Richard A. Kipp March 27, 1953 - February 9, 2018

Richard A. Kipp passed away at home on February 9, 2018. He is survived by his loving wife of 41 years, Deborah (White) Kipp; sons Ryan and Richard C. married to daughter-in-law Heather and their children, Rory and Liam; brother Alan married to Rose and their children Betty and Cathy. Rich is also survived by Richard B. White and daughter Kimberley; Daniel White married to Pat and their children Mark and Heather; Linda (White) and John Mitchell and their children Taylor and Cole; and, Laurie White and her children, Jaclyn and Jarrett.

Rich will continue in his passing to be a loving, devoted husband, father, grandfather, brother, and uncle. There is no mortal state that could contain his limitless devotion.

His life outside his family was committed to keeping his community safe thru his areas of expertise, including criminal justice, social work, and education. These coupled with his thorough knowledge of law, policy, and procedural development, positively impacted communities across the United States.

His professional qualifications include 26-years of supervisory and administrative level positions in community corrections. Under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Institute of Corrections and other professional associations, Rich was a nationally recognized teacher, mentor, and trainer working with police agencies, sheriff departments, institutional corrections, and other law enforcement personnel in federal, state, and local government. Rich had a uniquely diverse background in criminal justice that influenced his delivery of judgements and sound management. As once noted by Governor Tom Ridge, Rich was a “change agent” in delivering successful collaborative partnerships with a wide-range of criminal justice and community agencies, once deemed innovative and now preferred practice.

Rich served as a Parole Board Member for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1997-2003. As a Board Member, he was an administrative law judge with oversight and responsibility of the Parole Board’s administration of budget, personnel, and field services to 65 county probation departments, serving over 200,000 offenders. During his tenure, Rich designed, developed, and implemented initiatives such as a statewide critical incident protocol to effectively address victimization and crisis management of agency personnel and their families. He facilitated a strategic task force to reinvent, redesign, and automate the business practices, rules, outcomes, and processes of field supervision.

Before the Parole Board, Rich served for 20-years as Chief Probation Officer for Lehigh County (Allentown), Pennsylvania. In this role, he instituted a day reporting center offering community-based services for employment readiness, drug and alcohol assessment and treatment, credit consumer counseling, health and wellness, sexually transmitted disease education, and an adult basic education program with computer lab. Acknowledging a service gap between the criminal justice system and the mental health/retardation system, he developed a program for the rehabilitation and education of mentally ill and deficient offenders, co-administrated with the Office of Mental Health and Retardation. In 1994, this program received the first Annual President’s Award for Innovative Programs by the American Probation and Parole Association.

Many conceptual programs started under Rich, are considered effective national probation strategies. These include electronic monitoring, alcohol highway safety programs, retail theft rehabilitation program, community probation and police weed-and-seed operations, geographically assigned caseloads, banked (administrative) caseloads monitored by support personnel, and specialized units (i.e., drug intensive, pre-parole, intake, presentence, day reporting and warrant). In 1977, Rich led the Lehigh County Department of Adult Probation and Parole to receive the highest rating of all departments in the United States and Canada by the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections.

Rich developed and wrote a comprehensive caseload management system that implemented a structure that defined desired outcomes and included a tracking procedure to identify critical work processes and standardized methods for measurement. This included creating statistical reports, monthly exceptions reports, offender profiles and generating other performance outcome measures. He also adopted a workload versus caseload management system to ensure parity of work levels for staff. Given the authority to hire and fire by the Court, Rich developed and implemented a candidacy process that improved hiring of qualified officers and increased Departmental retention rates. These protocols continue to strengthen service delivery, caseload management, accountability, officer and community safety in many county agencies in the Commonwealth.

Training is crucial to staffs’ professional development, health, and safety. Rich was one of the U.S. Department of Justice and National Institute of Corrections most requested trainers in the specialized areas of officer safety and critical incident protocol. He arranged his limited vacation schedule to accommodate consulting in a total of 48 states and was an expert witness.

Believing that education is the best investment one can make, Rich taught in higher education since 1987, impacting thousands of students who had the honor of sitting in his classrooms. Colleges and universities relied heavily on his extensive knowledge, skills, and abilities both as a criminal justice educator and practitioner.  His academic, educational, and professional qualifications and experiences uniquely blended to help and encourage sustainable student learning, preparing his students with excellent undergraduate preparation for socially useful and self-fulfilling careers. Rich was highly regarded, respected, and admired by his colleagues and his students who outwardly appreciated the information and guidance acquired under his caring and compassionate tutelage. Rich emphasized the importance of ethical behavior in both their personal and professional lives. Ideally, the two become intertwined when a graduate enters the criminal justice profession.

In all areas of his life, Rich believed it is critical to remain in a dynamic state, creating opportunities for innovative ideas and methodologies.  Whether he was meticulously upgrading his M3, competing in international SIM racing, or infusing high technology in our home, Rich had novel approaches to life challenges. In his world, “effectiveness becomes not just a matter of resources and operational capacity, but the ability to design solutions. Energy for change is equal to the level of vision.” His applied energy in all facets of his life will live far beyond his mortal departure.