The once rapid growth in South Dakota’s prison population has been significantly slowed thanks largely to efforts to keep parolees from returning to prison. The state Corrections Department expects only a slight increase in the number of state penitentiary inmates this fiscal year thanks to programs aimed at helping them prepare for life after prison. Reported by the Rapid City Journal.

Inmate counts have leveled off the past five years after a seven-year period when the average daily inmate count grew by 41 percent, from 2,424 inmates in July 1999 to 3,428 in July 2006.

“We’re growing, but we’re growing at a really moderate pace,” said Laurie Feiler, deputy secretary of the state Department of Corrections.

She told an interim legislative committee last week that the average daily inmate count from July 2009 through May this year was 3,448.

The availability of federal grants and the increasing annual state expense for a growing inmate population helped shift the emphasis to keeping inmates from re-offending or violating parole and returning to prison, said state Sen. Julie Bartling, chair of the South Dakota Corrections Commission.

“Plus I think there’s been a societal focus,” she said. “I think the focus has changed that we need to get the inmates – men and women – back in their homes and back with their children and their families so they can be productive citizens and hopefully be good examples for others in their community,” she said.

The number of new prisoners and parole violators at the women’s prison is down this fiscal year. There are fewer parole violators among the men, but more first-time offenders.

The average length of stay – 14 months for women and 20 months for men – is changed little from a year ago.

A May report showed that 38 percent of the inmates convicted of violent crimes were in prison for rape or aggravated assault. For nonviolent crimes, the largest percentage of inmates (12 percent) were there for possession of a controlled substance.

Bartling, D-Burke, said it’s important that the state continue to fund Corrections Department programs to provide education or General Educational Development (GED) classes to inmates.

“That’s an area that I think money could be very well spent, and just continuing some educational opportunities. … I’m a firm believer all the way around that a good education is a very strong part of a person’s life and ability to make good for themselves and their families” she said.

Part of the reason for a leveling off in the prison count is a state population that is growing older. Young people are most often those at risk to commit crimes, Feiler said.

Programs that target an inmate’s specific needs, such as ending methamphetamine use, also are helping, she said.

Gov. Mike Rounds has created the Re-entry Council to look for ways to keep released inmates from committing another crime. The state’s recidivism, or re-offending rate, is 30 percent.

Feiler said the DOC might relax some policies if that can help minimize parole violations. For example, it might be better for some parolees to have family support and be without a job than to require that they have both a place to live and a job, she said.

jchev Parole, Prison Population, South Dakota

Vicente Moreno could have turned back to the streets when he finished his prison term, but a program that slain East Palo Alto community leader David Lewis helped create saved him, he said. “When I got out of prison I had nothing. I was struggling to find a job. My shoes were ragged walking everywhere trying to find work,” he said. Moreno has a small son and was determined to stay out of prison. He also wanted to marry his son’s mother, but he had no money or prospects, he said. Story reported at Palo Alto Online.

“With this help, I got some relief,” he said, recalling the food and transitional housing he received through the East Palo Alto Parolee Reentry Program. He was able to earn enough money working at Safeway and for Caltrans to marry his sweetheart and provide for his family, he said.

Moreno will soon start a job with San Mateo County in human resources, where “they don’t care about my record. I’m going to work real hard,” he said.

The Parolee Reentry Program, launched in 2007, assesses the needs of residents returning to East Palo Alto from prison and works to reintegrate them into the community by addressing the root causes of criminal behavior and providing access and referrals to substance-abuse treatment, mental health and support groups, computer and job-skills training, educational opportunities, transitional housing, medical care and other services.

Lewis was the chief architect of the program, according to East Palo Alto police Chief Ronald Davis. California Assemblyman Ira Ruskin introduced Assembly Bill 2436, which provided $3.4 million ($949,000 annually) to run the pilot program.

In 2009, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) partnered with the program to hire parolees in a 14-month pilot job program.

The re-entry program has been highly successful, Davis said, keeping a much greater percentage of parolees from returning to a life of crime than average.

Corey Bell is a soft-spoken man who served a 20-year sentence in prison. Coming out was like living in a Rip Van Winkle world, one filled with computers and cell phones and other technologies that didn’t exist when he went into prison. Bell said he’d heard about the re-entry program while still incarcerated and felt he was ready to tackle the challenge.

“When I walked out of prison, I knew I wasn’t going back,” he said.

He’s been at the center, located at Free at Last for 18 months, showing up daily to take classes and learn computer skills “for my future,” he said. Since arriving, he has gone to truck-driving school and earned his forklift license. Soon, he might have a job with a concrete company, he said.

“I want people to know that a lot of inmates really do come out with their head on right,” he said. Having zero opportunities makes staying straight that much harder, he said.

“You don’t know when their spirits are broken,” he said of parolees. “Give them the opportunity to change their lives.”

For all its success, however, the program faces a cloudy future.

Lewis’ untimely shooting death on June 9 has left Bob Hoover, director of the program, deeply concerned about the program’s long-term viability.

“About three to four weeks ago, (Lewis) said, ‘We need to find more money to keep the project open, even if the state won’t pay for it.’ He was trying to use his connections. Now I don’t know what we’ll do,” Hoover said, sitting in a meeting room at Free at Last, the drug-rehabilitation center that Lewis co-founded.

The re-entry program needs about $450,000 a year, which includes providing transitional housing, he said. Hoover hopes someone will help establish a long-lasting base of support to continue Lewis’ legacy regardless of state funding.

On June 10, Hoover, along with scores of others, gathered for an impromptu memorial for Lewis. Ironically, the meeting was originally scheduled to announce the closure of the program on June 30, after 3.5 years of funding by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

State funding is expected to be restored, for a two-year period. But the program won’t reopen until at least September and when it does, rather than being community-based, the program will be regional and will serve parolees throughout San Mateo County, said Brian Lee, police department liaison.

Parolees said they rely on the program’s continuity. They have thrived under the community-based model that offers support and counseling. Some are also recovering from issues such as childhood abuse, according to Dolores Ferrell, counselor case manager at the Day Reporting Center (DRC).

Ferrell said she worries that the break in services from July to September will affect clients in transition.

“Some clients are very vulnerable. I worry that we’ve given them enough tools to work through. This is the refuge spot,” she said.

Gustavo Pulido is one such client. His “road to recovery” still isn’t yet that smooth, he said. Closing the program will make it harder without the support of counselors who have provided continuity, he said.

Pulido, who was known as “Ogre” during his prison days, is proud he has left that persona behind. Now he is just “Mr. Pulido.”

A large man with powerful, tattooed arms, he takes classes with titles such as “Enlightenment” and “Anger Management.” When he got out of prison, Pulido was starving. He has five children to support. The Caltrans job program put money in his pocket, and sometimes he can take his children to the movies, he said.

Getting a job has been challenging, he said. Employers are impressed by his demeanor and attitude, but his rap sheet of drug arrests trips him up.

“It’s discouraging. I could walk down to the street corner and get a pound of meth right now to sell before I get a job. The crack spots are one block away. I could either go to the corner or go to the DRC. I’d rather go to the DRC,” he said.

The re-entry program is about setting a higher standard for oneself, he said. “Now I know my self worth and I’m worth more than that,” he said.

Part of re-entry includes doing community service as reparations for damaging the community. On Tuesday afternoon, the three men painted and repaired Free at Last’s aging exterior. Sometimes, they talk to school children about their experiences.

Their community involvement is part of Lewis’ legacy, Ferrell said. She looked at the men appreciatively. “We are building the next generation of David Lewises,” she said.

jchev CA Palo Alto, Inmate Programs, Parole

Several years ago, California decided to require high-risk parolees, such as gang members and sex offenders, to wear GPS monitoring devices. The idea was to relay location information to law enforcement to ensure that the convicts stay where they’re supposed to. Unfortunately, the state often misses those alerts, making the devices both a lesson in the pitfalls of technology management and a massive exercise in largely useless spending. News from CBS Business Network.

In 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger first supported a pilot program to track 500 sex offenders and alert authorities if one of them wandered too far from home. California voters passed a ballot initiative, nicknamed Jessica’s Law, in 2006 that prohibited sex offenders from being within 2,000 feet of a school or park and required all offenders to wear monitoring devices for the rest of their lives. By this year, the state wanted to expand monitoring to a thousand paroled gang members at a cost of $9,500 a year for each one.

