More Felons Going Free on Probation : Punishment: Crowded prisons and courts lead to a dramatic rise in number of criminals back on streets.

Hailed as the safest urban area in the West, Ventura County is known as a place where justice is tough and felons land in prison.

Less known is that county judges in recent years have quietly placed an unusual number of high-risk and violent criminals back on the streets with probation.

Close to eight of every 10 felons in the county now receive probation instead of prison time, about twice as many as five years ago, according to probation officials.

Since 1990, felony probation has increased by 70%, with 3,062 offenders now enjoying supervised freedom. In that same time, juvenile probation has climbed 23%, to 1,537 youths.

As violent crime has skyrocketed across the state, judges have had to find new ways to keep court calendars moving smoothly. The answer in Ventura County has been to dole out more probation, especially to criminals who plead guilty early and spare the county the cost and time of a trial.

Consider these recent cases:

* A 41-year-old man received probation for felony theft despite 35 prior criminal convictions, including a retail holdup in which he brandished a large knife and threatened to slit a clerk’s throat. The man violated his terms of probation five times before finally going to prison.

* A 48-year-old man received probation this year after severely beating his wife, despite a criminal past that included five prior prison stints. He is now back in jail on a series of new felony charges.

* A 24-year-old man received probation for attacking a man with a 2 by 4 after a party. A co-defendant first fired 11 errant gunshots at the victim, then the defendant beat the victim so severely that a bone chip threatened harm to his brain.

Those are only a few of the many signs that standards for probation have dropped, according to probation officials and prosecutors. They say they often find themselves dealing with the same criminals over and over--and consoling new victims.

“We have people on probation who six, seven, eight years ago--no way,” said Larry Dobbs, who runs the unit that handles the most serious adult probation cases. “We have people on probation who are so bad that we don’t make home calls without the police.”

Prosecutors are just as worried.

“We are concerned that we have started down a path that ultimately is going to lead to a situation that’s comparable to Los Angeles,” Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee said.

Judges say nothing significant has changed. They acknowledge that more felons get probation these days. But they argue that violent offenders are not among them.

Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr., boss of the felony bench, attributes the rise in probation to more felony charges against drug addicts, shoplifters and other nonviolent offenders.

“People who commit robberies or violent assaults,” Campbell said, “they are all going to prison.”

‘Say No to Drugs’

One reforming drug addict with a violent past knows well that he could be in prison.

His real name is Jimmy Shankles, but he goes by Tiny. He is 38, stands 6-foot-5 and weighs more than 300 pounds. He appears gentle, particularly now, recovering from hernia surgery and in a drug rehabilitation program.

But for years he has been sergeant-at-arms of the local Hell’s Angels. He boasted that he has harassed, provoked and assaulted police officers. His latest crime, the one that landed him on intensive probation with the most high-risk offenders: He was busted with 57 grams of methamphetamine in his boot.

Shankles now wears a “Say No To Drugs” baseball cap over his long, blond hair. He also praises his probation officer and the judge who put him on probation.

“This is in lieu of prison, and I don’t want to go to prison,” said Shankles, standing in the courtyard at the Khepera House anti-drug program.

His probation officer is a street-hardened former Ventura cop named Dennis Nicholson, who considers it a success if three of 10 probationers don’t get back in trouble.

“We’re kind of like baseball players. If you bat .300 with these people, you’re doing well,” said Nicholson, who speaks sternly but softly.

“Right now,” Nicholson said, looking at Shankles, “Jimmy has got a future.”

But Nicholson knows that all probationers, no matter how bad their crimes, have futures only when they are in a supervised setting. It’s when they are out on their own, with no one hovering over them, that they commit crimes and victimize family, friends and strangers alike.

With his partner, Gina Alcala Johnson, in the passenger seat one recent morning, Nicholson wheeled a county probation van around the streets of Oxnard, Santa Paula and Ventura, visiting the homes of one serious offender after another.

