he claims in self-defense) who robbed him of money that Robert admits was "drug-related." He served 13 months in county jail awaiting trial for involuntary manslaughter. He was convicted and sentenced to the Department of Corrections for 30 months. With time served and day-for-day good time, Robert spent seven weeks in Graham Correctional Center.

Already considered "lucky" by his probation officer to have been given a second probation, Robert has to go before the judge again for not attending mandated drug rehabilitation sessions. He will argue that he is staying off drugs, as random testing has verified, on his own power because he has to care for his children while their mother gets treatment for drug abuse.

As Illinois' prisons continue to fill up, judges are sentencing more adult offenders to probation, often a second and third time for additional crimes, rather than sending them to jail. Probation in lieu of prison has been an option for punishment of Illinois' criminals for the past century. It is getting more attention now partly because the legislature is being asked to consider recommendations from the Governor's Task Force on Crime and Corrections. Many of the recommendations call for use of more alternatives to prison, so-called "intermediate sanctions" like electronic monitoring and home confinement, most of which fall under the supervision of probation.

What the legislature, and ultimately society, has to come to grips with is the dual-sided question: Who's punishing whom when lawbreakers go to jail, and is there a better way to punish criminals while protecting society? To answer that question lawmakers, and those who elect them, need to take a close look at what probation is and what its potential is for alleviating the state's overcrowded prisons.

The cost comparisons between probation and prison are dramatic (see figure) and one of the strongest arguments for using probation as a sentencing option. Standard probation costs $700 per offender per year, whereas keeping that offender in prison costs $16,000 per year. In addition, according to the Department of Corrections, it costs the state an estimated $70,000 per bed to build a new prison, for an estimated total cost to the taxpayer of $1 million per bed over the life of the prison. Probation may also be the most effective form of punishment for those committing the majority of nonviolent crimes. Nancy Martin, chief probation officer for Cook County, assesses the effectiveness of probation in real life terms: "When you or I talk about jail, it's the most horrifying thing in the world because we're employed, because we have families, because our reputations mean something to us. Unfortunately for a lot of the people we

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deal with, those aren't really considerations, and jail really isn't the most horrifying thing. The most horrifying thing for a lot of our clients is that they would have to live my life: Get up at 5:30 in the morning, go to work, be responsible for their own upkeep and their own welfare, have to provide some type of monetary relief to their families and be held accountable." She says jail as an option is just another continuation, unfortunately, of giving people things they don't have to work for. It's not teaching anyone responsibility or accountability, which are goals of probation.

Martin says the type of client her department is seeing is a more serious offender who is young, male, unemployed, undereducated and substance-abusing, either alcohol or drugs or both. That profile holds true statewide according to statistics provided to the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC).

"It never ceases to amaze me what our statistics look like," says Martin. Even being a prosecutor for 12 years before taking the job in probation two years ago had not prepared her for the number of people on probation in Cook County. Counting active warrants only (those who are required to see a probation officer), nearly 32,000 offenders — 95 percent of whom are felons, only 5 percent misdemeanants — are currently under probationary supervision. A staff of 641, of which 397 are probation officers and 75 are supervisors, serves the county. Most officers in Cook County and many other counties around the state carry a caseload of over a hundred clients. The 1991 year-end total number of probationers in Illinois was nearly 143,000, according to the AOIC. Included in that number are 79,800 adult offenders, which is about two and a half times the 30,000 adults in prison. (The remaining offenders include 17,000 juveniles, who are treated under a separate set of guidelines. In addition, there are 46,300 adult and juvenile administrative cases that require monitoring but not face-to-face contact with a probation officer.)

She said jail as an option is just another continuation, unfortunately, of giving people things they don't have to work for

"The numbers are astronomical," says R. Barry Bollensen, director of probation services for the AOIC. Adult cases have increased 25 percent since 1988, and adult felony cases have increased 32 percent, from 31,139 to 41,214. The rise in the number of felons on probation mirrors the rise in the number of felons in prison. According to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, an executive branch agency, at the end of 1991 there were nearly 14 convicted felons on probation in Illinois for every 10 felons in state prison.

