After three violent criminals escaped from a private prison last month in Kingman, state officials began asking why they had been assigned to a medium-security facility. John McCluskey, Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick escaped July 30 after an embarrassing series of security lapses at the prison, operated by Utah-based Management and Training Corp. Story from the Arizona Republic.

All three have been captured, but their escape is likely to spur further discussion on how to classify inmates’ security risks and decide where to house them.

Both public and private prisons use the state’s classification system, but the Arizona Department of Corrections already has pulled some inmates from the Kingman facility as it rethinks how it assigns risk.

Arizona assigns inmates a number from one to five, with five representing the highest risk, based on their crimes. Depending on their score, inmates are assigned to one of four custody levels: minimum, medium, close and maximum.

Over time, an inmate’s classification can be adjusted up or down based on the inmate’s behavior in custody.

The system works when used properly, said Tom Rosazza, a consultant and former state corrections director. But the system can also mean that more violent offenders can wind up in less-secure facilities depending on their behavior.

Although they were in a medium-security facility at a private prison, McCluskey, Province and Renwick qualified as dangerous offenders. Renwick was a convicted murderer. Province killed a man in 1991 by stabbing him 51 times. McCluskey was sentenced in Arizona for attempted murder and had a previous armed-robbery conviction in Pennsylvania.

“My first thought was, ‘What the hell were those guys doing at that (Kingman) place?’ ” Rosazza said.

Their cases are not unique. There are more than 1,400 inmates serving time for murder in medium-security settings in Arizona, including 796 with life sentences. More than 100 were housed at the prison near Kingman, the only private facility in Arizona to house murderers.

Province entered the prison system with a maximum “five” rating when he reported to serve his life sentence in 1993 but was moved down to a “three,” or medium security, by 1997. Renwick followed a similar path through the system, while McCluskey entered custody as a medium-security inmate for firing a shotgun into a Mesa home in 2009.

Authorities allege the trio escaped with help from Casslyn Welch, McCluskey’s cousin and fiancee. The escapees are believed to have cut their way through a fence. Alarms were ignored because, according to state officials, prison guards thought they were false.

Renwick was recaptured Aug. 1 in Colorado after a shootout with police. Province was caught Aug. 9 in Wyoming. McCluskey and Welch were caught Thursday evening in Apache County and are suspected along with Province of being involved in the murder of an elderly couple in New Mexico shortly after the escape.

Because of the three inmates’ possible post-escape crimes, the classification issue likely will come up in any future lawsuits against the state or a prison operator, Rosazza said.

“That would be the first thing I’d look at,” he said.

Arizona officials control what factors are used in determining prisoner classifications and, based on those classifications, decide which facilities prisoners are held in. Although the former fugitives escaped from a private facility, the state will bear some liability in any court action because it is responsible for prisoners sentenced in Arizona.

“The state doesn’t contract away its responsibility,” Rosazza said.

The current classification system was put in place following a 1978 inmate escape and killing spree. In the wake of last month’s escape, there is discussion of making changes.

Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan last week said 148 inmates have been moved from the Kingman facility because of the escape. He cited a lack of confidence in the management there to house more violent and escape-prone offenders. The inmates remained at the same custody level when they were moved to different facilities.

jchev Arizona, Assessments and Classification

Corrections officials in Montana opened a new $12.3 million revocation-sanction facility designed to reduce unnecessary prison admissions by diverting low-risk offenders away from state prisons.

The new 40,000-square-foot Sanction, Treatment, Assessment, Revocation and Transition facility, which cost more than $10.3 million to construct, provides 142 beds for adult offenders. Designed by San Francisco-based firm KMD Architects, the facility also incorporates an additional 10 special-needs beds designated for mentally ill offenders.

Butte-based Community, Counseling and Correctional Services Inc. won the contract to operate the new START facility for the state Department of Corrections after successfully managing a 3-year pilot program launched in December 2005. The program operated out of an existing facility on the campus of the state hospital in Warm Springs for the duration of its pilot phase.

The START program provides short-term, secure housing for offenders who violate the conditions of their community placement and who would otherwise be automatically subject to increased sanctions, such as incarceration.

Current outcome measures of the intermediate-sanction initiative indicate that more than 80 percent of offenders placed in START are successfully diverted from prison. During the first two years of the pilot phase, prison admissions in Montana dropped 12.5 percent, according to official figures.

