Counties push fix for ‘broken’ probation funding system

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Among civic boosters and good government advocates of varying stripes, Minnesota’s low incarceration rate — which is second only to Maine among the 50 states — has long been a point of pride.

To social justice advocates, the distinction represents a welcome exception to the lock-’em-up-throw-away-the-key ethos that has made the U.S. the world’s most prolific jailer. To budget hawks, the virtue lies in the considerable cost savings achieved from the decreased reliance on expensive prisons.

For evidence of the latter, they point to Wisconsin, where, despite similar demographic and cultural characteristics to Minnesota, the prison population is three times as large.

In fact, according to the Minnesota Inter-County Association (MICA), the state’s prison costs would swell by an additional $420 million were Minnesota to incarcerate at Wisconsin’s rate — and that’s without taking into account the expenses of building out all the additional prison space.

Lake Wobegon-esque views about the above average nature of the Minnesota citizenry aside, what explains the difference?

Lawmakers, corrections officials and county officials all point to the state’s emphasis on probation as a cost-effective alternative to incarceration.

But the counties — which handle 84 percent of the total probation load, with the Department of Corrections taking on the remainder — say that success is jeopardized by byzantine funding formulas for probation services, which have forced them to pick up an ever larger share of the tab.

According to the MICA, counties that operate stand-alone probation departments — mainly the larger counties and groups of smaller counties organized under the Community Corrections Act — have received just a 5 percent bump in funding over the past 12 years.

That’s an anemic increase compared to those received by other branches of the criminal justice system. Over the same period, spending on trial courts rose by 116 percent, prisons by 56 percent, and public defenders by 45 percent.

Those counties that handle their own misdemeanor and juvenile probation cases but cede felonies to the Department of Corrections have also felt the squeeze. They now pay an average of 70 percent of probation costs, up from a 50-50 split a decade ago.

Given the numbers, it’s no surprise that an overhaul of probation funding is a top priority for counties heading into the session.

“We know that our probation system is extremely effective. But you need to have the right client-to-probation officer ratio for it to work, and the funding model, as it currently exists, is broken,” said Rep. Sheldon Johnson, DFL-St. Paul.

Last session, Johnson, a retired Ramsey County probation officer, introduced legislation to create a single funding stream for probation, divvying up the approximately $80 million in annual probation spending in what he said would be both more fair and transparent manner.

Although the bill received a favorable reception in committee, it stalled in the wake of opposition from Department of Corrections Commissioner Tom Roy.

As a former county probation officer, Roy told lawmakers at the time he was sympathetic to the complaints and acknowledged that counties had been shortchanged during the lean budget years of the past decade.

But Roy also argued that the proposal would create practical headaches for the DOC by forcing the agency to share in any supplemental appropriations for probation — including new union contracts with DOC employees — with the counties.

“I don’t know if we’ll make progress this year or not, but we’ll look at it again,” said Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, the newly appointed chair of the House Public Safety and Crime Prevention Policy and Finance Committee.

“I’ve been a proponent from the start. But we’re still getting resistance from the DOC and Commissioner Roy,” Cornish said. “He did say he’s working on new funding plan that would be less complicated and easier to understand. But he didn’t give us any guarantees.”

Still, Cornish said the issue is not partisan, which makes the prospects for a solution more likely than for anther public safety-related issue awaiting legislative action, crafting a fix to the politically radioactive Minnesota Sex Offender Program.

Although MSOP remains a top legislative priority for counties heading into the session, John Tuma, a former lawmaker who now lobbies for the MICA, agrees lawmakers are unlikely to make progress on that front.

While probation reform is not nearly as fraught as MSOP, he said, it’s no slam dunk, either. In part, according to Tuma, that’s because the probation system is not in a visible crisis.

“The counties have stepped up to the plate because they see the value in having good corrections programs. But I think it’s getting to that critical breaking point where they won’t have enough money and they’ll have to start prioritizing,” Tuma said. “And because they’ve been starved for the last decade, we could start to slip from having one of the best run correctional systems in the country to something more like Wisconsin.”

As a practical matter, according to Tuma, some counties may be forced to cut back on the sorts of specialized probation programs that target domestic abusers or drug offenders. That would effectively leave judges with a choice between releasing offenders back on the street without supervision, increasing the risk of recidivism, or sending them to prison, he said.

“I think the Department of Corrections is willing to get more money for us, because we’ve been underfunded for the past decade, but doesn’t want to marry the funds into one system because that means when the agency gets a budget increase, we get one, too,” Tuma said.

Neal Huemeller, a probation officer in Wright County and president-elect of the Minnesota Association of County Probation Officers, said the funding issue is critical because probation has become increasingly complex in recent years, with an increased emphasis on developing on highly individualized case plans for high risk offenders.

“Probation has really changed in the last 10 years. We’ve shifted to evidence-based practices that are much more effective — all the statistics say so — but also much more time-consuming,” he said. “Everybody is watching this issue very closely because it will affect staffing. They want to know if we’re going to lose people.”