Shouldn't we give them one more chance, readers?
I mean, they do such good work.
"An agency where patronage is job one; The state Probation Department once set the standard for the nation in rehabilitating criminals. But nine years ago the Legislature freed it from meaningful oversight, and the results were predictable: budgets soared, and the welcome mat was out for hundreds of job seekers with political juice" by Globe Staff | May 23, 2010
.... After 12 years in charge, Jack O’Brien has transformed the Probation Department from a national pioneer of better ways to rehabilitate criminals into an organization that functions more like a private employment agency for the well connected, the Spotlight Team has found.
O’Brien’s agency now employs at least 250 friends, relatives, and financial backers of politicians and top court officials, the Spotlight review found, including children of US Representative William D. Delahunt, former mayor Raymond L. Flynn of Boston, and former Senate president William M. Bulger. The agency has also hired House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo’s godson, who, at 28, is now the youngest chief probation officer in Massachusetts.
O’Brien has taken care of friends, too, finding jobs for the children of his Boston College football teammate, for a friend who ran a fur shop, for a former plasterer friendly with Cahill, and promoting two probation officers who moonlight as bartenders at a Northampton pizza joint frequented by one of his top deputies. Along the way, O’Brien’s family has also benefited....
No legislator has reaped greater benefit from the pattern of hiring than state Representative Thomas M. Petrolati, the third-ranking House member who is regarded by many members of the Western Massachusetts legislative delegation as the “king of patronage’’ in courthouses west of Worcester. Under O’Brien, the Probation Department has provided jobs for Petrolati’s wife, a former staffer, the husband of his legislative aide, and literally dozens of Springfield-area residents who have donated money to Petrolati.
Since 2002, Petrolati has collected twice as much in campaign contributions from probation employees as any other legislator, according to campaign finance records. And O’Brien’s former deputy commissioner, William H. Burke III, planned to help Petrolati raise even more last week as master of ceremonies at his annual fund-raiser....
"O’Brien rise and reign defined by tenacity" by Thomas Farragher, Globe Staff | May 24, 2010
The contempt-of-court dust-up offers a window into the insular, sharp-elbowed world of the state’s probation commissioner, the man who, as the Globe’s Spotlight Team reported yesterday, presides over an agency whose payroll is thick with patronage hires, whose sloppy financial controls make it vulnerable to employee theft, and where political contributions by employees often appear tied to career advancement.
Probation Commissioner Jack O’Brien does not want to talk about much of this. He declined the Globe’s request to discuss his career, his management philosophy, and a growing chorus of criticism about his department.
If he is by choice mostly silent, others are willing to fill out the picture. O’Brien is, by all accounts, a man of force and ambition and not inconsiderable achievement, a man who takes things personally and knows how to keep score.
Oh, great, just what we need around here.
This year, when Governor Deval Patrick sought to take control of O’Brien’s empire, proposing to move the probation agency from the judiciary into the executive branch, O’Brien let it be known that he considered the initiative a wounding personal affront....
“O’Brien is one of these guys [for whom] everything is personal,’’ said Robert F. Kumor Jr., the recently retired first justice of the Springfield District Court. “It’s like his own power fight.’’
*******
An insurgent Thomas M. Finneran, who had watched the O’Briens grow up from his home in St. Gregory’s Parish in Dorchester, was elected speaker in 1996, outflanking then-majority leader Richard A. Voke by collecting the support of every House Republican. When longtime Probation Commissioner Donald Cochran retired a year later, O’Brien was tapped to succeed him, a much lower-profile but equally surprising turn of events.
The consensus insiders’ choice was Ronald P. Corbett Jr., a longtime and respected probation professional with sterling credentials. He was a deputy probation commissioner and a Harvard graduate. He held a doctorate in education and was a former president of the National Association of Probation Executives. The year the commissioner’s job opened up, the national association named Corbett its probation executive of the year.
But O’Brien had something more important: John J. Irwin Jr.'s unwavering support and Finneran’s friendship.
“Everyone was scratching their head because Ron Corbett was eminently qualified,’’ recalled R. Peter Anderson, a retired district court judge.....
That's why it's called Massachushitts here.
