A report on drug use in prisons urges the federal government to set up needle exchange programs for inmates.  Story from the CBC News.

Rates of HIV and hepatitis C infections in prison are 10 to 20 times higher than in the general population, says the report to be released Tuesday by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

“Because of the scarcity of needles and syringes in prison, people who inject drugs are more likely to share injecting equipment than people in the community,” the report said. “This significantly increases their risk of contracting HIV and HCV.”

The report noted that as of 2009, prison needle and syringe programs have been introduced in more than 60 prisons of varying sizes in at least 10 countries in Europe and Asia, producing positive results and few problems.

“In spite of the overwhelming evidence of the benefits of (the programs), at this time no Canadian prison permits the distribution of clean needles,” the report said. “This harms the health of people in prison, given the increasing presence of HIV and (hepatitis C) behind bars.

“This also creates a further risk to public health more broadly [because] the vast majority of people who spend time in prison return to their families and communities.”

The network’s purpose is to promote the human rights of people living with, or vulnerable to, HIV/AIDs.

“We’re not evil people, we’re people’s daughters, we’re people’s mothers, we’re just people wanting help,” Karen Dooks, who contracted both HIV and hepatitis C in prison, told CBC News. “If they had a needle exchange, there’d be a lot less sickness — it would work, that’s all I know, it would work.”

To bolster its case for needle exchange programs, the HIV/AIDS Legal Network spent 2008 and 2009 interviewing and gathering testimonials from 50 people who had spent time in jail to find out “what do people in prison have to say about the Canadian government’s unwillingness to address the problem?”

Testimonials strengthen message

The group said it hopes the testimonials, which form the bulk of the report, will help bring about a change in government policy.

“They describe first hand how the denial of clean needles in prison has contributed to the harm they have experienced, why (needle programs) are critical to protect their health and what they think a prison system can and should do if truly committed to people’s health,” the report said.

“The hope is that their stories will strengthen the case for change, which governments continue to ignore even as a growing body of evidence highlights the need.”

Greg Simmons, who sold and used drugs during his 20 years in prison, told CBC News his supply came from visitors, guards, volunteers and staff. Now clean and working in a Toronto youth centre, Simmons said the prison environment pushes many people into using drugs.

“It’s a breeding ground for addiction … the loneliness,” he said. “I’ve seen people literally cut themselves and get their vein open and pour it in there without a syringe, that’s how desperate, wanting to kill the pain.”

Dooks spent four years in prison for more than 500 break-ins, all to support her habit.

“I remember using a needle that was so bent and dirty, but you don’t care,” she said.

Both Simmons and Dooks said the millions being spent by the federal government to try to keep drugs out of prisons would be better spent helping inmates who are addicted.

Sandra Chu, senior policy analyst for the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, said previous reports on the problem have concentrated on laws, policies and public health issues, but the organization felt a different approach was needed.

“What we thought was really missing was the voices of the people directly affected, the formerly or currently incarcerated people,” she said. “So we thought this report would really humanize them.”

janchavarie Canada, Drug Treatment & Diversion

Berrien County’s community corrections program will be able to house a larger number of felony drug offenders in a residential alternative to prison. News from the Herald Pallidium.

County commissioners recently approved an agreement to receive $572,137 from the Michigan Department of Corrections to provide residential services.

The funding, the same amount as in 2008-09, will pay for 33 beds in the Kalamazoo Probation Enhancement Program. The nonprofit KPEP operates a branch center in the former corrections center on Waukonda Avenue in Benton Harbor.

County grant coordinator Jenny Grimm said the state has agreed to provide an additional $20,000 to allow sentencing judges in Berrien County to send lower-level offenders to KPEP. They are convicted felons who could be sentenced to prison for up to six months under state guidelines.

Previously, residential services grant funding could be used only to cover KPEP costs as an alternative for people whose sentence guideline range was up to nine months in prison. The $572,137 grant will continue to be used for those offenders.

Grimm said more people sentenced in the county Drug Court will now qualify for a 30-day stay in KPEP as a condition of probation.

“This is a shortened version, but they will get all of the same programs,” she said.

No other residential program is available for people who fall into the lower sentence guideline range, she said. The stay in KPEP is typically 90 days for people who score higher on the guidelines.

