A Kane County Board committee, faced with jail overcrowding and a big increase in probation cases, approved a request from corrections officials Monday to rent office space for two new probation officers by using funds already allocated for other purposes.
The county, whose crime rate has increased along with its recent rapid population growth, has had particular problems handling drunken driving offenders since county officials instituted stiffer penalties in late 1984.
The Corrections and Rehabilitation Committee gave Court Services director James Rudolph the go-ahead to rent space to accommodate two new probation officers to deal with drunken driving cases.
But Rudolph must find the funds for the rental in his existing budget.
The cost to rent extra space in the two facilities currently housing probation officers in Aurora and Elgin would be $2,500 for the remaining months of 1987, Rudolph estimated.
The additional probation officers, whose $17,000 annual starting salaries will be funded by the state, were requested last month after statistics showed that probation cases had increased 48 percent since 1985.
Almost half of the probation cases are related to drunken driving or other traffic offenses, Adult Court Services director Tom Scott said Monday.
When asked if the addition of the probation officers would help ease the overcrowding situation at the jail, both Rudolph and Sheriff John Randall said they doubted it.
The county board and sheriff have been grappling with overcrowding in the jail since early 1985.
Rudolph suggested that a recently proposed state program might help solve some of the jail`s overcrowding problems.
The program, which is still in the early planning stages, would enable counties to hire people who specialize in pre-trial services to help judges sentence offenders more effectively.
But Randall, who has been attempting to justify hiring additional corrections officers, disagreed.
”We get the inmates to begin with,” he said after the meeting. ”That proposal might help the judges, but I can`t see that it would help us.”
Randall said he has the data to prove ”beyond a shadow of a doubt”
that his department needs three additional corrections officers to cope with overcrowding, and he asked the committee to continue to support his request for the officers.
Despite strong endorsements from the committee in the past, Board Chairman Frank Miller has indicated he will not approve the hirings until he receives ”hard numbers” proving that they are needed and that the department can pay for them.