Finneran acknowledged that in 2001 when the Legislature stripped judges of the authority to hire probation officers and gave it to O’Brien, a seminal moment in his tenure as commissioner, Finneran helped shepherd that legislation, which consolidated O’Brien’s power.
Finneran said he was motivated to make the change in part after watching the trial court squander millions of dollars on a new computer system that he described as a debacle for which no one could be held accountable. He wanted someone in charge.
“He’ll stand up and take responsibility,’’ Finneran said, explaining his move to dramatically strengthen O’Brien’s hand. “I do think he was probably more politically attentive than a judge would have been.’’
Indeed, many judicial critics of the Probation Department’s hiring and promotion system under O’Brien say he is politically attentive in the extreme. As the Globe reported yesterday, O’Brien’s agency has hired or promoted at least 250 friends, relatives, and financial backers of politicians and top court officials.
After Kumor, the former Springfield chief justice, joined with another jurist to ask the Supreme Judicial Court to return control over probation hiring to judges, he bumped into O’Brien at a sporting event at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Kumor recalled that the commissioner made it clear that he took the judge’s legal challenge personally. He was not interested in the underlying legal niceties about separation of powers, Kumor said....
Isn't that GREAT, Massachusetts?
A PROBATION COMMISSIONER who DOESN'T GIVE a DAMN about the LAW!
If the challenge from Kumor irked O’Brien, his contempt-of-court showdown in Judge R. Peter Anderson’s Brighton courtroom in the spring of 2002 infuriated him.
And in the boiling back-and-forth that ensued, O’Brien made clear that he would brook no challenge to his control of his department....
“I have never in my 11 years as a judge ever had any other court official respond in the manner in which the commissioner has responded,’’ Anderson said, according to the transcript. “It is a shocking and very sad state of affairs.’’
Six days later in Brighton District Court, it was clear the two sides could not find common ground. Anderson said he had issued a lawful order O’Brien must obey. O’Brien, represented by James Arguin, an assistant attorney general, said he would run the Probation Department, not Anderson.
Arguin conceded that if he wished, O’Brien could comply with the court order and have the drug testing done, as the judge had ordered, by the Office of Community Corrections.
“He does not believe your honor has the lawful authority to tell him how to allocate his resources,’’ Arguin said.
Anderson had had enough.
“Today, when I put to him directly this opportunity to comply, he has refused again,’’ the judge said, before motioning to a court officer. “And pursuant to all the evidence before me, I find that he is in contempt of this court. Mr. Crowley, I ask you to put the commissioner into custody.’’
In an interview, Anderson said he took no pleasure in ordering the probation commissioner into the courtroom’s dock. “But I had never seen anything of this level of mendacity,’’ he said.
A lawsuit O’Brien later brought against Anderson was dismissed. But the commissioner sued the trial court, too.
The state’s chief administrative judge, Robert A. Mulligan, rebuffed O’Brien’s demand for a $300,000 settlement, but the probation chief did receive $20,000 to settle the case, a payment that continues to mystify Anderson, who wonders about the trial court’s motive.
“He had no law on his side,’’ Anderson said. “I never got any sense of why they made that decision.’’
O’Brien isn’t talking.
He declined the Globe’s request for an in-person interview for this report. He would not be photographed or tape-recorded.
When asked why he would not answer personal questions, his spokeswoman intercepted the question for her boss.
“He’s not interested in profiles,’’ she said.
O’Brien began his 13th year as probation commissioner in January, the same month the governor proposed to take control of his department. To say the Legislature, where O’Brien’s network thrives, has greeted the proposed change dismissively is an understatement.
O’Brien did not even bother to show up for a hearing on the proposal before the Judiciary Committee, at which not a single legislator asked a question.
Now that is ARROGANCE!
The day before, when the Joint Ways and Means Committee examined the measure at an otherwise sleepy hearing in Sturbridge, the lawmaker chairing the session seemed to go out of his way to make sure that the governor was not mounting a personal attack on O’Brien....
--more--""Calls to overhaul probation agency; Patrick, Baker press for AG investigation" by Thomas Farragher, Globe Staff | May 24, 2010
Governor Deval Patrick and his Republican challenger, Charles D. Baker, called yesterday for a sweeping overhaul in the management of the state’s Probation Department and asked the attorney general’s office to open an investigation into an agency awash in patronage jobs and hamstrung by poor financial oversight.
