6W may need additional agent in 2018
6W Community Corrections is likely to need an additional agent in 2018 to handle the rapidly expanding workload agents are dealing with.
Commissioner Gary Hendrickx, District 1-Appleton, said at the Swift County Board of Commissioners meeting May 16. Hendrickx, along with Commissioner Pete Peterson, District 3-south Benson, serves as a liaison on the 6W board. It provides probation and parole supervision for Swift, Chippewa, Yellow Medicine and Lac qui Parle counties. It has 18 employees with 11 career agents.
“The workload for the agency is getting beyond the point where it can do the job with due diligence,” Hendrickx said. The 6W board voted to have the dollars in by Jan. 1, 2018, for another fulltime agent, he said.
Commissioner Joe Fox, District 4-Hegbert Township, asked what it would cost Swift County to add a fulltime agent to the 6W staff. Peterson said it would be around $17,000 a year.
“If things stabilize and go down a little, it is not for sure that the position would be added,” Hendrickx said. “But at this point it doesn’t appear the caseload is dropping at all.”
6W had an average daily population under supervision for 2016 of about 600 people on any given day, Christianson told commissioners. Chippewa County, the largest population county of the four, averages a daily census of around 200. Swift and Yellow Medicine counties are almost identical averaging 175 to 180 offenders being supervised. Lac qui Parle County has just 70.
Ave daily census Offenders
Chippewa 200
Swift 175-180
Yellow Medicine 175-180
Lac qui Parle 70
In tracking the number of offenders it has under supervision, Director Midge Christianson told commissioners last April that 6W Community Corrections has seen a steady increase over the past couple years. In fact, it has been growing so quickly and so much that she said she could use two more agents....
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