System Overflows With a Flood of Probationers : Corrections: The goal of rehabilitation has been scrapped. The new mission is to protect the community.

There are 90,000 adults in Los Angeles County who have been convicted of various crimes and are on active, formal probation. They are supposed to be supervised by probation officers.

Nearly three-quarters are not.

There are 16,400 adults on probation who, by court orders, are supposed to be periodically tested for illegal drugs.

Nearly half are not.

The numbers speak volumes about the present state of Los Angeles County’s Probation Department--the tail end of local criminal justice.

Faced with limited resources and a burgeoning caseload, the 1,200-member Probation Department has adopted one shortcut after another while struggling to protect the community from criminals who have been released to the streets.

Most people who are granted probation in Los Angeles County never report to a probation officer, but instead are instructed to mail in postcards to the department each month.

Hundreds of other criminals who are supposed to be more closely supervised spend only a few minutes at best each month with their probation officers.

“Probation should be harassment, a force to be dealt with by the criminal,” says Richard Shumsky, a probation officer and local union president. “Anymore in Los Angeles, it is not.”

By definition, probation is a formal agreement through which convicted criminals can avoid prison by complying with certain rules and regulations. By design, it is “prison without walls,” where criminals remain free but are kept in line by hawk-eyed probation officers.

But in Los Angeles County, which boasts the nation’s largest probation department, probation has deteriorated to little more than a hollow concept.

“We don’t do probation anymore,” said Mary Ridgeway, a probation officer for 23 years. “We don’t have the time.”

With the number of people released on probation skyrocketing, administrators in 1985 scrapped their traditional goal of rehabilitating criminals and adopted a new mission: “to protect the community.” Probation officers were directed to recommend heavy sentences for convicted criminals and to aggressively enforce rules of behavior governing those granted probation.

In practice, many probation officers say, the get-tough strategy has proved unworkable.

One reason, they say, is that there are hardly enough officers to keep close tabs on the hundreds of criminals released on probation every month in Los Angeles.

Moreover, officers say that with overcrowded jails and jammed court dockets, judges often are hesitant to lock up people for dodging drug tests, failing to make restitution or committing other so-called “technical” violations of probation.

Consequently, probation officers routinely do not bother asking the courts to revoke someone’s probation until several violations have occurred.

“It tends to foster an attitude among probation officers of ‘Why should I do anything if the courts aren’t going to do anything?’ ” said Sandra Summe, who heads the department’s narcotics testing program. “With no sanctions for misconduct, we have, in effect, promoted a big, stupid game.”

Most probation officers are assigned one of two primary functions: supervision or investigation.

Investigators prepare reports on felony defendants who are to be sentenced in Superior Court. In these state-required reports, probation officers recommend to judges whether people should be granted probation or sent to jail or prison. Similar but less comprehensive reports on misdemeanor defendants also are prepared when requested by Municipal Court judges.

In studying more than 1,800 Superior Court cases throughout Los Angeles County, The Times found that probation officers recommended that defendants be denied probation and sent to state prison 52% of the time. Yet in 25% of those instances, judges granted defendants probation on condition that they first go to County Jail--where inmates serve far less time than in state prison.

Historically, a person granted probation had to report regularly to a probation officer--part cop, part social worker--who made sure that his “client” stayed in school, got a job or otherwise stayed out of trouble.

“We used to do some pretty damn good, heavy-duty work back then,” said Summe, who joined the Probation Department in 1965. “We could pick up people and walk them right into court before they could start victimizing. Not anymore.”

Ten years ago, when the department’s staff was cut in half after passage of Proposition 13, there were about 41,000 adults on probation in Los Angeles.

There are now more than 90,000 adults on probation--two-thirds of them convicted of felonies--and many of them literally have no probation officer.

Instead, the majority are instructed to mail in monthly postcards to let the department know where they are. Their names are placed in a computer, known as the “automated bank.” The probation officers who monitor the computer each keep track of about 2,000 names to see who has been arrested for a new crime and who is not sending in the postcards or not paying court-ordered fines.