The move expands what is already the nation’s biggest Global Positioning System monitoring program of convicts, coming three years after voters required satellite tracking of more than 7,000 paroled sex offenders.

Unfortunately, the technology, as California implemented it, didn’t work. The case of convicted sex offender Leonard Scroggins shows the system’s problem. Scroggins cut the tracking device off his ankle and allegedly tried to rob or kidnap several women and girls over a two-day period. The device sounded an alarm and parole officers pushed through the paperwork for an arrest warrant, but the process took nearly 24 hours. Even then, police would only learn of the warrant if they picked up Scroggins for some other reason and then checked the appropriate database.

Computers can automatically route signals to the proper people in law enforcement. Nevertheless, parole officials have left tens of thousands of electronic alerts unresolved:

Officials say the backlog grew because they lacked software to run an ongoing report of all unresolved cases. That is, supervisors in Southern California were working only with reports of new alarms, rather than a report showing previous alarms that had not been cleared.

Officials clearly didn’t have a desktop database or spreadsheet to filter and analyze the alerts, and so they were buried in unexamined data.

According to Petra Fuhriman, owner of GPS Monitoring Solutions, a monitoring consulting and services company never involved in the state’s system, California chose a passive alert system. Notifications from the monitoring devices automatically go to parole officers. However, there is no differentiation among different types of alerts. A device could as easily signal that it had been removed or that the battery was running down. Someone might be on a highway, technically in a restricted area but actually passing by at high speed — or stuck in traffic, where it might look like they were loitering.

Fuhriman says that that parole officers’ phones and email in-boxes “are flooded with these messages, so they become desensitized and stop paying attention.” The state could write software to prioritize the messages, based on the type of alert and the frequency of notification to help the officers choose the most important alerts, but it apparently hasn’t.

Alerts also do little good when parole personnel are off-duty on a weekend and no one receives a message until the following Monday. Some companies provide real-time monitoring, with outsourced first level screening of alerts and officer notification for serious issues, but that is more expensive.

And so California, like so many institutions and organizations, looked to technology as a silver bullet siren, but failed to undertake the operational changes necessary to make it work. Officials cost-cut the original good idea to the point where it was all but useless.

jchev California, Electronic Monitoring, GPS, Parole

State parole officials are scaling back oversight for thousands of felons, bumping them to supervision levels that require nothing more than mail-in forms — or even a new level that includes no formal supervision at all.  News, with more images, from the Union Tribune.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials say they reduce oversight only for nonviolent and low-risk criminals as the agency pushes forward with an overhaul.

“There is no policy direction to the field to systematically reduce supervision levels,” said Scott Kernan, the corrections undersecretary who oversees parole. “We have to manage our caseloads. We cannot have parole agents having artificially high caseloads.”

But interviews, data and internal documents collected by The San Diego Union-Tribune over two months point to a methodical effort to cut costs and ease prison overcrowding. Fewer parolees, on lower supervision, mean fewer tickets back to prison for criminals who won’t fit there.

“They don’t want parolees back before the parole board to be returned to prison,” said Harriet Salarno of Crime Victims United, an advocacy group suing the department over its release policies. “This is all about reducing the prison population.”

The department’s numbers reflect the trend. Between April 2007 and April 2010, the parolee population fell about 10 percent overall. The number on “high control” supervision fell 13 percent, and the medium supervision level fell 22 percent. But the lowest supervision level grew 16 percent.

The prison system has come under increased scrutiny since convicted sex offender John Albert Gardner III was paroled and then went on to kill Amber Dubois, 14, of Escondido and Chelsea King, 17, of Poway.

Apart from Gardner’s, the newspaper reviewed dozens of cases where serious and violent offenders were assigned low or infrequent supervision, only to commit new assaults, robberies or murders.

Need to reclassify
Early last year, a state parole administrator congratulated his Los Angeles staff for easing agent caseloads, including downgrading five high-control criminals so they had to see an agent only once every two months.

“I wanted to point out that your supervisors reduced more than 130 cases in your district,” then-deputy parole director Robert Ambroselli wrote. “Please convey our sincere appreciation to your supervisors for their very hard work and their willingness to get things done. GREAT JOB!!!”

The e-mail was forwarded to supervisors by Vincent Thompson, then a district administrator. “Review the e-mail from Mr. Ambroselli,” he wrote. “You need to reclassify cases to bring relief to the agents in the district.”

Relief in the form of new parole agents is slow to come amid the state budget crisis. So the state manages agent caseloads by weighing parolees on a point scale. Lower supervision levels are assigned lower points, allowing agents to take on more cases.

Corrections officials deny that Ambroselli’s memo about “workload point reduction statistics” shows an effort to reduce supervision levels. They say it had to do with routine case reviews to make sure parolees were monitored at the correct level — whether lower or higher.

Ambroselli said the e-mail was not his only communication with the staff. “I told them specifically, ‘This is not an attempt to get somebody to lower points just to lower points,’ ” he said.

But internal records show that controlling expenses by reducing parolee supervision levels has been a consideration of top Division of Adult Parole Operations officials for years.

Regional administrator Mark Epstein wrote to his Los Angeles subordinates in 2005 about agent overtime and other implications of failing to move parolees to lower supervision levels. For instance, at the minimum supervision or MS level, parolees mail in a monthly form, with no requirement to see their parole agent.

“These numbers are disturbing for a number of reasons,” Epstein wrote. “Units with MS levels below the regional or divisional averages may be contributing to excessive workload/points.”

The memo spells out optimal workloads, including a guideline that no more than 15 percent of parolees be on the top supervision level.

“That’s a fair percentage,” Ambroselli said, discussing the goals set in the memo. “It’s like a gas gauge — when it gets to a quarter-tank, you should begin to look for fuel for your vehicle.”
State Task force report: “Parole Reform in California”

“The costs associated with parolees’ return to the state prison system are staggering, estimated to be $900 million a year in California. Perhaps even more important is the non-financial costs related to parolee failure: increased victimization.”

A year ago, the state agreed to pay $900,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by former parole supervisor Rebecca Hernandez. She claimed she was discriminated against because of her unwillingness to keep down overtime by lowering supervision to levels that would be dangerous for the community.

“They made it a competition between supervisors,” said Hernandez, who retired in January as a supervisor in Huntington Park. “They wanted 29 percent of the cases on minimum supervision. They told me, ‘You’re only at 9 percent. You need to work harder to get people on mail-in status.’ ”

At the time Ambroselli wrote the congratulatory memo to the Los Angeles staff, he was deputy director of state parole. Since then, he has been promoted to director of the division. He also was given a significant raise that pushed his salary to just under $150,000. Including the new category of unsupervised parole, the department now has 29 percent of its parolees on minimal supervision, up from 21 percent in 2007.

New crime victims
Less supervision of parolees can translate to more crimes and more victims, department records indicate. The Union-Tribune obtained hundreds of pages of parole documents, including dozens of daily reports that summarize parolee crimes committed the prior day. The daily briefings offer accounts of homicides, rapes, assaults and parolees fleeing police.

The reports include “face sheets” of parolees listing their supervision status at the time of the incident. Although the reports do not indicate previous supervision levels, retired agents say these kinds of cases indicate mistakes in classification — probably brought on by pressure to have lower caseload points.

“In an attempt to reduce costs, they are reducing parole classifications so agents don’t have to provide supervision,” said retired agent Caroline Aguirre, who has made a second career of holding the department more accountable since she retired in late 2007. “This way you don’t discover violations and you don’t have to return them to custody.”

Last year, Los Angeles police responding to a vandalism call at the Ramona Gardens housing project were fortunate to avoid being shot by a parolee under the medium supervision level, known as controlled service.

Oscar Velasquez was 20 when he went to prison for murder in 2002. Known as “Snake” in his Los Angeles gang, Velasquez was released in December 2008 and placed on controlled service, meaning he had to report to his parole agent once every two months.

When police confronted him for vandalizing the housing complex weeks after he was released from prison, he pulled a shotgun and began firing. As officers returned fire, he dropped the shotgun and ran. As police closed in, Velasquez began shooting again and was arrested. He is awaiting trial on charges of attempting to murder a police officer.