KPEP provides men and woman with substance abuse counseling and its own cognitive behavior program called Successful Thinking. Residents also have access to GED classes and are expected to look for jobs. KPEP provides help in finding work.

Grimm said the state has not cut community corrections funding for several years. The funding helps counties operate programs that provide an alternative to sending people into the crowded and expensive prison system.

To help balance the budget for 2009-10, the state is closing several prisons.

In addition to the funding for residential services, the county will receive $60,000 for the electronic monitoring program (tether), $20,000 for substance abuse counseling, $43,897 for an employee who monitors the jail population and $31,700 for grant administration.

janchavarie Community Corrections, Drug Treatment & Diversion, MI Kalamazoo County

Drug- and alcohol-addicted offenders in Fairfield County might find themselves checking into a day reporting center rather than jail early next year, if the proposed alternative is found to be cost effective. Story from the Lancaster Eagle Gazette.

County commissioners and the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office are looking at developing a day reporting center as an alternative to incarceration.

“We looked at one in West Virginia, and it could be cost effective,” Fairfield County Commissioner Judy Shupe said.

County officials visited the Lee Day Report Center in West Virginia in September to see if the program could be adapted to Fairfield County.

“They would receive counseling and other services,” Shupe said. “They would also be drug-tested. At the West Virginia location, the county would pay for the test if it was negative, but the offender would pay for it if it came back positive.”

Shupe said the key to savings would be whether the county can convert an existing county owned building into a center.

Under the proposal, nonviolent, misdemeanor offenders would report to a center during the day or nonworking hours.

Fairfield County Sheriff Dave Phalen said the site they visited in West Virginia had cut the jail population in half.

Phalen said Fairfield County had about 230 prisoners in jail on Tuesday.

“We spend as much as $600,000 and it could be as much as a million (dollars) by the end of the year,” Phalen said. “Right now we have more than 30 prisoners in other county jails.”

Phalen said the county is looking at the amount of money it could save by not sending prisoners to jail and instead diverting them to a day reporting center.

The next step is an evaluation being done in Fairfield County Municipal Court.

“If they can find between 30 to 40 offenders that could be in this program instead of in jail, the program would pay for itself,” Phalen said.

He said the goal is to find out if the county can find the numbers and location to make it work.

Sites being considered include the former offices used by the Fairfield County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, 407 E. Main St. The EMA recently moved to the Fairfield County Job & Family Services building at the corner of Memorial Drive and West Main Street.

“If the numbers work and a location can be found, we could have the center up and running early next year,” Phalen said.

janchavarie Corrections Reform, Drug Treatment & Diversion, Economic Issues, Ohio

Drug-free prisons would be impossible in a humane prison system, the secretary general of the Irish Department of Justice has said. Seán Aylward, a former director of the Irish Prison Service, was addressing the Dáil Committee on Public Accounts last week.  Story from the Irish Times.

Asked about aims, expressed most forcefully by former minister for justice Michael McDowell, for drug-free prisons, he said a prison system which eliminated “any drug use, at any time in any place would be a very cruel system”. “The complete elimination of drugs is not possible in a humane prison system. It would mean total isolation of prisoners, no visitors at all and a roof over the exercise yard – no fresh air.” Smuggling contraband into the prisons entailed “covert behaviours with minute quantities”. He said prisoners found it more difficult to get drugs in prison than outside and that the supply was intermittent.

The director general of the Prison Service, Brian Purcell, said just under 25 per cent of the prison population of 3,900 were active drug users, while over 80 per cent had experience of using drugs. The service had had success in reducing the supply of drugs into prisons, using sniffer dogs and security screening of visitors. “To date in 2009 we have had 700 drug seizures within the system. You’re not going to stop drugs altogether.”

He also said a methadone maintenance programme, currently only available in Mountjoy Prison, would be available in Castlerea next month and in Cork Prison by the end of the year. “It’s a growing need, but I suppose the services we provide in terms of methadone reflect what the HSE [Health Service Executive] is providing out in the community.” There was little point offering methadone maintenance programmes to prisoners if upon their release there was no service available in the community, he added. “We are now at the stage in Cork where we feel there are services in the community.”

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Ireland

Almost a quarter of a million individuals addicted to heroin are incarcerated in the United States each year. However, many prison systems across the country still do not offer medical treatment for heroin and opiate addiction, despite the demonstrated social, medical and economic benefits of opiate replacement therapy (ORT).   According to new research from The Miriam Hospital, Brown University and their affiliated Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, just half of all federal and state prison systems offer ORT with the medications methadone and buprenorphine, and only in very limited circumstances.