Only about 500 adult probationers were monitored by computer in 1981. By the end of this month, 65,000 will be “supervised” through computer and postcards, according to probation officials.

“I don’t feel real good about that,” said Barry J. Nidorf, the county’s chief probation officer, “but we know what they are doing. We are doing the job.”

Several officers, however, said that the Probation Department frequently has no idea how to locate probationers whose cases have been computerized because many do not mail in their postcards. In any given month, about 40% fail to send in the cards, according to Robert Polakow, the department’s director of program services.

Nidorf said only probationers who pose “the lowest risk” are supervised by computer. But officers say that there is no way to predict how “low-risk “ probationers will behave--with or without direct supervision.

According to several probation officers, Raymond Navarro Jr., 26, was supervised by computer after he pleaded guilty in January, 1988, to beating his wife and was granted 24 months’ probation.

In August, 1989, Navarro allegedly murdered his estranged wife, Maria, and three other women during a birthday party in East Los Angeles. Two others survived after Navarro allegedly shot them.

The case drew considerable attention at the time because Maria Navarro had called the 911 emergency line as Navarro was en route to her house, but was told by a dispatcher to call back when her husband arrived.

Navarro has pleaded not guilty to the killings and is awaiting trial.

Carol Koelle, a ranking probation administrator, said she could not confirm whether Navarro’s case was put on the automated computer bank.

“But I can tell you it wouldn’t have made any difference,” Koelle said. “The rest of supervision is quite minimal anyway.”

Others in the department agreed that given their caseloads, there is little to suggest that the outcome in the Navarro case would have been any different had he been subject to what passes in most cases for active supervision.

“There is no longer the staff in probation to do meaningful surveillance,” said Shumsky, the president of the probation officers’ union. “And without surveillance, the eyes and ears of the courts have been deafened and blinded.”

Of 577 supervisory probation officers recently surveyed by The Times, 59% said that given their workloads, they never leave their offices to check up on the people they are supposed to be supervising.

Workloads among probation departments in other cities also have ballooned over the last decade. A study released this year by the National Assn. of Criminal Justice Planners in Washington found that between 1981 and 1987, the number of adults on probation throughout the United States grew 81%, while the number of those in prison climbed 52%.

But while probation officers in other cities have their hands full, none have assumed the level of probation work in Los Angeles, where nearly 60% of all felony sentences today result in defendants being granted supervised probation. In New York City, the ratio is half that, according to the study.

Federal parole agents typically supervise about 35 felony parolees, U.S. Justice Department officials say. Parole agents of the California Department of Corrections, on average, keep track of about 50 convicted felons.

In Los Angeles County, probation officers commonly are expected to supervise 200 or more convicted felons, many of whom could have been declared ineligible for probation but were granted it anyway.

Deputy Probation Officer Mark Cutler has been assigned about 330 of more than 27,000 adults classified as “high risk” by the Probation Department. They include convicted murderers, rapists and robbers.

Cutler said he considers himself fortunate if he can spend more than 10 minutes a month with any of them. He is hoping that by year’s end, with more probationers being supervised by computer, his caseload will drop to about 200--an improvement, he acknowledged, but hardly a solution.

“Ludicrous” is how he describes his mission.

To guarantee true supervision of other high-risk felons, particularly child molesters and violent gang members, a handful of probation officers have been assigned relatively small caseloads, ranging from 50 to 70.

But probation officers say that the staff is too small to give specialized supervision to every member of these high-risk groups.

“At best, we can take only about 3,500 gang members,” says Mary Ridgeway, who is among 50 probation officers with specialized gang caseloads. “The problem is that there are three times that many gang members on probation, which means that many of them end up on the (computer) bank.”

Selectivity also determines which probationers in Los Angeles County are tested for drugs.

About 16,400 adults are supposed to be tested regularly under terms of their court-approved probations. Only about 9,000 are. Administrators say that they cannot afford to commit more than the 100 probation officers currently assigned to drug testing units without disrupting other probation functions.