The pair visited a young man convicted of weapons charges, a sex offense and drunk driving. Nicholson said the probationer is smart but doesn’t like to work. He would rather stay home and do drugs.

They visited Cesar Nunez, a 48-year-old recovering junkie, who stole people blind to cover his $300-a-day habit. Nunez, now in the Victory House religion-based drug program, professed to be over his bad days.

“When people hit the bottom, they change,” he said, as others read Scriptures about 50 yards away.

Nicholson does not know what to make of Nunez’s future.

“Will Cesar make it? Right now he’s had 4 1/2 months in a program. He’s tested clean. But what will happen when Cesar comes out in the real world?”

That is the key question with all drug-addicted offenders. “I would like to see Cesar make it,” Nicholson said. “But as a probation officer I’m realistic.”

Johnson is 27 and a four-year probation veteran. She considers her job adventurous. Although she deals with the county’s worst offenders, she takes solace in the fact that she has to work with only 55 of them. Some officers with less serious cases have up to 1,000 probationers.

Perhaps the worst part of a probation officer’s job is seeing the havoc crime wreaks on the lives of children, especially the sons and daughters of habitual criminals. Such children begin to consider it normal for probation officers to raid their houses. One boy said that when he got big, he wanted Nicholson to be his probation officer.

At an apartment house off Ventura Avenue, two small boys played in the yard while probation officers searched their house. Their mother was a probationer who had already turned in one dirty drug test. Now, she handed over a bag of hypodermic needles and syringes as her boys stared in amazement.

As bad as the scene was, Nicholson said, things get much worse.

“These boys are not that bad off,” the officer insisted, eyeing the two sandy-haired tykes. “They’re well-fed, they have toys and they have a mother who loves them.”

The System Failed

The county probation department has seen darker days of its own. Just having enough workers to handle cases was a challenge until last year, when a public safety initiative allowed the director of the county Corrections Services Agency to hire 50 new employees.

“In a way, we retreated to our offices,” agency Director Frank C. Woodson said. “Our caseloads were going up. We couldn’t afford to allow officers to be out in the field like they should be. We said, ‘If you are on probation, come in and see me once a month.’ We would ask if they were doing OK. But how do we know if we are not out there checking?”

It was during those days that James Linkenauger of Moorpark killed his 40-year-old wife.

He had beaten her many times before: He blackened her eyes, twisted her arms and punched her face. After one of those incidents, he was put on a form of probation called diversion. All he had to do was go to some meetings and express remorse, and he was scot-free. He never admitted doing anything wrong, but was let off anyway. Five months later, he beat and strangled his wife.

“In JoAnn Linkenauger’s case, it was quite obvious that while this guy was successfully completing this program, he was beating the hell out of her,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew J. Hardy, who won a first-degree murder conviction against the husband.

Hardy said the only purpose served by probation programs such as diversion is to keep judges from becoming overwhelmed.

“It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with protecting victims or rehabilitating defendants,” Hardy argued. “That’s why she’s dead.”

In every criminal case, the main consideration in awarding probation is whether the person is a danger to the community, said Judge Campbell. Although some offenders commit new and serious crimes, most small-time felons would not benefit from a prison stay, he said.

Campbell also noted that, while he appreciates input from probation officers and prosecutors on sentencing, it is ultimately up to the judge to decide who gets prison and who gets probation.

A Mother Watches

The line between the two fates--confinement or supervised freedom--can be easy to cross.

About 10 a.m. on a recent Thursday, juvenile Probation Officers Inese Teteris and Tim Cratch were pounding on the door of a hard-core gang member’s home in Oxnard’s La Colonia district.

The suspect was 18 but still on juvenile probation because he was underage when he was convicted of committing a violent crime.

After about five minutes, the sleepy-eyed, shirtless teen-ager answered the door. He gave a phony name and refused to produce any identification. He also told Teteris where she could put her handcuffs.

