Stanislaus extends bonuses to reduce job vacancies. AI to help with probation reports
Stanislaus County has brought down its workforce vacancy rate from 18% in 2022 to 13%, as of February.
Officials assert that a hiring bonus increased applications for county jobs, so the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday extended the bonus program for new hires for another year.
The program offering a choice of a $5,000 to $10,000 cash bonus, increased paid leave or a boost in retirement savings will run between July 1 and June 30, 2026. Each option is the equivalent to one month’s base pay.
In August 2022, the county had 4,730 allocated positions, of which 845 were vacant, with the number of empty cubicles in county offices swelling during the COVID pandemic. That was affecting service delivery to the public, a staff report says.
After offering the bonuses for new hires, starting in August 2022, the county saw a 34% increase in job applications and a 38% increase in people hired for full-time positions.
The county has since added more budgeted positions to the workforce without increasing the percentage of unfilled positions. Before the bonuses were offered, the county was losing more employees than it could hire.
As the county continues to fill vacant positions, the estimated cost of extending the incentives for new hires is $2.28 million. About 53% of the eligible employees hired have chosen the cash, while 42% chose extra time off and the rest wanted retirement savings.
Artificial intelligence to help with county probation workload
Hiring incentives and recruitment efforts have not significantly improved the staff vacancy rate in the county Probation Department, where more than 20% of positions have been vacant, the report says.
Supervisors approved an agreement Tuesday with Cognisen, a Modesto-based firm, for artificial intelligence services to assist probation staff. By helping with report writing and gathering data, the AI services can free probation officers to spend more time in the field monitoring and motivating people on probation.
Mark Ferriera, chief probation officer for the county, said the primary use for the AI services will be assistance with writing reports. Probation officers are expected to summarize the content in police documents in preparing sentencing reports for the Superior Court. Sometimes the police reports are hundreds of pages and need to be condensed to something that’s understandable in court, Ferriera said.
“The AI system can assist us with condensing many of those reports,” Ferriera said. Probation staff still will be responsible for what’s in the report and for reviewing and editing the content for accuracy, he said.
Ferriera said he could not stress enough that artificial intelligence won’t be involved with decisions or making recommendations to the court regarding a defendant.
“We are still trying to identify how it can help us,” he said. “We think it can help us in a lot of different ways.”
Stanislaus County Probation and the probation departments in San Joaquin and San Mateo counties have assisted Cognisen in developing features of a PEARL (Personal Engagement Automated Resource Liaison) system to help with time-consuming desk work.
For serving as a pilot county, Stanislaus qualifies for a $240,000 credit from Cognisen. The county justified the noncompetitive, five-year contract by noting there are no other known contractors providing AI technology to probation departments.
Ferriera said the hiring incentives have been effective in recruitment of probation staff. But recruitment and retention of employees remains a challenge for criminal justice agencies in California, he said.
This story was originally published May 1, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
