Places responsibility for supervision of probation services in family court with the judiciary

This measure would transfer to the Judiciary a portion of the responsibility for funding the State's longstanding program of reimbursing counties and New York City for their costs in operating probation systems. Specifically, the courts would be required to budget for, and disburse, so much of the amount of this State assistance as relates to local expenditures for probation services that are provided in Family Court. Complementing this assumption of funding responsibility, the Judiciary, together with an Advisory Board comprised of local government representatives, probation officials, judges and attorneys experienced in Family Court and others will replace the State Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives as the source of standards governing local delivery of probation services in Family Court.1

We recognize that the success of probation services in Family Court depends greatly upon local availability of occupational, educational or therapeutic services for individual probationers. Accordingly, this measure also would establish a special grant program, likewise to be administered by the Judiciary, by which local governments may seek State assistance to support local efforts to assure the availability of these services.2

Probation services are an indispensable aid to the state's Family Courts. Local probation agencies help screen cases and assist litigants in the many thousands of sensitive and complex cases that annually come before the Court. Adequately staffed and supported by appropriate service providers that can offer health-related, occupational and educational assistance to troubled families and youth, a probation department can make all the difference to the future course of a young life, and can spare communities the pain and immense costs of having to incarcerate juvenile delinquents.

Regrettably, local probation departments are routinely overburdened and underfunded. Probation caseloads are inordinately large and Family Courts have few meaningful options when it comes to trying to set troubled youths right. There are many reasons why this is so but, in large part, it is because the local governments that establish and operate probation departments are perennially under siege financially. The consequences: for individuals, it means that people most often children - cannot get the attention, guidance and assistance they need to reform their lives and embark down more productive paths; for the greater community, it means that, increasingly, Courts must institutionalize young people in expensive residential facilities that, experience has shown, may be little more than incubators for adult criminals.

As has been recognized by many, the governmental body most directly impacted by persistent probation difficulties is the Judiciary itself. Realistically, a local probation agency's immediate "client" most often is the Judiciary. In the Family Court realm, when a local probation agency is so overworked that it cannot fully meet its institutional duty to screen juvenile justice cases, impacts ripple across the already-clogged Courts. When there are no services available to support probation and its efforts to right a troubled life, Family Court Judges cannot effectively discharge their responsibilities to do justice for the juveniles appearing before them. In short, the effective operation of the Judiciary depends in no small part upon the effective operation of the probation system, and the long-unmet challenges of the probation system directly harm the Judiciary.

For this reason, we urge the Legislature and Governor to act on this measure that can provide a new paradigm for treatment of young people and families who come before Family Court.

This measure would take effect September 1, 2010 and would activate the Judiciary's responsibility for funding State reimbursement of localities for the Family Court probation expenses effective with the 2011-2012 State fiscal year.

2010 LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

Senate 7426 (Sampson) [ref to Judiciary] Assembly 10793 (Weinstein) [ref to Judiciary]

Footnotes

1 This measure carries over present probation standards applicable to Family Court intact. For the Judiciary later to change or add to these standards, the Advisory Board must advise and consent thereto.

2 This program is modeled after the Judiciary's long-running and highly successful Justice Court Assistance Program - by which operations in locally-run Town and Village Justice Courts have been materially improved through modest State assistance grants.