Wisconsin's probation and parole officers aren't responding quickly enough to violations or offering all the services required by law. According to a nonpartisan legislative audit published Friday, the state's community supervision program isn't meeting deadlines for investigations and risk assessments. Department of Corrections staff report feeling frustrated with new policies and unhappy with high workloads and low pay. The probation and parole program, tasked with overseeing more than 63,000 offenders who have been released from or were not sentenced to prison time, faces understaffing issues similar to those ongoing in state prisons as lawmakers decide whether to increase wages for criminal justice workers.