Two years ago, to decide who should be tested and who should not, administrators began dividing probationers into five categories.

Those placed in the highest-priority category are regularly tested for drugs. They include burglars, child molesters, and people convicted of weapons charges--anyone who is perceived as a threat to public safety.

Those in the lowest-priority categories--including nonviolent drug dealers and prostitutes--are almost never tested.

“It’s fish or cut bait,” said Summe, the drug testing director. “We can’t test them all so it comes down to the question of who do you want in your neighborhood--the rapist or the drug dealer?”

Summe and others in the Probation Department complain that even when probationers are found to have traces of narcotics in their urine or commit other probation violations, judges rarely are willing to take punitive action until a pattern of misbehavior can be documented.

As a result, officers in most cases wait for three violations before seeking to have the courts issue an arrest warrant--a process that can take months.

By then, a probation violator may be all but impossible to track down, according to sheriff’s Lt. William Seiber, whose Fugitive Warrant Detail is responsible for serving Los Angeles County Superior Court bench warrants.

Last year, Seiber said, more than 20,000 bench warrants were issued, most for probation violations and failure to appear in court. Only about 1,600--fewer than one in 12--resulted in arrests.

So swamped are his 12 deputies, Seiber said, that they rarely have time to do more than knock on the door of a probation violator’s last known residence. If the violator is not there, and there is no known forwarding address, the deputies usually shelve the warrant and go on to the next one.

“It’s purely a numbers game,” Seiber said. “You could spend two or three days looking for one person, but by the time you got back, you’d have 50 or 60 or 70 new warrants sitting on your desk. The regrettable truth is that the numbers of people involved in criminal conduct are simply overwhelming the resources we have to dedicate to them.”

His squad, Seiber acknowledged, often is 60 days behind in serving warrants, which even further diminishes the chances of locating probation violators who frequently change residences to avoid arrest.

Even when warrants are issued and probation violators are arrested, the penalties imposed by judges often appear to have little deterrent value, court records show.

Jennie Marie Valenzuela, 32, for example, was convicted in 1985 of attempted murder after shooting her live-in boyfriend five times with a .22-caliber revolver as he slept, records show. The man had beaten her, she told police.

Valenzuela was given a year in jail and placed on probation by Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan, who ordered her to submit to narcotics testing and not use drugs.

Within four months of being released, Valenzuela had deserted probation and a bench warrant was issued for her arrest. When she surrendered in August, 1987, she was six months pregnant.

It was while in jail that Valenzuela in November, 1987, gave birth. The baby girl, addicted to crack cocaine, was taken from Valenzuela and eventually placed in a foster home.

“The defendant is not viewed as a suitable candidate for reinstatement on formal probation supervision . . . ,” a probation officer wrote Judge Tynan. “There is no indication that she would cooperate more fully in the future.”

Tynan, however, reinstated Valenzuela’s probation in February, 1988, and ordered her to attend a live-in drug treatment program. Within months, she had disappeared, and yet another bench warrant was issued in September of that year, records show.

“She has gone from program to program and is simply loose on the streets without supervision,” another probation officer wrote Tynan a day after the warrant was issued. “The defendant appears to be under the impression that she can just talk to the judge whenever she is confronted about complying (with) the conditions of her probation. . . . This defendant is not suitable for probation. . . .”

Valenzuela gave birth prematurely to another baby in March, 1989, this time a boy. She admitted to doctors that she had smoked crack “on and off” while pregnant and was again living with Arnold F. Hooks, the man she had shot in 1985.

The second infant also was placed in the care of county officials and Valenzuela was sent to jail. She was transferred to a mental hospital, where she was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. A psychiatrist reported that Valenzuela complained of “auditory hallucinations, specifically hearing the devil talk to her.”

By January, 1990, after nine months in custody, she was deemed mentally competent and Tynan reinstated her probation. She was ordered to report to the USC Medical Psychiatric Clinic, to take antipsychotic medications and not see Hooks.