Another parolee on infrequent supervision, Donald Austin, is now facing an attempted-murder charge in the Central Valley’s Madera County. Austin was a five-term prisoner whose history included guns, drug abuse, evading arrest and hit-and-run. But he was on controlled service after being paroled in September on a burglary conviction.

In March, Austin was suspected of trying to kill a man by driving into the victim’s go-cart. The man was seriously injured; Austin got away.

He was sighted days later, but “the subject placed the car in reverse and drove full speed at the deputies,” a parole briefing states. “The deputies fired their weapons at the vehicle and a short pursuit ensued before the vehicle crashed.” Austin was captured and jailed last month.

Despite a violent past that includes arrests for kidnapping, assault and robbery, Charles Samuel was placed in a sober-living home on minimum supervision after his release from prison in February 2009.

Last summer, after getting a day pass, Samuel beat 17-year-old Lily Burk to death. Police found him hours later, wandering Skid Row with a drink in his hand and blood on his clothes.

In a Los Angeles courtroom Friday, he admitted he killed Burk and was sent back to prison for life. This time, he will never be eligible for parole.

“They’re being asked to manage an extraordinary number of people,” Barry Krisberg, a distinguished senior fellow at the University of California Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, said of the corrections system. “People get released who shouldn’t be released. Then you have people who should have been released but stay longer. The system can’t even manage the basics.

“We have to do something different, and part of that means being much more selective in who we’re going to invest tight supervision on and who we’re going to allow back into the community.”

jchev California, Community Corrections, Parole

Addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine, Jennifer Cuyler began her road to redemption with an 18-month wake-up call in prison. “I was so mad at the judge who sentenced me,” said Cuyler, a Coloma resident released Nov. 24. “Now I would kiss the ground he walks on, if that makes any sense. There’s really nothing I could do to thank him enough.” News reported by the Herald Paladium.

Cuyler, 27, is one of a record-high 13,541 prisoners paroled last year by the Michigan Department of Corrections, whose prison population decreased about 9 percent from 50,233 at the end of 2007 to about 45,478 on Jan. 1.

Increased drug laws and stricter sentencing led Michigan and the rest of the nation’s prison population to quintuple over the last 30 years despite fluctuating crime rates.

However, Michigan – which has the seventh-highest prison population in the United States – was second only to California in prisoner reductions the last two years, said John Cordell, a DOC spokesperson.

Cuyler, who said she has been clean and sober two years, said she can’t make amends to her deceased grandparents, from whom she stole. However, Cuyler, the mother of 11-year-old and 7-year-old daughters, said she’s determined to redeem herself.

“I don’t want to be remembered as a no-good mother or a failure,” Cuyler said. “I want to be remembered as the person who grasped life and turned things around and accomplished things.”

Parolees like Cuyler don’t often make headlines, but parolees like Donnell Williams do. Williams, a parolee with a long and violent criminal record accused of a violent crime shortly after his release, is a parole board’s worst nightmare.

Paroled on Jan. 7 after serving 31⁄2 years of a 3- to 20-year sentence for a stabbing, Williams has been accused of wounding 4-year-old Zaniyah Anderson on April 9 in Benton Harbor.

Witnesses said Williams was shooting at a car whose driver he had been feuding with. Zaniyah was hit by a stray bullet and suffered spinal cord damage. She has been unable to walk since the shooting. Doctors don’t know if the paralysis is permanent, according to Barbara Brown, Zaniyah’s grandmother.

Who’s to blame?
Berrien County Prosecutor Arthur Cotter believes the parole board abdicated its responsibility in Williams’ case.

“This parole board has basically said, ‘We will no longer exercise discretion and will let people out after the minimum sentence.’” Cotter said. “If they don’t use that discretion, what do we need a parole board for? Everybody gets out after the minimum.”

Brown disagrees, and said Williams, rather than the parole board or prosecutors, is ultimately responsible for his actions.

“I’m all for people getting second chances, but I think his minimum (sentence) should’ve been higher,” Brown said of Williams. “The parole board really didn’t do anything wrong. His minimum was three years, and he did 31⁄2 years.”

Last year the corrections department had the lowest parole revocation rate since it began keeping such statistics in 1987. Revocations are down 35 percent since a record high in 2002, despite a 43 percent increase in the parole population since that year, but Cotter contends that’s nothing to brag about.

Cotter, who helped persuade a judge in March to overturn the parole of convicted murderer Steve Sanders, said Williams’ parole should have been revoked by the board in March.

Cotter said police caught Williams taking drugs in March. “Not only are they letting them out without exercising discretion, they won’t send them back to prison unless they commit another violent offense,” he said.

The DOC’s Cordell counters that parole officers have adopted a more discretionary approach that balances cost and public safety. For instance, a parolee testing positive for drugs might receive counseling or treatment in the community rather than in prison, where it’s more expensive.

“We’re not using zero tolerance for every parole violation,” Cordell said. “That’s just not reasonable.”

Stats vs. common wisdom
Cotter emphasized his concern is not nonviolent convicts such as Cuyler being paroled, but violent prisoners being released too soon and endangering the community.

Conventional wisdom is that violent criminals are more likely to commit another crime than are people convicted of property crimes when released from prison.

But an extensive analysis of corrections statistics refutes this. The August study, by the nonprofit Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, tracked the first four years convicts were released in Michigan.

Of the 76,721 prisoners the state released between 1986 and 1999, the study says 4.5 percent returned for crimes against a person. Of the 2,558 murderers released, 69 (2.7 percent) returned for crimes against a person, and 14 (0.5 percent) for another homicide. Prisoners convicted of property crimes such as burglary or larceny had the highest recidivism rate, about 45 percent (24 percent for new crimes, 21 percent for parole violations).

Released sex offenders are even scarier to the public. Laws restricting the freedom of paroled sex offenders are often proposed due to fears they’re likely to reoffend, but the study found otherwise. Of the 6,673 paroled sex offenders, 280 (4.2 percent) were returned for a crime against a person, and 204 (3.1 percent) were returned for a new sex offense.

Over all, 37 percent of the prisoners returned to prison within four years for new crimes or parole violations, according to the study. The most recent recidivism analysis by the department tracked prisoners released in 2005 and 2006 for three years. They had a 39 percent recidivism rate, Cordell said.

Barbara Levine, Citizens Alliance’s executive director, emphasizes the prisoners her group tracked were released before the 2005 creation of the Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative, a recidivism reduction program credited by the corrections department with an approximately 32 percent recidivism reduction rate in high-risk parolees compared with 1998 standards.

Levine said that in 1992, after then-Governor John Engler stocked the parole board with political appointees on a “get tough on crime” mission, parole was being revoked based on a prisoner’s crime rather than his prison record or likelihood of reoffending.

Levine, who supports reinstituting credits for good behavior, which would reduce sentences, believes if a prisoner has a good record while behind bars, then he should serve the minimum sentence. “Using the nature of the offense is actually counterproductive in terms of evidence-based decision making,” Levine said.

Levine acknowledged that parole board members don’t have crystal balls and that a small number of prisoners statistically scored to have a low probability of reoffending will commit violent crimes.

“How many people do you keep in because of the risk of three people out of 100 who will recommit?” Levine asked. “There’s a limit to the power of human prediction and what’s reasonable to expect of the board.”

Tom Hendrickson, Michigan Association of Police Chiefs executive director, said he’s sympathetic to the dilemma faced by parole board members and the association doesn’t take an official stance on whether parole is too lenient or strict. But Hendrickson said early parole makes policing more difficult.

“One failure of our criminal justice system is not meting out swift punishment,” Hendrickson said. “I’m not a strong advocate of long prison sentences, but at the same time, in law enforcement we have to look at individuals, and some of these people released do commit some heinous acts.”

Paying her debt
Cuyler understands why people are suspicious of parolees. In prison, she said some inmates were halfhearted about rehabilitation, and some actually liked life behind bars. But she said she used her time productively, throwing herself into alcohol and drug rehabilitation classes, job training, parenting and self-help programs.

