CRIME PREVENTION
Doing the best they can

Recent publicity about the parole officer in Tacoma highlights the yawning
gap between what citizens of Washington know about how supervision of
offenders works versus what really goes on. Even more importantly, there is
the gap between citizens wanting to be safe in their homes and the reality
of how difficult it is to provide real safety. An entire book could be
written about all the contradictory and often counter-productive changes in
the criminal laws in this state since 1984. As a small example, there are
no longer any "parole" officers in this state. They are now "community
corrections officers (CCOs)."

Our ability to keep offenders from committing new crimes is directly
proportional to the motivation of offenders to stop committing crimes.
There are numberous and varied opportunities to intervene to prevent
certain types of crimes. CCOs are highly trained and dedicated to public
service. Nonetheless, the notion that we CCOs can unerringly prevent all
criminal acts from occurring is a major misconception.

For many years, society has been quite willing to pour ever increasing
dollars into arresting, convicting, and incarcerating low level drug
offenders. We would rather thake money away from health care, education,
repairing bridges, etc. and put that money to punish large numbers of
people for using non-prescription drugs. While the citizens of Washington
are crying out that they are not safe in their homes, we CCOs
are managing large caseloads of relatively harmless drug offenders.

The issues in public safety are very complex. Society will never be safe as
long as we spend most of our money for police and prisons. On the one hand,
we are clogging our system with non-violent, non-threatening drug
offenders. On the other hand, we have done little to remedy the social ills
that are the breeding ground for later cirminal behavior. It is seldon a
single mistake or oversight by a community corrections officer that is the
source of the problem. CCOs do an incredible job considering the almost
impossible task they are thanklessly given to do.

MICHAEL GOLDBERG
Community Corrections Officer II

Everett