Similarly, only twenty-three states provide referrals for some inmates to treatment upon release from prison. These policies are counter to guidelines issued by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which say prisoners should be offered ORT for treatment of opiate dependence. The study’s findings are published online by Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

“Pharmacological treatment of opiate dependence is a proven intervention, is cost-effective and reduces drug-related disease and reincarceration rates, yet it remains underutilized in U.S. prison systems,” said Amy Nunn, ScD, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of medicine (research) at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. “Improving correctional policies for addiction treatment could dramatically improve prisoner and community health as well as reduce both taxpayer burden and reincarceration rates … Opiate addiction, like all forms of addiction, causes long-term changes to the structure and functioning of the brain, which is why it is classified as a disease. Addiction requires treatment just as other chronic diseases, like diabetes and cancer, do. Unfortunately, there is a large gap between the number of prisoners who require addiction treatment and those who actually receive it,” added senior author Josiah Rich, MD, MPH, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at The Miriam Hospital and Alpert Medical School.

The U.S. has the world’s highest incarceration rate, with approximately 10 million individuals incarcerated each year. More than half of inmates have a history of substance use and more than 200,000 people with heroin addiction are incarcerated annually. Inmates face disproportionately higher burdens of mental illness, substance use and infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Meanwhile, their transition back to their communities is often associated with increased sexual health and drug-related risks, and more than half will relapse within one month of their release. For the past four decades, methadone has been the treatment of choice for opiate dependence. It prevents withdrawal symptoms and drug cravings, blocks the euphoric effects of other opiates, and reduces the risk of relapse, infectious disease transmission and overdose death. The drug buprenorphine is a newer treatment for opiate replacement that has less likelihood of overdose and is associated with less social stigma. Like methadone, it prevents withdrawal symptoms when an individual stops taking opioid drugs by producing similar effects. Both methadone and buprenorphine are included in WHO’s “Essential Medicines” list of drugs that should be made available at all times by health systems to patients.

The Miriam/Brown research team surveyed the medical directors at the 50 state departments of corrections, along with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the District of Columbia prison, about their facilities’ ORT prescribing policies and referral programs for inmates leaving prison. They received a total of 51 of 52 responses. Although it appears methadone is offered more frequently that buprenorphine, only 28 facilities (55 percent) offer it under any circumstances, although more than half of these provide it only to pregnant women or for chronic pain management. Approximately 45 percent of facilities provided some community linkage to methadone treatment post-release. Meanwhile, only seven prison systems (14 percent) offer buprenorphine in some circumstances, while 15 facilities (29 percent) offer referrals for some inmates to community buprenorphine providers upon release. When asked why these treatments are not available in their prison system, the majority of facilities indicated they prefer drug-free detoxification over ORT. A number of prison systems also cited security concerns about providing methadone and buprenorphine to inmates. Interestingly, 27 percent of medical directors said they did not know how beneficial methadone is for treating inmates with opiate addiction, while half were unaware of the benefits of buprenorphine.

A major barrier to providing ORT after incarceration appears to be the lack of partnerships with community ORT providers. Many providers also cited their focus on inmate health during incarceration, rather than upon release, as another reason for not linking inmates to ORT after they’ve been released. “In spite of overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrating that pharmacological treatment for addiction has greater health and social benefits than abstinence-only policies, many prison directors are philosophically opposed to treating substance use. Most prisons also do not provide referrals for substance use treatment for prisoners upon release,” said Nunn. “These trends contribute to high reincarceration rates and have detrimental impacts on community health. Our interviews with prison medical directors suggest that changing these policies may require an enormous cultural shift within correctional systems.”

The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA/NIH) and Center for AIDS Research (CFAR); and the Tufts Nutrition Collaborative. In addition to Nunn and Rich, co-authors include Nickolas Zeller and Ank Nijhawan from both The Miriam Hospital and Alpert Medical School; Samuel Dickman from Brown University; and Catherine Trimbur from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion

Officials in Horry County SC have announced a contract agreement between the J. Reuben Long Detention Center and Life Recovery Solutions, LLC to develop and operate a jail diversion program to help offset inmate overcrowding.  Reported by WMBF News.

