NH Justice System Overhaul
Budget restraints and a growing prison population have led lawmakers to take a closer look at the parole system and consider alternatives to incarceration. Officials are hoping Senate Bill 500, a bill on the way to Gov. John Lynch’s office, will address both issues and then some. News from the Foster’s Daily Democrat.
Lynch supports and is expected to sign the measure, according to spokesman Colin Manning. The legislation focuses on preventing repeat offenders from going back to jail by increasing the availability of substance abuse and mental health treatment as well as increasing supervision for high-concern individuals who are most likely to reoffend.
It also calls for the release of all nonviolent offenders after they have served 120 percent of their minimum prison sentences, a move geared toward freeing up the courts from holding unnecessary parole hearings. Other stipulations include a 90-day prison sentence spent in special programming for parole violators, instead of making violators serve their remaining maximum sentence.
Finally, all prisoners who haven’t been previously paroled would be released nine months before their maximum sentences expire.
The logic behind the bill is to reduce the prison population and costs to the state.
Lawmakers say New Hampshire has been one of the safest states in the nation for the last 10 years, but despite that, the state prison population has increased by 31 percent in that period, resulting in the corrections budget doubling from $52 million to $104 million.
The main causes are probation and parole revocations, which account for 57 percent of admissions to state prison, according to lawmakers.
Senate President Sylvia Larsen, D-Concord, is the primary sponsor of SB500 and said it has the potential to reduce recidivism by promoting community-based programming.
“It has both good implications for improving better public safety outcomes and reducing state spending, making wiser investments with our state dollars,” she said.
New Hampshire Chief Justice John Broderick said focusing on community-based programming and adjusting parole is the only way to get the corrections budget down, which at $104 million far surpasses the court system’s budget of $76.2 million.
Broderick, Attorney General Michael Delaney and several others were on a state task force assigned to examine ways to control the corrections budget. The group developed SB500 with the help of the Council of the State Governments’ Justice Center, which helps states create policies based on research.
“Corrections is something we looked at extensively and we noticed it was becoming increasingly expensive and the failure rate was growing,” Broderick said.
He said parole violations really stuck out to him and it became immediately apparent that something needed to be done about minor probation violations.
For example, a person could violate their probation by drinking a beer, and while it’s still a violation, it doesn’t make fiscal sense to make that person go back to prison and serve their maximum sentence.
“Some of these violations are a new crime entirely, but many are technical in nature,” he said. “We’ve never had the flexibility of having intermediate sentences for parole violations, it’s been easy to do it the old way, without thinking about the cost.”
Another harsh reality that needed to be acknowledged is that many parolees reoffend because they have some sort of substance abuse or mental problem and can’t get the proper treatment in prison because of a lack of resources, according to Broderick.
Of the 160 women incarcerated at the women’s prison in Goffstown, 70 percent have some sort of mental health or substance abuse problem, he said.
“It’s not a coincidence that people with these issues are behind bars,” he said. “We had to ask ourselves how can we ensure them better success when they leave prison? We can pretend there’s no problem or pretend that being incarcerated would solve all their mental health or substance abuse problems, or we can do something about it.”
The state is hoping to reinvest whatever savings comes from SB500 back into community-based programming dealing with mental health and substance abuse, according to Broderick.
Some, including the state Parole Board, have criticized the bill for being too soft on crime, but Broderick says something needs to change because “failure is expensive.”
“If we don’t change anything, nothing will change other than we’ll incarcerate more people,” he said.
Programs similar to SB500 are being tried in Kansas and Texas, he added.
The state Department of Corrections is in favor of bill, according to department spokesman Jeff Lyons.
He said the state now relies on county-level programs but is limited itself, outside of traditional probation, electronic monitoring and administrative home confinement.
“We’re supporting the bill because we feel strongly it will go quite a ways to making offenders successful in the community,” he said. “There’s more emphasis on community-based treatment in an effort to keep them from returning.”
The DOC estimates the bill will decrease state general fund expenditures by $22,862 in fiscal year 2011 and could result in a savings of $3,210,247 by 2014. Most of the initial savings would come from marginal savings, such as costs for medical, food, clothing and inmate pay.
By 2013, the state would start to see more savings from staff and the elimination of contracts they have with county facilities to house overflow inmates.
Lyons said he’s optimistic about a portion of the bill that calls for the early release of inmates nearing the end of their maximum sentence.
“We have over 200 prisoners a year that max out of their sentences, and once they’re done, they’re done, and we have no authority over them whatsoever,” he said.
Being released into society without any structure often leads to these prisoners reoffending and ending up back in prison, Lyons said.
“If we can get them out nine months early and get them some treatment, at least we can help them make an attempt of getting back on track,” he said.
The DOC also has taken its own steps to reduce recidivism by expanding its division of community corrections. It was expanded through a federal grant and by using leftover funds from a discontinued academy program.
Lyons said the academy program was limited to only first-time offenders and involved multiple treatment programs. He said the state’s focus now is to open up treatment programs to a wider range of prisoners.
The state also is looking to hire case counselors to help develop treatment programs for inmates, a job that now falls to the parole officers, Lyons said.
“This would allow for the parole officers to focus more on law enforcement, while councilors can focus on counseling,” he said.
Community-based programming and alternative sentencing programs have been successful on the jail population at the county level.
Strafford County has numerous community programs and alternative sentencing options available, including a drug court and drug academy, mental health court, therapeutic communities within the jail, community work programs and traditional pre- and post-trial monitoring.
County Administrator Ray Bower said the county has a less than 10 percent failure rate in its programs, which save the county more than $6 million annually.
“Based on our success from early release and monitoring, as long as the state is committed to helping these early release inmates be successful, I have no doubt it will be successful,” he said.
However, he did caution there are sometimes differences between a jail inmate and prison inmate, based on seriousness of crime, and notes the state needs to be cautious about how they apply some of the new policies.
SB500 does call for a risk assessment of all parolees to determine their risk of reoffending.
Other bills geared toward reducing the recidivism rate include:
— House Bill 621: Establishes earlier time frames for conducting a pretrial examination by a psychiatrist or psychologist, requires the establishment of mental illness screening procedures and establishes new procedures for the appointment of counsel for a person with a mental illness. This bill has a Senate hearing set for May 26.— HB1177: Establishes a committee to study educational and career development programs for youths and young adults in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. That bill has passed both the House and Senate.
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