He kept stalking the inside of the small brown-stuccoed house, refusing the officers’ orders to sit down. A 15-year probation veteran, Teteris knew it was time to radio for Oxnard police. Within minutes, two motorcycle officers rolled up and arrested the surly youth.

Sitting handcuffed by the curb, waiting for his ride to Juvenile Hall, the heavily tattooed probationer began teasing Teteris.

“Hey, Inese,” he called derisively. “You know I could have run.”

Motioning toward Cratch, a 6-foot-2, 235-pound bodybuilder, Teteris rejoined: “Yeah. But then you would have had to deal with him.”

She found bullets in the teen-ager’s room and asked if he was trying to earn his way to the California Youth Authority’s juvenile prison.

“Just make sure you come see me every two weeks, and bring cookies,” was his carefree response.

His mother stood by watching, never speaking, even as her delinquent son gave the false name. She has three other teen-age sons on probation, too.

Impact on Children

Before the morning was over, Teteris and Cratch, a 25-year-old officer who had been on the job only five months, would arrest one other juvenile and gather a urine sample from another.

Cratch--a Simi Valley product and, like so many other officers, a Cal State Northridge graduate--wanted to be a probation officer because he thought he could have an impact on young lives. He comes from a family of police officers, but says, “I never wanted to be a cop. I don’t think you can do much from that end. I wanted to be in the preventive and recovery end.”

Teteris has worked east and west, and finds the tough youngsters of Oxnard to be honest and open about their problems.

In more affluent east county areas such as Thousand Oaks, middle-class parents are in denial about some of the troubles their sons and daughters have, she said. Still, none of it has dampened her enthusiasm for the job.

“I’ve worked with kids for 15 years, but I’ve never gotten tired of it,” she said. “In fact, it’s kind of fun. You can have such an impact.”

An impact is what she was trying to have on the life of an Oxnard youth named Jorge. He was sitting in his room when she appeared and hauled him off in a pair of handcuffs for testing positive for drugs.

Driving up Oxnard Boulevard with the handcuffed youth in the back of the car, Teteris struck up a conversation, telling the boy she would try to place him in drug rehabilitation.

“You knew this was coming, huh?” she said of the arrest.

Jorge, a slight youth with dark hair and an overbite, grinned sheepishly and sighed.

“Oh, yeah.”

Director Woodson said he worries about the tougher breed of criminal being placed on probation. But he said the agency is getting the resources to deal with its most pressing issues, thanks to the half-cent sales tax for public safety passed in 1993.

Probation officers are staying on top of the most serious offenders, Woodson said, hauling them off to court at the first sign of trouble.

Besides monitoring the high-risk offenders, the department’s priorities include better gang intervention and juvenile rehabilitation programs, Woodson said.

But perhaps most crucial, he said, is avoiding the type of snafu in domestic-violence counseling that led to the death of JoAnn Linkenauger.

“What was happening, essentially, is [wife beaters] were going to group therapy, and some of those men were hiding, in essence. They weren’t being forced to talk about their cases. They went every week, but they didn’t say much. Now we say no longer is that good enough,” Woodson said.

Woodson acknowledges that probation in the county has changed. One difference, he said, is that people on probation are being held more accountable for the misery they have caused the community.

Another is that more of the rapidly growing pool of probationers are violent and potentially dangerous. Where probation officers once went into the field armed with only a pad and pen, now they wear badges, carry handcuffs, talk on two-way radios and are training to use pepper spray. Guns, most probation workers agree, might not be far off.

“They’ve become more like policemen than the social workers they’re supposed to be,” complained veteran criminal defense lawyer James M. Farley, who said he did not know of any effort by probation workers to find jobs for their charges.

‘Now, they carry handcuffs. That’s police work.”

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Felony, Juvenile Probation in County

1990 1995 % increase Adult felons on probation 1,802 3,062 70% Juveniles on probation 1,254 1,537 23%

Source: Ventura County Corrections Services Agency