"We are sadly short of staff out there to meet the needs," says Bollensen. He says the workload has been growing about 7 percent a year, and the legislature has cut state funding almost 15 percent over the last two years. Some people have been laid off and some vacancies are not being filled, he says. "We have a workload need of about 400 officers out there," says Bollensen. "So we're having to take some shortcuts with the minimum cases — and often they just don't get seen at all — and concentrating on the maximum and the serious medium cases."

Understaffing and increased caseloads are not only a large county problem. Lyn Lanter, chief probation officer for Montgomery County, says her department's caseload is over 400 and their three officers see 250 clients per month. Richard Vandenboom, chief probation officer for Saline County, says that even though total numbers of people on probation differ widely from county to county he believes that per capita the percentage of clients is similar statewide. He says his department serves a caseload of 500 clients (75 of whom are juveniles) in a county of 28,000 population.

Lanter says the difference serving a smaller county or area is that the officers must be all things to all people. Unlike larger counties that have officers specialized in drug offenses, intensive supervision, home confinement, electronic monitoring, pre-sentence reporting, etc., she and her two officers are not specialized. "We all do everything," she says.

Funding probation is a "mixed bag" in Illinois due to the way probation has evolved in the state over the last century. Probation departments are operated by the circuit courts, with general oversight of the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, and are funded primarily by the counties. In 1991, the state financed 33 percent of all probation expenditures in Illinois. State funds to reimburse counties for salaries of some probation personnel, grants-in-aid and juvenile detention centers funnel through the Supreme Court budget. Chief Justice Benjamin K. Miller says that 19 percent of the Supreme Court's budget is dedicated to probation reimbursement. If the legislature agrees to the $193 million Supreme Court budget proposed for fiscal year 1994, probation would receive about $37 million. "That would bring those three line-items up to 91.8 percent of the funding that is promised by statute," says Miller. "That figure basically restores [probation reimbursement] to the fiscal year 1991 level of funding."

According to the Criminal Justice Institute, a private corrections data gathering group in New York, Illinois is one of 15 states with judiciary-controlled probation departments. The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority reports that there are 74 probation departments administering adult probation in the state, 15 of which cover more than one county. Of those multicounty departments, six are circuitwide departments and the remainder are district departments covering two or more counties. Jim Grundel,

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associate director of the AOIC, says that even though the system is not comprehensive or uniform statewide, which often results in piecemeal delivery of services, it has its advantages in tough economic times. In the last two years, he says, counties have had to "fill the gap" left by state cutbacks.

Cook County probation innovation: Narcotics Night Court One innovation in the court system that determines whether a lawbreaker goes to jail or to probation is Cook County's Evening Narcotics Court. Instituted in 1989 to respond to the high volume of felony drug cases in the county, night court begins sessions at 4:00 p.m. with eight judges assigned to hear cases. Since the inception of Evening Narcotics Court, Cook County's adult probation department has handled more than 16,000 probation cases and conducted more than 1,900 presentence and pretrial investigations. During 1992 the department received from the night court 4,323 new probation cases and completed 737 presentence and pretrial investigations. On permanent night court assignment to respond to the court's orders is a staff of 37 — 32 probation officers, four supervisors and one deputy chief — working from 12:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., rotating one week in court and one week in the office. Cook County's night court is one attempt to countermand the costs ascribed to rising rates of drug crimes. A 1990 survey by the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts found that 23 percent of offenders sentenced to probation in Illinois were charged with a drug offense. The numbers go even higher when crimes related to drugs — theft, murder, etc. — are counted. In 1990 there were 47,242 arrests for drug offenses in Illinois, 33,234 in Chicago alone, according to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. Beverley Scobell