Based on short-sharp-shock modalities, the program uses a taste of incarceration, coupled with personal needs assessment and tailored treatment, to get offenders back on track.

The START program relies on a comprehensive range of assessment tools that help staff develop an intensive, tailored treatment/programming regimen designed to return offenders to their original supervision status in the community without resorting to long-term prison incarceration.

Licensed addiction counselors provide chemical dependency treatment.

State authorities implemented the alternatives-to-incarceration initiative with the primary objective of reducing the number of unnecessary admissions to the overburdened state prison system. Diverting low-risk offenders to treatment and program-intensive community based facilities is less costly than prison placement on a per-bed basis, officials say.

Handling low-risk offenders by using intermediate sanctions that fall short of incarceration also serves to reduce prison overcrowding and reserves costly and finite bed space for higher-risk offenders, officials say.

jchev Assessments and Classification, Jail and Prison Construction, Montana

Washington state is preparing to stop supervising nearly 10,000 ex-cons on probation. That’s because of budget cuts – and a policy decision to focus on the highest-risk probationers. But some community corrections officers are raising red flags. Report from OPB.

Before the Washington Department of Corrections decides who will be released from supervision, it needs to assess the risk level of the people it monitors. In August of last year, the department switched to a new risk assessment system or tool. It’s a computer program that ranks offenders as high, moderate or low risk to reoffend based on their criminal history. Low-risk, non-sex offenders will no longer be supervised.

Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail says the tool is proving to be about 70-percent accurate at predicting recidivism. Eldon Vail: “It’s as good a tool that exists anywhere in the country. There’s no tool that’s a hundred percent. We have to make a choice about who we’re going to supervise, we can’t afford to supervise everyone at the highest risk level. This is the best tool available to us.” Vail adds that this new risk assessment tool is categorizing more offenders as high-risk.

But some community corrections officers say they don’t trust this new method of measuring the risk an offender poses to the public. Ton Johnson supervises felons in Seattle’s King County. He says the tool is limited because it only looks at an offender’s criminal record. Ton Johnson: “You know I think we need to look at other factors that cause criminal behavior. Are they homeless, are there chemical dependency issues, other triggers that may exist?” Johnson believes corrections officials are putting too much faith in a single tool to decide who will continue to be supervised and who will no longer have to check in with a probation officer.

jakking Assessments and Classification, Community Corrections, Parole, Recidivism, Washington

With the cost of housing for each of the state’s 23,000 prison inmates at $29,000 per year, the Wisconsin DOC is looking for ways to get smart on crime. As reported by the Superior Telegram.

Department of Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch was in Superior on Monday to meet with local law enforcement to highlight some of the changes proposed as the state faces a $5.7 billion budget shortfall. Among the changes is a new evaluation system that could keep low-risk, nonviolent offenders out of state prisons and low-risk offenders who’ve committed misdemeanor crimes off the state’s probation system … “There always will be a need for prisons to house violent criminals who pose a threat to public safety, but … we need to invest in strategies beyond prison expansion to curtail corrections spending and reduce recidivism,” Raemisch said …

The goal of the new strategy is to protect public safety by keeping violent offenders in prison, but providing opportunities for nonviolent offenders to complete treatment so they can succeed and become productive citizens when they return to their communities, Raemisch said. Under the proposed changes, offenders would be evaluated to determine the level of risk they pose to the community and provide services to help low-risk offenders.  The state would expand services in the Earned Release Program to provide services needed for successful reintegration in the community. Currently, drug and alcohol treatment are provided, but an offender may need education and job skills, Raemisch said. He said the goal is to provide what the offender needs …

One of the things county officials hope to see come from this is an opportunity to reintegrate prison inmates in the community by using the county jails to house state prisoners and allow them a chance, under Huber work release, to get jobs to ensure a successful transition from incarceration to release in the community.  “I’d like to work with the sheriff’s on a re-entry program … and get them acclimated in the community,” Raemisch said.

jakking Assessments and Classification, Economic Issues, Wisconsin

New York State’s highest court, in a decision made public today, said the Erie County sheriff’s jail division can mingle sentenced and unsentenced inmates at the jails it runs, despite union contentions that it was creating an improper work practice.  As reported by the Buffalo News:

The state Court of Appeals reversed decisions by lower courts and the Public Employment Relations Board. In those decisions, the jail division was told it had to bargain with the unions before changing the system that placed sentenced inmates at the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden and unsentenced prisoners at the Holding Center in Buffalo. Those classifications conformed to the labor jurisdictions of the bargaining units involved.

