With a change in the political landscape looming, Department of Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch plans to shift his fledgling inmate early release program into high gear. “I want a program so successful and so powerful that no one would dare eliminate it,” Raemisch told the editorial board of The Capital Times Wednesday. “That’s why I feel like the demons are chasing me right now.” Report from The Cap Times.

The program faces stiff opposition from Republican lawmakers and a lack of support from all three top gubernatorial candidates. No matter who is elected, given their policy differences, Raemisch doesn’t expect to keep his job past January.

“By the end of the year I want to have a good base of people coming out,” he said, adding that he hopes to see 50 to 60 inmates a month getting out early. That would be a substantial increase in a program that, since January, has turned out 112 Wisconsin prisoners before they served their entire sentences.

Raemisch, the former Republican Dane County sheriff, said he doesn’t have much time to prove that releasing inmates early not only saves money, but makes the state a safer place. With the political landscape in flux as fall elections approach, he wants to show not only that the program has been a success, but will reap vast benefits in the future.

Provisions passed last year in the state budget allow two mechanisms for letting inmates out before their sentences are fully served: Raemisch has the authority to release inmates who have less than a year left to serve, some of them with only days to go; and the Early Release Commission, formerly the Parole Board, can review the sentences of offenders who have served a particular percentage of their sentences and meet other criteria.

The savings per inmate are substantial. It costs about $30,000 a year to house an inmate, and about $3,000 a year to supervise them once they’re out.

Raemisch says the prison beds emptied by inmates who are now leading productive lives on the street have already saved the state $900,000 and stand to save millions in the near future. Meanwhile, with the first substantial drop in the prison population in recent history, the state can avert the $1.2 billion in prison construction costs over the next decade, plus millions more in staffing and operating costs, that were projected last year if the state does nothing to stem prison population growth.

He said if the state could reduce the prison population by just 200, he could begin shutting down prison units – and that’s when the real savings would kick in. The wild card, however, is whether the state’s stiffer new drunken driving laws, which go into effect on July 1, will erase some of the gains, he said.

The two leading GOP gubernatorial candidates, Scott Walker and Mark Neumann, oppose early release. Democratic candidate Tom Barrett has said he has “serious reservations” about it.

Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, introduced a bill last legislative session that would have repealed early release legislation, and he had a lot of GOP support in the Legislature. Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has panned it, too.

That has Raemisch worried that a shift in political leadership could doom the program he sees as his legacy as corrections secretary.

“My concern is that there are those out there trying to sink this ship before it even gets a chance to float,” Raemisch said. “The fact of the matter is it is working and we’re being very careful with this.”

About 40 states have changed, or are in the process of reviewing, their sentencing policies to cut prison costs. Raemisch said Wisconsin corrections officials have done everything in their power to screen those eligible for early release, picking only those who have the best chances of succeeding outside prison walls. Of those released so far, only three have committed new crimes, all of them petty, he said. One committed theft at a cell phone shop; one tried to steal tools at a house construction site; and one was caught helping unload scrap metal that someone else had stolen.

Seventeen have committed violations of the terms of their release, often for dirty urine samples.

“The rest have been very successful,” he said.

Aside from the statistics, he said, the program has important but intangible benefits.

“It’s changed the climate of the institution,” he says. “Corrections officers say there’s just more of a positive attitude.”

Under truth-in-sentencing laws, which have held sway since 1999, inmates have had no incentive to behave or better themselves, Raemisch said. In addition, the prison population faces numerous hurdles to success. Raemisch reeled off the statistics: most inmates are at a 9th-grade reading level, a 5th-grade math level, 16 percent are illiterate, 70 percent have drug or alcohol problems and 26 percent have serious mental health needs.

Under early release, he said, there is a direct relationship between their behavior and their eligibility to get out of prison, which is often contingent on their participation in programs like drug and alcohol rehab, anger management, vocational education and GED programs.

And a key to the success of the program is putting more programs in place. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has already made some headway, Raemisch said, tripling the number of treatment beds and increasing vocational program funding by 50 percent and GED programs by 20 percent.

Still, he said, “We’ve got a waiting line for everything. We have to readjust our whole system to make sure that those that are hitting the marks and doing well have the opportunity to get into those programs much earlier than they had been before.”

Raemisch clearly has reasons to be concerned about the fate of the program. While Republicans still had the majority in the Assembly, there was a bipartisan effort to explore efforts to reduce the prison population. But since Democrats took control in 2006, Republicans have dug in their heels and taken a harder line.

It’s anybody’s guess how majority Democrats will fare in this year’s elections. If the Republicans come up winners, he said, the Legislature “could kill it in a day.”

jchev Early Release, Economic Issues, Wisconsin

A state legislator said Friday he plans to call for an audit of the state’s early inmate release program to ensure the safety of Wisconsinites. Reported by the Badger Herald.

To cut Wisconsin’s budget deficit, Gov. Jim Doyle proposed a set of corrections reforms in the 2009-2011 budget that would expand the number of inmates eligible to petition for early release.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections estimated the reforms would save $30 million over two years. Doyle said 3,000 inmates could be eligible for the program, out of more than 22,000 inmates currently incarcerated in Wisconsin.

State Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, said he wants to audit the program because he doubts the new law is saving money. He added the DOC has been reluctant to release records to his office, calling the department “very tight-lipped and very secretive.”

To get the information on felons being released or money being saved, Suder said his office had to perform separate open records requests each month, which Suder says makes him wonder what the DOC might be hiding.

Although the budget was passed in October, the first batch of inmates that petitioned for early release under the reforms were released by January. So far, 138 offenders have been released from Wisconsin prisons, according to the DOC.

“It’s applied in a very careful, comprehensive way, and there’s a lot of review that’s going on,” said Linda Eggert, spokesperson for the DOC.

However, Suder argues there is not enough community communication, with no sector of law enforcement being informed of individuals who are under review or who have been released.

“I do think individuals they are releasing are dangerous, many have rap sheets a mile long and I would argue a lot of them are career criminals,” Suder said, citing two five-time drunk drivers who were released.

Two of the first inmates who were released as part of the program have already been arrested and are back in jail, Suder said.

Still, the sentencing changes that have been broadly dubbed as early release are actually very complicated, representing a slew of different reforms, provisions and mechanisms, Eggert said.

