“Tim has done an outstanding job in the past four months in his role as acting director and helped refocus our probation and parole system on the basics of good community supervision,” Secretary of Correction Alvin Keller said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford told Finance Committee members that SB398 would create a two-year pilot program of “intermediate sanction” centers for low-risk probation violators as well as people whose crimes are linked to alcohol or drug addictions.  Life skill and rehabilitative programs would be offered to about 400 participants a year, who would stay an average of six months.  Horsford said the program could save the state more than $34 million over the next five years. “Clearly there is a new and more innovative approach we can take that would ensure public safety and require the offender to go through their sentence, but also do it in a way that doesn’t cost the state what we’re spending now,” Horsford said.

The program would use existing facilities and wouldn’t require new beds. Horsford added that program participants wouldn’t mix with other inmates and that a little more than half of the beds would be concentrated in southern Nevada.  Drug and alcohol treatment programs for Willden told lawmakers an additional $2.2 million per year would be required to provide such programs, at a ratio of one staff person for every 27 inmates. The centers would be provided through the Department of Health and Human Services, who would work with community service providers, DHH director Mike Willden said.

Bernie Curtis, chief of the Division of Parole and Probation, spoke in support of the bill, saying, “It’s not going to cost us anything in parole and probation, frankly, to use these intermediate sanctions. We think it’s a good start for a program that is needed in this state.”

Budget plans agreed by the Ministry of Justice and its agency Noms (National Offender Management Service), which is responsible for both the prison and probation services, will see cash cuts in all four regions.  In Gwent, for example, the overall budget is due to reduce from £22.8m in the financial year that began last week to £20m in two years’ time.

Mike Dunne, co-chair of the Gwent and Glamorgan branch of Napo, said: “We are extremely concerned about the potential impact of these cuts on our members’ ability to do their jobs properly. There is evidence that increasing workloads for probation officers results in an increase in crime. Coupled with the recession, which in itself is likely to result in more crime, there could be very serious consequences. The public will undoubtedly be at greater risk …

Mr Dunne said that Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, had stated that the public sector, like the private sector, should expect job losses in the recession.  “That’s all very well,” said Mr Dunne. “But whereas when car sales go down and demand decreases, there isn’t the need to employ so many workers in car factories, the same does not apply in the probation service. We still have the same number of clients to deal with, probably more” …

Justice Minister David Hanson, the MP for Delyn, said: “There is absolutely no evidence in the figures cited by Napo relating to the number of new crimes that would be committed and suggestions that there will be a 25% reduction in supervision are totally unsubstantiated.  “There has been a 70% increase in probation funding in real terms over the last 10 years and an increase of more than a third in staff.   “Re-offending rates are down, successful drug treatments and offending behaviour programmes are up, and the target for Community Payback is being exceeded.   “The Government will not do anything to endanger these successes in the future.  “Public protection is the main priority for the probation service and it will not be put at risk.”

It had so many inmates in 1998 that it sent some to empty cells in other Pennsylvania counties. In early 2003, the prison added second bunks to hundreds of cells. “We’re reaching our capacity,” then-Warden Charles Barber said in April 2003. He spoke just after the prison’s total average daily population surpassed 700 inmates for the first time. The number peaked Oct. 30, 2006, at 743. The figures have gone the other way since then. The prison’s average daily population in December 2008 was 531, the lowest since 2001. The daily census was 516 on Dec. 24, 2008, also the lowest daily figure since 2001, and the average daily population was 606 for all of 2008, another recent low …

Erie County Judge Ernest J. DiSantis Jr., who works closely with the prison as head of the local court’s Trial Division, said public safety remains a major factor at sentencing. But he said his fellow judges know that home electronic monitoring and other programs for nonviolent inmates are effective. “Everyone is conscious of the issue of prison overcrowding,” DiSantis said. “We try to use incarceration judiciously” …

DiSantis is confident the shift is due to one change in policy, regarding the incarceration of parents who fail to pay child support. He said a change in policy for jailing offenders on probation and parole has likely contributed to the shift as well. A February 2005 state Superior Court decision … said judges must consider a delinquent parent’s ability to pay. The Erie County Prison held 124 inmates on average a day for failure to pay child support in 2005. The number dropped to 52 in 2008 …

In the other policy shift, for offenders on parole or probation, Erie County’s judges in 2007 altered a 2002 program. The old program, a zero-tolerance initiative called Sanction Certainty, required probation officers, with few exceptions, to jail offenders who committed probation or parole violations, such as drinking alcohol. The new program takes a more gradual approach. An offender is likely to receive a verbal or written warning before prison. “We’re not necessarily looking to lock them up the first time around,” DiSantis said.

