Today’s Times Argus reports on several pieces of legislation that have been proposed to address issues faced by children of incarcerated parents. There are many noteworthy aspects to the legislation, but there’s one bit that I particularly noticed for its dovetailing with one of the points incorporated in my State Ombudsman Proposal.

At one point I refer to a lack of details in state laws that permit bureaucrats to engage in behavior that common sense would argue against. The example I use in the proposal is that there’s no express prohibition against a dismissed professional discipline case being reopened without any new evidence. I make the assumption that legislators did not specifically prohibit it in legislation because it would seem common sense for that kind of thing to be covered in the rules and regulations in the Secretary of State’s Office.

I also make the assumption that it’s not expressly covered in the rules and regulations of the Secretary of State’s Office because bureaucrats prefer to leave themselves as much wiggle room as possible.

There is, however, no comparable explanation for lack of common sense action mentioned in the Times Argus article:

Lawmakers to ease upheaval for children of Vt. prisoners: Times Argus Online
Sen. Hinda Miller, a Chittenden County Democrat, introduced a bill that would codify voluntary “time of arrest” procedures already in place at some police departments. Under the new law, arresting officers would be required to ask the suspect if he or she has children and, if so, to take steps to ensure the welfare of those children by connecting them to human service agencies in the region.

“There are instances when parents are taken away and sleeping children are left in the next room,” Miller says. “One would think that it would be common sense to have these time-of-arrest policies, but apparently it is not part of the education of public safety officials and others who deal with parents that are arrested.”

On the one hand, we do not want every detail legislated, but neither can we fail to specify “common sense” behavior when people who should know better repeatedly fail to act that way.

The question is, why don’t they know better?

What I wrote recently about the attitude of “good enough for government work” comes to mind, but that describes the situation without revealing a cause or solution. Both cause and solution, I think, are properly located with the leadership in any agency or office. How leadership articulates the purpose or mission of the group either by word or example (with example being the stronger influence) goes a long way in determining how subordinates will act.

Personnel in a law enforcement agency that has as its purpose protecting and helping people will behave differently than those in a police department that is focused essentially on getting the bad guys. In the latter, once the bad guys have been apprehended, they’ve done their jobs. In the former, getting the bad guys is only a part of their jobs–they still need to look around and see what they can do to help others.

I think there’s been an increase in a focus on “getting the bad guys” since 9/11. But even prior to that date, in this culture, there’s been entirely too much focus on things like numbers of arrests and numbers of convictions as indicators of success, and way too little on serving justice and the needs of the people with whom we come into contact.

And that leads to another good aspect of the proposed legislation focusing on children of incarcerated parents: if the legislation is passed, there will follow data collection about activities to render care, not just to capture and prosecute.

May we focus more and more on the actions that will generate the data on care.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen