By Ed Palattella
Erie Times-News
ERIE, Pa. — A rise in the number of mentally ill offenders has the Erie County Courthouse contemplating changes not seen in years.
President Judge Shad Connelly wants to increase fees for those on probation and parole to pay for two more probation officers.
One would monitor the cases of the mentally ill, including those who suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression.
The other would monitor regular offenders, helping to relieve probation officers whose cases are increasing due to abuse of heroin and other opiates, Connelly said.
He said the rise in mentally ill offenders particularly concerns him. Many of those offenders, he said, need intense supervision to keep them medicated and out of prison, where stays are costly.
“Our probation officers are just becoming overwhelmed,” Connelly said. “It is a matter of community safety, to make sure these people receive adequate and appropriate treatment.”
The county last increased the number of probation officers in 2006, and the county courts in 2002 last raised the basic supervision fee for offenders.
Connelly’s proposal would boost that monthly fee to $40 from $35. And it would boost the fee for Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition -- in which first-time, nonviolent offenders serve probation in return for a clean record -- to $400 from $200, which has been the amount since the 1970s, Connelly said.
Four probation officers now work in the county’s Mentally Ill Offender Program, and their individual caseloads have grown from 30 in 2008 to 110 in 2015, Connelly said. He said about one in four of the county’s 3,074 supervised offenders attend the Forensic Outpatient Clinic at Stairways Behavioral Health.
The increase in mentally ill offenders is due partly to a rise in “more and better testing,” Connelly said. To also address such cases, Stairways runs a county-funded mental health program at the Erie County Prison, and Judge William R. Cunningham in 2002 launched a mental health treatment court.
Connelly, as president judge, can raise court fees on his own. But County Council must approve adding the two probation officers as well as increasing the hours of a clerical worker in the probation department from part time to full time, which Connelly also requested.
Council will consider approving the requests at its meeting Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Harborcreek Township Building, 5601 Buffalo Road.
Council Chairman Fiore Leone said he supports the jobs.
“We’re having a lot of problems with people having mental illness issues in the criminal justice system, and these are necessary to cope with that,” he said.
The two probation officers would fill entry-level positions with a base pay of about $34,000, said Jeff Shaw, director of the county Department of Adult Probation and Parole. Changing the clerical position to full time would cost an additional $7,700, he said.
Shaw said the department’s staff now numbers 72, including five supervisors and 64 probation officers. Fifteen of those officers handle cases only of regular offenders, and their caseloads average 138, Shaw said.
Connelly said the fee increases would raise an additional $174,864 a year, and an expected increase in state aid would bring in another $68,010. The additional $242,874 would cover the costs and benefits of the added positions.
In a July 24 letter to County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper, Connelly wrote that he turned to fees, rather than asking for direct county funding, so the added positions “will not be a burden to taxpayers.”