Cuyler now works part-time as a waitress and about 20-hour weeks as a caregiver to a friend’s elderly parent. Scheduled to complete parole in May 2011, Cuyler said she continues to attend drug treatment and self-help classes despite graduating from them. Cuyler said she continues to maintain close contact with her parole officer and counselors at The Opportunity Center in Benton Harbor, which helps parolees in Berrien, Cass and Van Buren counties find jobs as part of the MPRI program.

Cuyler said there needs to be more inpatient drug rehabilitation for prisoners and parolees and more job opportunities for parolees reintegrating into society. But she said parolees who say they can’t get a job or stay crime-free are copping out. Cuyler said seeing people she knows who remain addicts reminds her of how low she sank and increases her desire to stay clean.

While drug-free for two years, Cuyler still considers herself an addict. “At any moment I could relapse,” Cuyler said. “I’m not going to say that I will, but there’s always the possibility. Anything can happen.”

Cuyler said she partially deals with her fears by remembering she still has to make amends to her victims. “They can accept it or they can’t,” she said. “Hopefully they do and see what I’m doing now is something completely different from who I was then.”

jchev Michigan, Parole

Budget restraints and a growing prison population have led lawmakers to take a closer look at the parole system and consider alternatives to incarceration. Officials are hoping Senate Bill 500, a bill on the way to Gov. John Lynch’s office, will address both issues and then some. News from the Foster’s Daily Democrat.

Lynch supports and is expected to sign the measure, according to spokesman Colin Manning. The legislation focuses on preventing repeat offenders from going back to jail by increasing the availability of substance abuse and mental health treatment as well as increasing supervision for high-concern individuals who are most likely to reoffend.

It also calls for the release of all nonviolent offenders after they have served 120 percent of their minimum prison sentences, a move geared toward freeing up the courts from holding unnecessary parole hearings. Other stipulations include a 90-day prison sentence spent in special programming for parole violators, instead of making violators serve their remaining maximum sentence.

Finally, all prisoners who haven’t been previously paroled would be released nine months before their maximum sentences expire.

The logic behind the bill is to reduce the prison population and costs to the state.

Lawmakers say New Hampshire has been one of the safest states in the nation for the last 10 years, but despite that, the state prison population has increased by 31 percent in that period, resulting in the corrections budget doubling from $52 million to $104 million.

The main causes are probation and parole revocations, which account for 57 percent of admissions to state prison, according to lawmakers.

Senate President Sylvia Larsen, D-Concord, is the primary sponsor of SB500 and said it has the potential to reduce recidivism by promoting community-based programming.

“It has both good implications for improving better public safety outcomes and reducing state spending, making wiser investments with our state dollars,” she said.

New Hampshire Chief Justice John Broderick said focusing on community-based programming and adjusting parole is the only way to get the corrections budget down, which at $104 million far surpasses the court system’s budget of $76.2 million.

Broderick, Attorney General Michael Delaney and several others were on a state task force assigned to examine ways to control the corrections budget. The group developed SB500 with the help of the Council of the State Governments’ Justice Center, which helps states create policies based on research.

“Corrections is something we looked at extensively and we noticed it was becoming increasingly expensive and the failure rate was growing,” Broderick said.

He said parole violations really stuck out to him and it became immediately apparent that something needed to be done about minor probation violations.

For example, a person could violate their probation by drinking a beer, and while it’s still a violation, it doesn’t make fiscal sense to make that person go back to prison and serve their maximum sentence.

“Some of these violations are a new crime entirely, but many are technical in nature,” he said. “We’ve never had the flexibility of having intermediate sentences for parole violations, it’s been easy to do it the old way, without thinking about the cost.”

Another harsh reality that needed to be acknowledged is that many parolees reoffend because they have some sort of substance abuse or mental problem and can’t get the proper treatment in prison because of a lack of resources, according to Broderick.

Of the 160 women incarcerated at the women’s prison in Goffstown, 70 percent have some sort of mental health or substance abuse problem, he said.

“It’s not a coincidence that people with these issues are behind bars,” he said. “We had to ask ourselves how can we ensure them better success when they leave prison? We can pretend there’s no problem or pretend that being incarcerated would solve all their mental health or substance abuse problems, or we can do something about it.”

The state is hoping to reinvest whatever savings comes from SB500 back into community-based programming dealing with mental health and substance abuse, according to Broderick.

Some, including the state Parole Board, have criticized the bill for being too soft on crime, but Broderick says something needs to change because “failure is expensive.”

“If we don’t change anything, nothing will change other than we’ll incarcerate more people,” he said.

Programs similar to SB500 are being tried in Kansas and Texas, he added.

The state Department of Corrections is in favor of bill, according to department spokesman Jeff Lyons.

He said the state now relies on county-level programs but is limited itself, outside of traditional probation, electronic monitoring and administrative home confinement.

“We’re supporting the bill because we feel strongly it will go quite a ways to making offenders successful in the community,” he said. “There’s more emphasis on community-based treatment in an effort to keep them from returning.”

The DOC estimates the bill will decrease state general fund expenditures by $22,862 in fiscal year 2011 and could result in a savings of $3,210,247 by 2014. Most of the initial savings would come from marginal savings, such as costs for medical, food, clothing and inmate pay.

By 2013, the state would start to see more savings from staff and the elimination of contracts they have with county facilities to house overflow inmates.

Lyons said he’s optimistic about a portion of the bill that calls for the early release of inmates nearing the end of their maximum sentence.

“We have over 200 prisoners a year that max out of their sentences, and once they’re done, they’re done, and we have no authority over them whatsoever,” he said.

Being released into society without any structure often leads to these prisoners reoffending and ending up back in prison, Lyons said.

“If we can get them out nine months early and get them some treatment, at least we can help them make an attempt of getting back on track,” he said.

The DOC also has taken its own steps to reduce recidivism by expanding its division of community corrections. It was expanded through a federal grant and by using leftover funds from a discontinued academy program.

Lyons said the academy program was limited to only first-time offenders and involved multiple treatment programs. He said the state’s focus now is to open up treatment programs to a wider range of prisoners.

The state also is looking to hire case counselors to help develop treatment programs for inmates, a job that now falls to the parole officers, Lyons said.

“This would allow for the parole officers to focus more on law enforcement, while councilors can focus on counseling,” he said.

Community-based programming and alternative sentencing programs have been successful on the jail population at the county level.

Strafford County has numerous community programs and alternative sentencing options available, including a drug court and drug academy, mental health court, therapeutic communities within the jail, community work programs and traditional pre- and post-trial monitoring.

County Administrator Ray Bower said the county has a less than 10 percent failure rate in its programs, which save the county more than $6 million annually.

“Based on our success from early release and monitoring, as long as the state is committed to helping these early release inmates be successful, I have no doubt it will be successful,” he said.

However, he did caution there are sometimes differences between a jail inmate and prison inmate, based on seriousness of crime, and notes the state needs to be cautious about how they apply some of the new policies.

SB500 does call for a risk assessment of all parolees to determine their risk of reoffending.

Other bills geared toward reducing the recidivism rate include:
— House Bill 621: Establishes earlier time frames for conducting a pretrial examination by a psychiatrist or psychologist, requires the establishment of mental illness screening procedures and establishes new procedures for the appointment of counsel for a person with a mental illness. This bill has a Senate hearing set for May 26.

— HB1177: Establishes a committee to study educational and career development programs for youths and young adults in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. That bill has passed both the House and Senate.

jchev New Hampshire, Parole, Re-offending, Recidivism

A new procedure in which low-risk parolees can call in to an automated system – rather than report in person to a parole or probation officer – is expected to be implemented in July in Michigan. Reported in The Detroit News.

The new “OffenderLink” system comes as the state grapples with thousands of parolees who already don’t bother to report to probation officers after release. Critics worry the call-in program could only add to the problem.

Miya Williamson, an officer with UAW Local 6000, which represents 1,344 Michigan parole agents, thinks the call-in program won’t provide enough oversight.

“It will result in agents failing to maintain contact with their offenders — no type of accountability,” she said. “If you can trust this person to call in, then why are they on phone status anyway?”

But state corrections officials believe the program will free officers to monitor higher-risk releases as the state seeks to cut budgets and beds and shutdown prisons. Training begins next month for the program.

