Last week, I met one-on-one with two Cumberland County probation officers -- not in my office or theirs, but on the streets at night while they worked, checking on the whereabouts of probationers.
From my observations, they did their jobs well.
We met in Fayetteville, where I live. My ride-along with them was somewhat eye-opening, and it held a surprise, too.
They had me in the front seat as they entered one neighborhood with unpaved, ungraded streets and little or no lighting. The officer had to use a spotlight to find most house numbers, where darkness veiled whatever might have been going on. And in that setting, where I imagined that a state car shining a light was drawing a lot of nervous attention, the officer had to pound a door to verify that a probationer was where he said he would be at that hour of the night.
I followed as they approached homes where the porch was dark, the house was dimly lit inside, and no one answered after numerous knocks on the door. All the while, we didn’t know what might be about to happen.
The last stop of the night hit close to home, literally. The probationer lived two blocks from my house. It was a telling turn of events, driving home to me the point that our justice system almost always returns offenders to their homes – be they probationers or inmates released from prison. It is their homes, their families, their neighbors - and as I saw, all of us are neighbors - who need to join the Department of Correction as we try to break the cycle of crime.
The community must work harder to prevent crime and my department must work harder to change the offenders’ mindset. And when offenders go back to the community, all of us must be committed to doing whatever we can to give each one of them a chance to become a productive citizen.