The new year has brought changes to Brown County Community Corrections in the form of a new executive director and office in Nashville.
Josh Bales began his new job as community corrections executive director on March 2. Former director Barbara Osborn left last year.
Last week, the department was also working on moving its office at Deer Run Park to the Nashville Police Department on Hawthorne Drive.
Bales is no stranger to Brown County. He grew up in Morgantown and attended Indian Creek High School. He spent time here with friends and visited Brown County State Park and Yellowwood State Forest. “It’s just an honor to come back and serve a lot of people in the community that I grew up in,” he said.
“I love the community. It’s basically home for me.”
In 2013, Bales graduated from Franklin College with a bachelor’s degree in sociology with a criminal justice track, and a minor in Spanish. Bales played football in college and was on the track and field team. He was also a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and served as the philanthropy chair.
He met his wife, Brittany, in college. They were married in 2015 and have two young daughters. The family currently lives in Indianapolis, but Bales said they plan to move to Brown County and build a home here. “I want to get my kids out of the city and give them some rural living like I grew up with,” he said.
During his senior year of college, Bales landed an internship with Marion County Probation Department working with juveniles. He was offered a job before graduation and worked as an adult probation officer in Marion County until taking this job in Brown County.
Bales worked in the presentence investigation unit, and then worked four years supervising a caseload of sex offenders in a field-based role. From there Bales, worked as a supervisor of that unit, managing six to nine staff members for two years.
Bales said both community corrections and the probation office work to strike a “unique balance between the well-being of our clients and the safety of the community.”
“As the director of the program, I feel like it’s my position within the community to make sure we’re guided in the right direction to accomplish that with an emphasis on community safety,” he said.
“But more to an extent, working with our clients in the long term will serve the community better as well — giving them the tools to succeed, finding gainful employment, address addiction issues, mental health issues and things like that while we have them.”
Community corrections offers services ranging from day reporting to home detention as an alternative to actual incarceration when someone is convicted or has their probation revoked. “We can step in with interventions and work with them while they’re still in a secure type of community supervision,” Bales explained.
“They are still being monitored, we’re still checking what’s going on, but we have more opportunity to work with them in the community versus in the jail. They can work, they can be productive, pay taxes, etc., but they’re still being monitored as well.”
The county’s community corrections also used to run the work release program for inmates here and Bales said one of his goals is to bring that program back. “It’s another alternative. It’s a little bit more restrictive than home adjustment (because they are going back to jail after work),” he said.
“If somebody is not successful on home detention, we have another alternative rather than sending them to the Department of Corrections or just serving jail time. They can still get out, still work, still be productive members of the community, but they’re under wraps more. Some people do thrive a little bit better under more regulation.”
Bales said he is passionate about helping others who may not be having the best moment in their lives.
“I wouldn’t be in it if I wasn’t passionate about it. It’s not a job that’s all about the glory, or the extravagant pay, or the benefits or anything like that,” he said.
“It’s about serving the people and trying to make a positive difference. We want to effect a positive outcome, especially with our clients.”
Bales said he and his staff are prepared to help their clients through their rough patches in life.
“A lot of people that we deal with are maybe not on their worst day, that’s probably when they get arrested or convicted, but it’s pretty close,” he said.
“The staff here, just in the few interactions I have observed, they do a really good job of deescalating things when people are upset and addressing their needs. They have a strong program here.”
Bales said he looks forward to maintaining the program already in place. “I hope to fill the shoes that I’m taking over. I know Barb was here for a long time and was successful in what she did. I can tell you in speaking with some local stakeholders and in other counties, she was held in high regard,” he said of Osborn.
He said he plans to work with his office manager and two field officers along with other local stakeholders to see what direction to take the program, “see what direction we can go and improvements. There’s always room for improvement.”