Most inmates can cut time off their sentence for good behavior if they are within 12 months of release, although sex offenders and murderers are not eligible.

Prior to the new law, a limited earned release system was already in place for substance abusers who could complete drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs in exchange for an earlier release from prison if their crimes were substantially related to their substance abuse.

The new law expands the number of inmates eligible for the program, allowing individuals to participate whose crimes may not have been directly related to substance abuse.

Elderly and terminally ill inmates were already eligible to petition for early release, but the new law expands this provision to inmates suffering from “extraordinary health conditions,” which include advanced age, infirmity, disability or a need for medical treatment not available at prison.

jchev Early Release, Wisconsin

The Utah Department of Corrections said it may have to release inmates early because of prison overcrowding issues. The prisons at Point of the Mountain and in Gunnison are within 150 beds of maxing out. Within the last two months, 37 inmates have entered the prisons — on top of those who have been paroled. Reported by Fox 13.

“We are inching closer to that maximum capacity,” said Tom Patterson, the executive director of the Utah Department of Corrections.

The Utah State Legislature didn’t fund an expansion of the Gunnison prison. Lawmakers also only gave one-time seed money to fund a parole violator center that would prevent the need to bring inmates back to the prisons for minor offenses. During the legislative session, corrections officials threatened to release more than 200 inmates early if their funding was slashed. The threat was merely delayed, however.

“As we spoke with legislators and leadership, we were very, very plain in our warning,” said Patterson.

Many state lawmakers who deal with the funding were stunned to learn from Fox 13 that inmates would likely be released, figuring they had solved the problem by not slashing the corrections department’s budget. Rep. Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns, said he knew it was not if, but when, adding that lawmakers grappled with so many funding priorities in a bad budget year.

“Is it going to be popular? Are people going to be comfortable with the ideas of people going home from prison? No,” he said. “But that’s part of keeping a balanced budget and I think people understand that.”

When the prisons hit maximum capacity, likely at the end of this year, state law requires conditions to remain overcrowded for 45 days. During that time, the prison will be required to accept more and more inmates, adding to the problems. Patterson fears what will happen then.

“During that 45 day period, keeping in mind we have no excess beds, we have no ability to move inmates and we have a pressure cooker for both inmates and for staff,” he told Fox 13. “Security issues are at a premium and an opportunity for injury and fatality is really at a height.”

To prepare, Patterson has ordered staffers to be issued vests that help prevent stabbings. The prison SWAT team has also begun training exercises in the event of a riot. Hutchings said funding for the prisons has to be more of a priority.

“We’re not building any new prison pods, we’re not putting any new capacity on the table and as the population of the state continues to grow, we’re still going to have an issue with that,” he said.

Legislators may address corrections funding during the interim session scheduled for mid-May.

jchev Early Release, Overcrowding, Utah

The California budget crisis has forced the state to address a problem that expert panels and judges have wrangled over for decades: how to reduce prison overcrowding. Story in the New York Times.

The state has begun in recent weeks the most significant changes since the 1970s to reduce overcrowding — and chip away at an astonishing 70 percent recidivism rate, the highest in the country — as the prison population becomes a major drag on the state’s crippled finances.

Many in the state still advocate a tough approach, with long sentences served in full, and some early problems with released inmates have given critics reason to complain. But fiscal reality, coupled with a court-ordered reduction in the prison population, is pouring cold water on old solutions like building more prisons.

About 11 percent of the state budget, or roughly $8 billion, goes to the penal system, putting it ahead of expenditures like higher education, an imbalance Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to fix.

The strains on the system are evident inside the state prison here, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles, where 4,600 inmates fill buildings intended for half as many. A stuffy, cacophonous gymnasium houses nearly 150 people in triple-bunked beds stretching wall to wall.

The new effort this year is intended to remove from prisons criminals who are considered less threatening and divide them into two categories: those who pose little or no risk outside the prison walls, and those who need regular supervision.

The goal is to reduce the number of inmates in the state’s 33 prisons next year by 6,500 — more than the entire state prison population in 2009 of Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah or West Virginia. In all, there are 167,000 prisoners in California.

“People in the criminal justice world are looking at California with great interest,” said Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “Some very important reforms are under way.”

The effort, narrowly approved by the Democratic-controlled State Legislature and signed into law by Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, will be achieved through a range of steps long recommended by independent analysts and commissions.

To slow the return of former inmates to prison for technical violations of their parole, hundreds of low-level offenders will be released without close supervision from parole officers. Those officers will focus instead on tracking serious, violent offenders.

Some prisoners may also be released early for completing drug and education programs or have their sentences reduced under new formulas for calculating time served in county jails before and after sentencing.

The effort represents a “seismic shift,” said Joan Petersilia, a criminologist at Stanford Law School and a longtime scholar of the state’s prisons.

Public safety concerns have other states rethinking their decisions to save prisons costs by releasing inmates early and expanding parole.

The same red flags are being raised here, but the overcrowding problem dwarfs that of any other state and the budget deficit — $20 billion and climbing — has left lawmakers with virtually no choice but to move ahead.

The Schwarzenegger administration has floated a number of other ideas to reduce costs, including building prisons in Mexico for illegal immigrant offenders, turning over prisons to private contractors and, last week, having the University of California handle inmate health care.

The release of prisoners in California has stirred a backlash. Several hundred inmates at county jails were released in the last couple of months because of confusion over time credits in the new law.

Attorney General Jerry Brown, a Democrat who is running for governor, issued a directive clarifying the law, but not before one inmate in Sacramento was arrested shortly after his release and charged with attempting to rape a woman. The man had been released on probation after serving time on an assault charge.

That case prompted several lawmakers to call for abandoning early releases. And crime victim and law enforcement groups have been sounding alarms about what they consider the dangers of not more aggressively tracking the low-level offenders.

“We are concerned about victims these felons will leave in their wake before being rearrested for committing new crimes,” said Paul M. Weber, the president of the Los Angeles police union.

Proponents, including Mr. Schwarzenegger’s corrections secretary, Matthew Cate, have stood by the law, calling it overdue and necessary. The state spends, on average, $47,000 per year to house a prisoner. Early estimates suggest the new changes could save $100 million this year.