“It will allow agents to spend more time on moderate- and higher-risk offenders,” said John Cordell, a state Department of Corrections spokesman.

He said the cost will be borne by fees assessed to those enrolled in the program. “We’ve already piloted low-risk supervision, but are now integrating automated reporting into that approach.”

Cordell said low-risk offenders — those most typically associated with minimum supervision levels — are likely to complete supervision without committing new crimes and without assistance or intervention from supervisors.

“Low-risk really is a measure of an individual’s likelihood of reoffense, rather than the crime itself,” Cordell said.

Some substance abusers prone to relapse and crime may not be considered for the program, Cordell said, adding that eligibility procedures were still being developed.
Success in other states

Under the program, offenders would call an automated OffenderLink system and leave recorded responses to later be reviewed by parolee officers.

The system also can be used to remind offenders of court dates and other required appointments. About 50,000 ex-offenders are now reporting on OffenderLink in Missouri, and officials there say it’s been a success.

That call-in system has been in place for seven years, partly replacing a program that allowed low-risk releases to mail in monthly reports.

“In belt-tightening times, this can be a help,” said Tom Hodges, an assistant director of probation/parole in Missouri. “In the last 18 months, we’ve been permitting some medium-risk offenders into the call-in system. But it also augments existing face-to-face contact.”

The program can identify the origin of the call, he said, acknowledging that parolees can use cell phones out of state and that there is no way to determine who made the call.

Almost 2,400 absconders
The whereabouts of thousands of Michigan parolees — some of whom served minimum sentences for assaultive crimes — remains unknown.

According to state figures obtained by The News, there were 2,392 absconders — paroled ex-cons who stopped reporting to probation officers as required after release — as of January.

Of the total, 657 — or 27.5 percent — were on parole for violent crimes, including 50 sex offenders. Another 11,000 offenders convicted of less-serious crimes failed to report to probation officers after being released from custody rather than spend time in county jails.

State corrections spokesman Russell Marlan said absconder numbers are actually down, in part because of new tracking technology.

“It used to be that a parole officer might have to physically follow a parolee around for a day to see what they were doing,” Marlan said.

“Now with GPS (global positioning system), one agent can track 30 at one time.”

But critics of efforts to parole offenders closer to eligibility dates than in the past fear that practice only results in a larger pool of potential criminals and absconders, and ultimately poses a public safety threat.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2008 there were 47,692 absconders out of 729,540 parolees nationwide, or around 6 percent.

There were 13,541 inmates paroled in 2009 in Michigan. About 92 percent are described as very low, low or middlerisk for assaultive behavior.

Officials credit the Michigan Prison ReEntry Initiative, which puts support programs in place for newly released inmates.

Some, like Ingham County parole officer Kyle Williams, stress working with offenders, families and others to help them succeed will make the newly released more compliant to supervision.

“Each person is on GPS monitoring,” Williams said. “If he chooses to abscond, we know that immediately and respond promptly.”

Tamra Flowers, a Kalamazoo County parole officer who averages 25 cases, said monthly roundtables with criminal justice experts about high-risk cases help put more focus on resources.

‘This isn’t a solution’
But in a state racked by double-digit unemployment and shrinking police budgets, others remain unconvinced.

Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said he sees more unsupervised parolees and absconders as a recipe for tragedy. He said knowing the location of a parolee is not only a deterrent to a repeat offense, but also is essential for public safety when it comes to people with assaultive histories.

“This isn’t a solution,” said Leyton, referring to state’s efforts to release inmates, including use of the call-in program. “The solution is to slow down the parole process … and do everything you can to maintain public safety. That’s job one.”

It remains undetermined what the offender-officer ratio will be here, but a December 2009 Michigan Corrections Department memo to parole offices noted Missouri agents use the system “to manage low-risk caseloads in excess of 400 offenders.”

Kelly Barnett, a Wayne County parole agent, said caseloads of 300 or 400 ex-offenders are “unreasonable.” She foresees problems.

“Someone calls up on a computer system and responds to prompts and leaves answers,” she said. “Some answers demand follow-up questions. If you have 300 to 400 of these to check up on, when are you going to get back to someone?”

jchev Michigan, Parole

It’s difficult enough to get prosecutors and defense lawyers to agree on basic facts — the sun rising in the morning, for instance. But on Monday, state Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, convinced interests on both sides of the prison fence that there’s value to providing services parolees need to avoid returning to prison and, in turn, spare the state $15 million to use on other programs. News from the Pueblo Chieftain.

With the support of the state Public Defender, the Colorado District Attorneys Council, the Colorado Department of Corrections, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition and others that tend to be polarized by law-and-order issues, Pace’s HB1360 advanced unanimously Monday through the House Judiciary Committee.

“The whole goal is to take the cost savings from decreased time in prison and use it to prevent people from committing other crimes,” Pace said.

About $3.1 million of the savings would be devoted to the programs outlined in Pace’s bill.

The bill seeks to reduce the number of parolees who violate conditions of parole without committing new crimes. It aims to isolate the factors that tend to divert released prisoners off the right path and address them specifically. That would be determined using evidence-based formulas for determining likelihood of recidivism, and affording opportunities for treatment to intercede in the cases of parolees who pose the lowest risks.

It provides for halfway house space and treatment in the areas that are most often pitfalls for parolees — such as housing, employment, mental health and substance abuse.

“The keystone in all of this is support services for parolees when they come out of prison,” said Christine Donner of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition.

The bill would provide for 70 more beds in halfway-house-style situations for parolees who violate technical terms of parole without committing new offenses. By being placed in those settings, they would not take up prison beds and would get the treatment they need to avoid repeating their violations.

The parole board also would have the option of releasing some parolees directly into the programs to prevent violation in the first place.

Pace said in Pueblo, organizations like Crossroads’ Turning Points, Spanish Peaks Mental Health Center, Minnequa Community Corrections and Community Corrections Services Inc., could provide the services the bill seeks to make available to parolees to keep them on track.

For those parolees who have violated the rules but are deemed to be low-risk, the bill calls for 90-day sentences in community return to custody facilities — similar to halfway houses — rather than 180-day stays in prison.

The bill will go through the House Appropriations Committee on its way to the House floor for debate.

jchev Colorado, Parole, Recidivism

jchev California, Community Corrections, Parole

Lewis was babbling. “I can see things. … There are signs out there coming from The Beast.” One of his arms moved randomly above the black bandanna around his head, as if to swipe away cobwebs. The man rocking in his seat before parole officer Chris Jorgensen in the drab, tiny Department of Corrections office in Kansas City, Kan., was one of 6,000 released convicts whom the state budget is doing less to help. Story from the Kansas City Star.

Treatment and support services for Lewis, who did time on a theft charge, and other inmates re-entering society cost $12.6 million two years ago. That was when mental health care, job training and community residential programs for people on parole helped make Kansas a national model for success.

Now the model has been dismantled. For the fiscal year beginning July, the corrections department will get about $5.3 million to fund those programs under Gov. Mark Parkinson’s budget recommendations.

To the taxpayer and government officials desperately trying to balance the state’s books, the short-term savings are hard to resist.

But experts know that a convict ill-prepared for “re-entry” — especially in this job market — may mean only rising crime in the coming years.

Should Lewis violate his parole and be taken off the street, it will cost about $25,000 each year to incarcerate him.

With burgeoning state budget crises affecting life as Kansans and Missourians know it, officer Jorgensen saw a more immediate crisis sitting in front of his desk.

“What is it you need, Lewis?” he said calmly, sensing a meltdown. “Tell me what you need. Do you feel the medicine is helping you?”

“I feel I need a witness, like it says in the Bible. … I believe I’m the Christ of all people.”

Jorgensen heard nothing coherent. He made a note to drive his schizophrenic client back to the mental health center as soon as his case load allowed.

It was then that Lewis, who is living with relatives, made a comment so striking in its clarity, so truthful, it seemed to crackle down the hall: “I don’t know where I’d be without you.”

He broke into sobs and asked that his full name not appear in this story. The two hugged — a trembling, disheveled man and his parole officer — before the next parolee sat down.

