Jason Anderson

It seems like just a month or two ago that I drafted my first report as your MACPO President.  Yet here I am, almost a year later, writing my final update.  Like sands through the hourglass…

It’s been a heckova year.  Probation offices have settled back into some sort of normalcy as the pandemic (hopefully?) dissolved.  While the location of our work may have fluctuated over the last few years, the work itself remained constant. 

Someone asked me recently to identify the biggest challenge that our industry contents with.  Several things came to my mine.  Dealing with difficult clients, those with significant mental health and/or chemical health issues, the lack of adequate resources – these are the quick answers that rose immediately to my consciousness.  Yet, after some careful reflection my answer was this:  There seems to be a pretty big disconnect between what we actually do and the public’s perception of what we do and what we should be doing.

I’ve sort of jokingly said to people before that our department, “fights crime and saves souls.”  It has a nice ring to it and I enjoy the way those two tasks seem sort of contradictory at first blush.  With any bit of humor, there is typically a bit of truth within it.  And the more I think about it – I believe an argument could be made that fighting crime and saving souls is exactly what we’re all about. 

There has been a lot of discussion at the legislature this session about pubic safety – driven in part by spikes in violent crime and the budget surplus that could be leveraged to address it.  The solution seems evident to those of us in the crime fightin’ & soul savin’ business…let’s adequately fund community corrections for a change.  At the time of this writing, it remains to be seen what the lawmakers will settle on.  I will note that we are closer than we’ve been in almost 30 years to seeing significant reform to our community corrections funding.  That’s a good thing.

I cannot thank you all enough for the opportunity you’ve given me to represent the work that you do for the last year.  The world is led by those who show up, and your MACPO board (and its committee members) are doing a remarkable job of meeting the needs for county probation officers.  I’ve been humbled and honored to serve beside them and to represent the work that you do for your communities.

Respectfully,

Jason Anderson

  President@MACPO.net