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Probation and parole agency asks for IT upgrades, fleet funds and more staff for victim services and hearings
Summary
Chad Gambrell, acting director (agency title given in testimony), presented budget priorities for probation and parole including IT modernization, vehicle fleet costs, body-worn camera funding and expansion of specialized caseloads; he asked to convert a recurring fleet ask to nonrecurring to allow a procurement strategy review.
Chad Gambrell, identified in the hearing as the acting director for the probation/parole agency present, told the Criminal Justice Budget Subcommittee his agency needs targeted funds for IT modernization, fleet replacement, body-worn camera support and additional staff for victim services and administrative hearings.
Gambrell introduced several deputy directors and subject-matter staff and said the agency supervises more than 72,000 offenders in jurisdictional caseload and reported roughly 22,000 people under active supervision at the state level. He said the agency’s mission remains supervising offenders, assisting victims and protecting public safety.
IT and technology: The agency described a three-part IT ask: hire in-house developers to reduce reliance on outside contracts (the agency reported $2.3 million spent on contracts last year and said outside contract costs could exceed $3 million next year if not addressed); replace aging equipment (a nonrecurring ask of roughly $2.3 million); and modernize infrastructure and software to handle increased video uploads and other demands. Gambrell said the agency uploads thousands of body‑worn and other videos monthly and needs more server and cloud capacity and software tools to index and manage footage.
Fleet: The agency said its fleet is about 481 vehicles and that lease costs have increased substantially. Gambrell requested $759,000 but asked the subcommittee to allow that sum to be treated as nonrecurring to buy time to renegotiate procurement and vehicle specifications with state fleet as a cost-control measure.
Body-worn cameras and related contracts: Gambrell thanked the committee for prior support and asked for recurring funding to sustain the program. He said the five-year contract is about $1.7 million and requested increasing recurring support to about $270,000 to keep operation and storage running.
Specialized caseloads and services: Gambrell described programs for domestic-violence and mental-health caseloads run by specially trained agents and said the domestic-violence program — in place since 2017 — has reduced recidivism and arrest rates by about 3 percent since its start. He also asked for two additional hearing officers to handle a growing number of administrative hearings that determine whether supervision violations will be resolved administratively or forwarded to court. He said victim-services staffing needs to increase in several growing circuits.
Why it matters: Gambrell framed the investments as both safety and efficiency priorities: better IT and more staff would speed case handling, support prosecutions where needed and improve transparency for citizens and other agencies that rely on video evidence.
What was discussed: Committee members asked whether population changes or increased use of electronic monitoring affected supervision numbers; Gambrell said the overall offender population has been stable between about 22,000 and 23,000 in recent years. He asked to switch the fleet ask to nonrecurring to allow one more year to pursue rate reductions with state fleet.
Ending: The presentation closed with an invitation to follow up; Gambrell said the agency would report back on procurement outcomes and continue to brief the committee on IT and specialized-caseload expansion.