The program is funded through a 2008 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Block Grant amounting to $190,000.  The grant will allow for the establishment of the pilot program to assist in diverting minor homeless offenders from jail to treatment and training programs.   Officials hope the program will be up and running by July 1.

Participants, according to Bourcier, will be housed in a minimum security wing at the detention center.  Entry criteria into the program will be determined in part with the Solicitor, the courts, detention center administration and the service provider.   “An underlying factor in a lot of our inmates is substance abuse and anything we can do to assist in providing treatment and training, will help to better themselves and our community when they transition back into society,” stated Tom Fox, director of J. Reuben Long Detention Center.

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, SC Horry County

A group including the former secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections and three former Florida attorneys general has written Gov. Charlie Crist to urge criminal justice reform.  Report from the Miami Herald.

The group, which calls itself the Coalition for Smart Justice, wants Florida to invest in education and substance abuse programs for prisoners. Their letter to the governor says too many ex-offenders go back to prison because they receive little or no job training, mental health and substance abuse treatment while in prison.   A letter from the group is dated Monday. Among others it is signed by James McDonough, the retired Department of Corrections secretary, and Jim Smith, Bob Butterworth and Richard Doran, the former Florida attorneys general.

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, Florida, Inmate Programs, Mental Health Issues, Recidivism

A new rehabilitation program has been launched at the California State Prison in Solana.  It is a program that could

“revolutionize the way we provide rehabilitation in this state’s prisons,” says Sol Irving,  Correction Counselor III. The first class of 50 long-term inmates, most of them “lifers,” will soon complete the Offender Mentor Certification (OMC) Program. Those  who pass a national exam in June will be certified as alcohol and drug counselors by the California Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors (CAADAC), and assist fellow inmates with recovery. California is believed to be the first state in the nation to launch an in-prison substance abuse counselor certification program.

Some OMC program graduates will be transferred to work in other prisons in the state.  Program graduates who are eventually released can use the certification to obtain a job. The program is administered by the Orange County Department of Education, which provides
certified alcohol and drug counselors to facilitate the program workshops, under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

This “extremely innovative, cutting-edge program” is “a major innovation in criminal justice rehabilitation,” says Terence T. Gorski, an internationally recognized expert on substance abuse, violence and crime, and among the top experts in the recovery field who are teaching Solano’s first OMC class. “It is a way to bring a sense of meaning and purpose into the lives of long-term offenders and also to expand by multiples the availability of addiction treatment within correctional facilities without increasing costs,” he says. He predicts that the program will make “a tremendous difference” in reducing recidivism.

There is a great deal of detail in the special edition of the CDCR Rehabilitation News.

jakking California, Drug Treatment & Diversion, Inmate Programs, Juvenile Justice

Alcoholism and substance abuse addictions have become plagues in Alaska. Repeat offenders hurt others in the community, with little hope of breaking the cycle.

This year, lawmakers gave Corrections about $800,000 for new inmate rehabilitation programs. It’s an area that was practically nonexistent in prior administrations, according to the DOC. “It’s a pretty exciting time for the Department of Corrections,” said Bryan Brandenburg, the department’s deputy director. “We’re going to have Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 treatment programs.” The goal is to help inmates transition back into society with a 90-day treatment program that gets to the root of the cause … “We don’t want to necessarily carry these people, but what we want to do is set up a system that provides them with the tools and the skills necessary so that they can make better choices,” Brandenburg said.

“Until we start dealing with that substance abuse problem, we will see people back on the streets and recidivating,” said Marny Rivera, a professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage Justice Center. “The pattern has to be stopped,” said Jim Morgan, outpatient manager for Akeela, a nonprofit organization that helps with drug and alcohol rehab. “One of the ways that it’s stopped is by actually going through treatment.” But the state’s current trends don’t favor that. Alaska has one of the highest percentages in the country for people not getting the substance abuse treatment needed. “When people are released from jail they don’t have the funds. This provides the wherewithal where they can attend treatments,” Morgan said.

Still, there are questions about whether the program is enough, or if it will really bring down crime. “Ninety days is a good crack at it,” Morgan said.

jakking Alaska, Drug Treatment & Diversion, Recidivism

Florida drug courts will likely expand in the next year after lawmakers decided to put more than $21 million into the programs.  Report from the Miami Herald.

