What does it take to keep a convicted sex offender from re-offending?

The biggest obstacle in reducing sex crimes is the lack of communication. At least 60 percent of sexual assaults against children, women and men go unreported. Most cases are reported long after the incident. Many offenders are victims themselves. Report by FerderalWayMirror.com.

Since 1990, Washington has required public registration and notification of convicted sex offenders. Along with supervision as required by law, sex offenders need a supportive environment that steers them away from bad behavior. Churches are often behind-the-scenes heroes in this process.

“Faith communities have always played a key role in helping offenders reintegrate,” said Alisa Klein, public policy consultant for the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. She said faith communities offer a place for offenders to get their spiritual needs met. They also foster a sense of community, and sometimes assist offenders in finding jobs or housing. Offenders who lack stability in these areas are more likely to regress into criminal behavior.

King County Sexual Assault Resource Center (KCSARC) sponsored an interfaith symposium on Jan. 25 in Federal Way. Representatives from local faith communities, prison ministries, the Department of Corrections and victim advocacy organizations examined the keys to public safety in regards to sex offenders.

KCSARC emphasizes the need to raise awareness and “end the silence” that accompanies this often taboo topic.

In the past 20 years of sex offender registration, Washington has seen a significant reduction (60 percent) in such crimes, said Dana Hufford, community corrections risk specialist.

“It’s a real cultural shift,” said Hufford, who works with the Department of Corrections. She credits the increased accountability of offenders, coupled with community partnerships, for this reduction. Overall, she said 13 percent of sex offenders who have gone through the judicial process will re-offend, treated or not.

“A sex offender needs social structure in the community in order to not re-offend,” Hufford said. “He needs positive relationships that hold him accountable.”

The U.S. Justice Department cites a study that says registration laws have made little difference as to whether a perpetrator re-offends. Other studies suggests that offenders are more likely to relapse because of a pre-existing relationship with the victim, regardless of the offender’s residence. The majority of sex crimes are committed by someone the victim knows — either a family member or acquaintance.

The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) advocates for specialized treatment and correct assessments of an offender’s level of risk for re-offending.

In Washington, convicted sex offenders have access to treatment and counseling during incarceration as well as one year after their release. Counselors like Mark Hudson specialize in treating high-risk offenders, some of whom are homeless upon re-entering society. If the offender wants to attend church, for example, Hudson talks with the pastors and church leadership to work on a safety plan. He would also be present to ensure proper disclosure of the offender’s crimes.

“My role is to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” said Hudson, who works for the state Department of Corrections.

Proposed cuts to the state Department of Corrections budget of $1.6 billion will mean less supervision of convicted felons and sex offenders. With that in mind, the symposium stressed the need for stronger community partnerships to pick up the slack.

Controversial state and federal laws

The Community Protection Act of 1990 was created on the heels of two violent sex crimes in the Puget Sound region.

The controversial program allows for indefinite incarceration of the most dangerous sex offenders who still pose a risk at the end of their sentences. More than 300 “sexually violent predators” have been committed under this law, according to the King County Prosecutor’s Office. A 2010 State Supreme Court decision made it easier for offenders to challenge their confinement once a year. In December 2011, a proposal called for transferring responsibility of these particular cases in order to reduce the state’s related legal costs.

The Seattle Times recently published a comprehensive special report titled “Price of protection: State wastes millions helping sex predators avoid lockup.” The report notes that Washington spends nearly $12 million a year in legal bills related to the program, which is “plagued by runaway legal costs, a lack of financial oversight and layers of secrecy.”

Passed in 2006, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is considered the most significant federal legislation. The law calls for more comprehensive registration and monitoring of sex offenders. It was named after Adam Walsh, a 6-year-old boy who as kidnapped in 1981 from a Florida mall and later found murdered.

However, only seven states have met the law’s requirements. Washington has yet to comply. According to a June 2011 report in the Washington (D.C.) Examiner, the cost of implementing the unfunded mandate has slowed states’ progress.

