The Brown County Council had planned to not add any new jobs in local government. Then they heard from leaders in local law enforcement.
Resisting law enforcement cases in Brown County have risen by 271 percent in three years. More inmates are exhibiting mental health issues.
One juvenile probation officer is responsible for checking in on eight children who have been placed in treatment hours away in different parts of the state, while also managing 28 cases from beginning to end locally. Some juveniles in the system are addicted to methamphetamine.
These are just some of the reasons the Brown County Probation Department and the Brown County Sheriff’s Department received approval during the county budget hearings to hire more staff.
“We have to do something,” Brown Circuit Judge Judith Stewart told the council.
The probation department had asked for a new probation officer and a probation officer assistant to help with the workload. The council voted to allow the hiring of a probation officer assistant.
Juvenile Probation Officer Brenda Dewees has 390 hours of “comp time” to use, and Chief Probation Officer Jennifer Acton has to figure out a way to pay those hours out. The department has just one other adult probation officer and an office manager right now.
Sheriff Scott Southerland had asked for up to three new deputies and a new jailer, citing an increase in calls for police help and a large jump in the number of resisting arrest cases. “It’s always been dangerous, but it’s getting more so all the time. It’s not just here, it’s everywhere,” he said.
The county council approved the hiring of one new officer and one new jailer, in hopes that they can be paid for by taking in inmates from other county jails and the Indiana Department of Correction. Whereas many counties are facing jail overcrowding, Brown County’s jail is below capacity.
‘We can’t continue this way’
The number of children and teens involved in the juvenile probation system has “steadily increased,” Acton said.
Currently, eight children are housed elsewhere in the state; one is three hours away. There is no juvenile detention facility in Brown County. Facilities do exist in Bartholomew and Johnson counties, but those might not fit the need of the child, which could require them to be placed farther away.
“Some of the sexually maladaptive issues that we are facing with these young people, violent issues we’re facing with these young people, self-harm, the serious self-harm among these people, they need very specific treatment and we need to give them the best we can, and that’s usually farther away,” Stewart said.
When a child needs to be placed in a facility, Dewees must contact different agencies trying to find the right fit for the child. She also has to do criminal history checks of all of the adults in the child’s life.
The probation officer’s role is also changing with the drug epidemic. “Now, we kind of became social workers,” Acton said.
What used to be a checklist assessment is now an hourlong risk assessment of the person on probation, which is something probation never did before.
“It used to be we pretty much checked in, we saw if you paid your fees, if you did one or two court orders, and that was it,” Acton said.
Currently, the department is dealing with around 160 people on probation, which is low compared to past years; but Acton estimated that 75 percent of them also are dealing with addiction. “I can tell you that 38 are heroin addicts. It really is so much of our time and energy,” she said.
“It’s worth it, we want to save these people, but when I get an adult, then I have to find them treatment. That means calling and figuring out their insurance, calling around different agencies and trying to figure out where I can get treatment at, working with the families. Our job has changed.”
The new probation assistant will help Dewees in data entry, making phone calls to placement facilities and doing record checks.
“It has steadily increased, not only in the number of kids I have, but in the intensity of the cases. Last year, I had five juveniles that were meth addicts that I had in treatment,” Dewees said. “Those take a lot of time.”
Sometimes Dewees has to enter data into four different programs because of the coordination with the Indiana Department of Child Services.
Dewees also has to visit the children in their placements once a month, and conduct meetings when a child is removed from his or her home.
“I am responsible for gathering all of those players and setting up a meeting place to talk about this kid and to figure out a permanency plan for the child. That’s been added,” she said.
She holds up a large packet of blank papers for the county council to see. It’s an admission packet for a placement facility that Dewees was supposed to have done that day.
“I did not have time, and the reason I didn’t have time is because I have a runaway and I also have a young man who tried to kill himself over the weekend. It just continues to go on and on,” she said.
“None of this stuff we had to do four or five years ago. Honestly, I’ve been doing my best and it is just overwhelming,” Dewees said.
Currently, Dewees is in charge of 28 juvenile probationers with 30 pending referrals. She is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In speaking with other probation officers, Dewees said she found that their caseload for supervision only totals about 20 kids. “All they do is supervise that child and see that child throughout the end of their probation,” she said.
Juvenile case referrals often come in from law enforcement. Dewees brings that child in for an initial interview or preliminary investigation, then meets with the prosecutor to talk about whether to dismiss the allegations, file an informal adjustment or file formal charges.
If charges are going to be filed, she has to complete a 45-page report.
Review reports also have to be done every 90 days for children in placement.
“The job has changed,” Stewart said. “She is working just as hard. … She is one of the best juvenile probation officers you’re going to find. She is at a point where we can’t continue this way; we have to do something different.”
Having another probation officer also would help if the new judge elected this fall wants to establish a drug court, said Stewart, who is retiring from the bench.
