Carmen George is the territorial probation officer. She has a staff of five -- it will be four by January, when one employee retires. That's not even half the number she needs to keep track of the criminals her office must monitor.

A shortage of probation officers spells trouble because it means that criminals in need of supervision may not get it.

Data shows that 40 percent of Virgin Islands criminals break the law again within two years of their release from prison. Many do that while on probation or parole.

And probation is not all that the Probation Office has to handle. The other tasks:

• Keep tabs on all suspects out on bail.
• Prepare pre-sentencing reports for all convicted persons.
• Monitor the more than 400 parolees and probationers.
• Make sure people sentenced to community service do their time.

The demands on the office, George says, are so great that she and her staff often put in 10-hour days. Overworked officers sometimes don't catch the early signs of trouble and can't monitor problem offenders carefully, she says.

Too often, some criminals slip through the cracks. Dozens of parole violators who should be sent back to prison are not -- simply because the Probation Office staff doesn't have time to follow their cases closely.

"We completed 35 pre-sentencing reports this month alone," George says. "These reports involve doing detailed background checks, interviewing victims and doing other time-consuming investigations."

That leaves less time to watch parolees and probationers and give them any help they might need.

Her staff, George says, can't keep track of everything. And she says the territory has no system for police to inform her office when they arrest a parolee or probationer.

"I am not blaming the police," she says. "But there is simply nothing in place."

She must rely on word-of-mouth or the media to find out who has been arrested.

"This is a small place," George says. "Sometimes I will see a name of someone arrested in the newspaper and it says that someone is on probation."

If she doesn't catch the name, nobody will yank his parole or probation.

George says this problem could be solved with a computerized system for recording all arrests and listing probationers and parolees.

"What we do now is keep records by hand," she says. "We are still in the Dark Ages."