Federal Way connection

In Federal Way, there are 217 registered sex offenders. According to Federal Way police, 21 active registered sex offenders are homeless, 19 have inactive registration (no longer required to report or register), and nine have died.

Every year, Federal Way police check that all of the city’s registered sex offenders are in the right place.

Since 2008, the additional money needed for this operation has come from a King County grant. The funding for the 2011 sex offender check-in was secured with a grant for $34,956.88.

There are three classification levels for sex offenders. Level one indicates the least likely to reoffend, and therefore the least dangerous of these individuals. Level three is considered the most likely to reoffend and the most dangerous to the community. The city checks on level one offenders once a year, level two offenders twice a year and level three offenders every three months.

Tammy Re-offending, Sex Offenders, Washington

Diana Jurik left home at 12. She was an alcoholic by 14 and a school dropout by 16. By 36 she had been in prison five times and convicted of nine felonies.

But age 37 has been different. Jurik is working and staying clean. She is going to school and learning there are people in the world who care about her. Report by LJWorld.com.

“I feel like somebody worth something,” she said, sitting between the two women she credits with much of her success.

The women are Dot Fernandez and Cindy Manske, co-founders of Freedom Foundation Ministries. Since last June, they have been holding life-skills classes for women in Topeka Correctional Facility and pairing them with mentors for when they are released. The group also offers optional religious services.

“It’s important for them to have that support from somebody who doesn’t want anything from them,” Fernandez said.

After Jurik was released from prison last April, Fernandez helped her get a job at a restaurant and enroll in cosmetology school in Topeka. She has also helped Jurik avoid her old way of life, which included alcohol abuse and bad relationships. She was convicted multiple times for forgery and drug possession.

Jurik said she has had one addiction relapse since being released from prison. In the past, that would have been the beginning of a downward spiral that likely would have ended in another prison cell. This time she called for help, and Fernandez spent an emotional hour in a cafe counseling Jurik.

Jurik said she has been clean since.

“I’ve used her to pick me up when I’ve fallen,” Jurik said.

Progress lost

Kansas was recently a model for helping people like Jurik.

In 2007, former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed legislation to grant up to 60 days in reduced sentences for inmates who attended offender re-entry programs and appropriated $4 million in grants for communities with plans to reduce recidivism.

Kansas was among the top three states with the largest improvement in its recidivism rate from 2004-2007, according to a 2011 Pew Study, and its inmate population fell 5 percent from fiscal year 2006 fiscal to year 2009, according to the Kansas Legislative Research Department.

Gov. Sam Brownback, then a U.S. senator, championed a bipartisan bill inspired by the Kansas law. It was later signed by President George W. Bush and became the Second Chance Act, which awarded grants to governments and organizations that helped offenders better return to society.

But Kansas’ fiscal woes have taken a toll on such programs, and the Kansas inmate population has been back on the rise. Every year since fiscal year 2009, there have been more people in Kansas prisons and jails than the year before. There were 9,186 prisoners in September 2011, the highest number in a decade.

It’s a trend the Department of Corrections worries will continue given current funding levels for offender programs. The Kansas Legislative Research Department included that concern in its 2012 legislators’ briefing book, a guide of issues provided to state lawmakers.

Fernandez believes her program is allowed access to the prison because of the state’s diminished ability to provide such services. But she praised Brownback, who has called for every Kansas inmate to have a mentor during the months before and after they are released.

“I know he (Brownback) isn’t always the most popular, but that’s something very positive he’s done,” Fernandez said.

As of December, 500 volunteers have been recruited for Brownback’s Mentoring 4 Success initiative.

Manske, the other Freedom Foundation co-founder, acknowledges the teaching and the mentoring is time intensive and affects relatively few. They have resources to help just 10 women each year. To her, it’s still progress.

“It’s one woman at a time,” Manske said.

Hope

Jurik has 12-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. They live in Louisiana, and she hasn’t seen them since they were 3.

A few weeks ago, their father unexpectedly emailed her a link to a Facebook page he had created. She opened it up and saw pictures of her twins, happy and doing well. She hopes she will get to see them again.