“This was an opportunity to do something impactful without imperiling public safety,” Mr. Cate said, adding that allowing parole officers to focus on more serious offenders will improve public safety.

Even with the new law, the system falls short of providing the kind of rehabilitation, drug treatment and education and job programs that academics and prisoner advocates have called for to help ensure prisoners and parolees do not commit new crimes.

The governor and the Legislature received a report on March 15 from a state oversight board warning that cuts to inmate rehabilitation programs would jeopardize the effort to reduce recidivism.

California is the only state that places all prisoners on parole at release, no matter the offense, Professor Petersilia said, and usually for one to three years. If a parolee is arrested or fails a drug test or misses an appointment with a parole officer, the offender lands back in prison.

Now, low-level offenders will not need to meet regularly with a parole officer and must be convicted of a new crime to be sent back.

Eric Susie, 24, recently had his parole terms readjusted under the new law. Mr. Susie had served 13 months in prison for possessing an M-80 firecracker wrapped with razors near a school (he argued, unsuccessfully, that it belonged to a friend).

Now, more than a year out of prison, he no longer reports to a parole officer or submits to monthly drug tests and can travel more freely, including out of state to visit family in Las Vegas.

“I feel like I am finally free,” Mr. Susie said. “I feel like I don’t have that monkey on my back, like being a prisoner. I feel like I am a human being and can get my life together.”

Even the guards’ union, which so heavily promoted and supported the tough sentencing of the past that fueled the prison building and expansion boom, now says it supports the idea of alternatives to prison and did not publicly object to the new law.

The overcrowding, union officials now say, poses a physical threat to its members, and the union has sided with plaintiffs battling in federal court to force even greater reductions of 40,000 inmates over the next two years.

But even with the progress in recent months, State Senator Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco who helped push through changes in the prison system, suggested that further reductions would be a hard sell. Mr. Leno called the changes under way “a noble effort” and the best that could be achieved in the current political climate.

Many lawmakers, he said, still want to lengthen sentences and spend more on incarceration, both politically popular notions.

“We can’t control ourselves,” Mr. Leno said. “Or some of my colleagues can’t control themselves.”

jchev California, Early Release

Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s proposal to cut prison sentences for well-behaved inmates failed its first test in the Legislature on Tuesday.

The plan to restore so-called good time credits for prisoners was left out of a 2010-11 budget adopted by a Senate subcommittee, along with $130 million in savings the administration forecast from closing four or five prisons.

The Senate alternative assumed savings instead from canceling a scheduled 3% raise for state employees and ordering the Michigan Department of Corrections to implement other cost-cutting. But the prison budget adopted by the subcommittee still came in at nearly $2 billion — $32 million higher than Granholm’s original proposal.

Subcommittee Chairman Alan Cropsey, R-Dewitt, said the wholesale release of prisoners — MDOC officials estimated that about 5,000 inmates could be released by the end of the year if good time credits were reinstated — “doesn’t make sense at all.”

“The governor gave us a budget based on a policy that is not going to happen,” he said.

Administration officials countered that the proposed Senate spending plan, which assumes legislative action to revoke the employee pay raise, is no less fanciful. An effort to do so in the Senate fell short two weeks ago. The deadline for both the House and Senate to reject the raise is April 11.

But Cropsey said the Granholm administration’s efforts to control prison spending have endangered the public and shifted the financial burden to local police departments and jails.

Further, the Department of Corrections has been far less successful cutting costs than it has at cutting the number of inmates, he said. The state’s cost per prisoner has climbed 17% in the last two years, he said.

MDOC officials said much of the increase is attributable to factors outside the department’s control.

The department budget is scheduled to be voted on by the full Senate Appropriations Committee as early as today. Separate legislation to reinstate good time remains stalled in the House.

Granholm’s good time proposal follows two years in which MDOC has accelerated the release of thousands of inmates to parole.

jchev Early Release, Michigan, Sentencing

The number of people Vermont locks up in prisons had been mostly in decline for about two years — until July 2008, when a 12-year-old girl died, allegedly at the hands of a convicted sex offender. News from the Burlington Free Press.

Since the death of Brooke Bennett, the number of inmates — and the cost to house them — has risen steadily. The theory: In response to public outrage that the man charged with Brooke’s death had been freed from prison, judges have been sending offenders to prison more readily and for longer sentences.

The solution: Legislation that passed the Senate on Wednesday seeks to counteract that boom in the prison population by keeping about 200 nonviolent offenders out of prison and letting others off probation six months early.

“We’re trying to make it possible for the Department of Corrections to meet the challenge of reducing expenses by $10 million,” said Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington. “I don’t believe the Judiciary Committee is putting anyone in danger. We are moving up the date of when they return.”

The move is projected to save $4.6 million next year, and calls for reinvesting $1.3 million of that into community housing and substance abuse programs that would be targeted at those offenders in hopes of keeping them from returning to prison.

The legislation, which goes next to the House, calls for earlier release from probation of such offenders convicted of nonviolent misdemeanors and felonies — a list that would include drug dealers, drug users and burglars. Some 100 non-violent offenders who’ve served their minimum sentences but continue to be held for lack of housing would be released. And another 100 who are being held pending trial would not be imprisoned.

The bill would allow judges to set bail for offenders who violate probation conditions that do not constitute a new crime, an effort to keep them out of prison. The bill also calls on state officials to create a plan to reduce the number of people being held pending trial by 25 percent. That population has increased from 336 in 2008 to 402 this year.

jchev Early Release, Vermont

The Department of Corrections would be required to post online the pictures and identification information of former inmates who receive early release if legislation introduced by state Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale, is signed into law. Reported in the Fox Valley Villages Sun.

“This is a commonsense practice that might have deterred some of the problems and abuses we saw occur with the Quinn administration’s flawed early release program,” Dillard said in a press release. “As the sponsor of Illinois’ Truth in Sentencing law, I was infuriated by the Quinn administration’s early release of prisoners who were violent criminals or involved in a murder.

“Some early release inmates served only days of their sentence in an Illinois penitentiary. That is a mockery of our system of law enforcement, and a mockery of their victims and their victims’ families.”