There were indications that Probation Commissioner John J. O’Brien might have exhausted the patience of his judicial branch bosses.
Baker said O’Brien should be fired and called on Attorney General Martha Coakley to look into the connection of political donations to hiring and promotion decisions at the Probation Department.
“Enough is enough,’’ Baker said. “This has to end.’’
Patrick called for an independent review by Coakley after a Globe Spotlight Team report yesterday detailed O’Brien’s leadership of a department in which political connections and contributions can be keys to advancement and where poor financial supervision has left the agency that handles $70 million in cash a year vulnerable to theft....
Baker called on his rivals in the governor’s race to join him in calling for O’Brien’s dismissal.
State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, who is running as an independent, instead blasted Baker’s campaign for trying “to politicize issues for their own benefit without having a full understanding of the matters at hand.’’
Cahill has received substantial contributions from Probation Department employees. O’Brien’s wife and one of his daughters work for Cahill.
“Rather than villainizing one individual without having a full understanding of the situation, perhaps we should try to fix the root case,’’ Cahill said in a statement.
What a scummy embarrassment for a treasurer.
See: The Collapse of the Cahill Campaign
A spokesman for Patrick would not say flatly that the governor wants O’Brien to be fired. But he said the plan the governor issued in January to remove the Probation Department from the judicial branch of government and place it under the Executive Office of Public Safety would allow him to make that decision.
“The way we run our probation department has to change, and it has to change now,’’ the governor said in a statement he issued to the Globe last week. “This is an area of state government that has been untouched for far too long, and we can’t wait any longer to fix it.’’
Patrick’s proposal has been ignored, so far, by the Legislature, and never made it out of committee in the House. Senate budget deliberations are ongoing.
Patrick and Baker found rare common ground on the need to restructure the probation agency. But politics intervened there, too....
Baker said he was particularly troubled by the Spotlight Team’s description of a “pay to play’’ mentality in the probation agency in which ambitious employees, qualified or not, make campaign contributions to key politicians in hopes of advancing their career.
“We’re talking about the supervision and monitoring and oversight of people convicted of crimes,’’ Baker said in a telephone interview. “This is heavy-duty stuff. It needs to operate without a whiff of all this back-scratching and deal-making....’’
Baker said he supports a proposal advanced by his running mate, Senate minority leader Richard R. Tisei, to return control of Probation Department hiring to judges in the trial court, a system that had been in place before the Legislature gave O’Brien that power in 2001.
Cahill said he would support that, too....
Will someone kick that lying SoB off the bandwagon?
Probation Commissioner John J. O’Brien was stripped of his duties yesterday as the state’s highest court appointed a special counsel to conduct a “prompt and thorough’’ investigation into the state agency.
The Supreme Judicial Court named Paul F. Ware Jr., a senior Boston trial counsel with broad experience investigating alleged public corruption, as independent counsel, granted him subpoena power, and asked him to finish his probe of the Probation Department within 90 days. Ware, who will have the power to collect testimony under oath, declined to say whether crimes may have been committed....
O’Brien’s suspension, with pay, was announced a day after the Globe Spotlight Team detailed his tenure at a probation agency that is pervaded with patronage jobs, in which political contributions are often associated with advancement, and where lax financial oversight has left the department vulnerable to theft.
“We are deeply concerned with not only the proper administration of the Probation Department, but with how such reports may affect the public’s perception of the integrity of all aspects of the judicial branch,’’ Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall and Judge Robert A. Mulligan, the trial court’s chief justice for administration and management, said in a joint statement.
“The reporting by the Globe Spotlight Team requires a full, prompt, and independent inquiry,’’ the judges said.
Mulligan said he met with O’Brien in the judge’s office opposite Government Center early yesterday to deliver the news.
“I met with him and told him what I was doing,’’ Mulligan said.
O’Brien told the Associated Press yesterday that he was disappointed with the court’s decision. He said every one of his appointments has to be approved by Mulligan, who also has to approve that the hiring process had been followed correctly.
“They talk about a rogue agency,’’ O’Brien said. “I answer to the chief justice [Mulligan]. I don’t know what anybody means by rogue agency.’’
O’Brien will receive his $130,000 annual salary while under investigation, because the allegations are unproven....
