Gov. Joe Manchin’s office says the money will help communities set up and operate corrections programs that give judges a sentencing option besides jail.

Grants are going to 22 programs serving counties from the Eastern Panhandle to Mason County and Hancock County to the southern coalfields counties of Logan, Mingo, Boone and Lincoln.

Manchin announced the grants Tuesday.

“This is a tremendous boost to our education programming,” Abbott said. “These monies will help us move even farther ahead, better ensuring that we’re providing inmates the education and skills that they need to be productive citizens and stay out of prison once they’re released.” According to Abbott, the funding will be used to enhance and improve training and infrastructure, and will not add staff or non-sustainable programs.

The WDOC will partner with DWS on this grant to assist inmates with job placement and tracking post release to determine success.

The grant provides that the monies will allow the department to:

* pay for training and infrastructure
* purchase necessary curriculum and programs
* implement Microsoft Office Computer Certification programs
* provide Career Readiness Certificate testing for inmates
* provide access to the Wyoming at Work website so inmates can sign up prior to release and utilize the tools available on the website
* provide funds to provide staff training and professional development
* help staff develop relationships with workforce personnel and potential employers
* help staff learn current techniques for working with this inmate population

Education managers work as a team even though they serve individual institutions, so that as inmates move through the WDOC system they can continue their education and not get stalled in the process. All Education Managers and ABE instructors are certified academic positions, certified at the same level that is required in the public school system for K-12.

“I couldn’t ask for a better staff,” says Abbott. “Everyone works hard, approaches new challenges, is innovative, and always has the inmates’ needs in mind.”

The population served by the grant will be:

* WDOC incarcerated unemployed adult job seekers within 1-6 months of release
* WDOC incarcerated job seekers in need of a GED
* WDOC incarcerated English as a Second Language (ESL) job seekers who need skills to enter the workforce
* WDOC incarcerated veterans in the above categories

Mentally ill criminal offenders in Dauphin County are closer to having a new avenue for help.

The county has been awarded a $250,000 federal grant to develop a mental health court for mentally ill prisoners.

The court would serve as an alternative judiciary process similar to drug and juvenile courts, county Commissioner Jeff Haste said.

A team including a public defender, the district attorney and pre-trial service representatives would collaborate to assign a treatment program before resorting to jail time, Haste said.

Defendants who are deemed successfully treated could have their criminal charges dismissed or deferred. Those who fail would re-enter the standard judiciary system.

The program would make the county prison system more economical, Haste said.

“Any amount of time we can reduce, whether it be no time in jail or reduced time in jail, helps … the taxpayers,” he said.

About 25 percent of the county’s prison population has been treated for mental illness and more than eight in 10 of those offenders have been imprisoned more than four times.

Mentally ill offenders often spend more days in jail than other offenders — even if they’ve committed the same crime, Haste said. Inmates with mental health problems might be unable to advocate for themselves or serve full sentences because of poor behavior, he said.

Similar mental health courts exist in Northumberland and York counties, Dauphin County spokeswoman Diane McNaughton said.

The grant also would pay for an expansion of jail diversion and re-entry programs, which reduce the number of days an offender with a mental illness and charged with a nonviolent misdemeanor has to spend in prison.

The county agreed in February to match up to $80,000 for the project. Haste couldn’t say when the court will be operational, but many of the pre-trial alternatives the court would enact are already being used for mental health offenders, he said.

The key to the process is not a special courtroom or a mental health judge, but a team of people working on the case, Haste said.

“There are a number of people who come together to develop a plan and take responsibility for an individual,” he said. “The judge then becomes the one who blesses the plan.”

The future of the Missouri River Drug Task Force, an anti-narcotics unit that includes 10 police detectives from seven counties in southwestern Montana, may depend on whether its officers can confiscate enough drug money to pay their own salaries. That’s because the task force, like hundreds of other specialized state and local law-enforcement teams across the country, relies heavily on a federal funding stream that Congress slashed by 67 percent late last year … Similar scenarios are playing out across the nation, as cash-strapped law-enforcement teams from California to Pennsylvania come to terms with potentially crippling cuts in funding under a key federal grant program. State and local governments, struggling as the U.S. economy falters and tax revenues flatten, are unable to help.

Stateline covers this story in detail.

Last year, Montana received about $1.2 million from the program, of which 90 to 95 percent went to the seven drug task forces in the state … The Missouri River Drug Task Force serves Helena, Lewis and Clark County and other surrounding communities. The task force, mainly funded by federal grant money, faces a cut of 67 percent for the next year, as do the rest of the nation’s multijurisdictional drug task forces. Task force detectives were instrumental in solving the last five homicides in Helena, all of which were drug-related. They used networks of informants to gather incriminating information on the murders. Investigators say they also spend many hours a week on assaults, burglaries and other drug-related crimes.

The full article from the Helena Independent Record has a lot more information.

Source:  IJIS email

“I was frustrated,” said Klecker. “I knew that my (Intensive Supervision Officers) were doing a very good job, but we were not being effective. And I [was] troubled with it.”

Through NCIC he found ” The Eight Principles of Effective Intervention” and he knew it would help.

The Eight Principles of Effective Intervention say in order to successfully release an offender from probation, the corrections facility needs to help change the way the offender thinks and reacts to particular situations. The principles are as follows: Assess actuarial risk and needs, enhance intrinsic motivation, target intervention, skill train with directed practice, increase positive reinforcement, engage ongoing support in natural communities, measure relevant processes and practices, and provide measurement feedback. ISOs will utilize pro-social or rehabilitation interventions to emphasize positive behaviors. Research by the Center for Effective Public Policy says “punishment and deterrence-driven approaches used in isolation have negligible impact or no impact.” But when using positive reinforcement, revocation rates decrease and re-arrest rates can be lowered by as much as 20 percent …

Between July 1, 2006, and today, SFTCC has already reduced by 59.1 percent the number of felony offenders who are sent to prison for violating the conditions of their probation.

This is, of course, re-entry at the basic level. More details can be found in the Dodge City Daily Globe.