Probation Department Has Few Options For County Cuts

The Sacramento County Probation Department doesn’t have many places left to cut.

This year the county is asking the department to slash , and the only feasible place to make reductions is the Sacramento County Juvenile Hall in Rosemont, Chief Probation Officer Don Meyer .

The county has the third-largest population of probationers in the state, but supervises only the most dangerous, which was about 6 percent last year, Meyer said.

Add to that a court order not to exceed certain population limits in the juvenile hall, and the department has limited flexibility.

The county announced Monday that eight probation officer positions slated for layoffs would be saved, but Meyer asked the board of supervisors to further reduce the cuts to his department.

“I’m not asking for that entire amount [of $8 million],” he said. “I think we could make it work with half that amount.”

He said even with reduced cuts, the department would have to lay off employees and ask courts to release residents from juvenile hall.

“I don’t have the authority and power to release kids,” he said, noting that about 14 murder suspects are currently held in juvenile hall.

Currently the probation department is slated to eliminate more than 60 positions at the juvenile hall, and reduce its capacity to levels not seen since the 1960s, Meyer said.

Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, whose own department is , said cuts to Meyer’s department also hurt his.

“We know with a statistical certainty we’re going to encounter these people,” Jones said. “By and large they’re going to be probationers. To the extent they can be monitored, controlled … or all these other things by probation, it takes them off our plate and allows us to do other things, up to and including proactive, preventative policing.”