The news of O’Brien’s suspension ricocheted across the judicial landscape yesterday, lighting up phone lines in courthouses across the state....
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“The problems within the Probation Department run far and run deep, and it shouldn’t have taken a news story for Beacon Hill to wake up to the well-chronicled crisis there,’’ Baker said in a statement. “The leaders on Beacon Hill must immediately come together to reform the system by placing the department’s purview under the courts,’’ as proposed in a budget amendment by Baker’s running mate, Senate minority leader Richard R. Tisei....
Cahill, the state treasurer, said he knows O’Brien, a fellow Quincy resident, but said politics played no role in his decision to hire O’Brien’s wife and daughter. He said he was unaware that several dozen probation employees donated to his campaign in the summer of 2005, weeks before O’Brien’s wife was hired by the Massachusetts State Lottery, which Cahill oversees....
Isn't it SO NICE that your STATE TREASURER is a BRAZEN LIAR, Massachusetts?
Cahill also said patronage is to some extent a part of politics....
And THAT is why we HATE POLITICS NOW!
When government officials in Massachusetts need an outside lawyer to clean up a mess, many speed-dial the phone number of Paul F. Ware Jr.
In the past nine years, the senior partner at the Boston law firm of Goodwin Procter has been tapped to investigate alleged misconduct by Superior Court Judge Maria I. Lopez and to prosecute companies responsible for the ceiling collapse in a Big Dig tunnel that killed a Jamaica Plain woman.
In the early 1990s, Lawrence E. Walsh, independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, picked Ware to prosecute Duane Clarridge, a former CIA official accused of perjury in connection with a secret shipment of missiles to Iran....
Far down the AmeriKan memory hole, folks.
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"Senators propose probation regulations; Judge would get limited controls" by Michael Levenson, Globe Staff | May 26, 2010
The proposal, unveiled yesterday by Cynthia Stone Creem, a Newton Democrat who cochairs the Judiciary Committee, is the first legislative response to a Globe Spotlight Team report, published Sunday, that outlined a pattern of patronage hiring and lax spending controls at the Probation Department. It currently is not subject to oversight by the governor and operates with minimal oversight by the judiciary....
The plan would create a task force to study whether long-term control of the Probation Department should be returned to the judiciary, as favored by the state’s judges, or to the executive branch, as favored by Governor Deval Patrick. The task force would be chaired by Attorney General Martha Coakley and would be charged with issuing its findings by Oct. 1....
More WHEEL-SPINNING!
The plan does not have the support of House leaders....
Then it i$ going nowhere and we all know why.
Representative Eugene L. O’Flaherty, House chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the House frowns on making major policy changes through budget amendments.
Since when?
O’Flaherty, echoing statements made Monday by House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, also said the House does not want to make any changes to the Probation Department until a special counsel, Paul F. Ware Jr., completes his 90-day review of the department. Ware was appointed Monday to conduct the review.
O’Flaherty, a Chelsea Democrat, also questioned whether the paid suspension of O’Brien, which was also announced Monday, is legal.
“I’m curious, as a lawyer, how, based on a news story based on allegations that political people, quote-unquote, were given jobs, warrants the removal of the commissioner,’’ he said.
“If this legislation and the various provisions are filed because of what was in the Spotlight series, I would say to you I don’t think that is a good idea,’’ he said. “I think we should wait and find out what, if any, recommendations there are, before we start rushing around and bumping into each other looking for legislative solutions. I think it’s sort of putting the cart before the horse.’’
So how much campaign loot is the Probation Department kicking back to you, Gene?
***********
The chief justice for administration and management, Robert A. Mulligan, said “It’s essential that probation remain in the judicial branch, where it has been for 130 years, to maintain the vital relationship between the judge and probation officer, as they make important decisions about which defendants require incarceration and which defendants are appropriate for supervision within the community.’’
O’Flaherty, however, said the Legislature should retain a prominent role in overseeing the department. “The Legislature is accountable via the electoral process, and the judiciary is not, so when it comes to issues of fiscal accountability and being responsible for the people’s dollar, the Legislature is closest to the people,’’ O’Flaherty said.
Then WHY are you WASTING SO MUCH of it and STUFFING YOUR POCKETS with it?