“It’s just one little step,” Jurik said. “Now I’m being reunited with my children slowly. It’s just a lot of good things.”

Tammy Community Programs, Female Inmates, Inmate Education, Kansas, Re-Entry, Recidivism

Tammy Crime Bills, Overcrowding, Recidivism, West Virginia

Photo by Angela Carone / KPBS Above: The entrance to the prison at R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility, which houses roughly 4,800 inmates. The entrance is heavily gated and monitored by a watchtower.

California’s correctional system is undergoing an overhaul that could save money and reduce recidivism but also might lead to thousands of criminals spending significantly less time behind bars or in the parole office.

The so-called “prison realignment” that began on Saturday, is transferring the state’s responsibility for lower-level drug offenders, thieves and other convicts to county jurisdictions.Report by KPBS.

Some prosecutors and county sheriffs predict rising crime and other dire outcomes from what amounts to the most radical change in the prison system in decades. But others say California’s counties can provide better rehabilitation and job training services that can only improve on the state’s recidivism record, in which nearly seven of every 10 ex-convicts are returned to state prison after committing a new crime.

The move is designed to reduce the state’s corrections costs so more money can go toward public education and other services while also reducing California’s prison population to accommodate a federal court order.

“This is a bold vision of a different relationship between the state and local government,” Gov. Jerry Brown said Thursday. “It’s bold, it’s difficult and it will continuously change as we learn from experience. But we can’t sit still and let the courts release 30,000 serious prisoners. We have to do something, and this is the most viable plan that I have been able to put together.”

Realignment means judges will no longer sentence non-violent, lower-level offenders to state prison for crimes such as auto theft, burglary, grand theft, forgery, counterfeiting and drug possession for sale. Instead, nearly 26,000 convicts who would previously have gone to state prison are expected to serve their time in county jails where, proponents say, they will be closer to home, jobs and rehabilitation programs and so will be less likely to commit new crimes after they are released.

The realignment will not affect inmates in state prison today, but rather will apply to those convicted after this week. Those convicted of sex crimes or violent offenses will continue to be sentenced to state prison.

While the length of sentences is to remain the same, jails in many counties are overcrowded and release inmates after they have served a fraction of their time. That dynamic could lead to more inmates being released early, as counties cope with the influx expected to peak over the next four years.

“It’s a sea change,” said Ventura County District Attorney Gregory Totten, president of the California District Attorneys Association. “That policy of ‘Just lock ‘em up’ is changing.”

Critics say counties have neither the money nor the bed space to cope with the coming wave of inmates.

“The law-abiding public is going to pay a huge price as they become the victims of a tremendously spiking crime rate,” said Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, who attributes years of dropping crime rates throughout California to the many sentencing enhancements available to prosecutors.

“We are abandoning a system that was working,” he said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who runs the nation’s largest jail system, has said he has 4,500 spare beds and is confident he can handle — at least initially — the influx of new inmates. The county expects more than 10,000 extra inmates or people on probation in the first year of the realignment plan.

Criminal justice experts call California’s shift the most sweeping corrections development in the state since lawmakers adopted determinate sentencing in 1977. That change set terms of incarceration by law rather than allowing a parole board to decide on a case-by-case basis when convicts should be released.

California’s prison population has exploded over the past two decades as voters and lawmakers approved numerous tough-on-crime measures, including life sentences for those convicted of a third felony and extended sentences for using a gun or belonging to a gang. In almost all cases, voters and lawmakers made the changes without a way to pay for the extra prison space or guards required to house the additional inmates, a scenario that left the state paying more for corrections while it cuts money for higher education, health care and other services.

California’s adult prison population has grown from about 97,000 in 1990 to nearly 161,000 today, while the cost of incarceration during that timeframe has risen from $20,562 per inmate to $49,190.

The corrections department now draws $9.8 billion from the state’s general fund, or 11.4 percent of this year’s spending plan. That is more than the state spends on the University of California and California State University systems combined.