A crown jewel fades
The Kansas method of preparing inmates for re-entering society was considered the crown jewel of correctional systems worldwide. Congress in 2008 established “Second Chance” grants to help other states create the kinds of programs launched in Kansas — for drug rehabilitation, education, family reintegration and transitional housing.

Recidivism rates — the percent of ex-convicts committing new crimes — had in 2007 plunged statewide to 2.2 percent, less than half the recidivism of the early part of the decade.

The number of parolees re-convicted for felonies fell 36 percent. The total prison population and new admissions also were on the decline, enabling the Department of Corrections to project that Kansas needn’t worry about expanding its prison capacity for 10 years.

The recession and consecutive budget blowouts have thrown that momentum into reverse.

“Just like that — the national model we created no longer exists,” said state Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican who leads the House Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice. “We were written up in The Wall Street Journal. I was invited to the White House,” when then-President George W. Bush signed legislation directing $54 million in federal grants to help duplicate Kansas’ success around the country.

“The fact that our programs had gotten it right — and we had the data to prove it — didn’t keep us from destroying that model,” she said.

Now, her state must line up at the federal trough for Second Chance grants it once didn’t need.

While other states are stepping up prisoner releases to meet budget, officials say Kansas sentencing laws prevent them from springing inmates at will.

It is too early to know how program cuts, both inside and outside prison walls, may affect future recidivism rates, or even overall public safety, corrections officials say. But they already face a new penal landscape, as about $25 million has been chopped from the corrections budget since 2008.

Last year, four minimum-security units were shut down, many inmates were routed to tighter quarters, and treatment and education programs lost more than half their funding.

“For Joe, the parolee,” said state Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz, “it means no longer having access to substance-abuse treatment through the Department of Corrections. Joe is going to be lining up and competing for the same treatment slots as any law-abiding Kansan needing the help” but unable to afford it.

“It’s going to be harder for him, harder for everybody, to get that treatment slot.”

Gone from most Kansas communities are the structured group-living arrangements that provided offenders a bed, counseling and supervision while they sought full-time work or fought off addictions.

The department last year discontinued such residential programs in Topeka, Wichita and Kansas City, Kan. A treatment program for sex offenders at the Norton Correctional Facility ended.

In Jorgensen’s office, the parolees said they wanted to make it on the outside.

“It’s easy to get back in — to just lie down in your cell and let the state take care of you,” said Mike Buie, paroled in 2008 after a five-year stint for robbery and attempted battery. “What’s hard is to make it out here. …

“I understand if people do feel safe in their homes, safe going shopping, with criminals locked away. But to really feel safe, you’re going to have to focus on the people getting out.”

Buie has spent 18 of his 44 years behind bars. For him, being out and avoiding trouble for the last two is an achievement. But state budget cuts have limited his eligibility for MediKan insurance benefits to 18 months, and the medication Buie needs to control his bipolar disorder is running out.

“Leaves me high and dry” until he can collect disability benefits next year, Buie said: “I’m waiting for the grass to finish growing so I can mow some neighbors’ lawns.”

Scarce resources
Frederick Releford sat down. He was sprung from the Lansing Correctional Facility in February, and already he is facing homelessness.

The halfway house where Releford is sleeping and getting help for alcoholism requires that he make a co-payment of $5 a day. But before Releford, 46, can land a driver’s license and steady work, he needs to track down his Arkansas birth certificate and Social Security card from relatives who are nowhere to be found.

Until last year, the Department of Corrections had a residential safety net for him — the Salvation Army Shield of Service House in Kansas City, Kan. Dropping it and other residential beds for parolees allowed the state to save $640,000.

Parole officer Jorgensen: “Frederick, if you get behind two, three months on your rent, and they discharge you for not paying, we’re back to square one, and you’re homeless.”

Releford, head down: “I don’t want to go that route.”

He wants to finish up his GED. He wants to volunteer for Metropolitan Lutheran Ministries. He wants to work in roofing or landscaping. But he knows hardly anybody in Kansas City, Kan., except the corrections staff.

“What are we going to do with Frederick?” Jorgensen asked himself after the parolee stepped back into hall. A short time later, Valori Sanders bounded into the hall with a grin.

“I’ve got good news,” said Sanders, of the nonprofit Kansas Housing Resources Corp. “I just found a landlord willing to give us first dibs on two units! She was pretty tough, but we worked it out.”

This is how the parole business makes do: By negotiating with private providers, tapping churches and publicly paid welfare options, by reworking agency contracts, corrections officials will try to find a way.

“At the end of the day,” said Jorgensen, “we’re going to find the resources to help these people be successful.”

Each of the state’s 125 parole officers will do it juggling caseloads ranging from about 30 to 300 parolees.

“I don’t know many parole officers who make over $40,000 a year, and almost all are college graduates,” said Sean McCauley, a lawyer for Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 64 of parole officers. “They may start out hoping to help people, like a social worker, but eventually they feel like they’re emptying an ocean with a thimble.”

In Topeka, lawmakers of both parties widely agree that corrections and parole services need healthy funding — it reduces crime and cuts penal costs in the long run.

Still, McCauley said the state has not hiked parole officers’ wages in 10 years, save for a couple of cost-of-living adjustments.

Jorgensen, 31, chucked plans of being a criminologist for the threadbare office in which he works: green file folders stacked on the floor, dull green carpet and dull green walls, no window, black-metal desk and black file cabinets — a 1970s flashback.

The rewards?
A few say thanks when their parole is done. But normally they just disappear into society, where no news is good news.

“In our world,” he said, “if we don’t hear from or see these people again? Then they’re probably doing great.”

jchev Economic Issues, Inmate Programs, Kansas, Parole

An Oklahoma Senate budget committee on Wednesday derailed a plan to seek a statewide vote on merging the Pardon and Parole Board with the Department of Corrections. Reported in Business Week.

The House Appropriations Committee voted 12-9 against Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee’s joint resolution, which called for a public vote on an amendment to the state constitution.

Another state agency merger bill that would consolidate the Scenic Rivers Commission with the Oklahoma Department of Tourism narrowly passed the committee.

Lawmakers are considering merging several state agencies as they grapple with a $1.2 billion shortfall in next year’s budget.

In other legislative action Wednesday, the full Senate approved a bill to exempt animal husbandry, or livestock breeding, along with horseshoeing and teeth filing from the Oklahoma Veterinary Practices Act.

The proposal to merge the Pardon and Parole Board ran into trouble when several senators voiced concern it could create a conflict of interest for DOC personnel to decide which inmates should be paroled. Currently, that function is performed by investigators with the Pardon and Parole Board.

“I could see the department being under pressure to release inmates to get the numbers down to make budget,” said Sen. Kenneth Corn, D-Poteau. “I think we’re better served with an independent Pardon and Parole board.”

Sen. Anthony Sykes, who carried the bill, said the proposal eliminates a duplication of services performed by employees at the two agencies and would save the state about $500,000 each year. Sykes says the merge would eliminate the need for a director and general counsel at the Pardon and Parole Board.

“It’s efficiency of government that we’re looking for,” said Sykes, R-Moore. “I think they’re both performing the same function.”

The practice of filing horses’ teeth, or teeth floating, has been a source of controversy at the Legislature since rodeo star Bobby Griswold was arrested last year and charged with a felony count of practicing veterinary medicine without a license.

Griswold, who has lobbied for a change in state law, later pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of possession of a dangerous drug without a prescription and received a deferred sentence.

“They obviously wanted to make an example out of me because I was high-profile,” said Griswold, who was in the Senate gallery when the bill passed. It now heads to the House.

Sen. Mike Schulz, who authored the bill, said Griswold’s prosecution made it clear the law should be changed.

“That sent shock waves across Oklahoma among livestock producers who were doing something they’ve always done,” said Schulz, R-Altus.

jchev Oklahoma, Parole

The state Department of Corrections needs to do a better job of collecting supervision fees owed by those on probation and parole, House budget panel Chairman Jim Fannin said Wednesday. As reported by the Advocate Capitol News Bureau.

Sixty-two percent of the $54 per month fees are going uncollected, and that is unacceptable, Fannin said. The fee is generating about $16 million annually, according to budget documents.

“We undoubtedly are not doing very well,” said Fannin, D-Jonesboro. Fannin told top corrections officials that he wants a plan to address the debt collection problem.

