Massachusetts Chief Justice Mulligan Knew Nothing Was Happening in the Probation Department, Doncha Know?

An incredible thing happened last week (November 9, 2010) to the Massachusetts Court System.  A special investigator  exposed about 5% of its corruption, a root-shaking cataclysm which has never occurred before.  That only leaves about 95% of the corruption in the system to be addressed.

OK, Ahem, tongue is now removed from cheek.

 Justice Mulligan "Seeing Nothink"
 at the Probation Department.

Last week, the largest bloc of Massachusetts court employees, the 2200 member (ultra hack-bloated) probation department, was rocked by a scandal.  It's management, including its commission John O'Brien and several high level assistants, as well as a number of state representatives and other state cronies, were larding up the payroll with worthless friends and relatives of said state reps.  These fine elected officials would then see the need to pass very very very large budgets to fund the Probation Department, thus enhancing the power and prestige of the Commissioner of Probation and his management team who were directing the hiring scheme.

One Western Massachusetts rep appeared to have sponsored about 100 such candidates, along with having two family members directly on the Probation payroll, his wife and son.  (They were only hired after a nationwide search for the best candidates, of course).  He became known as "Mr. Probation".

In Massachusetts, in order to maximize the number of tax-eaters on the state payroll, we have SEVEN different divisions of our trial court, such as family, juvenile, superior, district, land, housing, and the icing on the cake - a second completely separate Boston district court division.  Each of these departments has its own full management structure, chief judges, judges, clerk-magistrates (earning six figures), clerks, support staff, opulent high-rent headquarters, courthouses (some combined in various places), procedures, rules, forms, computer systems which can't talk to any of the ones in the other departments, and so forth.  About the only thing they do together is buy paper clips.

Each division also has its own probation officers, even the family courts, where they are euphemistically called "Family Service Officers", and instead of monitoring criminals, they act as semi-demi ineffective mediators. . .  sorta.  With 2200 people, probation has the largest workforce of any court department in this little state.

Anyway, when the scheme began to unravel, our Supreme Judicial Court hired a prestigious Boston lawyer, Paul Ware, to do an investigation.  To his credit, he kicked some serious butt in his report - until the butts got a little too important to kick.  And then, well, the important people didn't really know what was happening with their largest and most important court work force.

Chief Justice Mulligan Oversight of Probation Dept.

The greatest recipient of the storm shield was the Commissioner's direct boss, Chief Justice for Administration and Management, Justice Robert Mulligan.  According to the report, he sternly admonished Commissioner O'Brien every few years or so - wink, wink - that he really oughta clean up his act.  But horrors, despite this strict and careful oversight by Justice Mulligan and his predecessor, thousands of these unqualified candidates were hired anyway during the twelve years of Commissioner O'Brien's tenure.

How could this be?  Pretty easy, I guess.  No one noticed for twelve years.  However, it is preposterous to suggest that the uppity-ups didn't know about this scale of fraud and corruption occurring in plain sight all that time.

My concern is that this tiny little first start at exposing the corruption will start and end here.  Congratulations will be extended all around for a job well done, and it will deflect any further attention from the other 95% of the corruption that is still in the system.  I wonder if that was the idea.