Editorial: Supervisors still haven’t completed Probation

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is on the verge of naming a new chief probation officer, and we’re holding our breath. Too many of the people who have filled the position over the last two decades lacked a coherent vision for the department, failed to give the job their full attention, never intended to stay, wouldn’t or couldn’t curb bad behavior by their deputies, didn’t work well with the Board of Supervisors, or some combination of the above.

Hope springs eternal, and it could be different this time. As the supervisors conducted interviews earlier this month, the names of finalists were reported by the website WitnessLA, and they include candidates with varied and impressive credentials.

The chief probation officer may be the most important department leader appointed by the supervisors, and this hiring decision may therefore be the board’s most consequential. Whoever fills the post will take charge of programs that will determine whether juveniles who have had brushes with the law will get the guidance and support they need to straighten out or will instead careen down a destructive path of crime and failure. The new appointee will also play a key role in carrying out state criminal justice reforms that assign adult felons to county jails and former inmates to probation officers instead of parole agents.

Probation has been such a vexing problem for the supervisors for so long precisely because they have never figured out the appropriate relationship between themselves and the department chief, nor have they been able to determine the proper role of the 15-member Probation Commission.

The board has had a sketchy and at times nonexistent relationship with the commission, at turns heeding and ignoring the input of the members it appointed. Frustrated, commission members have occasionally gone rogue, taking their critiques of the department to the public. Should they not? Are probation commissioners responsible to the supervisors who appointed them, to the clientele the department supervises, or to the public? Who works for whom?

The supervisors acknowledge that roles are not always clear, and in February they called for a study. An Oversight Commission Working Group launched a series of hearings to take testimony from more than 20 agencies and experts with something to say about their oversight roles. The hearings are still going on and are slated to continue well into October.

Also in February, the supervisors called for a separate study to review the department’s many challenges, including inadequate data expertise, problems with its workforce, spotty fiscal controls and difficulties in its relationship with community-based contractors. That review, too, is still in progress.

The supervisors have their own vision of the department, embodied on the juvenile side in an “L.A. model” of individual care and closely monitored outcomes rather than punishment, and they have invested millions in remodeling a youth camp into a campus that will accommodate and enhance that approach. It’s the right one.

Yet they remain dogged by a reality in which probation officers are caught on camera abusing their young wards, and many employees have offered, at best, a lukewarm embrace of the new model. And on the adult side of the operation, criminal justice reforms have given the department increasing responsibilities but not always resources to match.

Befuddled by the many problems that beset the department, the board has a quandary: Should it hire, as quickly as possible, a talented chief probation officer to right the ship while answering the many questions they have posed? Or should they answer those questions first, and turn over the department to a leader ready to implement their vision?

It has taken so long to identify and vet candidates for the position that now only a few weeks remain until voters select two new supervisors and the various studies are due to be completed. If they believe they have among their five finalists someone with a magic touch — someone who can answer all the oversight questions and put the department on the right track — then it makes sense to go ahead with an appointment. Otherwise, they ought to complete their various studies and allow the new board, with its new members in place after the election, to pick the new chief.

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