Senate Bill 3411 would require the DOC to place a recent picture of the inmate on its Web site within three days of the inmate’s release. The Web site would not only include the inmate’s name and age, but also his or her physical attributes, address, the offense that was committed and the county where the conviction took place.

Dillard said the DOC would be required to leave the information on the site until the inmate successfully completes the first year of his or her mandatory supervised release, or is returned to the custody of the department.

“Not only will making this information public bring peace of mind to concerned citizens, posting the information online could be a simple way to prevent someone from being seriously injured — or worse,” Dillard said.

The measure was unanimously approved by the Illinois Senate and must now win House approval.

The Bill is available online.

jchev Early Release, Illinois, Public Release

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm proposes cost-cutting measures including early outs for as many as 7,500 prisoners — nearly a thousand of whom include rapists, murders and pedophiles. News from the Charlevoix Courier.

The governor claims the cuts are a necessary part of the move to stem a projected $1.5 billion shortfall in the state’s 2011 budget, but some law enforcement officials statewide see the move as putting the public in danger.

“They are proposing to release dangerous criminals back into society,” said Charlevoix Prosecuting Attorney John Jarema. “They are letting out murderers, rapists, sexual predators and still are not addressing the cost to house them.”

The governor estimates nearly 7,500 prisoners will be released in four to six months of passage of the budget as-is.

jchev Early Release, Economic Issues, Michigan

The government is to halt the prisoner early release scheme designed to ease jail overcrowding in England and Wales. Reported by The BBC.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw told the House of Commons the scheme would be phased out from 12 March and see the the last inmates freed on 9 April.

Prison chiefs began using the scheme in June 2007 amid rising prisoner numbers. Since then, about 80,000 inmates serving up to four years for a range of less serious offences have been freed early. Some have been released up to 18 days before the halfway point of their sentence.

The latest figures show that 76,886 prisoners were released under the End of Custody Licence (ECL) scheme by the end of December last year – with the figure rising by approximately 2,000 a year.

Of those who were released, the Ministry of Justice says that 2,522 were recalled for breaching the terms of their licence, representing 3% of all those in the scheme. A further 1,574 offences were committed by offenders who had been released under the scheme.

Spare capacity
Among those was Andrew Mournian who murdered his girlfriend Amanda Murphy in 2007 five days after being released. He had been sentenced to 20 weeks for assaulting the mother-of-two but was released 18 days early.

And in 2008, the government had to make changes to the scheme after two men convicted of terrorism were let out of jail early to ease prison overcrowding.

Mr Straw told MPs that there were now enough spare places in the prison system to mean it was no longer necessary to consider any prisoners for the scheme. As of last Friday there were 83,820 inmates in jail and approximately 2,500 spare beds.

On the weekend before the scheme was introduced in June 2007, there were 80,951 people in jail, a further 400 in emergency police cells – and barely 100 beds available across the entire prison system.

Mr Straw told MPs that prisoners who had been given a formal release date up to and including 9 April would be released and then the scheme would end.

He said: “Predicting the prison population and matching places to meet demand has always been difficult and inevitably imprecise.

“I can certainly recall early release schemes on three separate occasions – in 1984, 1987 and 1991 – when the government of the day faced crises in handling pressures upon the prison population. ECL was explicitly introduced as a temporary measure. I have always said that we would end it as soon as we could.

“I have always recognised that, while necessary as a temporary measure, it was inherently unsatisfactory and potentially damaging to public confidence in justice – confidence which is otherwise high, particularly in the light of falling crime.”

EARLY RELEASE SCHEME

• Only available to prisoners serving between four weeks and four years
• Sex offenders subjected to registration excluded
• Serious violent offenders excluded
• Foreign national prisoners excluded

Mr Straw said the prison service was on track to have 96,000 spaces available by 2014 because of the current building programme.

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said the scheme had been “reckless”. “The introduction of the early release scheme was a direct result of this prime minister’s failure,” he said.

“As chancellor, he choked funding for the prison cells the home secretary had asked for, the capacity required to meet official projections for the prison population. The consequences of that failure have been stark. Eighty thousand criminals let out of jail early, including 15,000 violent offenders and two terrorists. Those released went on to commit 1,500 crimes, including several rape and murder offences.”

‘Gaping hole’
Mr Grieve attacked the Ministry of Justice for shelving some prison building plans. He said the cancellation of prisons in Essex and North Wales had left a “gaping hole” in the figures and that the ministry’s own projections showed that it would again reach capacity by July 2011.

Liberal Democrat justice spokesman David Howarth said he welcomed the announcement, but added: “The real scandal is not just the offenders released early who commit more crimes – it is the sky-high levels of re-offending across the board.

“The system is not working and today’s announcement does nothing to address that. Prison should be reserved for serious and violent offenders.

“If the government were not so obsessed with filling our prisons with people who should not be there, such as drug addicts and the mentally ill, they would not be forced to let out dangerous criminals before they have served their sentence.”

jchev Early Release, England & Wales

Iowa’s prisons have serious problems that are delaying release of inmates into rehabilitation programs and potentially costing taxpayers millions of extra dollars, the state’s ombudsman told lawmakers Wednesday. Report from the Des Moines Register.

Among the problems:
- A work-release program that costs taxpayers less than daily prison fees has a waiting list of 800 inmates. In one inmate’s case alone, the additional cost to taxpayers was $25,000.

• Some prison officials have improperly held inmates’ earnings instead of applying them to victim restitution or court reimbursements.

• A gradual release program has been revamped so dramatically that some offenders are unable to do what is required to qualify for early release.

“We can’t continue to keep people in prison when they would be better placed in a less restrictive environment at a significantly reduced cost,” Iowa Ombudsman William Angrick said.

Lawmakers agreed the issues and likely extra costs are vital at a time when the state is discussing cuts to key services, such as education and health programs for low-income families.

Rep. Wayne Ford, a member of the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee, expressed anger at the findings and told committee members they would be violating their duties as lawmakers if they fail to immediately look more closely at the issue, despite a shortened legislative session.

Ford, D-Des Moines, has worked with prisoners through his social agency, Urban Dreams. Failures in rehabilitation programs not only cost taxpayers money but also increase the likelihood of recidivism, he said.

“Our No. 1 job as a Legislature is the public safety of this state,” Ford said, noting Angrick’s report. “Somebody is going to kill somebody, saying they’re mad as hell because these things are against me.

