The Colusa County Probation Department celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Day Reporting Center, a service center to help adults on probation and Post Release Community Supervision (parole) stay out of trouble and successfully reenter the community.
Probation Chief Michael Rogers said the Day Reporting Center, located in Colusa, collaborates with law enforcement agencies, the court, behavioral health, employment development, and other local agencies to create a structured environment that provides skill-based learning opportunities, educational and vocational training, and intensive community supervision that meet the needs of its clients.
County officials and guests celebrated the anniversary at an open house at the 5th Street center.
“Ten years of service at the Day Reporting Center is quite a feat in a lot of ways,” Rogers said. “The DRC came about in 2011 with AB 109 being passed, where the state mandated non-serious, non-violent, and non-sexual offenders be supervised through the county.”
AB 109, the California Public Safety Realignment Act, mandated all counties to have Day Reporting Centers and take on the burden of supervising most offenders released from state prison rather than state parole officers.
“The cool thing, in my opinion, is that it wasn’t something we really wanted to do, but it is something that we tackled,” Rogers said.
Rogers said the DRC has become an efficient “one-stop shop” that links clients with the resources and services they need to be successful.
The DRC, which is operated by Kristen Simmons and Kim Oliva, manage the population they serve by offering classes that promote behavioral change, addiction treatment, batterers treatment, among other programs, while holding probationers accountable.
Rogers said it was a daunting task to bring new programs together but the county was lucky enough to have employees and collaborators that saw what needed to be done to make it happen with a limited supply of community-based resources.
“We had to make things work, so we brought in programs, we sent staff to training, and we became facilitators. We made this a program for people to use and to have services available rather than people having to go out of county or somewhere else to try and get them. That is huge.”
Rogers said programs will continue to change as the DRC adapts to new challenges, but the center, overall, has been a great success for the county and for offenders who are serious about making needed changes in their lives.
“The challenge that we face is a changing environment with our probationers,” Rogers said. “They have different needs than they had, and we continue to change and add and grow to face those needs. It’s awesome in that sense.”
In addition to the open house for the public to celebrate the DRC’s important milestone, Rogers recognized the organizations and agencies involved in the program, including One Stop and the Colusa County Office of Education, the Probation Department staff, and specifically Simmons and Oliva for their vision and dedicated to running the program and their commitment to their profession. ■