Supporters of the changes say county prosecutors and judges now will have to take into account the financial burden their sentencing decisions create because more criminals will stay in the community for their punishment.

“The Legislature has decided our enthusiasm for incarceration has outstripped our willingness to pay for it,” San Diego County Superior Court Judge David Danielsen said.

Once completed, the transfer in responsibility is projected to trim the state’s incarceration costs by nearly $1.5 billion. Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said the savings will come from closing some prisons and laying off correctional and parole officers, although the state will have to be careful to avoid overcrowding the remaining prisons to avoid running afoul of a federal court receiver who is overseeing inmate medical care.

Sentencing lower-level offenders to county jail instead of state prison also is California’s primary response to a federal court order, upheld earlier this year by the U.S. Supreme Court, that the state reduce its prison population to improve the medical care given to inmates.

Counties are in line for nearly $1 billion a year to help pay for realignment. The money comes after lawmakers converted part of the state sales tax to a local sales tax. Counties also will receive $453 million from the state’s vehicle license fee that used to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The DMV is getting part of its money back through a $12 increase in the cost to register a vehicle.

Brown pledged again Thursday that he will put a constitutional amendment before voters in November 2012 to guarantee that local governments get the money no matter if the state runs into more fiscal difficulties. In the meantime, law enforcement authorities differ on whether the realignment will succeed or lead to a crime wave through a mass early release of criminals.

Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones predicted the switch “is destined to failure.” Jail inmates will serve half their sentences before being released instead of the current two-thirds, and Jones said he cannot open enough jail cells to keep pace with the influx of inmates who previously would have gone to prison.

“You know with certainty there’s going to be more people on the street that otherwise would have been in jails or prison,” Jones said. “You add to that a statistical certainty of a 70 percent recidivism rate — I don’t know how anyone could rightfully argue there’s not going to be more crimes in the community.”

Others say they are confident the changes will help reduce crime.

Some counties have a head start, and others say they can learn from those successes.

Napa County, for example, created a Community Corrections Service Center in 2009 as it sought alternatives because of jail overcrowding. Dozens of offenders attend classes and undergo regular drug and alcohol testing in a program that can run as long as a year.

Those who succeed can get early release from their jail or probation terms, said Mary Butler, the county’s chief probation officer. Of its first graduates last year, 70 percent are employed and less than a quarter have violated their probation or committed new crimes.

In South Los Angeles, officials have converted an old furniture warehouse into what they say is a gleaming example of how probation should be done. Young offenders are given therapy, job training and lessons on how to make wise decisions when posed with a moral predicament. With adequate funding, officials hope to expand the program.

Good intentions aside, counties have had only about six months to prepare for the changes, and some are not ready.

At the Crenshaw probation office in Los Angeles, which will see its current caseload of about 4,000 ex-cons double in the coming year, staffing is the most pressing concern. The county hasn’t approved funding for extra probation officers, so existing workers are being placed on an emergency staffing schedule to deal with the strain.

The probation department’s senior director, Ed Johnson, said criminals will have fewer check-ins with probation officers and that more medium- and low-risk offenders will be monitored via touch-screen kiosks that ask a set of rote questions.

One of his probation deputies, Larry Holloway, supervises 60 high-risk offenders but expects his caseload to increase to about 200 under realignment.

“I have some concerns about that, for sure,” he said.

Tammy California, Prison Realignment, Probation and Parole, Recidivism, Rehabilitation

San Diego County has a plan to absorb 4,000 offenders who will shift from state to county oversight in the next few months. The county’s probation department is expanding to work on new policies designed to shorten jail stays and increase community supervision.

County Supervisor Ron Roberts said a good working relationship among law enforcement agencies in San Diego should make the transition easier. But he said many other counties are not handling the challenge well. Report by KPBS.

“San Diego is not an island,” he said, “We’re part of a state where many of the counties, they’re not going to be able to deal with this. There are not going to be hundreds of people that don’t belong there, there are going to be thousands of people on the streets of California that rightfully should be in jail.”

Thirty-seven of California’s 58 counties have jails that are already overcrowded.

