Time not on their side

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

For Clark County probation officers, time for troubled kids is getting shorter as their caseloads get bigger.

Officer Kevin Eppenger, a former college boxing champion, had time to make quite an impression on young delinquents 10 years ago. “You could actually be a role model to them, go get a burger,” he told reporter Tony Cook for a story in Sunday’s Las Vegas Sun.

That was when Clark County juvenile probation officers each supervised about 35 kids. Their average caseload today is closer to 60. Eppenger has 70 assigned to him. Another probation officer Cook interviewed, Jeff Jones, has almost 80 cases.

A few minutes’ conversation with county juvenile probation officers today paints a stark picture of their roles, which now are mostly carried out in their offices and at court, not at homes, in the streets or at schools.

The time they get for listening to their kids and trying to influence them is counted in minutes, not hours. They often cannot spare the time to go looking for a child who didn’t show up for his appointment. Meetings tend to include three or four kids gone is the time for meeting one-on-one.

For many children sentenced to probation, their case officer represents their best chance for discovering a better path in life. That chance is diminished with every new caseload assigned to the officer.

Family Court Judge William Voy, who handles juvenile cases, pointed out another consequence of overburdened probation officers. “Public safety is being jeopardized,” he told Cook.

Voy says Clark County needs to hire 15 more juvenile probation officers to keep pace with the growing number of children caught up in the court system.

Clark County managers, however, for the new budget that will be finalized next month, are recommending money for only three new juvenile probation officers.

Three is certainly too few, given how far behind the county’s staffing has gotten over the past decade. Probation officers demonstrate each day the pressing need for more time to intervene in the lives of troubled Clark County youths.