The recent merger of Starke County Community Corrections with the County Probation Department will result in better services, as well as cost savings. That’s according to Shawn Mattraw. He’s the director of the new entity, known as Starke County Court Services. “Well, the big difference is that it’s going to [be] a cost savings,” he says, “The past structure, when we were separate entities, we had a director in Community Corrections and a chief probation officer. Those positions were funded pretty nicely. Now, those positions have been eliminated, and it’s just me.”
Starke County Court Services is made up of three divisions: Probation, Community Corrections, and Pretrial. Along with Mattraw, the senior leadership team includes two supervisors, one for Probation and one for Community Corrections.
Mattraw says one of the main goals is to give probation officers a more manageable caseload. “A big thing is, by merging both divisions, increased accountability, and we’re going to be able to provide greater levels of supervision to the community for probationers, folks on Community Corrections, folks on pretrial release services because, traditionally, probation officers have had pretty high caseloads in Starke County.”
To help alleviate that problem, Mattraw says Corrections case managers will now become certified probation officers. “When they have an offender start supervision, generally, they serve six months to a year on home detention, and then they’ve got a year or two on probation to follow,” he explains. “So what this will do, this will allow that same case manager that started with that individual on home detention to be his or her supervising probation officer now, throughout their term of probation.” The restructuring will also allow the county to provide more group programs and other services, including some new resources to assist Knox City Court, according to Mattraw.
He says Starke County is the 18th in Indiana to complete such a merger. “Former Chief Probation Officer John Thorstad and myself have been looking at the possibility of a merger for about the last year now,” he says. “We had looked at other smaller counties similar to Starke County that had completed the merger and had success with it, and kind of used that as our stepping stone.” Mattraw thanks the judges, county commissioners, and Community Corrections Advisory Board for their support with the process.