“This blood is on our hands.”
Fred Scaletta, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Corrections, said the administrators who could speak about the programs were unavailable for comment Wednesday.

However, Scaletta pointed to November board notes in which Director John Baldwin thanked Angrick for his comments about prisoner payments and said that a final resolution would be handled when the attorney general issues a ruling.

The attorney general has not issued any opinions or advice on the matter, Bob Brammer, a spokesman for the office, said Wednesday.

About 800 inmates are on a waiting list for placement in a residential facility as required for work-release programs, according to Angrick’s report. The programs save taxpayers $19.08 a day compared with prison costs.

He said one unidentified inmate was held in prison 351 days longer than anticipated. If the work-release program had been immediately available, the prisoner would have been eligible for lesser levels of imprisonment, such as day reporting and eventually parole, which costs about $3.75 a day. Angrick estimated the extra costs to taxpayers at about $25,000.

A September state audit of the corrections department verified Angrick’s findings about prisoner payments. Inmates at the North Central Correctional Facility in Webster County, by labor law, should have been paid about $7.80 an hour to pull tarps over harvested grain at two local elevators. Instead, they were paid about $6.15, the audit showed.

The disparities are important because much of the earnings from prisoners are turned over for court or victim reimbursements. However, according to Angrick’s findings, some of that money was not being properly distributed.

In another finding, Angrick noted that some prisoners through no fault of their own have lost the ability to meet the Iowa Board of Parole’s requirements to receive early release.

The problems stem from a policy change made a year ago that no longer allows inmates to live and work outside the secured perimeter of the prisons, the report said.

“If the Board of Parole requires an offender to work outside the fence as a prerequisite for release, but the Department of Corrections’ policy prevents the offender from doing so, one can safely draw the conclusion that the releases of many offenders will be delayed,” Angrick said. “That will undoubtedly increase incarceration costs for the state of Iowa.”

The Oversight Committee will attempt to organize a public meeting with the corrections department, said Rep. Vicki Lensing, D-Iowa City, co-chairwoman of the committee.

jchev Early Release, Inmate Programs, Iowa

Oregon lawmakers moved a bill to the Ways and Means Committee Tuesday that temporarily suspends a law passed last session to allow some nonviolent offenders to get out of prison early. Story from The Oregonian.

The original law, passed last summer to help the state’s Department of Corrections save $6 million, allows some nonviolent offenders to earn an extra 10 percent off their sentences for good behavior. Previously, non-violent offenders were limited to a 20 percent credit. For the inmates who have earned the extra earned time, it has meant an average of 55 days off their sentences.

Prosecutors and Oregon Attorney General John Kroger objected to the increase in earned time, calling it too generous.

Tough-on-crime advocates, who’ve argued that 30 percent earned time is excessive, persuaded legislators to suspend the additional 10 percent earned time to study it and then reinstate it in 2011. The amendments to Senate Bill 1007 also include a list of violent offenses to be excluded from the early-release option.

In the original bill, legislators built in a review of the extra earned time credit and judges have turned down 766 requests since July. Another 3,473 inmates have been approved for early release. Some 952 inmates have earned the extra 10 percent and already been released, according to the Department of Corrections.

To date, Oregon Department of Corrections officials say the law has saved about $4 million of the projected $6 million.

jchev Early Release, Oregon

With his swollen legs and a throaty rasp that whistles like a kettle through his broken teeth, Eddie Jones is an unlikely man to make history. News reported in the NY Times.

He is 89 and dying, a former loan shark who, at 69, shot another man dead on a Harlem street in what he claimed was self-defense. Now he is serving a sentence of 25 years to life in a prison hospital bed in this upstate town, riddled with heart disease and probably cancer, though his doctors are not certain about the cancer because Mr. Jones has refused most every medical test.

Mr. Jones’s original parole date was in 2015, but he stands to go free in the coming weeks under a new state law that makes chronically as well as terminally ill inmates eligible for early release. Inmates must be deemed physically or cognitively unable to present a threat to society.

The law, passed with the state budget last April, expanded the eligibility list to add those convicted of violent crimes including second-degree murder (like Mr. Jones), first-degree manslaughter and sex offenses, so long as the ailing inmates have served half of their time.

But despite fanfare within the corrections industry about the humanitarian and financial benefits of compassionate release — New York is one of a dozen states that have expanded, enacted or streamlined programs over the past two years — the policy shift has had minimal effect. Experts attribute this to the fear that no matter how sick, freed inmates might commit further crimes, as well as to the difficulty of placing dying criminals in nursing homes.

“The problem is, when we start trying to put people out, there are others in the community who are sure we’re trying to make more crime in the community,” said Dr. Lester Wright, chief medical officer for the New York State Department of Correctional Services. “We’re also competing for beds. Some people think my patients aren’t as valuable as other people in society.”

The embrace of compassionate release comes as the nation’s prison population is at a historic high — 1.6 million people as of 2008, according to the Justice Department — compounded by a surge in aging and sick inmates serving longer sentences. In 2008, there were 74,100 inmates ages 55 and older, a 79 percent increase from 1999. New York estimates the cost of caring for a gravely ill inmate at $150,809 a year. Once released, they are usually cared for by family members or placed in nursing homes or hospices, their expenses largely covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

But while the new state guidelines led to a surge in applications for medical parole — 202 inmates last year, compared with 66 in 2008 — they have hardly changed the outcome. Mr. Jones would, in fact, be the first freed under the new guidelines (the seven inmates released last year were eligible under the old rules).

The National Conference of State Legislatures said 39 states had compassionate release programs, but many of them also have minimal impact.

In California, where federal judges ordered the state to cut the prison population by 40,000, three people were granted compassionate release last year. In Alabama, where prisons are at double their capacity, four sick inmates were let out on compassionate release in fiscal 2009; 35 other prisoners in Alabama died while their applications were being reviewed.

Since New York adopted medical parole in 1992, at the height of the AIDS crisis, 364 people have been released.

“Medical parole was designed to consider the humanitarian needs of inmates as well as the safety of the community,” said Brian Fischer, commissioner of the State Department of Correctional Services. “Anybody can tell us they want medical parole, but the numbers who qualify are going to be a lot smaller than the ones who want it.”