Once again, she vanished. Tynan issued yet another bench warrant in April.

The Times located Jenny Valenzuela weeks later in a run-down duplex near County-USC Medical Center, where she was living with Hooks. She refused to be interviewed.

Her father and stepmother, who live in Vacaville, said they hoped their daughter would be sent to prison or anywhere that she might be forced to shake her addiction.

“It may sound cold and hard,” said Geraldine Valenzuela, “but if it means getting her off the drugs. . . . Who knows what could happen to her or somebody else with her out on the streets.”

Jennie Valenzuela voluntarily appeared before Tynan yet again in October and acknowledged that she was living with Hooks, a clear violation of the terms of her probation.

After reviewing a probation report which showed that Valenzuela had recently begun attending an anti-drug program, Tynan revoked her probation, then reinstated it in the same breath. He also removed the provision barring Valenzuela from living with Hooks.

On Tuesday, Valenzuela returned yet again to court. Rambling and distraught, she was deemed by Tynan to be mentally incompetent and committed indefinitely to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County.

“I have taken chances with this woman,” Tynan said, “because the total business of our business is not always to punish people, but to retrieve them. I think she is deserving of a chance to rehabilitate herself.”

California law requires that county probation departments prepare a comprehensive report on each defendant who faces sentencing on a felony. The reports, which examine a defendant’s criminal and personal history, help judges decide who is worthy of probation and who should go to prison.

By state statute, such pre-sentence reports must be presented to the judge within 28 days of a defendant’s conviction. But two years ago, probation officials in Los Angeles proposed something innovative.

Today, in about 80% of all felony cases filed downtown in Superior Court, probation officers submit “pre-plea” reports--prepared even before defendants have gone to trial. And instead of 28 days, probation officers have only 14 days to interview defendants, investigate their backgrounds, dictate the reports and have them transcribed.

Nowhere else in California are probation officers under such a tight deadline.

The intent, probation administrators say, was to help reduce jail overcrowding by expediting the vast majority of cases that are plea-bargained. By having a probation report ready in advance, administrators theorized, a defendant could be sentenced on the very day he decided to change his plea to guilty.

Officials say that there is no question the program has hastened many sentencings and helped reduce the jail’s population.

But probation officers say that the program also has proved to be a boon to criminals.

Given their deadlines and the number of reports they must produce each week--usually four to six--many probation officers say that they often lack the time to fully investigate a defendant’s background.

As a consequence, they say, judges can impose relatively light jail sentences and grant probation in cases where they may know little, if anything, of a defendant’s true criminal past.

In the survey taken by The Times, 221 investigative probation officers were asked how often the 14-day program allows them to gather all available records and confirm the criminal backgrounds of defendants.

Only 5% said they are “always” able to confirm the information; about 40% said they were able to check “most of the time,” while another 40% or so said they are able to confirm only “sometimes.” Five percent said they never have time to confirm any information.

Standard procedure also requires that when preparing a report to the court, a probation officer interview and include comments from the investigating police officers in the case. However, The Times found in 87% of the cases it studied that probation officers never spoke to the police. Probation officers commonly complained of leaving telephone messages with the Police Department and never having calls returned.

The Probation Department’s own inadequate filing system also contributes to the problem of sketchy reports, because files frequently are misplaced or lost outright, probation officers say.

Probation officials, in fact, were able to locate only 750 of the 1,250 files requested for a national study of probation departments by the National Assn. of Criminal Justice Planners, according to Mark Cunnis, the executive director.

Los Angeles County’s Probation Department is “kind of behind” probation agencies in other large cities in terms of technology and modernization, Cunnis said. Only recently has the department begun to computerize its records.

With limited storage space, the department also has begun throwing away all files more than 5 years old. Instead of relying on previous reports, probation officers must often start from scratch--and on deadline--while researching a defendant’s criminal past.

The 14-day deadline presents additional problems when probation officers in Los Angeles request records from the California Department of Justice in Sacramento.

