‘On Probation’ in L.A. Can Also Mean ‘On Your Own’

Linda McCoy stood outside a run-down house with torn screens and a hole kicked into the front door. The teen-aged girl who lived there had not been at school for two days, and it was McCoy’s job to find out why.

The place was quiet, but McCoy, a veteran Los Angeles County Probation Department officer assigned to South Los Angeles to target problem students, kept knocking. Finally, an older woman answered. She knew nothing of the teen-ager’s whereabouts.

“I took her to . . . school this whole week,” the woman said.

“Well, she’s not there,” McCoy said, and left with a warning: “I’ll be back.”

McCoy takes the time to check up on the 39 youngsters assigned to her, evaluating their problems and devising the most effective ways to respond. “This is the best probation has to offer,” she says.

Her personal touch is increasingly rare at Los Angeles County Probation, the largest such department in the country. Due to overwhelming caseloads, the regular visits and close supervision thought to be associated with probation work have become a myth in Los Angeles. Like a hospital with too many patients and not enough doctors, county probation officials are choosing among criminals: which will be closely monitored and which will not.

The department has been buffeted by a decade of staff and budget restrictions and increasing numbers of criminals. As a result, the task facing its 3,300 probation deputies is enormous. They must:

* Supervise 90,000 convicted adults, who comprise 80% of those convicted in Los Angeles County. But three-quarters of those are monitored only by computer, by probation officers with caseloads of about 1,000 each. As a result, Chief Probation Officer Barry J. Nidorf said, “Our deputies have, on average, only one hour and 47 minutes per year to devote to each probationer.”

* Conduct court-ordered drug testing of 17,000 narcotics offenders each year, with a department budget that can guarantee testing for only 10,000.

* Research and prepare 92,000 multi-page investigation reports--nearly 1,800 a week--on all adult defendants convicted of misdemeanors or felonies, for use by judges in levying sentences. Another 44,500 reports are prepared on juvenile offenders.

* Supervise 21,000 juveniles on probation, along with the 1,700 in three juvenile halls, including Central, which is the nation’s largest. The halls have been under attack in recent years for overcrowding and allegations of abuse. The recent death of a 16-year-old youth prompted a new investigation.

Some 2,000 juveniles are assigned to 19 county camps, an alternative to probation or incarceration in the California Youth Authority. But due to county budget cuts, the camps are scheduled to close this spring. Their numbers will pose an additional burden on the rest of the system when they are sent home on probation or placed in county or state detention facilities.

As it is in many other cities across the U.S., probation here is the stepchild of the county criminal justice system. “We’ve always been the bottom rung,” Nidorf said, citing statistics over the last decade showing that the county Superior Court budget grew more than 200%, compared with a 10% increase in county probation spending. Sheriff’s and district attorney’s budgets grew about 50%.

At the same time probation’s workload almost doubled. Because of prison overpopulation and the large proportion of cases that are plea-bargained instead of tried in court, Nidorf said, “Local probation has been asked to monitor growing numbers of felons.”

Because of budget cuts that began following the passage of Proposition 13, the department has, in effect, functioned on a triage system, pooling its supervisory resources to track only the most dangerous adults and juveniles.

“The public is not aware of the lack of supervision that goes on for three-fourths of the felons on probation in Los Angeles County,” Nidorf said.

Out of a South Los Angeles office, Probation Officer Patricia Pope-Jordan uses a computer to track what the department calls “high risk” adult offenders, who might be drug users, robbers, or sex criminals. With a caseload of 1,800 such offenders until she was given an assistant in November, she hopes to be able to see each once every six months.

One day, she scheduled 14 people to come in, including one man convicted of exposing himself in a public bathroom, another who had been involved in a $3-million Malibu jewelry theft and several arrested for drug crimes.

Usually, she has only a few minutes to spend with each one, and she often takes the phone off the hook so she can quickly read a case file, try to familiarize herself with “the client,” and check what they have been doing while on probation.

“It’s chaos,” Pope-Jordan admits. “You just do the best you can.”

The effect of such limited supervision concerns many officers.

“The loss of meaningful surveillance leads to more crime,” said Richard Shumsky, a probation officer who heads the officers’ union. “We are close to surrendering to the criminals.”

“It’s a budget-driven situation,” Probation Chief of Staff Walter Kelly said. ‘We don’t supervise. We monitor.”

Without probation supervision, compliance with court orders is largely left up to the criminal, Kelly added. “We have had to put more of the burden on the probationer, in expectation that the probationer will do things that in times past we would have done.”

Typically, probation officials become aware of violations when police inform the department that a criminal has been rearrested, or when a probationer’s family or associates call to complain. Then, probation officials notify the court.

The department’s best efforts are aimed at the juveniles. Youngsters under 18 are much more likely to find a probation officer checking on them at school, visiting their homes or counseling them.

In East Los Angeles, probation officer Mary Ridgeway drives the streets most nights, checking whether the 50 kids on her caseload who have court-ordered curfews are actually home, or hanging out with fellow gang members.

As a gang specialist, Ridgeway actually performs the role probation officers are traditionally known for. She is the eyes and ears of the court, supervising those convicted of crime but not incarcerated. She provides, by her constant presence, the threat of detention when people step out of line. But she also helps them find jobs or counseling if they want to turn their lives around.

One night, she suddenly jammed on her brakes at the Pico-Aliso housing project, which is home to eight gangs. “Jimmy, get in the car!” she yelled to a teen-ager in baggy pants, standing on a sidewalk where there had been gang shooting the night before.

“I told you not to be there,” Ridgeway scolded the hapless teen-ager as he slouched in the back seat.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” grumbled the 13-year-old gang member, on probation for a shooting. Ridgeway did not believe him, and quickly drove him home. She chastised him the whole way, but as she marched him up the sidewalk to his family’s apartment, she placed one arm around his shoulders. “He’s not really that bad a kid,” she said later.

The efforts by McCoy and Ridgeway are aimed at preventing juvenile problems from becoming adult problems, Nidorf said: “Whatever resources we have, if we don’t use them to address the front end--and juvenile, to me, is the front end--then it’s just a vicious treadmill.”

But juvenile programs have felt the impact of past budget constraints. Gang prevention programs, for which the department is best known, were eliminated in 1981. Nidorf is convinced this has played a role in gang problems that have mushroomed over the decade.

For the same budgetary reasons, the department also had to veer away from adult counseling or rehabilitation efforts. “Our primary responsibility is to enforce the court’s orders,” Nidorf said.