Politicians believe the money will be enough to keep some 3,000 people out of prison, saving the state more than $4 million. The hope is that graduates will also be less likely to re-offend. Right now, programs like the one in Panama City for offenders headed to prison are rare. Fewer than half of Florida’s counties have drug courts targeted at offenders who would otherwise go to prison. That’s even though Florida started the nation’s first drug court in Miami in 1989 and was marking its 20th anniversary Friday with graduations and speeches. “When it does work it really does work,” said judge Sirmons, who has been running the drug court in Panama City for 12 years.

Lawmakers didn’t work out all the details of the drug court expansion plan during the legislative session that ended a week ago. They agreed, however, to pay for treatment for more offenders as well as more prosecutors and defense attorneys. An office within the Florida Supreme Court will decide which counties actually get the money. Gov. Charlie Crist still needs to sign the provisions into law, but people like Department of Corrections Secretary Walter McNeil already support the legislation.

Florida has more than 100,000 inmates in its prisons, and two-thirds or more enter prison with drug problems, the Department of Corrections said. Most don’t get treatment before they leave, and this year lawmakers cut both prison and probation drug treatment programs. “We think that the drug courts are a front-end intervention,” McNeil said near the end of the legislative session.

Two-thirds of all counties have some type of drug court program. But many are like the one in Miami, which takes people who may be first time offenders and would likely be sentenced to parole. Less common are programs for people with prior convictions, many of them parole violators who would otherwise be headed to prison. Participation in both types of programs is voluntary, but offenders can’t be drug dealers or have prior convictions for violent felonies like murder or rape. Once in the program, participants attend therapy classes, have frequent drug tests and meet regularly with a judge. Unlike offenders on parole, there’s an understanding that participants may mess up.

There is a lot more detail and background in the full article at the Miami Herald.

jakking Community Corrections, Drug Treatment & Diversion, Florida

The following editorial was published by the New York Times this Sunday.

Congress took an important step last year when it passed the Second Chance Act to help former inmates return to their communities. If properly financed and carried out, the act could cut recidivism, and ruinous prison costs for the states, by helping them develop programs to provide job placement, drug treatment, mental health care and other services that former prisoners need to build viable, crime-free lives.

Congress does not have to look far for proven programs. New prison sentencing and re-entry policies are already taking hold in several states, thanks in part to work by the Council of State Governments’ prison policy arm, the Justice Center, with the support of the Pew Charitable Trust’s Center on the States.

Their results have been especially impressive in Texas and Kansas, law-and-order states that were facing huge increases in their prison populations before they turned to the Justice Center for analyses and policy suggestions. Last month, representatives from both states testified about their experience before a House appropriations subcommittee.

State officials said that after studying the problem they found their prison populations were being driven up, not by crime, but mainly by breakdowns in their parole and probation systems. Simply put, they were sending too many people back to jail. Many were drug-addicted or mentally ill offenders who could be safely dealt with in community programs.

Legislatures in both states decided to expand community-based drug treatment and mental health services, and encouraged localities to provide closer supervision for released inmates. The changes, put in place two years ago, have yielded especially strong results in Texas. State officials said that the new system had already reduced parole revocations by an astonishing 25 percent and helped the state avoid a projected increase in the prison population that would have cost the Texas treasury hundreds of millions of dollars.

With the economy in recession, and prison costs rising, states that used to lock up as many inmates as possible are looking for sensible alternatives. President Obama has asked Congress to commit more than $100 million to prisoner re-entry programs, with three-quarters going to the Second Chance Act. That would be a good down payment, but only a down payment, on what is needed.

jakking Community Corrections, Drug Treatment & Diversion, Mental Health Issues, Parole, Re-Entry

The following editorial is republished from the Des Moines Register:

It was a disappointment when the Iowa Legislature last year voted to build a new state penitentiary. Given all of Iowa’s other infrastructure needs – from highways to sewers – a major investment in a maximum-security prison should have been low on the list of priorities.

The Legislature has repeatedly increased criminal penalties, which drives increases in the prison population. Given that, lawmakers should first have had a serious discussion of how they could reduce the need for prison capacity before committing future generations to a new, $130.7 million penitentiary.

