Oregon Public Broadcasting

Washington state is preparing to stop supervising nearly 10,000 ex-cons on probation. That’s because of budget cuts - and a policy decision to focus on the highest-risk probationers. But some community corrections officers are raising red flags. Olympia correspondent Austin Jenkins reports.

Before the Washington Department of Corrections decides who will be released from supervision, it needs to assess the risk level of the people it monitors.

In August of last year, the department switched to a new risk assessment system or tool. It’s a computer program that ranks offenders as high, moderate or low risk to reoffend based on their criminal history.

Low-risk, non-sex offenders will no longer be supervised.

Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail says the tool is proving to be about 70-percent accurate at predicting recidivism.

Eldon Vail: “It’s as good a tool that exists anywhere in the country. There’s no tool that’s a hundred percent. We have to make a choice about who we’re going to supervise, we can’t afford to supervise everyone at the highest risk level. This is the best tool available to us.”

Vail adds that this new risk assessment tool is categorizing more offenders as high-risk.  But some community corrections officers say they don’t trust this new method of measuring the risk an offender poses to the public.

Ton Johnson supervises felons in Seattle’s King County. He says the tool is limited because it only looks at an offender’s criminal record.

Ton Johnson: “You know I think we need to look at other factors that cause criminal behavior. Are they homeless, are there chemical dependency issues, other triggers that may exist?”

Johnson believes corrections officials are putting too much faith in a single tool to decide who will continue to be supervised and who will no longer have to check in with a probation officer.