PANORAMA CITY : Community Service ‘Volunteers’ Decline

A sharp drop-off in the number of offenders sentenced to perform community service work has put a crimp in the Court Referral Program at the Volunteer Center of San Fernando Valley, according to the program’s director.

“Last year at this time we had 10,000 more people referred from the courts to do community service work,” said Pat Kortlander, who has been with the program for 18 years. “Area nonprofit organizations are hurting. This type of work helps not only the person (who gains job experience by performing community service), but the agencies as well.”

During May, the last month complete figures were available, the 2,500 community service “volunteers” at the Volunteer Center gave area nonprofit groups an estimated $1.2 million worth of their time. That’s about half the amount of work performed during the same period last year, Kortlander said.

The Court Referral Program deals with at least 200 agencies to which offenders are referred, she said.

She says it is ironic that tough economic times, while making the services performed by court-referred workers more vitally needed than ever, have caused judges to opt increasingly for making offenders pay fines instead of doing community service.

“We’re questioning whether or not we ought to keep an office open,” Kortlander said of the Court Referral Program.

Kortlander added that she will be meeting with judges in an effort to reverse the trend.

“It’s basically up to the judges whether they will or they won’t,” she said.