Thank You Speech
American Probation & Parole Association
Scotia Knouff Line
Officer Of The Year Award
Ó Carl Reddick
Good Afternoon, my name is Carl Reddick and I’m from the beautiful
central Oregon coast. I’d like to thank the APPA for the Scotia
Knouff award as Line Officer Of The Year.
I’d also like to thank my colleagues and my director back in
Newport, Oregon because, as you’d expect, it’s very difficult to have an
aggressive, healthy, and functional Parole and Probation office without
co-workers that are deeply committed to what we do... And my colleagues are the
best in the business.
You know...it was not until 1954 that every state and the
federal government had formal, legislated parole and probation systems.
Folks...that was only 40 years ago.
I’m a parole and probation officer because in Oregon that’s just
the way it is. I can read the first chrono entries ever written in the first
probation files that ever existed in my state. I can talk to the people that
originally designed the parole and probation system, because they are still
alive! Think about it...only two full
generations of PO’s have ever existed. This is a profession in it’s infancy.
Compare that history with, say.... lawyers... who have been around
since...oh... the invention of money... and you’ll get a sense of the
opportunities and future ahead of us.
The only certain thing in this room today is that we won’t recognize
this profession 20 years from now. 20 years ago, I needed some money so
I got a job. The job was with the Probation office in Alameda County in
downtown Oakland, California. That job was a sort of mishmash between social
worker and cop. Five years later I was in Oregon but now I was on an
interagency tactical supervision (swat) team, complete with my Glock Model 17
handgun, mace, and sculpted body armor.
Today I teach classes in Cognitive and Behavioral change in an old
storefront in a beach community more noted for Keiko, the whale of the
FREE WILLIE movie fame, than for progressive criminal justice innovations. Our
community, our society, has spent 5 million dollars to rehabilitate one
whale. Don’t get me wrong...I like whales. But that amount of money
would run our entire agency for 7 years.
You know...This is the only job where you can go to work in the morning
without a hope of predicting what your day will be like. It’s not just a
job...it’s an adventure of high drama into the innermost workings of
government... public opinion... and the fantasies of newspaper reporters,
criminals, and politicians everywhere.
Although it’s the administrators that keep the financial and
policy wheels turning in parole and probation offices across this nation, it is
the line staff that actually perform the business of what we are all
about. And what we are about is...people. The people who staff our court
systems, the citizens who pay our salaries, and the offenders who have been
defined as criminals who are entrusted to us for sanctions and rehabilitation.
20 years ago there were no urine testing devices; there were no
electronic monitoring devices, the was no pepper spray, there was no DNA
profiling; no cogent theory of sex offender treatment; no Kevlar; no answering
machines; no fax machines; and no computers. These tools have revolutionized
how we do our business.
And I believe that our primary business is the protection of the
community. As society has poured more
and more money into our effort we’ve seen an accompanying rise of the number of
accountants, statisticians, and academicians associated with our profession.
These people are studying and measuring what we purport to be doing. At
the end of this century we are finding that some of the original assumptions
about parole and probation were just plain wrong.
I run a cognitive change program for offenders...and I’m still
on the swat team. We need both methods of law enforcement but, believe me, the cognitive program has had the
greater effect on the incidence of crime in my community.
It’s our little storefront operation, operated with a budget of
zero, that has had the greatest impact
on the lives of offenders in our community...by far. I’m a firm believer that education in how to think
is, ultimately, a far more powerful tool than all the combined sanctions in the
world.
Today I accept this award for all the thousands of Parole and Probation
officers in this country who are, as we speak, making home calls in crack
houses, under bridges, in motels, in homeless shelters, and abandoned cars
trying to make a difference in people’s lives...trying to make a difference
in the quality of life in their communities.
Just trying to make a difference.
Thank you very much for this
wonderful honor.