Advocates for prisoners argue that fear of recidivism is unreasonable, especially for convicts close to death. Corrections officials said during the 18 years the program in New York has been in effect, three medically paroled inmates have ended up back in prison, none for violent crimes.

“Politicians and high-level officials and bureaucrats don’t want to be accused of being soft on crime, even if the prisoners are terminally ill and there’s no possible risk to public safety,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison advocacy group.

Indeed, the release last summer in Scotland of an ill Libyan man convicted in the bombing of an airplane over Lockerbie created an international furor. Last fall, anger over New York’s new law erupted when Gregory Felder, who was convicted of murdering a Radio Shack employee on Long Island in 2004 and is now gravely ill, was considered for parole. (He was turned down; and a legislative loophole that had made him eligible despite having not yet served half of his sentence was subsequently closed.)

Other cases have unfolded far from the public glare. Cinderella Marrett, 74, who was caught at Kennedy International Airport in 2007 smuggling cocaine in her girdle — to offset medical expenses, her daughter said — was released in May 2009. Stricken with cancer, she is living in a nursing home in the Bronx.

Since 2005, at least 16 New York inmates have died while waiting for the parole board to decide their fate.

Timothy McGowan, a once-burly high school dropout from Deer Park, N.Y., spent half of his 50 years behind bars for 11 felony convictions, including robbery and second-degree manslaughter. By the time he was thrown back in prison for a parole violation in April 2009, cancer was consuming his lungs, whittling away his body and creeping up his brain stem.

In July, when Mr. McGowan could barely walk, his prison doctors applied on his behalf for compassionate release; his final wish was to have one last cup of tea with his mother in their Long Island home. Instead, he died at Fishkill Correctional Facility on Nov. 7, two days before the parole board was to hear his case.

Among the prisoners in New York newly eligible but denied release last year was Sergio Black, 38, a former Marine who said he had fought in the first Gulf War.

Mr. Black was convicted in 2005 of raping his former companion, which he denied. In 2006, his spinal cord was injured in a prison basketball game. Now a quadriplegic at the Walsh Regional Medical Unit of the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y., Mr. Black is a “poster boy for medical parole,” according to his lawyer, Stephen Dratch, because it would be difficult for him to commit another physical crime. But the parole board rejected his application, saying Mr. Brown “exhibited little or no insight or remorse for the victim.”

Mr. Jones, the near-nonagenarian and former loan shark known by his hospice aides as the Harlem Knight, was supposed to go before the parole board in December, but the hearing was pushed back twice because the court had not yet sent a transcript from his sentencing. His next scheduled parole date is next month, and he remains bedridden in the hospice at Coxsackie Correctional Facility upstate.

A long-lost niece, Marcy Jones, who lives in Washington, has poured her heart into pushing corrections officials and the governor’s office to grant the parole. She is optimistic enough that she has bought her uncle a new wardrobe and has set up a battery of medical appointments for him.

“Once I get him out, I’m going to advocate for others,” Ms. Jones said. “There are other Uncle Eddies out there.”

jchev Early Release, New York

The Tulare County jail system has been overcrowded since 1988, and it’s unlikely a revised law that will result in more releases based on good behavior will help, a local jails official said Tuesday. News from the Visalia Times.

The Tulare County Sheriff’s Department was forced to release 205 inmates Monday under a modified state law that gives inmates more credit for good behavior.

“We book 30 to 50 inmates a day. The overcrowding issue will not go away with this one law change,” Capt. Jim Hinesly said. “We will be releasing more as soon as we are over capacity again.”

The law is expected to save more than $5,300 per day each housed inmate would have served. However, Hinesly says the jail will soon be back up to capacity, which is 1,554 inmates. There were 1,544 inmates as of Tuesday.

Hinesly said it would take four months to determine the total savings and effectiveness of the early releases.

The changes apply to all nonviolent inmates in California prisons who have not been convicted of a sex crime, including those in county jail facilities. The changes are intended to reduce prison and jail overcrowding and budget issues.

The Sheriff’s Department released 87 housed inmates and 118 inmates who were in alternative work programs and were not housed in a county facility.

Old guidelines gave inmates with good behavior one-third day’s credit for each full day served. Changes made to California Penal Code 4019, which took effect Monday, give one-half day’s credit for good behavior, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

The new policy concerns some local law enforcement agencies and public officials.

“If there are no consequences for bad behavior, there will be bad behavior,” said Phil Vandegrift, vice mayor of Tulare. “I don’t think anything is being fixed with this law.”

Visalia Police Department officials agree that early jail releases cause concern.

“It is always a concern when that many people are released all at once,” Visalia police Sgt. Steve Phillips said. “I wish there was an another way of getting through the economic crisis.”

jchev Early Release, Overcrowding

In what could be claimed an innovative approach to rehabilitation, an Indian prison is offering its inmates commutation of sentences for completing a three-month yoga course. Reported by the Xinhua News Agency.

According to the prison authorities, more than 400 inmates have enrolled themselves for the yoga course introduced by the Gwalior Jail in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, the successful completion of which will see their prison terms reduced by 36 days, and some 68 are set for early release.

“We are running yoga classes in many jails. The basic objective to practice yoga in jails is to help the inmates to master the art, bust the stress, anger management and to keep them fit,” Sanjay Mani, Inspector-General of Prisons in Madhya Pradesh, told the media in state capital Bhopal.

“We offer remission of sentence to prisoners who admit themselves for educational courses and yoga will be covered in the remission,” he added.

Yoga exponents have welcomed the move.

“Yoga helps to control the mind, create self-awareness and in the process helps you to achieve mental and emotional well being in addition to physical fitness. It encompasses within its purview factors that contribute to good health and vitality,” said Romen Roy Chowdhury, a foremost recession yoga exponent who teaches in Delhi and Mumbai.

“Yoga inculcates discipline in temperament, soothes the turbulent mind through meditation, and helps you to focus and channelise our lives,” he added.

In fact, Gwalior Jail is not the only one which has introduced the yoga course. The Tihar Jail in the national capital last year introduced yoga to cut stress levels inside prison.

Tihar authorities have made an hour-long yoga session in the open gardens mandatory for inmates and the policemen, under the supervision of a trainer.