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Related: State Government On Probation
See The Massachusetts State Budget and related links within to see where the money is coming from and going, dear readers.
"Patrick vetoes effort to protect suspended probation commissioner; At issue: a limit on terms he can serve" by Kyle Cheney, State House News Service | July 2, 2010
A legislative plan to protect embattled and suspended probation commissioner John O’Brien from term limits drew a veto from Governor Deval Patrick on Wednesday, despite concerns among lawmakers that applying term limits retroactively could be illegal.
“I am vetoing this section because any commissioner of probation should be held accountable by a periodic term of years, rather than a life appointment,’’ Patrick wrote in a message to lawmakers.
In the annual state budget, lawmakers had approved a five-year term limit for probation commissioners, but on the advice of counsel decided against imposing that term limit on O’Brien, said Senator Cynthia Creem, Democrat of Newton, who sponsored a slew of amendments to the Probation Department in the wake of a recent patronage scandal....
Creem also bristled at lawmakers’ unwillingness to grant senior court officials total authority to move funds among judicial agencies.
Lawmakers instead limited their “transferability’’ to 5 percent of their total budgets.
Creem was one of two Democrats to vote against the state budget, citing her disappointment in the revisions to her probation proposals.
A spokesman for House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo deferred questions to Charles Murphy, the House Ways and Means chairman.
An aide to Murphy cited the “give and take’’ of conference committees as the reason the probation amendments turned out the way they did....
Yup, the probation department gives campaign loot and the lootislators take it.
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Related: Massachusetts Justice: Plenty of Money For Prisons
Legislature Checkmates Courts in Massachusetts
Nothing like liberal fascism, folks.
"A legacy of lax oversight and dubious claims; The troubles at the state Probation Department go way beyond patronage. Key programs have gone astray, with bloated budgets and indifferent management; caseload reports are wildly exaggerated; and a culture of secrecy has enveloped it all.
The prosecutor’s report is chilling: A convicted rapist — just out of prison and still on probation — forced his way into a Framingham woman’s home and tormented her for more than two hours in February, repeatedly raping her, then forcing her to bring him beer and drive him to an ATM.
All the while, an electronic device on William D. French’s ankle was sending a signal to the Probation Department’s 24-hour monitoring centers in Boston and Clinton, where six staff members could track his every movement on their computer screens. The device couldn’t tell them what French was allegedly doing, but even when he triggered an alarm by cutting off the bracelet, probation employees didn’t call police. Instead, they faxed an arrest warrant containing no information about French’s location.
It took another three hours before the victim, bloodied after yet another assault, escaped from her captor and screamed until a neighbor notified police.
Why do we need government again?
Ankle bracelets were supposed to make Massachusetts safer, at least that’s what Probation Commissioner John J. “Jack’’ O’Brien and his legislative allies argued as they built one of the biggest, most expensive monitoring systems in the country.
“We are extremely proud of the heightened public safety which has resulted from the implementation of these electronic monitoring programs,’’ O’Brien declared in December, adding that the monitors save the state millions by allowing people to remain free rather than in a cell.
But, like much of O’Brien’s work during his 12-year tenure at the Probation Department, his claim for the benefits of electronic monitoring collides with the facts. The program, in fact, is an emblem for the many ways the department has been mismanaged under O’Brien, the Spotlight Team has found.
If electronic monitoring hadn’t been available, French might have been jailed two days before the alleged assault when he violated probation by testing positive for marijuana. But probation persuaded a judge to let him remain free if he wore a bracelet....
Any claim that electronic surveillance saves money is undercut by the fact that probation has hired more employees to provide the service — 59 — than any other state, a Spotlight Team survey shows. Many of them are politically connected job holders, including the godson of House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and the wife of DeLeo’s deputy, State Representative Thomas M. Petrolati.
Yeah, $ome folk$ are making $ome money off it, though!
O’Brien’s Probation Department is relentlessly focused on creating jobs and filling them with his preferred candidates, but he doesn’t take routine steps to make sure programs are worthwhile and money is spent wisely. His department significantly exaggerates its workload, giving legislative allies ammunition to increase his budget.
Which can then be kicked back in the form of campaign contributions.
Who are the CRIMINALS again?
Meanwhile, the $19.5 million network of rehabilitation centers that is his signature initiative at the Probation Department is regarded as an empty shell by many of the judges and others who are expected to send troubled offenders to them.
