State District Judge Mollee Westfall, member of All Saints Episcopal Church, Fort Worth, and the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, is featured in a front page article of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Thursday, August 7, 2014 edition.
The story is about two programs Judge Westfall administers that offer a new approach to probation – SWIFT, or Supervision With Intensive enForcemenT, and HOPE or Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement program.
The story reports that “SWIFT was launched in September 2011 in Tarrant County, followed in January 2012 by the similar HOPE (Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement) program.
“HOPE serves about 200 offenders in Tarrant County and is part of a nationwide study funded by a $728,000 grant from the Justice Department. Preliminary findings from that study, which includes four jurisdictions, should be available in the first quarter of 2016.
The story continues, “The SWIFT program operates on an annual grant from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. This year’s grant totaled $245,000 and has enabled the SWIFT program to serve more than 660 participants during fiscal 2014.
“The programs are almost identical, but because of the federal government’s guidelines, Westfall said, she has more freedom when sanctioning SWIFT participants. She said she hopes to merge the two programs once the HOPE study is complete.”