Probation and Pretrial Services – Annual Report 2021

Location Monitoring Call Center

Probation and pretrial officers use an array of location monitoring technologies, including ankle bracelets, voice-recognition systems, and smartphone-based GPS location applications to manage risk and keep pace with large workloads.

A new location monitoring call center opened in 2021 to handle low-level alerts from the field, allowing officers to focus on more serious events. Call center staff are tasked with investigating and trying to resolve certain low-level alerts before officers are notified. Officers were trained in the new protocols prior to the program being fully implemented in early 2021. As of June 2021, 75 percent of eligible participants were enrolled. Call center staff have successfully reconciled key events, reducing officer notifications and responses. In some cases, they can reduce calls to officers by half, which eases job burnout from excessive work hours and allows officers to focus on supervisees who present higher risks to the community.

Pandemic-Related Measures

As the duration of the pandemic increased, probation and pretrial services offices innovated to replace their face-to-face approaches for supervising people with digital alternatives.

Officers conducted virtual home visits by using video applications, allowing them to check in with people under supervision and to inspect residences with a smartphone camera. In the case of individuals who didn’t own video-capable devices, officers contacted family members and neighbors in order to verify the person’s whereabouts. To further reduce face-to-face interactions, officers used oral swabs and sweat patches to conduct drug testing over a video call or in-person from a distance.

With in-person treatment and counseling services suspended during the pandemic, probation and pretrial offices arranged for treatment service contracts to include telemedicine, so that individuals undergoing treatment for substance abuse and mental health issues could continue their programs while abiding by local stay-at-home orders.

Officers’ Safety and Wellness

In response to reports of increased stress in probation and pretrial services offices from work-life events, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple wellness resources were provided to field offices. Probation and pretrial services officers often work in unsafe environments, late at night, or on weekends and holidays. The AO provided online wellness resources for officers and managers, districtwide guidance for developing wellness programs, and a directory of subject-matter experts. The AO also publishes Wellness Wisdom, a quarterly newsletter that highlights related ideas, activities, and strategies. In February 2021, a virtual wellness conference was held with the theme Coping is Hoping.

Extending Low-Risk Supervision Standards

The Judicial Conference’s Committee on Criminal Law and the AO made changes to the low-risk supervision policy in response to the many challenges faced by the federal probation system, including increasing caseloads and the need to minimize in-person contacts to limit COVID-19 exposure. The federal probation system temporarily increased the number of supervisees placed on low-risk caseloads by approximately 12 percent.

One year after the change went into effect, the AO conducted an analysis to determine whether the policy change affected community safety. A key metric in the evaluation was whether supervisees placed on low-risk supervision engaged in similar or lower levels of criminal behavior than a similarly situated group of supervisees who remained on traditional forms of supervision. Results showed that compared with people on traditional supervision, the new low-risk supervision group needed less intensive supervision (i.e., fewer contacts) and had lower levels of recidivism as measured by rearrests. The results suggested that the new low-risk policy had no negative impact on community safety. The AO continues to monitor the policy.

Automated Case Tracking System

A new Probation and Pretrial Services Automated Case Tracking System (PACTS) will replace the current aging system with a highly configurable and cloud-based system that is more efficient and easier to use, with “sandbox” features for testing and experimentation. Several previews of the new PACTS 360 software were held throughout the year. Initial development was focused on pretrial and presentence investigations, a mobile pretrial interview tool, offense level and drug calculators, and activities management. Capabilities will be added for supervision, clinical services, integration with internal and external partners, and advanced analytics.

PACTS is vital to the work of probation and pretrial services officers. It is their main case management system, used to manage their supervision and investigative efforts. The new version will provide a single database for all case records, from pretrial interview and bail reports to presentence investigation documents, and will also facilitate greater data sharing among offices nationwide.