The decision to build was made, however, so at the very least the state should now exploit this opportunity to rethink how a prison should be designed and operated: If this one lasts as long as the 170-year-old existing penitentiary, Iowa will live with the result for a very long time …

The penitentiary houses those inmates classified as the most violent, the most troublesome and the highest risks of escaping. Many are serving life sentences, but most will eventually return to society. The Department of Corrections has commendable goals for giving them the tools – education, job training, drug and alcohol counseling and mental-health services – to eventually return to productive lives. The new penitentiary should be designed with those goals in mind, not only from the perspective of guards and staff, but from a perspective of rehabilitation.

The overall plan and physical condition of the existing penitentiary could be considered an impediment to criminal rehabilitation: The depressing, at times barbaric, conditions of the penitentiary surely contribute to the dehumanizing effect of prison life. The layout of cells resembles kennels. With guards largely confined in control booths, the opportunity for meaningful and constructive interaction on a human level is limited.

The new prison should dramatically change that atmosphere: It should afford inmates access to daylight, views to the outside, indoor and outdoor exercise facilities and ample space for shops and classrooms for job training, counseling and remedial education.

Since the penitentiary was first established in 1839, it has witnessed numerous movements to try new methods of reforming convicted criminals, from hard labor to severe discipline, designed to change criminal behavior. Planning a new penitentiary offers opportunity to experiment, again, with prison reform.   The new prison still will be an institution for confining the toughest criminal convicts, but the state should never lose sight of the idea that these men are capable of change. The new prison should reflect that optimism.

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, Inmate Education, Inmate Programs, Iowa, Jail and Prison Construction

Judge William Sessions, who was nominated Monday to be chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, hopes to continue reforming federal sentencing guidelines to address prison overcrowding.  From the Rutland Herald:

“We’re at a particular point in history where prisons are incredibly overcrowded,” Sessions said. “We’re also at a particular point in time in which there’s a potential for real change.”

Sessions is the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Vermont and has been a federal judge in Vermont since 1995. He was nominated by President Barack Obama, but will still need to be confirmed by the Senate, a process that he said can be highly political.   Sessions, who made national headlines in 2002 when he declared the death penalty unconstitutional, is currently a vice chairman of the commission, which sets sentencing policy for the United States and advises Congress and the executive branch on crime policy.

Options other than standard incarceration should be used more to address prison overcrowding, Sessions said. That includes drug treatment courts, placement in home confinement or community confinement, and split sentences in which part of a sentence is served in prison and part is served in the community.

Sessions also hopes to make rehabilitation a higher priority in federal sentences.   “For the last 15 years there’s been little interest in rehabilitation,” Sessions said.   Instead, punishment has been the priority.   “A person commits a crime, and they get X,” he said. “We’re going back to, ‘How do we get these people rehabilitated so when they get out of prison, they’re not a danger?’”

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

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, Overcrowding, Re-Entry, Sentencing

Members of the New Jersey administration appeared this week before the State Senate Budget Committee.  The NJ DOC was no exception, as reported by NJ.com.

Department of Corrections Commissioner George Hayman told the committee: “We are living through an era when each expenditure must be scrutinized and every efficiency realized.”

New Jersey’s inmate population continues to drop — from 22,908 in 2007 to a projected 21,715 next year — but the annual cost of housing inmates continues to rise, to $38,500 per inmate. Prisons remain over capacity, with 5,563 more inmates than the facilities were designed for.

The department is doing everything from buying milk and cereal in bulk to closing a prison, Riverfront State Prison in Camden, this year to save money, Hayman said.

Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer County), asked about drug treatment and rehabilitation programs, which she said could help reduce the number of former convicts returning to prison.  Hayman said they were doing the best they could with limited resources.  “We treat as many as we can treat,” he said.

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, Economic Issues, New Jersey

Criminals are using the lack of rehabilitation in South Australian jails to win less jail time.

In the past 12 months, evidence of the lack of rehabilitation has been considered by judges when:

• Releasing a multiple child sex offender from indefinite detention partly because a lack of resources had delayed rehabilitation.
• Overturning the indefinite detention of a rapist, partly because it was “unfair” he was denied rehabilitation reserved for those soon to be released.
• Fixing a non-parole period for a drug user, commenting he could access better rehabilitation in the community.
• Suspending the sentence of a man convicted of assault, commenting this would allow him to access community rehabilitation.
• Lowering a non-parole period for a sex offender, commenting prison could set back his recovery.