In short, the agency has gone from one of the most respected in the nation to one whose practices mystify and chagrin many national probation specialists....
I am EMBARRASSED to IVE HERE!
This state SUCKS!
During its investigation, the Spotlight Team found no shortage of hard-working probation staff members who do vital, often unheralded work and want to do the right thing. But the department’s best are up against a culture of cronyism and exaggerated claims that casts doubt on how probation performs its most basic functions.
That IS Massachusetts!
For example:
The Probation Department overstates its reported workload — perhaps by a factor of four, the Spotlight review found, creating the false impression in statistics published nationally that Massachusetts has one of the busiest probation departments in the country....
Government create a false impression?
Nooooooooooooo....
The Probation Department’s penchant for secrecy about its operations has seriously undermined efforts by everyone from judges to county sheriffs to coordinate oversight of hundreds of thousands of men and women in the state court and prison systems.
When public safety leaders — judges, prosecutors, police, and community activists — gather to chart strategy, discuss common goals, or exchange information, the Probation Department, they say, is usually represented by an empty chair at the table.
“I have no idea what he looks like,’’ said Lael Chester, executive director of Citizens for Juvenile Justice, a statewide advocacy group, referring to O’Brien....
Under O’Brien, the Probation Department now releases less information about its work than almost any other state’s probation agency, based on federal statistics. Its annual statistical report is confined to a single page....
I'm so proud of my smug, self-righteous, PoS state!
Probation’s dubious workload claims have political implications, too, giving legislators justification to dole out more money to the department at a time when crime rates are stagnant.
You have been RIPPED OFF, Mass. taxpayers -- and imagine when these PROBATION THIEVES start COLLECTING PENSIONS and the like!
The Legislature has overridden gubernatorial vetoes of probation budgets nine times since 2000, often portraying the department as overworked and understaffed....
In the pocket of probation and we all know why!
"Evidence of insider job deals at agency; Probation chief may have swayed hirings" by Scott Allen and Thomas Farragher, Globe Staff | July 26, 2010
The independent counsel investigating the Massachusetts Probation Department has found strong evidence that suspended commissioner John J. O’Brien manipulated his agency’s hiring and promotion process to advance applicants with insider support, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
Isn't that the way one gets any job?
:-(
O’Brien, suspended from his job in May after the Spotlight Team reported that he had hired or promoted at least 250 politically connected job seekers, routinely sent his subordinates lists of his preferred candidates for probation jobs from the Berkshires to Cape Cod, the investigating attorney, Paul F. Ware, has found....
The Spotlight Team found that, under O’Brien, the agency hired scores of friends and relatives of O’Brien’s inner circle, including his daughter, the daughter of his deputy commissioner, and the nephew of the judge who appointed O’Brien as commissioner. The agency also hired family members of top politicians, including the son of former Boston mayor Raymond L. Flynn, the godson of Massachusetts House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, and the wife of a top DeLeo deputy, Representative Thomas M. Petrolati.
O’Brien, in an interview with the Spotlight Team before his suspension, denied any favoritism in probation hiring decisions, insisting that the department has an open and elaborate process intended to hire “the appropriate candidate, not just for probation in general, but for the particular court.’’
*************
It’s not illegal for relatives of politicians and probation officials to hold jobs in the Probation Department, but, if probation managers systematically steered jobs to less-qualified but politically connected candidates, it could violate state conflict of interest law, according to several legal experts. In addition, state law and Massachusetts court policy prohibits the direct hiring of either a blood relative or the blood relative of a spouse....
--more--""Report says probation’s flaws may prove costly" by Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff | July 27, 2010
The Massachusetts Probation Department’s culture of secrecy, failure to evaluate its own performance, and indifference to the best methods of reforming criminals have wasted scarce public funds and compromised public safety, according to a new study to be released today.
If public safety agencies — primarily probation — do not do a better job of keeping offenders from returning to the state’s overcrowded prisons, Massachusetts will need to spend $550 million to build new jails and $45 million every year to run them, according to the Boston Foundation report....
I wonder who i$ going to get tho$e contract$!