"The Community Corrections Act of 1986 specifies certain programs that each circuit court should have available through its county probation departments," says Michael Rohan, president of the Illinois Probation and Court Services Association. "Unfortunately, probation and court services have remained consistently underfunded and have been unable to implement those programs." Bollensen agrees. "If we get all the money we're asking for in our budget this year, ... we'll still not even begin to address the workload needs." Rohan believes state under-funding causes the system to lose credibility at the local level. "Judges and other criminal justice professionals begin to believe that community corrections cannot provide adequate supervision for offenders," Rohan says, "when, in fact, the problem is that there are simply not enough probation officers to handle the number of offenders." Is probation an effective form of punishment? "The public, at least those not well informed to what probation is," says Bollensen, "tend to think that probation is getting off easy, a slap on the wrist. In truth, that's really not the case." He says the Department of Correction's statistics show that 53 percent of all releasees from prison served less than a year of time, whereas the average felony probation sentence is 30 months. Most probation sentences carry with them requirements for substance abuse treatment, employment, community service, continuing education or a combination of sanctions. Under intensive probation supervision (IPS), probationers may be required to wear electronic monitoring devices, be confined to their homes or submit to random urinalysis for drug testing. The intensity of the supervision is geared to the severity of the crime. The effectiveness could be improved, probation experts agree, if clients could be moved up or down a "continuum" of sanctions without having to take offenders back to the court everytime their status changed.

Tom Tomlinson, professor of law enforcement at Western Illinois University, says probation is "somewhat" effective as a system. "There is less recidivism [repeated offenses] out of probation. ... Part of that is because [the offenders] get more help on probation in terms of adjustment to the community."

"Community service is one of the best programs we have," says Cook County's Nancy Martin. "The fact that it's caught on as an issue and as a sentencing option is good because we are able to take people who have committed crimes, when the judge has mandated a community service sentence, and have them contribute their efforts to a variety of agencies or not-for-profit groups and have them pay back something to society." According to the AOIC, in 1991 a total of more than 1.85 million hours of community service were performed by probationers. Calculated at the minimum wage of $4.25 per hour, that free labor was worth approximately $8.1 million to nonprofit organizations. Martin says the free labor not only benefits groups, but it also helps probationers understand they have wronged society. In addition, for the chronic unemployed it is not a bad idea to have them learn what it means to hold a job. "Community service placements have led to employment," she says. "We have good success stories."

Tom Roberts, chief adult probation officer in Sangamon County, has also seen community service benefit both the community and the probationer. He reports a recent success story of three probationers who were assigned to a local hospital and were subsequently hired, two full time and one part time.

According to the AOIC, almost 70 percent of adult probationers exiting probation in 1991 were successful discharges, meaning they completed their full term of probation. Of the remaining 30 percent only 2,309 adult probation cases, of the more than 116,000 active and administrative adult probation cases, were revoked and sentenced to the Illinois Department of Corrections. Those who do not successfully complete probation often are charged by prosecutors with new offenses and given more probation time by judges rather than have their original probation order revoked.

Probationers also are often required by the court to pay

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restitution to their victims. During 1991, over $8.6 million in restitution was collected from adult offenders. Courts can also order adult offenders to pay a fee of up $25 a month to help cover the cost of their supervision. The fees, deposited in a special fund in the county collecting them, can only be used for operating costs, such as equipment purchases; they cannot be used for salaries. In 1991, according to the Illinois Criminal Justice Authority, counties collected $2.2 million through these probation services fees, or about 2 percent of the probation departments' total expenditures.

Many law enforcement officers tend to be ambivalent about probation. Robert E. Nall, sheriff of Adams County and board member for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority and on the advisory board for the Illinois Department of Corrections, explains that when police officers hear that someone they have arrested has been sentenced to probation rather than prison, their reaction is often one of anger or resentment toward the system. "The officers often have dealt with that person many times in the past," says Nall, "and feel they have already given him or her second, third and fourth chances. By the time they arrest [him or her], they don't think the offender deserves any more second chances."