Chair of the Law Society’s Criminal Law Committee George Mancini said the trend was increasing because of a State Government policy of longer sentences. “It is an aspect of overcrowding, of longer terms of imprisonment and not spending sufficient resources on rehabilitation,” he said.  A spokesman for Prisons Minister Tom Koutsantonis defended the Government’s record on rehabilitation.  “Prior to 2005, there was no sex offender treatment in SA prisons at all,” the spokesman said.

A number of the recent decisions have been made on the advice of Dr Raeside, a consulting psychiatrist to the Department of Correctional Services, who has been praised by judges for his professionalism and is highly critical of rehabilitation in the state’s jails.

“I figure if we are going to lock more people up for longer (whether one agrees with that policy or not) then we ought to do something for them whilst they are there to reduce the chances of them re-offending and make the community safer when they get out,” he said.

jakking Australasia, Australia, Drug Treatment & Diversion, Early Release, INTERNATIONAL, Inmate Programs, Private Prisons, Sex Offenders, South Australia

The Kentucky Parole Board granted parole to significantly more prisoners in the past two months than last year, but officials say it’s not because they are trying to save the cash-strapped state money, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

The parole rate climbed to 69 percent in February and 58 percent in March, compared with 48 percent and 52 percent in the same months last year.  The parole rate for all of the last fiscal year was 47 percent.

Parole Board Chairwoman Caroline Mudd cited two factors for the jump: more substance-abuse treatment opportunities for parolees, and a study the board received in January that found the length of inmate sentencing isn’t related to their odds of re-offending. “I will tell you that as Parole Board members we read the papers, we listen to the evening news, we understand that there is a budget crunch going on,” Mudd said. “However, that (revenue shortfall) is not what drives our decisions” …

But some prosecutors and victim advocates aren’t convinced. “Felons are being freed faster, either because of the budget or a new hug-a-thug philosophy in Frankfort,” Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders said. “Either way, public safety suffers” … Of the 814 individuals paroled in February, 8 percent were violent criminals incarcerated for rape, murder and sexual offenses.  And Jo Ann Phillips, executive director of Kentuckians’ Voice for Crime Victims, argues that one paroled violent or sex offender is too many. “They can let out every single check bouncer, joy rider and marijuana possessor that they wanted to,” she said. “It’s the rapists, murderers and pedophiles that should concern all citizens” …

The legislature allocated $4.5 million for substance-abuse treatment programs in prisons and jails this fiscal year, and $5 million next fiscal year, he said. Such programs began in the 2005-06 fiscal year with a $500,000 appropriation.  Mudd noted that the board has begun granting parole to more inmates who agree to remain incarcerated for six to nine months while undergoing substance-abuse treatment. “I think if we can give them the tools, then perhaps they are less likely to re-offend as a result,” she said.

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, Kentucky, Parole

The Nevada Senate’s top Democrat told lawmakers Monday that a new program for low-risk parole violators and drug and alcohol offenders would reduce the state’s prison population and save millions of dollars in taxpayer money. Report from Mercury News.

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.”

jakking Community Corrections, Drug Treatment & Diversion, Nevada, Parole

In January, a consultant told Lancaster County PA prison officials it would cost $169 million to build a new prison.  Next week, the same consultant will discuss the financial wisdom of abandoning the current prison entirely if a new prison is built.   Yet officials say that when it comes to dealing with the county’s prison overcrowding problem, they’ll be passing out thinking caps long before they break out any shovels.  Reported by LancasterOnline.

At next Thursday’s prison board meeting, L. Robert Kimball & Associates will outline for the board how much cheaper it would be to operate one big, new prison than to run the current prison and a scaled-down prison to be built somewhere else.  A January report prepared Kimball detailed the shortcomings of the circa-1851 prison at 625 E. King St., which  has a design capacity for 658 beds, but today is home to 1,143 prisoners.  That report discussed the projected need in 2025 for 2,114 prison beds, then laid out several scenarios to build a new prison. The most ambitious plan was for a new, 2,158-bed facility that would cost  $169.42 million to build, an amount roughly equal to the cost of the downtown hotel/convention center.  Yet most prison board members say the are now focused on how to save money, not how to spend it on a new prison …