The Spotlight Team reported Sunday that the Probation Department’s electronic monitoring program has more employees than any other state and that its $19.5 million statewide network of rehabilitation centers is increasingly shunned by judges and county sheriffs who considers its performance lackluster. In May, the Globe reported that the department has hired at least 250 relatives, friends, and financial supporters of politicians or court officials....
With strong support from state legislators, Probation Department spending skyrocketed 163 percent from 1998 to 2008, according to a previous Boston Foundation report. Other public safety agencies’ budgets grew by no more than 20 percent. But those figures don’t capture the taxpayer money lost when the agency fails to help troubled lawbreakers change their ways — leading them back to jail....
The new report says that several states have been able to close prisons or shelve construction plans by making the kinds of moves the foundation recommends in Massachusetts, including intense data analysis, staff training, and programs that can change the way criminals think....
We keep voting and they still act the same way!!
"SJC backs judge on probation hirings; He rejected applicant on nepotism grounds" by Scott Allen, Globe Staff | August 31, 2010
The Supreme Judicial Court yesterday upheld the power of the state’s top administrative judge to enforce fair hiring policies at the troubled Probation Department, ruling that he was “well within his discretion’’ to reject an applicant who already had six family members working for the court system.
Chief Justice for Administration and Management Robert A. Mulligan’s power over the Probation Department, an agency within the court system, has been in question since 2001, when the Legislature gave most hiring and firing power to Probation Commissioner John J. O’Brien.
Since then, Mulligan has questioned the fairness of O’Brien’s hiring decisions, but has rarely reversed them, even when O’Brien hired his own daughter. However, Mulligan literally said “enough is enough’’ after he learned about the probation job offered to Stephen P. Anzalone Jr., son of O’Brien’s former Boston College football teammate.
In a unanimous decision, the state’s highest court ruled that Mulligan had the authority to rescind the job offer to Anzalone, whose father, sister, and two cousins already work at the probation agency, while two other relatives work in court security....
Anzalone’s lawyer, Kevin G. Powers, portrayed his client as a victim of politics following a Spotlight Team story describing a pattern of favoritism in hiring and promotion at the Probation Department, which has more than 2,000 employees. Mulligan put O’Brien on paid administrative leave from his $130,304 post on May 24, the day after the Globe reported that at least 250 friends, relatives, and backers of politicians and court officials are on the Probation Department’s payroll....
Retired Springfield District Court Judge Robert F. Kumor Jr., who unsuccessfully sued to reverse the 2001 law change, said yesterday:
“When the Legislature made that run in 2001 for purely the worst and most petty reasons, they attacked the integrity of the whole system. Now, we’re just trying to gradually get it back.’’
Jack Alicandro, who for six years was president of the union representing probation officers before retiring last year, said special treatment for people with political or family connections has become rampant in the Probation Department. But most employees do not complain openly, for fear it will damage chances of promotion, he said.
Yeah, NO ONE can SPEAK the TRUTH in AmeriKa!!
“They are afraid of retaliation,’’ said Alicandro, former president of Local 229 of the National Association of Government Employees. “O’Brien lives by the old Irish adage: ‘I don’t get mad. I get even.’ ’’
Oh, that's a great guy to be in charge of probation!
And the new addition is you get AHEAD!
Time to work the road crew, readers?
"Indifference, indolence on work crews; Supervision lacking, some staffers report" by Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff | July 25, 2010
Halfway through the four-hour community service shift on a raw, drizzling morning, the dozen probationers had done only 45 minutes of work, indifferently collecting trash with long pickup tools along a highway exit ramp.
Suddenly, their state supervisor introduced a sense of urgency. It was time for a midmorning break....
Community service vans, ubiquitous along Massachusetts highways, are supposed to beautify the Commonwealth while teaching criminals work skills and the satisfaction of a job well done. At least that’s what the brochure claims....
But according to several community service staff members and the Globe’s close observation of crews led by two supervisors, the $4.2 million program frequently offers little more than lightly supervised make-work — and some days, not even much of that....
The mood was something like an after-school detention session that the class cut-ups didn’t particularly mind. Some dozed. A middle-aged man bragged about how cushy his prison stint was....
Some worked diligently, others less so. A young woman just wandered around. One guy made cracks about condom wrappers and pocketed a prescription pill bottle he found on the ground....
I guess this detail is done.
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