-: Well, my name is Brandon Shaw.
I'm a parole officer with the state of Indiana.
Our job is basically to reintegrate you into society.
So now, you've messed up, you made a mistake,
and now our job is to kind of mold you
back into where you need to be
so you don't make that same mistake again.
So we get you out, make sure that you have stable housing,
make sure that, if necessary, you need drug treatment,
of if you have a problem with battering a spouse,
you get treatment or assistance for that,
or if you're a sex offender, you get some sort of assistance
for those issues that you have, and then at the same time,
assure that you obtain and maintain gainful employment,
and make sure that you follow all the conditions and rules
agreed upon by you and the parole board, essentially,
when you're released.
Well, first thing what I do is
I'll bring you in and talk to you.
I don't like to review the file before I meet you.
I like to talk to you and get a feeling for you first
and basically, let you tell me your story.
If you're a sex offender, I'm gonna go through
your sexual history, find out where you've been at,
what you've done, find out what your goals are,
find out what obstacles you've had in your past
which led you to offend, in your mind,
and then at that point, we're gonna
get you set up with a treatment provider.
From a sex offender, a lot of times in Indiana,
you're released on GPS.
It's not always, it's not absolute,
but at this point in time,
a lot of them are released on GPS,
so I'll show up when you're shopping at Wal-Mart,
see what you got in your cart.
I'll go out to your work, check on you there.
You're going out to church, if I am available on a Sunday,
I will go to the church and, you know...
Currently, I have a regular case load
and in this case load, you're usually dealing with
those that have been convicted of drug crimes,
sometimes murderers, sometimes armed robberies, thefts,
but traditionally, people who've been
out of the system a couple times.
We had a guy who was convicted of murder back in the 70's.
He was on a lifetime commitment with the department,
and that particular individual decided to stop showing up.
He was hanging out with a prostitute
who was also drug addicted
and he had basically fallen off the map.
It was my team which is me and another agent's job,
to go out and find this particular individual,
and of course, it's very high risk due to the simple fact
that he has everything to lose,
because he knows he gets returned, he's 60 years old,
it's probably gonna be end of the road for him,
and it took us a little while to find him
and to get ahold of him, and we were able
to arrest him without incident.
Technically, my field, you wear two hats.
You have a social worker hat and a law enforcement hat.
Both of them have to be used at times.
Sometimes I have to come in and my whole day
is being a social worker and trying to help people
get through their lives and life situations
and get them treatment, get them assistance,
and give them every opportunity to succeed possible.
And there's other days where I have to come in
with the law enforcement hat and I have to,
for lack of better terms, clean house.
I have to go find out what they're doing,
what they're doing wrong, and sometimes,
that is going to lead you to have to
get a warrant for their arrest
and arrest them and take them to jail.