“The yoga session will be held between 07:00 a.m. and 08:00 a.m. . The inmates are more excited than we are. Earlier, they were holding yoga sessions on their own. After we saw their enthusiasm, we decided to make more formal arrangements,” Tihar Jail official Sunil Gupta had said.

jchev Early Release, India, Inmate Programs

The first group of Wisconsin inmates left prison last week under a state plan to relieve overcrowding by releasing some prisoners early, corrections officials said. Story from the Green Bay Press Gazette.

The Department of Corrections has spent the past three months reviewing hundreds of nonviolent offenders eligible for early parole in exchange for good behavior. Twenty-one were released Tuesday, agency spokesman John Dipko said. None were released from the Green Bay Correctional Institution in Allouez.

The parolees came from across the state correctional system’s institutions. Their crimes include retail theft, driving while intoxicated, operating a vehicle without consent, forgery, burglary, drug possession and disorderly conduct, Dipko said in an e-mail.

States around the country have turned to early-release programs to alleviate overcrowding. Last year 13 states either created or expanded programs to speed up early release, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Critics say the programs could put the public in danger. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn suspended that state’s early out program in December after The Associated Press revealed the Illinois Department of Corrections was releasing hundreds of inmates too early. The agency had secretly changed a policy that required everyone to spend at least 61 days in prison and was awarding six months’ good-conduct credit as soon as inmates entered prison.

Several of Illinois’ parolees were arrested within weeks of their release for various offenses. “This is a dangerous social experiment doomed to failure,” Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, said of Wisconsin’s programs. “These felons are headed back to a community near you.”

Dipko stressed offenders must earn the release with good behavior. “Earned release provides a positive incentive that we know from research can reduce recidivism,” he said.

Prisons are a big business in Wisconsin. The correctional system includes more than 18 institutions and costs more than $1 billion per year.

Overcrowding has been a problem for years. Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch estimated in February that the inmate population stood at more than 22,000. A consultant’s report released last year found Wisconsin’s facilities are decaying. It recommended more than $1.2 billion in upgrades over the next 10 years.

Faced with a $6.6 billion shortfall in the state budget, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle instead proposed releasing some prisoners early to save money and space.

Killers and sex offenders aren’t eligible, but most offenders will be able to shave days off their sentences with good behavior. Convicts including drug dealers and bank robbers can seek early release from the Department of Corrections, a judge or a newly created parole commission.

Inmates with “extraordinary health conditions,” defined as advanced age, infirmity, disability or a need for medical treatment not available behind bars, also can petition for early parole.

Raemisch estimated in February the changes might affect 3,000 inmates. The Corrections Department estimates the early release programs will save about $30 million over the two-year state budget.

jchev Early Release, Overcrowding, Wisconsin

Prosecuting attorneys would receive advance warning about the early release of prison inmates under legislation a House committee approved Monday. News reported in the Daily Herald.

As proposed, the Department of Corrections would have to notify the relevant state’s attorneys at least 14 days before an inmate could be released early. State law presently proscribes only that state’s attorneys get “reasonable” notice before an inmate is let out before the scheduled date.

“And it’s my understanding that that led to situations where in fact, 24 hours, 12 hours (or) instantaneous with the release, that these offices were being notified,” said state Rep. Emily McAsey, a Lockport Democrat.

The amendment approved Monday comes just weeks after Gov. Pat Quinn publicly apologized for a secret, money-saving measure that allowed the early release of more than 1,700 inmates – several of whom already are charged with crimes committed after they were let go.

McAsey said prosecutors in the county where the crime occurred and where the prisoner is released, if different, should be notified.

“So we may have a situation where the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office prosecuted the case, the inmate went into the Department of Corrections and is serving time in Will County, and in some situations based upon the legislation, the Will County State’s Attorneys Office also would be given notice,” McAsey said.

The amendment approved Monday also will require inmates to serve at least 60 days in the state correctional system before review for early release.

State Rep. Jim Sacia, a Republican from Pecatonica, said he would like to see another addition that would require victims, too, be notified.

The proposal now heads to the full House.

jchev Early Release, Illinois

A law intended to save taxpayers $6 million by lopping time off the sentences of Oregon’s nonviolent prisoners has unwittingly opened freedom’s door early to hundreds of violent inmates. News from the Oregonian.

They include Troy Lee Hischar, who fired a bullet so close to his ex-girlfriend’s skull that it clipped off a tuft of hair; Raul Peña-Jimenez, who gave a 16-year-old girl drugs and alcohol before sexually assaulting her; and Joseph Duane Betts, a convicted child molester who exposed himself to two boys.

Nearly 800 of the 2,397 inmates approved for reduced sentences were sent to prison for crimes as serious as robbery, arson and attempted murder or had previous convictions for crimes against people, The Oregonian found in an examination of state corrections data.

The new law, which passed as part of budget cuts by the Legislature, made thieves, drug dealers and other lower-risk prisoners eligible for a 10 percent reduction in their sentences.

But lawmakers acknowledge they left more than a dozen serious crimes off the list of offenses that disqualify inmates from reduced sentences. So prisoners could get extra time off for crimes such as assaulting police officers, sexually abusing children or committing certain kinds of arson or robbery.

“I call it an oversight,” Prozanski says. “Just like any major piece of legislation, we have now realized there are some crimes we intended to include that we are going to include.”

Dozens of prisoners qualified for early release even though they were accused of crimes committed in prison, such as attacking corrections staffers, possessing dangerous weapons and downloading child pornography on a prison computer.

The law also does not consider inmates’ previous histories of violence, and it opens the door to those serving time for multiple offenses during a violent crime. For example, a carjacker who completes a sentence for armed robbery can then win early release on a consecutive sentence for stealing a car.

“They need to repeal this law,” says Dean Gushwa,  Umatilla County’s district attorney. “I can’t believe that they ever intended for this law to shave time off sentences for violent offenders.”

Key architects of the statute, Prozanski and then-Rep. Chip Shields, D-Portland, say the law has generally played out as expected. The average inmate to win a sentence reduction gets out 59 days early, saving taxpayers $84 a day. However, Shields acknowledges, some of them are hardened criminals.

“There are very few saints in prison,” says Shields, now a state senator, “which is why this can’t happen in an easy way.”

