Remember carbon paper?
He made phone calls by dialing on a land line. He mailed reports by actual mail, with stamps and everything. And he found parolees and probationers by actually looking for them.
A lot has changed in 37 years.
“About the only thing that has really remained the same is that criminals keep doing the same sorts of things,” Lemaich said last week. “The drugs change a little bit, but criminals are still criminals.”
Later this month, Lemaich will step down as regional supervisor for the Montana Department of Corrections' probation and parole division. He's been there since 1983 and been in charge since 1990.
Although he's seen nearly a sea change in the way convicted criminals are handled by the justice system, one of the biggest changes in his career came when he and his wife Marilyn moved to Montana from California, where he also worked in probation and parole. The difference wasn't about technology or which program might best help an inmate reform, but the overall outlook.
“In California, we'd have judges reading rights to like 50 guys at a time,” Lemaich recalled. “He'd say, ‘OK, you guys who are going to plead guilty stand over here, and you guys who are going to plead not guilty, well, here's the number of the public defender.' ”
But when he took a job in Missoula, Lemaich found a system much more focused on the individual.
“Everybody gets their day here, and it's nothing like the sort of cattle-call approach we had in California,” he said. “It's an amazing difference, and really made an impact on me. You treat every guy like a real person.”
Lemaich is known for that, and it's central to his approach to criminal justice. If you speak generally about criminals, they often don't prosper in the criminal justice system, and far too few take advantage of the numerous chances for treatment and change offered by the Corrections Department. But some do. Some want to change, to do better, to stay out of prison.
“It's those guys, the ones who do well and then show up 10 years later and say thanks, those guys really keep you going,” Lemaich said. “You can see the impact you've had on their lives, and that's very rewarding.”
When Lemaich showed up in Missoula in 1982 - his wife Marilyn had grown up in Helena and wanted to return to Montana - the corrections side of the criminal justice system was a pretty simple place. Criminals were sentenced to probation or prison, with little in between. When Lemaich went to work for probation and parole in 1983, five officers supervised about 400 inmates.
Today, 22 probation and parole officers supervise about 1,200 inmates who are often spread out over a host of programs designed to rehabilitate and help them re-enter society as useful citizens.
“When I came, you didn't have a lot of options, but today there are just so many places we can place people,” Lemaich said. “And I do think the basic idea of trying to deal with people with community-based programs is the right thing. Of course, there are just some guys who have to go to prison, but other guys, maybe the prerelease with some job training is a better idea. Certainly with the new meth treatment programs, that's a much better option than just filing people away in the prison.”
Lemaich said Missoula is fortunate to have had excellent probation and parole officers, as well as a justice system willing to make use of community programs instead of warehousing inmates.
“I think the officers, the county attorney's office, law enforcement, the judges, they've all done a good job at sorting through all these folks and all the possible options for them,” he said. “When you've got people who are willing to make a change, you want to see if you can help that person along.”
Besides, Lemaich said, Montana has learned that just locking up prisoners is a path to financial disaster.
“If we locked up everybody in the system, we'd break the bank, and break it quickly,” he said. “We're not going to stop people from breaking the law, so we're going to continue to need to lock them up, treat them and keep track of them. Treating them in the community seems to make the most sense, as long as we do it in a way that doesn't endanger public safety.”
That said, Lemaich said Montana will eventually need a thorough assessment of its treatment and diversionary programs to ensure that they're actually working.
“I would say the evidence is anecdotal that they're a good thing, but we need to do a full assessment at some time that would tell us more about what works best and what doesn't work as well,” he said.
Despite the drastic changes over the past 25 years, Lemaich said probation and parole still comes down to having good officers keeping track of criminals.
“GPS and electronic monitoring are nice, but they'll never make up for having boots on the ground,” he said.
In late July, Lemaich will hang up the work boots for hiking boots, golf shoes and waders.
“There's a lot of things I still want to do, and I've got to get to it,” he said.
He'll leave with a host of good memories, but none more symbolize his career than the one that involves Anita Richards.
Anita's son, Jim, was murdered in 1992 by his wife. Becky Richards shot her husband in the head, but argued that he had committed suicide. The entire Richards family was crushed, but as Anita took part in the presentence process of the case, she found a calling - advocating for victims.
In 2005, she won a prestigious award for victims' services, and she's been on the Montana Sentencing Commission, a co-chair of the Department of Corrections Crime Victims Advisory Council and a consultant to the Flathead County Restorative Justice Council.
“Victims used to be left out in the cold, but we finally found a way to start hearing them,” Lemaich said. “Seeing someone like Anita, who had such a horrible tragedy, do all the good things she's done, it's pretty special. Listening to victims, that's one of the most important things we can do.”
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com.
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