The request came as the  House Appropriations Committee continued hearings on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposed $24.2 billion state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Lawmakers are trying to cope with a $1 billion downturn in revenues to fund on-going operational expenses.

Office of Probation and Parole Deputy Director Gerald Starks said the agency encounters multiple problems in its collections efforts, including “people no longer around” and people back in jail.

“Those out on the street we basically hound them and try to get as much money as we can,” Starks said. “Many are not employed, a number are on SSI for mental illness and physical handicaps. But if you have money, we do everything we can to get them to pay it.”

Fannin said the nonpayment should be considered a debt to the state, just like the money owed by people who take out student loans to go to college. He offered to sponsor legislation that would move the probation and parole non-payments to tax debt status.

Corrections Undersecretary Thomas Bickham said the agency is already working with the Revenue Department to try to recoup money out of any tax refunds individuals may receive.

The agency is also looking into ways to make it easier for those who owe supervision fees to pay, such as contracting with Western Union for wire transfer of money, Bickham said. He said the agency is proposing legislation that would allow payment by credit card.

Bickham said another option being eyed is potentially hiring a collection agency. Corrections Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc said the agency will continue to work on improving collection of the supervision fees.

But he warned: “If you push them and push them, they go to commit crimes … Prison costs more than the fee they are not paying. That’s the balance we have to work.”

jchev Economic Issues, Louisiana, Parole

More than 1,500 parolees in Orange County may stop reporting to their parole agents under the same law that is releasing state and county prisoners early. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, there are currently 6,406 parolees in Orange County. Of those, 1,719 of them could be eligible for the so-called “non-revocable” parole. Story published in the Orange County Register.

Under non-revocable parole, recently released inmates in the state parole system:

• Would not have to report to a parole officer on a regular basis
• Can’t have their parole revoked by the parole board. Instead, a former prisoner who commits a crime would have to start from scratch in the judicial system
• Can still be searched without a warrant or probably cause by law enforcement officers

In the county’s most populous city, Santa Ana, that means that 338 of the 1,326 parolees currently registered there could be eligible for the new system. In Anaheim, 294 of 1,223 may qualify.

To qualify for the new parole category, inmates must not have a violent or serious felony conviction in their records. Those who are required to register as sex offenders would also not qualify. They must also not be a member of a prison gang. Inmates convicted of crimes such as misdemeanor spousal abuse, vehicle theft, prostitution or embezzlement may qualify.

Under the same law, more than 6,500 state prison inmates are due for early release this year and hundreds of inmates in county jails have already been freed early.

Officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the new system will reform the state’s flawed corrections approach, reducing the number of cases each parole officer handles and allowing them to focus their attention on the most serious offenders. The result, they say: a half-billion-dollar savings to the state by the end of the year.

But local law enforcement – faced with its own budget challenges – oppose the changes. Before Jan. 25, when the new law took effect, all freed state inmates were placed in the parole system. They had to report to a parole officer, keep the officer abreast of travel plans and follow additional rules and restrictions. Any violation of parole could send them quickly back to prison — a decision that was made by a parole board.

Under the new law, those inmates who and deemed “low-risk” may be placed under a non-revocable parole, meaning they can be searched, at any time. But if they break the law or the rules of parole, they are not returned to state prison. Instead, they must be charged and processed through the justice system. The law applies to soon-to-be-released inmates as well as those already reporting to parole officers around the state.

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said in the new system may clog local courts with cases that were once handled by the state officials. The new system, Rackauckas said, is not reform, but simply a way to save money. But while the state saves money, the costs will be shifted to local law enforcement.

Non-revocable parole, says Rackauckas, takes away the penalties that released inmates were meant to follow: “It’s a parole that can’t be violated.”

CDCR spokeswoman Terry Thornton counters that the new law reforms a broken system. “I’ve seen someone in state prison on a non-serious offense do eight months, get out on parole, and spend three years back in state prison on parole violations,” she says. “We have to do something about that, too.”

jchev CA Orange County, Parole

The city’s high-risk parolees may soon be subject to additional oversight and receive job training and other assistance intended to prevent them from returning to prison. Story in the San Bernardino Sun.

The new programs, however, would probably not be offered to inmates now being set free early under legislation intended to ease pressure on California’s strained budgets.

“The low-end offenders are being cut loose,” said Kent Paxton, an aide to San Bernardino Mayor Pat Morris.

In San Bernardino County, the Sheriff’s Department has thus far released 404 inmates from its four jails, spokeswoman Arden Wiltshire said. The department has also ended the commitments of 244 offenders who were sentenced to work release or subjected to electronic monitoring.

In addition, some 6,500 state prisoners may be released without being subjected to standard parole requirements.

The Morris administration, working with Cal State San Bernardino personnel and California prison officials, have sought during the past few years to create new programs focused on preventing ex-convicts from re-offending.

The basic idea behind the proposals is that former inmates, who typically leave prison with $200 and a host of personal problems, require various services such as schooling, job training and substance-abuse care to make the jump from felon to reformed citizen.

The ideas have languished, however, because of a lack of money from Sacramento. That could change within the next few months, but prisoners set free under the current early-release push are not likely to be eligible for the new programs. Nonviolent offenders will not be subject to same parole requirements as more dangerous inmates.

What that means is low-risk offenders are being released from jail at a time when it’s difficult enough for those without criminal records to find jobs. In San Bernardino, unemployment is around 19 percent, Paxton said.

Paxton said city officials have met with San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency personnel to discuss how $200,000 in federal funding could be used to keep ex-inmates out of the ranks of unemployed.

“They’re actually going to be using those funds to find employers who would be willing to help hire or train those guys,” Paxton said. “They’ve got parolees coming into their office every day.”

“Not many employers are ready to take a chance on people who admit to a conviction on their job applications,” said Kim Carter, the director of the nonprofit Time for Change Foundation. “You can see time and time again when we’ve had employment fairs for people who are coming home from prison, trying to find a job, the employer participation is very low.”

The new programs that could soon be enacted to deal with high-risk parolees are built around Day Reporting Centers.

Cal State San Bernardino and the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation are on the brink of a $1.2 million deal to create such a facility in San Bernardino, said Carolyn Eggleston, director of the campus’ Center for the Study of Correctional Education.

The Day Reporting Center, Eggleston and Paxton said, is intended to serve only ex-inmates who lived in San Bernardino before being incarcerated.

A location has not been established, but Paxton said the plan is to put the facility in an industrial area away from homes. He said the center will enhance safety because parolees required to report there will not be on the streets for part of the day.

Paxton is also working on an application for a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The grant proposal is likely to be presented to the City Council on March 1. The government makes the grants available for programs such as job placement, substance abuse treatment and mental health care. And even more help could be on the way.

State Sen. Gloria Negrete- McLeod, D-Montclair, introduced a bill Monday to create a re-entry program in San Bernardino County.

Cal State San Bernardino is expected to factor heavily into such a program if McLeod’s bill becomes law and the Legislature provides funding. Eggleston and her colleagues are seeking state funds for a program called Crest – Community Reentry Education/ Employment Services and Training Center – which they envision as a comprehensive effort to aid ex-prisoners.

jchev CA San Bernardino County, Inmate Programs, Parole

A new state law that took effect Monday is expected to reduce supervision of more than a quarter of Barstow’s parolee population. As reported in the Desert Dispatch.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill into law last October which created a non-revocable parole status for low-risk parolees. Parolees who didn’t receive serious disciplinary action while incarcerated, weren’t convicted of violent or sex crimes and have not been proven to be members of a gang can qualify for non-revocable parole.

Gordon Hinkle, press secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said that qualified parolees will not be sent back to prison for parole violations and wouldn’t be directly supervised by a parole agent. However, if a parolee commits a new crime they could be sent back to prison, according to Hinkle.

Hinkle said that although non-revocable parolees will have less supervision, parolees will still be subject to searches by law enforcement at any time.

“People seem to think we’re just letting them go free,” Hinkle said. “They are still monitored and have to let us know where they live. We keep a database of all parolees and that system will include non-revocable parolees. If a police officer hears something on the street about a parolee breaking the law they can just go search without a warrant.”

