New class of officers coming as DOC, parole merge

transports prisoners from place to place. If the DOC employees could take over the transportation duties, parole officers might be able to spend more time meeting with the people they supervise, Mr. Wetzel said.

It’s also possible the two could coordinate on assessments to help gauge the needs of parolees — right now, they receive assessments in the prison system and often again from their parole officer.

The results of those screenings help determine what kinds of programs people participate in while they’re on parole.

About 75 percent of the people who go through the state’s prison system and leave struggle with addiction, and just shy of 30 percent have some form of mental illness, according to DOC statistics. Mr. Wetzel hopes that sharing and streamlining more of that information could help better tailor programs for each parolee and reduce the chances that they’ll commit new crimes.

“Even though we have similar goals,” he said of the two departments, “they’re not the same goal, and similar is not good enough to get outcomes.”

Ideally, he said, the new arrangement will allow the DOC and parole board to better coordinate to get those outcomes.

Some parts of the merger worry people in law enforcement circles.

The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, for example, fears that pairing the two agencies could weaken the parole board’s independence.

The Wolf administration has said that the parole board will continue to have full authority to decide who would be released on parole and who should return to custody after infractions of the rules of their supervision.

But Richard Long, executive director of the state DA association, said members fear that if parole officers are deeply attuned to the budget for prisons — and thinking, intentionally or not, about the high costs of incarcerating someone — they might be less likely to recommend that someone who has violated the rules of their parole return to prison.

“If someone should be revoked ... and they’re not revoked, that weakens public safety,” he said.

Mr. Wetzel said, “I don’t know any criminal justice professional who would make a decision that would impact the safety of the community based on money.”

Mr. Long said his group also has concerns about the way the merger came to be. Legislation authorizing the merger had been floating around the General Assembly since at least 2015 but had never passed to the governor’s desk.

The governor’s office said when it announced the merger last month that it believed a line in a budget bill known as the administrative code gave it the authority to make the move.

Had it gone the whole way through the House and the Senate, Mr. Long said he thought the change might have been “more fully vetted.”

Mr. Wetzel said he plans to meet with the association, possibly early next year, to discuss the changes.

For now, Mr. Long’s reaction to the merger is mixed.

“If we end up with more agents on the streets, that’s a positive,” Mr. Long said, “but our concerns remain.”