“We’re just not going to build ourselves out of this problem right now when there’s other things we could be doing before we get to that point,” said County Commissioner Scott Martin.   Martin, who chairs the seven-member prison board, said streamlining some court operations and setting up a day-reporting center are among the options that would free up space at the East King Street prison, delaying the need for a new jail …

Among the improvements, [District Attorney Craig] Stedman said, would be to streamline the court’s scheduling system to get people to trial quicker, thereby cutting down on the number of prisoners who are waiting for a trial date.   In 2006, the Kimball report said the average stay in the county prison was 71 days, while adding that every day knocked off that average could reduce the daily prison population by 16 prisoners.  And since about 80 percent of prisoners in the county prison that year were awaiting trial, getting them through the court system quicker could free up a lot of space …

Commissioner Craig Lehman also highlighted the benefits of a day reporting center, which could be set up apart from the prison and include drug testing and job training services.  With such a center here, probation officers could send violators there instead of simply adding them to an already overcrowded prison, local officials say.

jakking Court Delays, Drug Treatment & Diversion, Economic Issues, Jail and Prison Construction, Overcrowding, PA Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Pre-Trial

There are not many winners in the new New York State budget, but the fiscal plan will make it easier for some prison inmates to be released early for medical, merit and other factors.  This report from the Buffalo News.

The relaxed standards, contained deep within the 2009 state budget, go beyond the much-publicized reforms to the Rockefeller-era drug laws that Gov. David A. Paterson and lawmakers pushed to include in the fiscal plan over the objections of many district attorneys.  The provisions will, according to supporters, encourage more humane treatment of a select number of inmates while, in some cases, making prisons safer. The efforts will also save money and, eventually, help in the years ahead to close expensive facilities that are seeing fewer inmates.

But critics insist that some of  the new standards are open to wide interpretation that will result in the release of still-dangerous inmates.  “It’s a wholesale change in the policies that have led to the most significant drop in the violent crime rate of any state in the nation,” said State Sen. Michael F. Nozzolio, a Finger Lakes Republican who until January had served for years as chairman of the Senate’s Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee. “These issues, taken together, will ensure more violent criminals are out on the streets, and that’s going to create tremendous pressur e for law enforcement. It will make our cities less safe,” Nozzolio said.

The major sentencing change involves the Rockefeller drug laws, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for some drug violations and providing judges with more discretion to steer some individuals to treatment instead of prison … The new budget adopted last week [also] permits some inmates to be released on medical parole if approved by a physician and the state Parole Board, a plan originally proposed by Paterson in December. It is the first major change to medical parole laws since 1992, when terminally ill inmates were first allowed to leave prison early. It also recognizes the prison system’s increasingly aging population; the number of inmates older than 55 has risen from 1,500 to more than 3,600 in the last decade … The Paterson administration estimates that 45 individuals now in prison could be released this year. They estimate $2 million in savings this year from the early releases …

The new budget also includes an expansion of the merit-time program that permits early release of eligible inmates, including violent felons. It allows the release of such inmates six months before the completion of their minimum sentence. Not eligible are those convicted of first-degree murder or sex crimes.   The new merit-time effort takes into consideration whether an inmate participated in no less than two years of college programming while in prison and other efforts to reduce recidivism rates, such as enrollment in a state-approved apprenticeship program. Credit can also be given for working as an inmate hospice aide. The inmate’s prison behavior, and even whether they filed a “frivolous” civil lawsuit while in prison, are also considered as factors for the credit.

There is a great deal more detail and background in the Buffalo News article.

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, Early Release, Economic Issues, New York, Sentencing

In answer to criticism of State treatment for addicts in New York’s prison system, Commissioner Brian Fischer wrote the following letter to the New York Times:

The myth that addiction goes untreated in prison is just that: a myth.   Last year 90 percent of all inmates with identified substance abuse needs who were released for the first time had received addiction treatment in New York’s state prisons.  Every day nearly 10,000 inmates receive in-prison substance abuse treatment from qualified, professional staff members. Last year alone, 34,300 inmates participated.

We offer traditional treatment programs, as well as specialized treatment for sex offenders and mentally ill inmates. We offer intensive, minimum-six-month structured residential treatment. More than two-thirds of inmates who complete the program stay out of prison for at least two years. Diversion to community-based treatment, as Gov. David A. Paterson supports, is an appropriate response to the issue of addiction. But treatment within prison remains vital for those who are nonetheless incarcerated.

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, New York