A Washington resident with over 10 years of experience in law enforcement now handles another side of the criminal justice system.

Brandon Hamilton has been the Washington County Outreach Director since 2019, providing supervision and supportive services to those assigned to supervised probation or pretrial release. Hamilton became a certified peace officer in 2008 and worked for the Washington Police Department and then the county sheriff’s office before taking over the position. Hamilton says it’s been nice to leave working nights behind and continue to work within the criminal justice system with the relationships he’s formed with agencies and offices in the county. As county outreach’s mission statement is to enhance community safety and facilitate positive change, Hamilton works to hold clients accountable and help them complete their court-ordered requirements so he hopefully doesn’t have to see them again in his office, “Good days are everybody’s showing up for their appointments and not showing dirty results on a urine analysis. Those would be good days, those are the days I want every day, and I hope for every day. But also just building those relationships with people that are on probation, and them having enough trust in me to ask for advice about what they should be doing, or things not even court or probation related, just going on within their own personal lives.”

In the last year Hamilton began giving pretrial release supervision to clients with ongoing cases, and he says his client list has increased greatly over the past couple of years, with most of those clients having committed drug or alcohol offenses. Hamilton says county outreach is a good program as the court system can be confusing with a lot of requirements put upon defendants. He wishes more Iowa counties had programs like Washington’s as he believes his supervision makes a bigger impact on people’s lives than the services that were available prior. You can hear more from Hamilton during today’s edition of the KCII Public Safety Special Edition News Magazine at 1 and 6 p.m. Wednesday and by visiting the “On Demand” page under Listen Live at kciiradio.com.