Prosecuting attorneys tend to feel the same way unless the sentence is for intensive probation supervision. "I am strongly in favor of all kinds of suggestions made by the commission [Governor's Task Force on Crime and Corrections] about more intense supervision of people on probation," says Cook County State's Atty. Jack O'Malley.

The Illinois Intensive Probation Supervision Program (IPS) was established by statute in 1984 to try to address the prison overcrowding problem. Only 17 counties in the state currently have IPS as a sentencing option. It is designed to supervise people who would otherwise be sentenced to prison. The Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts says the majority of people sentenced to intensive probation are convicted of a Class 2 felony offense (for example, aggravated criminal sexual abuse, nonresidential theft, manufacture or delivery of controlled substance, computer fraud, etc.). A Class 2 felony conviction carries a sentence of three to seven years in prison, but by law prisoners receive a day off their sentences for every day of "good" time served, making nearly every sentence imposed automatically halved. Intensive supervision requires face-to-face contact with a probation officer as often as five times a week. The cost is $3,600 per client per year.

The total cost comparison between keeping a lawbreaker in prison and keeping him or her on probation figures out at about six to one. In fiscal year 1991, the cost to house, feed, train and provide medical care for 23,941 inmates was $563 million, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. Probation that year for 79,402 offenders cost $100 million, according to the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts.

In addition to the hard numbers, the AOIC contends that the benefits of keeping an offender on probation rather than sending him or her to prison extend beyond the offender. Among the benefits, says Bollensen, are the obvious ones of continued employment, caring for family and remaining a tax-paying constructive member of the community. Among the less obvious benefits are families of offenders that will not be forced onto welfare, employers that do not have to replace a worker and victims that are paid restitution by a working offender. Offenders remain taxpayers instead of taxtakers.

Tomlinson agrees: "With recidivism rates about half of what they are for prison, IPS sort of pays for itself in that these people may not be back, and it is a great deal cheaper than sending these people to prison. ... In the long run it should bring costs down as recidivism rates go down. I would really recommend ... statewide intensive supervision programs. It looks like the best and the cheapest way to go. The state's own experience shows that."

O'Malley disagrees. "It's false to say that we can look at alternatives and that's going to save us money on prisons because those alternatives really are going to apply to people not in prison anyway. So the notion that there's some cost saving there, the exact opposite is true because what we're going to have to do is spend more resources on probation. You can't have all these programs without increasing the resources devoted to probation."

Tomlinson says the effectiveness of probation would increase if there were more officers and/or lower caseloads. He says officers can only keep track of and help so many people at a time. "When the caseload gets overly large, [the officer] is just more of a record keeper," says Tomlinson. Tim Monical, a Sangamon County probation officer, agrees. His caseload runs between 90 and 110 clients. "The paperwork has to be done," he says, "but if there wasn't so much paperwork involved, we could help the clients more."

Frustration is a part of a probation officer's work day — frustration at seeing the potential for helping clients and not having the resources to offer the help, frustration in coping daily with an entire overloaded criminal justice system that makes their job more difficult and frustration at society in general for showing little awareness for a problem many of them see as reaching near unmanageable proportions.

"Prison overcrowding is intimidating the whole system," says Tom Roberts. Nancy Martin agrees. "Jail overcrowding is a symptom of the fact that we have a system that is not working correctly," she says. "If you look at the number of indictments from the grand jury, the number of cases prosecuted by the state's attorney's office, the number of cases public defenders are having to carry, the numbers in probation, or if you look at the number of people screened by pre-trial services, or any of those indicators, you're going to find that every one of those services is being stretched to the maximum."

Sheriff Nall says we have bought ourselves this "gigantic monster" through stiff laws, increased penalities, stiffer prosecution, stiffer sentences, and we have to admit that we created it. Nall says, "Now John Q. Public, taxpayer, everybody involved is strapped with the problem." 

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