An already stretched-thin probation department will have a hard time meeting the demands of two laws currently being pushed in Albany, Julie Smith told the Genesee County Legislature on Tuesday.
Probation Director Smith said her department struggles now to keep up with its caseload, more often being reactive to problems with probationers rather than working with them to get their lives straightened out.
The department has lost six staff positions in the past few years.
The first proposed law would make misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies committed by 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds matters handled by a youth division of the court with supervision falling to probation.
The second law would put an alcohol monitoring "transdermal device" on the ankles of people convicted of DWI, with probation getting notified any time such a person drinks an adult beverage.
In 2010, Smith said, 74 young people were arrested for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.
To handle the caseload, probation would need to add two more staff members at a cost of $150,000.
Smith believes the actual caseload today would be bigger than the 2010 number.
"Our juvenile caseload numbers now are higher than I've seen in five years," Smith said.
As for monitoring people convicted of DWI, Smith said her department does a good job of random checks of people at home and work to ensure they're not drinking and to ensure they're not driving cars without interlock devices, as required by Leandra's Law.
But New York lawmakers are looking at the fact that, on a statewide basis, only 30 percent of the convicted drunken drivers are getting the interlock devices. The rest are claiming they've somehow gotten rid of their cars, so they don't have to get the interlock device.
The transdermal device would take the question of who owns a car out of the equation, supposedly, but Smith said it doesn't really address directly the issue of people drinking and driving.
It would, however, increase the workload for probation officers who would have to respond to every alert the department receives of a person covered under the law who had a drink.