Hinkle said CDCR hopes the new law will reduce the case load for parole agents in the state. The average parole agent currently oversees 70 parolees, but that number is expected to drop to 45 a year after the law takes effect, according to Hinkle. The new program is also expected to save the state $100 million, according to a CDCR report.

“Non-revocable parole will allow parole agents to focus on the more serious offenders,” Hinkle said. “Right now our agents have the highest average case load of any state.”

The new law also increases the amount of early-release credits inmates can earn for completing education programs and training for or working as inmate firefighters. Hinkle said the CDCR is anticipating a reduction of 6,500 inmates from the state prison population in the next 12 months due to the new incentives.

“If inmates are rewarded for improving themselves when they are incarcerated they will hopefully continue on that road, and they will not become repeat offenders,” Hinkle said.

jchev California, Community Corrections, Parole

Gov. Sonny Perdue is pushing to merge the state’s parole and probation functions under the Department of Corrections.

A bill that would combine the operations is being introduced by Rep. Jim Cole, the governor’s senior floor leader in the House. The bill is designed to improve community supervision of parolees and probationers and streamline administrative positions between the two agencies.

The bill could cut in half the number of offices the agencies use, double the number of field officers and increase the sentencing options for offenders.

It is not immediately known how many jobs could be affected by the proposal.

jchev Georgia, Parole

A smoother process for handling paroles of prison inmates, and possibly easing the population crunch in penal institutions, is the intent of legislation crafted by an interims committee. News reported in The Montgomery Herald.

But the parole idea might not be the lone one advanced by the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority, says a co-chairman, Delegate Dave Perry, D-Fayette.

While Gov. Joe Manchin set up a special task force to look at the crowded conditions in prisons and jails, Perry’s committee decided to commission a separate report, performed by the West Virginia University Law Institute.

A report is due in the committee’s hands at the January interims session, Perry said.

“I won’t know until we see the final report,” he said when asked if additional legislation is contemplated.

Prison overcrowding has been a constant them in recent years, and the situation hasn’t improved. Some lawmakers are talking about expansion of alternative sentencing and reforms in the criminal sentencing code so that non-violent offenders aren’t put behind bars.

Otherwise, some have warned, West Virginia would have no choice but to build a new prison, costing in the neighborhood of $20 million.

One step is being taken in dealing with paroles. Under existing policy, an inmate must have a home plan approved as a requirement for release.

“This necessitates that they could have parole without assuming the family home plan has been approved,” Perry said of the bill approved by his panel this month.

“Under current practice, they have to have a home plan approved prior to being considered. This would expedite the parole process. I think it would make it a more efficient process for those who are eligible.”

Perry said he believes a number of inmates are being held back from release due to the home plan.

Before the 2010 session opens, Perry suggested his committee might draft legislation to impose tougher penalties on sexual offenses behind bars.

Within a five-year stretch, the state was hit with 21 lawsuits involving alleged sexual misconduct in penal institutions.

“Our intention is to have a piece of legislation to address that issue,” Perry said.

Based on data supplied his panel, Perry said it appears the problem is one that demands legislative action.

In a recent interims meeting, Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein said the problems were confined to the Anthony youthful offender facility in Greenbrier County and a women’s prison at Lakin, Mason County. Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County wasn’t involved.

“We’re very proactive on this,” Rubenstein told the panel. “We have zero tolerance.”

jchev Overcrowding, Parole, West Virginia

The Massachusetts Bar Association is pleased that sentencing reform in Massachusetts cleared a major hurdle when the Legislature passed an MBA-backed bill that grants parole eligibility to nonviolent drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences.

“We applaud the Senate’s action on sentencing legislation,” said MBA General Counsel/Acting Executive Director Martin W. Healy. “Passage of mandatory minimum reforms will not only save the commonwealth million of dollars, but reduce the rate of recidivism among offenders.”

A long-standing opponent of mandatory minimum sentences, the MBA’s Drug Policy Task Force issued a report earlier this year recommending meaningful drug sentencing reform. The organization maintains the astronomical increase in the state’s correctional population – at a cost of $48,000 per offender annually – is partly due to an increase in drug arrests.

Under the current sentencing laws, nonviolent drug offenders face a one-size-fits-all system and have no incentive to plead guilty because judges have no discretion over sentences, according to MBA.

“It’s a giant step forward,” MBA Drug Policy Task Force Chair and Past President David W. White Jr. said of the legislation. “People have been arguing for sentencing reform for decades. We’re only halfway there, but it is a sea change.”

In addition to the cost savings, this legislation would reduce recidivism. Instead of being released directly into the community, offenders would be eligible for parole and work release programs.

Numerous studies have shown these programs help offenders re-enter the community and prevent them from re-offending, which approves public safety, according to the MBA.

The bill now awaits action by the House of Representatives. Formal legislative sessions have ended for the year and will resume in January.

jchev Massachusetts, Parole, Sentencing

A federal bill that would impose mandatory jail time for serious drug crimes would increase the workload of the parole system, and the government intends to inject more than $23.3 million over five years to ease the burden, according to the commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada. Reported by Canwest News Services.

Commissioner Don Head said at a Senate committee hearing Thursday that if the bill is passed, CSC will receive an additional $23.3 million over the next five years to support an expected increase in cases for the National Parole Board.

The parole board supervises both federal offenders who are sentenced to two years or more, and provincial offenders in some provinces.

Under the proposed legislation, mandatory sentences would be handed out to everyone convicted of a serious drug offence, such as trafficking, production, and possession for the purpose of trafficking narcotics. A person who grows five to 200 marijuana plants with intent to sell would get a minimum six-month sentence. An addict selling heroin to fellow addicts near a park could go away for two years.

Head said that while there’s no evidence that federal prison populations will increase with mandatory sentences, provincial institutions likely will be affected by the proposed changes outlined in the Conservative government’s Bill C-15, which is now being debated in the Senate.

“There’s going to be some impact in terms of (provincial) sentence populations and (the provinces) will have to re-visit their approach to providing programs to provincial offenders,” Head said after his testimony. “At this point, the figures that we have don’t allow us to draw definitive conclusions in terms of the impact on the federal institutional population, and we’ll continue to assess that as time goes on.”

Head said CSC continues to invest in prison substance abuse programs and treatment.

Critics of Canada’s proposed mandatory drug sentences compare them to similar failed U.S. policies and say they lead to prison overcrowding and end up punishing street-level dealers, most of whom are drug addicts who need treatment, not jail time, they say.

Furthermore, the bill would imprison people who do not pose an immediate threat to the public, said Neil Boyd, criminology professor at Simon Fraser University in suburban Vancouver.

“Bill C-15 will have the unfortunate consequences of annually jailing thousands of Canadians who do not threaten the social fabric any more than those who produce, in a regulated framework, drugs such as tobacco and alcohol,” Boyd said at Thursday’s hearing.

He asked for an amendment to the bill so that cannabis growers are not treated along the same lines as heroin and cocaine traffickers.

Boyd also said the bill, when applied to the recorded number of British Columbia’s marijuana cultivators, would cost a total of almost $30 million annually for the additional imprisonments.

According to CSC, 80 per cent of offenders have grappled with substance abuse, and for approximately 50 per cent of them, there was a direct link between their crimes and substance abuse.

Head said CSC has an anti-drug strategy to combat illicit substances in prisons, with $122 million in funding announced in August 2008 for the next five years. He acknowledged the difficulty in ensuring that institutions remain drug-free.

The Senate will continue to hear testimony and is expected to go through the bill’s legislation clause-by-clause on Dec. 3.

jchev Canada, Parole, Sentencing

Pennsylvania’s corrections chief says last year’s temporary moratorium on parole compounded the prison overcrowding that may force the state to board hundreds of inmates in other states. Reported on Philly.com.

Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard told a panel of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday that the parole rate began to plummet last year after the first of two highly publicized shootings of police officers in Philadelphia.

Gov. Ed Rendell ordered a two-month moratorium following the second shooting.

Beard says the parole rate is rebounding, but that the more than 51,000 state prison inmates are nearly 2,000 more than the approved capacity of the system.

Even with plans to add new prisons with 8,000 beds by 2013, Beard says boarding prisoners out of state may be necessary in the long term.

jchev Overcrowding, PA Philadelphia, Parole