Authorities there maintain comprehensive criminal information files on 9.5 million people, about 3.2 million of them available on computer, said Michelle Dille, manager of the Justice Department’s command center. When a probation officer requests information on a file that has not been “automated,” Dille said, it can sometimes take days to locate, copy and mail it.

According to probation officers in Los Angeles, the process sometimes takes weeks--and by then, the 14-day deadline has passed.

“The judge can always delay sentencing if he feels that he doesn’t have sufficient information on the person’s background,” said Probation Officer Thomas W. Aiken, “but they never do.”

As a last resort, probation officers can go to local law enforcement agencies to get criminal background information about defendants. But many say that they never bother unless the defendants have been accused of particularly serious crimes.

“Quite frankly, I don’t bust my ass anymore for these nickel-and-dime-type cases,” said Arvis Bruveris, a probation officer for 15 years and an investigator for nine. “Why bother? The way this . . . system works, the guy’s going to walk anyway.”

The Times Poll: Probation System

A majority of probation officers in Los Angeles County say that they never leave their offices to check up on convicted criminals who have been released on probation. And 42% say that they see their “clients” in their offices less than once a week.

Nevertheless, slightly more than half of probation officers surveyed by The Los Angeles Times Poll rated as “good” the level of supervision given probationers in Los Angeles County today.

Another 28% rated probation supervision as “adequate” and 16% rated it as “poor.”

Most adults released today on formal probation in Los Angeles County--two-thirds of whom are convicted felons--are not actively supervised. Rather, their names are placed in a computer and they are monitored by postcards that they are instructed to mail each month to the Probation Department.

Most of 798 probation officers surveyed expressed “some” faith in their department’s ability to prevent recidivism among convicted criminals and thus protect the community. But of the total, 29% said flatly that given the Probation Department’s present resources and caseload, they have no confidence in its mission.

In fact, most probation officers surveyed said they believe that even if criminals were more closely supervised, only “occasionally” could officers deter them from breaking the law again.

Given current caseloads, how would you describe the level of supervision given probationers today?

Good: 54%

Adequate: 28 Poor: 16 Not Sure: 1 Refused: 1 How often do you leave your office and conduct field checks of probationers?

Never: 59%

At Least Once a Week: 21 At Least Once a Month: 7 Less Than Once a Month: 10 Not Sure: 1 Refused: 1 Given the Probation Department’s present resources and caseload, how confident are you that it can protect the community and prevent recidivism among criminals?

Somewhat Confident: 68%

No Confidence: 29 Not Sure: 3 How often do you speak on the telephone to probationers whom you are assigned to supervise?

Never: 42%

At Least Once a Week: 19 At Least Once a Month: 21 Less Than Once a Month: 14 Not Sure: 2 Refused: 2 If criminals on probation were more closely supervised, how often could they be deterred from committing new crimes?

Occasionally: 81%

Rarely: 14 Not Sure: 5 How often do you see probationers assigned to you?

At Least Once a Week: 57%

Less Than Once a Week: 42 Source: Los Angeles Times Poll

The Two Types of Probation

The Los Angeles County Probation Department is responsible for supervising convicted criminals who are placed on probation. Judges have discretion to grant two types of probation, but the degree of supervision varies:

FORMAL PROBATION

There are about 90,000 adults on formal or supervised probation, and about two-thirds of them have been convicted of felonies.

Approximately 25,000 are supervised by direct contact with probation officers, including office visits and phone calls, ranging from several times a day to once a month or less.

About 65,000 others are supervised through an automated computer “bank.” They have no direct contact with probation officers and are required only to mail in postcards once a month to let the Probation Department know where they are living and what they are doing.

INFORMAL PROBATION

An unknown number of people convicted of felonies or misdemeanors are on informal or “summary” probation without direct supervision. But, should they violate the terms or conditions of their probation, they must answer to the judge who sentenced them.

If probation is violated, probationers are subject to incarceration.

Computerized research for this series was designed and execueted by Richard O’ Reilly, Timesdirector of computer analysis.