Prosecutors and victims rights advocates say the new law has freed violent criminals, clogged court dockets, reopened wounds for crime victims and appears to be a sneaky way of tampering with mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

Much more to read on the Oregonian.

jchev Early Release, Economic Issues, Oregon

Hundreds of inmates are scheduled to be released from Oregon’s prisons this fall, but Josephine County officials say that they are prepared to handle the influx. Complete story in the Illinois Valley News.

Earlier this year, the Legislature passed House Bill 3508, which suspended certain provisions of Measure 57 between February 2010 and January 2012. That measure was passed by voters in November 2008, and was intended to increase prison sentences for persons convicted of certain nonviolent drug, property and identity theft crimes.

An estimated 800 criminals will be released early this fall as a result of HB 3508, and more than 4,000 could be let out throughout the next four years. The early release does not apply to violent criminals like rapists and murderers.

Abe Huntley, Josephine County Community Corrections director, said that at the local level, releases are “just about doubling.”

“In a typical month, we would have five to six releases from prison,” Huntley said. “We’re now seeing 10 to 12.”

Those early releases have kept Karen Caskey plenty busy. She is the founder and president of Welcome Home Oregon, a religious nonprofit prison transition program that helps remove barriers from re-entry into the community. It is funded through private donations and grants.

Between 150 and 170 persons typically are released into Josephine County every year, Caskey said. The passage of HB 3508 won’t alter that figure, she said, but meant that Welcome Home Oregon was saddled with two months’ worth of early releases.

“By the time everything made it through the process, some people had already passed their earned time release dates,” Caskey said. “As soon as the paperwork was filled out, those people were released. In a community like Josephine County, with somewhat limited resources, that put an immediate strain on things.”

Welcome Home Oregon’s duties include conducting a reach-in call for every state prison inmate that returns to Josephine County and developing release plans intended to meet their most basic needs. Caskey said that the sudden increase in releases complicated the program’s ability to keep up with its core functions.

“We were not able to conduct reach-in calls,” she said. “In terms of a successful release plan, which includes housing, food, clothing and the barest necessities in some cases, we were faced with being in reactionary mode.”

Caskey wasn’t alone in feeling overwhelmed by the increased workload. She said that release councilors at the state Dept. of Corrections were “totally trying to play catch-up” due to the changes in policy.

Huntley said HB 3508 “really put pressure on our release officers.” But it also enabled the county to receive its portion of the savings realized from the suspension of Measure 57’s implementation. That figure amounts to $250,000, he said, which will be spent on treatment programs for drug-addicted property offenders.

Such an approach enables community corrections to focus on reducing recidivism, something Huntley said he strongly supports.

“Housing people in prison doesn’t change their behavior, it takes them out of circulation,” he said. “Community Corrections is different in that we provide programs, structure and supervision to change behavior long-term, so we don’t let them out and send them back to the same environment to continue the same operation.”

Caskey said that despite the early rush, the situation has calmed down and is back to normal after a series of short-term adjustments.

“It did make us scramble a little bit, but for the most part, we’ve gotten through that period of time,” Caskey said. “We had a few people who fell through the cracks, but we’ve been able to find them and reach them, and made sure that they ended up with a positive set of goals when they reached the community.

“It was crazy, but it was totally something we were able to handle in a good manner,” she stated.

jchev Community Corrections, Early Release, Oregon

The Tennessee Department of Corrections has been asked by Governor Phil Bredesen to cut nine percent, or more than $50 million from its annual budget. Reported by WVLT-TV.

To do so, officials with the department said they’ll likely have to release around 4,000 convicted felons early from their inmate ranks.

“This isn’t scare tactics,” said George Little, commissioner of the Department of Corrections. “This is sort of the tab coming home, and we are going to have to figure out how we are going to make ends meet.”

Gov. Bredesen grilled Commissioner Little on the plan in order to guarantee the state took a serious look at who it let out before they restore their freedom. .

“You are saying those people would be A, non-violent and B, people who are coming to the end of their sentence periods or somethings like that,” asked Gov. Bredesen.

“Yes sir,” replied Little.

Unfortunately the cuts might not end there. Before all is said and done, the state may have to close down one or two prisons.

Most of Tennessee’s 14 state prisons were built within the last 20 years. Two of them are owned privately. Presumably, the oldest prisons would be the facilities most likely to close if needed.

The oldest prisons in the state are as follows:

• Northwest Correctional Complex Annex, Roan Mountain – built in 1986
• Southeastern Tennessee State Regional Correctional Facility, Pikeville – built in 1980
• Charles B. Bass Correctional Complex, Nashville – Main was built in 1979, Annex was built in 1946
• Mark H. Luttrell Correctional Center, Memphis – built in 1976
• Turney Center Industrial Complex, Only and Clifton – Main was built in 1971, Annex was built in 1985

jchev Budgets, Early Release, Tennessee

Gov. Quinn Tuesday defended his plan to release up to 1,000 inmates, a step that begins this week and eventually could save the cash-strapped state $5 million a year. As reported in the Chicago Sun Times.

By the end of this week, 62 non-violent offenders who are within a year of their scheduled release dates will be freed in the first wave of Quinn’s early-release initiative.

“We’re going to do this because we do have financial challenges. But at the same time, we’re going to do it in a way that always protects the public,” Quinn said during an appearance in Chicago to announce the opening of a new veterans home.

Quinn said those released will be under “constant electronic monitoring” while on parole, and the governor expressed optimism that none of those being set free early will be a threat to society.

“Hopefully they learned their lessons in jail and won’t repeat their crimes,” Quinn told reporters.

His administration refused to divulge the names of those in the first wave of early releases.

Januari Smith, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Corrections, did not offer a basis under the state Freedom of Information Act to justify withholding the inmates’ identities.

“At this time it’s not being released through my office,” said Smith, who added that local law enforcement agencies have been notified who is being released early.

The administration has said that drug offenders and inmates convicted of non-violent property crimes are among those being set free early. Those with homicide or sex offense convictions are not eligible for early release under Quinn’s plan.

Those sent home early will be required to wear electronic-monitoring ankle bracelets and be assigned to parole agents, with whom they will have to meet at least once a month.

jchev Budgets, Early Release, IL Chicago