Savage: Hire more
probation officers

By Tom Waring
Times Staff Writer

In the ongoing debate about the rising violent crime rate in Philadelphia, the most popular suggestion is to hire more police officers.
City Councilman Dan Savage (D-7th dist.) agrees that more officers would help curb gun violence and drug activity.
Savage, though, thinks there’s an equally important solution to the problem. He wants to bolster the ranks of the Philadelphia Adult Probation and Parole Department.
Statistics show that individuals on probation are prone to commit more crimes. In 2006, of the 235 homicides that resulted in arrests, 51 of the suspects were on probation. Almost one-quarter of those arrested for shootings were on probation.
Savage believes that, because of prison overcrowding, probationary sentences will be imposed more frequently.
"The first step towards improving the situation is increasing the number of Philadelphia APPD officers," he said in an opening statement last week at a hearing of Council’s Committee on Public Safety.
Savage, who was elected in November to replace convicted felon Rick Mariano, offered a resolution on Dec. 7 that led to the Feb. 13 hearing. The resolution calls for a "substantial" increase in probation and parole officers.
Right now, there are about 280 officers.
"The least that we need is a hundred more," the councilman said. "The more probation officers you have, the more supervision and the bigger impact there is on reducing crime."
Probation and parole officers are responsible for providing investigation reports, mental health evaluations and any other information necessary to the judicial decision-making process.
The department supervises about 40,000 offenders and 50,000 cases on an ongoing basis.
Mayor John Street will give his budget address on Thursday, Feb. 22, and Savage plans to press his call for more probation and parole officers during budget hearings and negotiations.
In his opinion, probationers can benefit by the human touch of an officer who can help them get into school, find a job or obtain treatment for substance abuse problems.
"The officers are a liaison to social services and can give them the resources to be successful in society," he said.
Savage, who will face Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Marnie Aument-Loughrey in the May 15 primary, was pleased that the experts testifying at the hearing seemed to back his resolution.
Among those testifying were District Attorney Lynne Abraham; Common Pleas Court President Judge C. Darnell Jones II; Robert Malvestuto, the city’s chief probation and parole officer; Lawrence Sherman, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerry Lee Center of Criminology; Denise Clayton, director of the city’s Youth Violence Reduction Partnership; Harriet Spencer, director of prisoner re-entry services for the city; Alphonso Albright, of the New York City Department of Probation; Bob Zimmerman, president of District Council 47 Local 810, the probation officers union; and Ed Schwartz, a former city councilman and director of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values.
Malvestuto testified that additional officers could be used to strengthen the Strategic Anti-Violence Unit, which handles the highest-risk cases.
Jones, who is running for a seat on Pennsylvania Supreme Court, thinks the city needs an individualized probation supervisory plan. That can happen with more probation officers.
"The lower the probation officer-to-probationer ratio, the more predictable a successful outcome," he said.
Sherman said Philadelphia should recruit people living in other states who want to accept the challenge of preventing homicides, luring them with tuition reimbursement at city institutions offering a master’s degree in criminology or criminal justice.
The city should invest in 150 more officers by 2008, he believes, and a total of 500 new officers by the next five years.
If the increase in probation officers does not yield a drop in serious crime, the staffing levels could be decreased. If crime declined so much that there was less work for the department, the staff could be reduced by attrition.
"Perhaps there could be no better goal for APPD officers than to work themselves out of a job," Sherman said. "For the moment, however, there seems little risk of that." ••
Reporter Tom Waring can be reached at 215-354-3034 or twaring@phillynews.com