“For drug court, you have to have a facilitator. You have to have someone who creates the policy and procedure manuals, gets it all approved. … I thought if we had an additional probation officer, not only could they lift some of the load from juvenile casework, but they could work on the drug court,” she said.
In 2020, a new criminal rule will go into effect that will require pre-trial services to determine if people are a risk to the community or not. If they are determined to be a risk, they would not be able to post bond. The change, which from the state, is “because they felt that people who couldn’t afford bond were being kept in jail, while people who had money were able to bond out. … You’re basing it more on who can pay as opposed to who is a real risk,” Stewart said. A new probation officer could help with that new requirement, too, she said.
Brown County Council Vice President Dave Critser said that the county was not going to approve any new hires before the probation budget hearing began, but he changed his mind.
“I think we need the probation officer assistant. I don’t think this county can afford another probation officer. If Jennifer has to work a little longer, she’ll just have to work a little longer,” he said.
Council President Keith Baker said that if a drug court is created, the council may be able to justify a new probation officer then. However, the council could fund the assistant sooner, who will make $31,799.
“The problem we have with drugs and kids and mental health issues right now, I couldn’t, in good conscience, not vote for somebody right now,” Baker said.
The new assistant job was approved on a vote of 6 to 1, with council member Glenda Stogsdill-Johnson opposed.
“I’m so happy I could cry,” Dewees said as she was leaving the meeting room.
‘More dangerous out there’
The council also approved a $5,000 increase for sheriff’s department overtime pay during budget hearings. It will total $20,000 in 2019.
Sheriff Southerland said the reason overtime has increased is because the department is trying to keep using comp time for deputies — giving them extra time off for the hours they worked over instead of overtime pay. However, that also feeds a need for more overtime because a person is still needed to cover that shift, he said.
He asked for more officers to handle an increasing workload.
From 2015 to 2017, investigations increased by 31 percent. Jail bookings were up 21 percent and traffic tickets increased by 39 percent. Calls for service had also increased by 11 percent, he told the council.
But those aren’t the most serious statistics. From 2015 to Aug. 1 this year, resisting law enforcement cases went up by 271 percent.
In 2015, there were just seven cases. As of Aug. 1, the county had 26 resisting law enforcement cases, he said.
“It’s getting more dangerous out there. More people are fighting the police, and when we’re shorthanded that makes it rough; it makes it more dangerous,” he said.
Southerland said three new merit officers “would be great.” The department has 14 officers now, and 10 of those patrol on the road.
He presented police force information from Blackford County, which is one of the like-size communities the county council studied when it did a salary study earlier this year.
Blackford has 30 officers covering a county that is half the size of Brown County, he said. When counting the Nashville Police and Cordry-Sweetwater deputies, Brown County has 24.
“They don’t have Brown County State Park with 1.4 million visitors a year that we have to provide emergency service to,” he said about Blackford County.
Indiana Department of Natural Resources conservation officers are tasked with patrolling the state park, but local officers often are called in because the DNR is short staffed, too, he said.
Southerland said an additional danger deputies face is people with serious mental health issues. “We have to deal with them on the street, but we also have to deal with them in the jail because there’s no place else to put them,” he said. That sometimes requires additional jail staff to monitor inmates.
One way to pay for more staff would be to house Level 6 felons from the Department of Corrections in the Brown County jail. The sheriff’s department would receive $35 a day per inmate.
Another idea would be to take in inmates from overcrowded county jails and receive payment from those counties.
Southerland said he was reluctant to do that in case it turns out to be “more trouble than it’s worth,” such as if it causes problems in the jail once it becomes more crowded and increases the risks for fights.
“I am willing to try it and see how it works out,” he said. “I don’t know if it (fights) will happen, but if it did, I would like to have the latitude to be able to pull the plug on it before it gets out of hand.”
The Brown County jail would need another jailer if inmates from other jails were brought in, Southerland said.
“If we house somebody else’s inmates, they will be sending us who they decided to send us. It’s not going to be some of their best inmates,” council member Darren Byrd said.
There are currently 10 inmates in the jail eligible for the DOC reimbursement. If they stay in the jail for an entire year, that would equal about $127,750 in additional revenue. However, some don’t serve an entire year there, and the number of eligible inmates could increase or decrease.
“I would like to see what revenue we can generate. If we can make this cost neutral, that’s been my thing all along,” Baker said.
Critser made the motion to add a new merit deputy and jailer at the sheriff’s department, which passed with five votes for it, one against and one abstaining. Councilwoman Debbie Guffey opposed the motion and Stogsdill-Johnson abstained, as her son is the chief deputy.
At the Sept. 19 Brown County Commissioners meeting, commissioner Diana Biddle said that the county was in the “draft stage” of creating a memorandum of understanding to bring inmates from Lawrence County’s overcrowded jail here.
She said the county will not bear any out-of-pocket costs for the inmates, and that the inmates would be immediately returned if there was a security issue or other problem the sheriff deemed unsafe.