The Civil Service Employees Association represents the corrections officers charged with guarding sentenced inmates at the Correctional Facility.  The Teamsters union represents the deputy sheriffs charged with guarding presentenced and pretrial detainees at the Holding Center and the “Annex,” the quarters in Alden handling the overflow of Holding Center inmates.

After the lockups were merged under the sheriff’s control in 2000, the state Commission of Correction looked at the county-run jails as one system and insisted on a unified classification standard in which prisoners were housed by their institutional histories, whether they were violent and other factors the commission considered more objective. That forced jail officials to ignore the “sentenced or unsentenced” standard in housing prisoners …

Citing past decisions, the Court of Appeals said a public employer’s decisions are not bargainable as terms and conditions of employment where “they are inherently and fundamentally policy decisions relating to the primary mission of the … employer.” The court said the sheriff has “a statutory requirement to implement and maintain a formal and objective classification system.”

jakking Assessments and Classification, County-State Issues, NY Erie County, New York, Officer Contract Issues, Personnel Issues

While jail and prison populations balloon statewide and across the nation, county jail facilities in Santa Cruz CA have reduced overcrowding in the past few years, according to the county’s annual grand jury report, and as reported in the San Jose Mercury News.

The report, which takes a look at jail facilities each year, applauded efforts by the Sheriff’s Office and its partners in the criminal justice system for making adjustments in how inmates are screened, housed and supervised to reduce overcrowding at county incarceration centers. The average monthly population at County Jail on Water Street in Santa Cruz fell 15 percent between 2004 and 2007, according to the report. Current statistics indicate that number continues to decline …  The report lists figures from the first six months of 2007, when the average monthly population there was 358 inmates, a significant decline from 2004 when the average population was 408 and a far cry from the 450-plus inmates that were housed in the facility a decade ago. According to County Jail statistics Tuesday, the population was 299 inmates, below the state-rated capacity of 311.

To keep a handle on jail population, the Sheriff’s Office established a Jail Overcrowding Committee that meets quarterly to discuss concerns. The committee — comprised of representatives from law enforcement, the judiciary, the District Attorney’s Office, the Probation Department, the Public Defenders Office, the county Board of Supervisors and other agencies — developed a set of strategies to reduce overcrowding.  Among those was implementation of a new classification system that screens inmates to determine whom might be better-suited for a work release or GPS monitoring program.

jakking Assessments and Classification, CA Santa Cruz County, Overcrowding, Work Release

If a new bill passes, criminals on probation in Washington State who are considered only moderately likely to re-offend will say goodbye to their corrections officer knowing they will have little or no supervision in the community.

Senate Bill 5288 is similar to one proposed by the governor. It would eliminate most supervision for people on probation who are classified as low or moderate risk to reoffend and is being considered by the state Senate as a cost-cutting measure … The bill states that the DOC must supervise any offender sentenced to community custody who is classified as high-risk violent or high-risk non-violent. Most low- and moderate-risk offenders will not be supervised, except for sex offenders who fail to register in their community. The DOC may terminate those sex offenders’ supervision after 12 months have passed without a violation of their sentence …

Eldon Vale, secretary of the DOC, said that because Washington is facing such a severe budget crisis, the DOC has to reduce its budget, too. “We have to either incarcerate less people or supervise less people, and by reducing the supervision of those offenders who score out at a low or moderate risk to reoffend, we’re cutting out caseload,” Vale said.  “Does it present zero risk to the public? That’s not a question anyone can answer,” said Vale.

This is an excerpt from a longer piece that discusses offender assessment in detail.

jakking Assessments and Classification, Early Release, Economic Issues, Washington

We have added a couple of interesting papers to the Library page.

“An Empirical Modeling Approach To Recidivism Classification” by Ed Dow, Charles Jones and Jack Mott is an introduction to a classification approach that goes far deeper than a single inventory score. With the continuing popularity of early releases as a mechanism to solve other corrections’ issues, accurate assessment of offenders being let out onto the street becomes ever more vital. In the interests of full disclosure let me state that Syscon has an interest in the RMS application that uses the principles outlined in this paper.

“Health and Prisoner Re-Entry” is a detailed report by the Urban Institute Justice Project on the nexus between re-entry issues and physical and mental health. A lot of interesting material in there.

jakking Assessments and Classification, Inmate Health Care, Mental Health Issues, Re-Entry