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November 24, 2009

Probation veteran to step aside

Gerald Haley has seen many changes

By Dan Linehan

MANKATO — For more than 35 years, Gerald Haley has been trying to turn lives around. His father did the same as a minister, but Haley has preached to a different flock.

After 22 years leading Blue Earth County’s probation department, Haley is retiring in January.

It’s the sort of career where your successes are never heard from again, but your failures never leave.

Probation has changed greatly since he began his career as a probation officer in Missouri.

In keeping with a national movement away from institutionalization, especially of juveniles, the county’s group home for young crime-breakers was shuttered a few years after Haley arrived here.

Blue Earth then became one of the first counties in the state to open a temporary holding facility for juveniles, Haley said. Instead of being sent to jail for a few nights, they were kept in the basement of the Law Enforcement Center. Teachers were brought in to hold class there. The current juvenile detention facility is in New Ulm.

The county later developed a teen court that tried juveniles before a jury of their peers and a truancy court that brought a judge into the schools. Truancy court was a way to speed up a system that took weeks to bring a truant before a regular courtroom.

Another big change in probation has been drug testing.

In the past, probation officers would take their clients at their word. Now, they take their urine, too.

“We’re trying to catch them being good, but often times you catch them being bad,” Haley said.

He estimates the county spent between $20,000 and $30,000 on drug tests before its recent purchase of its own drug-testing machine.

Probation agents are also searching houses more often, sometimes looking for evidence of illegal drug use.

There are more screenings, more registrations, more risk-based analyses to target the clients who need the most supervision.

All in all, Haley says probation has become more evidence-based and hard-nosed about trying to change behavior. It’s also bigger — the department has grown from eight officers in 1987 to 19 now. About 1,700 people will go through probation in a typical year in Blue Earth County.

Another big change in the business is drug court, which now requires two full-time probation officers and a manager. The drug court officers have about one-fifth the case load of a regular officer.

It would be easy for Haley or any probation officer to focus on the clients who never seem to leave the justice system. But he says they are in the minority and estimates that about 70 percent of people who go through probation end up being generally successful.

Josh Milow, a supervisor in the department, will take over as the interim director.

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