The provision could save the state up to $5 million a year and is supported by the Department of Corrections. At least eight other states, including neighboring Georgia, require offenders to pay for some or all monitoring costs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.  “The idea is that all of our punishment is geared toward making sure the person pays back his debt to society, and I think that’s what this seeks to do,” said Department of Corrections head Walter McNeil.

The state currently monitors about 2,300 people statewide, approximately three-quarters of them sex offenders. Last year, monitoring them cost the Department of Corrections approximately $5.5 million. Right now, only people under house arrest have to pay for the devices, and the department was only able to get ten percent of its money back, about $500,000. The bill lawmakers considered Tuesday broadens the payment requirement to all people wearing the devices…

[Secretary Walt] McNeil acknowledged that the money the state would be able to recover would be only a fraction of the department’s $2.2 billion budget, but he said it was important Florida citizens not pay for the monitoring. The department already requires probationers to pay for required drug tests and sometimes polygraphs … GPS monitoring costs $8.94 per day or $3,263.10 over the course of a year.   About 100 low-risk offenders wear a simpler and less expensive bracelet. It lets probation officers know whether an offender is at home during curfew but does not track them during the day. That kind of monitoring costs $1.97 a day and would cost an offender a little more than $700 a year.

Contending that a Senate proposal to close the McNeil Island Corrections Center and other cuts could cause 1,400 to 1,900 convicts to be released early, prison employees union leader Tracey Thompson said too little has been done to research the impact such a move would have on public safety. “Allowing early release when you’re also reducing supervision just doesn’t make sense,” said Thompson, secretary treasurer with Teamsters Local 117 …

The Senate proposal would see about 107 Department of Corrections positions cut during the coming two years, leaving the department roughly 662 workers short of the staffing level needed to support current service levels, according to state projections.  Suggested cuts would still see spending at the department increase by $31 million from 2009 to 2011, a time period when the department is expected to spend $1.8 billion to incarcerate and monitor convicted felons. While overall spending would increase under the proposal, the Senate plan would eliminate $124 million in expected expenses, either through spending cuts or by obtaining other funding sources …

Both House and Senate proposals take into account savings from a change in law allowing the department to issue 90-day housing vouchers to inmates who are scheduled for release but cannot find a place to live. Under existing law, offenders who are due to be released on so-called “good time” — a 10 to 50 percent sentence reduction granted to inmates who behave in prison — can’t be freed until they establish a residence.

Also included the proposals are cuts to post-prison services and constraints, including one-year reductions in the amount of time offenders will be monitored by community corrections officers after they’re released. Violent felons would be monitored by the department for three years instead of four after they’re released from prison.  The Senate proposal would see a 50-percent cut to offender re-entry programs such as vocational training and mental health services, cutting spending on the program by $15.6 million. The competing proposal from the House would reduce funding for such programs by $10.6 million.

Wrenn estimates the division, called the Division of Community Corrections, will cost between $1.4 million and $2 million and involve hiring between 10 and 20 case managers at 10 local parole offices around the state. He hopes to have at least some of the programs up and running by summer.   “I’d like these positions to work with individuals out in the community, keep (parolees) in their houses and jobs and with their families,” Wrenn said. “If they do step over the line, deal with them there; don’t always bring them back.”   The aim is to help parolees succeed and reduce costs, Wrenn said …

According to Wrenn, keeping an inmate in prison costs about $100 a day plus their full medical care, while keeping someone under the direction of field services costs about $2.80 a day. Even if the cost went up to $5 to $10 a day with new programming, he said, that would be a substantial savings …

Veteran probation/parole officer Keith Phelps said the pressure is coming from the top of the Department of Corrections to work with offenders in the community rather than return them to prison when they violate parole. He also said he understands why Commissioner Wrenn is exerting that pressure.  “It’s budget-driven. I blame the Legislature for slashing budgets,” Phelps said … Keeping parole violators out of prison without adequate services only increases the likelihood they will commit new crimes, and there are not enough substance-abuse and mental health treatment options available in the community, Phelps said …

