Public Safety

San Diego County Probation Opens New Office

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published August 9, 2011 at 7:13 AM PDT

This story was published more than 12 years ago.

Under a new state law called "Criminal Justice Realignment," San Diego County’s Probation Departments will take over the job of handling parolees when they leave state prison. The change goes into effect in October.

Chief Probation Officer Mack Jenkins says the new office opening in Chula Vista will help the department deal with this extra responsibility. However, he says the main advantage will be that the new building, which is larger then their old office in National City, will have room to handle juvenile offenders as well as adults.

Previously, more than a thousand juvenile offenders in south San Diego had to travel up to Kearney Mesa to check in with their probation officers.

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"We look for every opportunity to work with kids in the environment where they had their problems, so we want to match them to services that are local and close to their home," he said, "Plus, when we do accept responsibility for supervising the realigned population, this office will be very well optimized for that."

Jenkins said the number of juvenile parolees county wide has actually dropped recently from more than 5,000 to about 4,800. He did not offer figures on how many parolees the department will be responsible for supervising when the state realignment happens this fall.

San Diego County’s Probation office also supervises 17,000 adults.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.