Paul Cascio, a corrections lieutenant and president of local 255 of the New England Police Benevolent Association… believes budget dollars, not public safety, are driving changes in the DOC … Cascio said Wrenn’s parole plan won’t work because there aren’t enough treatment programs in the community to support it, especially when some parole and probation officers’ caseloads already are more than double what they should be. “If you’re going to put more people on the street, more supervision is required — more enforcement and more programs,” Cascio said. “There are not enough programs to meet the needs of people getting out of prison already” …

Parole Board Chairman George Khoury said Wrenn promised there would be more substance-abuse counselors at local parole offices.  Khoury also expects greater participation from community treatment services working under contract with the state.   “Nobody is minimizing how difficult it is to overcome drug and alcohol problems, but we need to give them all the assistance we can,” Khoury said. “Our job is to do the best we can and never at the public risk.”  In preparing to open the Division of Community Corrections, according to Wrenn, state officials are working with the National Institute of Corrections on writing policies and procedures.

Nearly half of all inmates released from the state prison system are back behind bars within three years because they violate parole or commit new crimes, Reisch said.  The state, city and county agencies and other organizations must provide the services that released inmates need to succeed, Reisch said at the first meeting of the Governor’s Re-entry Council, a panel appointed by Gov. Mike Rounds to cut the number of inmates who return to prison … The council’s first task is to coordinate the application for a federal grant that would finance a demonstration project aimed at providing services to released inmates in the Sioux Falls and Rapid City areas …

In South Dakota, about 30 percent of inmates released wind up returning to prison within a year, 39 percent within two years, and 45 percent within three years, according to Corrections Department records.  Reisch said South Dakota’s average daily adult prison population has risen from 2,267 in 1998 to a projected 3,451 this year, an increase of nearly 1,200 in 11 years.  “That’s a lot of beds. That’s a lot of mouths to feed,” the corrections secretary said. “Many of these people have been in prison before” …

Inmates must begin working on their release plans soon after they arrive in prison, Feiler said. Those parole plans must include where they will live, where they will work and how they will get treatment for problems involving drugs, alcohol, medical, mental health and sexual behavior.  The state now has about 2,800 people on parole, with 36 parole agents to supervise them, Feiler said.

There is a great deal more detail in the full article.

Public safety spending trimmed by 9 percent. Funding for community corrections programs, re-entry programs for parolees and juvenile detention facilities is sharply cut …

Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican, urged lawmakers to return $5 million to the state’s prison system to avoid reduced funding for community corrections programs and initiatives helping parolees overcome addiction and mental health issues.   Lawmakers credit such programs with reducing recidivism and eliminating the need for new prisons. Now, with funding cut, “crime will increase,” Colloton warned. “Our prisoner population will go up.” Lawmakers agreed to restore about $1.2 million of the funds.

Excerpted from a much longer article on the budget at the Kansas City Star.

Program chief Joe Ingraham’s reputation among probationers is tough love and a genuine desire to have them succeed. Offenders say the program gives them a reason to stay crime free while random tests and visits make them think twice about relapsing.”Being random is where it’s at,” Ingraham said. “Misdemeanor offenders used to languish in the system with no one watching them and were able to commit more crimes and not follow conditions of their probation. But this intense supervision really stops the revolving door” …

He said his program saved nearly $12 million in Washoe County Jail costs last year. The program spares a daily incarceration fee of $84 for 300 to 400 local offenders each day. Participants also pay $40 a month for the supervision. The county’s house arrest program is now a part of DAS, where up to $30,000 in monthly fees are collected from participants.

But the cost savings to the community are even more, said program coordinator Wendy Keller.   “They lose their job when they go to jail,” she said. “When they get out, they’ll be relying on social services and the medical community. Now, they maintain a job and a home and are less likely rely on social services.”  The program also has a low recidivism rate, 5 percent to 10 percent, because offenders are afraid if they violate their probation, such as by using drugs or alcohol, they will get caught in a surprise sting and be sent to jail, Ingraham said. Most of the participants are ex-felons, he said, who don’t want additional incarceration. “This program holds them accountable,” Ingraham said. “We are the teeth of the court order and make sure there is truth in sentencing. The goal is to make them stop criminal activities and be productive citizens. In turn, they become taxpaying citizens who give back to their communities.”

There is a lot more interesting material in the full article at the Reno Gazette-Journal.