In Los Angeles, Chief Probation Officer Donald Blevins is under pressure to leave because of a failure to reform the badly broken probation system. Employees have given him a vote of no confidence.

Meanwhile, community leaders are calling on Los Angeles’ sheriff to step down after the ACLU released a damning report.

Peter Eliasberg of ACLU said Sheriff Lee Baca has failed to address systemic violence and prisoner abuse in L.A.’s County overcrowded jails.

“For decades the LA county jail has had enormous problems, “Eliasberg said, “and for decades the sheriff’s department has failed to confront those. Either he or his spokesperson literally engages in a blanket policy of denial. “

Because of its size, LA will receive about a third of the offenders being passed down to county jurisdiction by the state.

Observers are concerned that the leaders of the criminal justice system in LA are under fire, on the brink of an historic change that could threaten public safety state wide.

Tammy CA San Diego County, Overcrowding, Prison Realignment, Probation and Parole, Recidivism

Life on the outside proved too much for one Texas man.

Life outside of prison proved overwhelming for a Texas man, who set a house on fire months after his release so he could go back behind bars.

Randall Lee Church, 46, spent 26 years behind bars for stabbing a man to death, and when he was released in April, he found freedom too much to take. He missed his old prison job.  Report by NBC Connecticut.

“Everything had gone fast forward without me,” he told the San Antonio Express-News from Bexar County Jail. “I didn’t know how to use computers or cell phones or the Internet. The weirdest thing was walking into a store, like Walmart, and have parents hide their children from me, like I was supposed to jump at them.”

On July 10, three months after his release, Church poured gasoline through a window of an empty house, then threw in flaming rags and paper towels. He admitted his crime to police and has already pleaded guilty.

Church’s original crime in 1983 was stabbing a pal named James Alfred Michael in a fight over $97 Michael, correctly, accused Church of stealing.

Tammy Probation and Parole, Recidivism, TX Bexar County

Random home visits that catch misdemeanor probationers in their underwear and socks, along with surprise tests for drugs and alcohol, are ways the Washoe County NV  Department of Alternative Sentencing curbs recidivism and annually saves the county millions of dollars in jail fees, officials said.  This report from the Reno Gazette-Journal.

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

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

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

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

vericatrajkova Community Corrections, NV Washoe County, Nevada, Re-Entry, Recidivism, Sentencing

There are more than 100,000 inmates in Florida prisons and 25,000 more expected in the next five years. Now, lawmakers are considering plans to further cut the programs that promise the best chance for long-term savings — specifically, education and substance abuse programs, according to this report from the South Florida Herald Tribune.

The cuts have heightened concerns that Florida’s tough-on-crime laws — including a mandate that inmates spend 85 percent of their sentence behind bars — have become too costly and ineffective.   Even the head of the state’s prison system says so.    “If you can’t read, if you don’t have any employable skills, if you have a substance abuse problem and you’ve spent three years in prison and you come out and you still have those issues, what the heck are you going to do?” said Department of Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil. “You’re going to hit my mom or someone else’s mom or somebody’s child over the head breaking into someone’s house. It is too costly to continue this uninformed way of trying to fight crime.”

But efforts to provide alternatives to prison are finding little support in a Legislature where being called “soft on crime” is seen as a devastating insult … Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, is sponsoring a bill that would provide funding for mental health courts, pre-arrest diversion programs, crisis intervention police teams and other means to treat drug addicts and the mentally ill instead of putting them in jails and prisons.   “It’s the moral thing to do, it’s the humane thing to do,” Fasano said. “And it will save money in the long run. Law enforcement supports this.”   But Fasano admits his bill, which has yet to find a sponsor in the House, has little chance of passing this year …

Sen. Frederica Wilson and other Democrats say they have a study showing that hundreds of millions of dollars could be saved by allowing early release of inmates who are first-time offenders with less than two years remaining in their sentence who have had no disciplinary problems in prison.  But Sen. Victor Crist, R-Temple Terrace, the chairman of the Senate criminal justice appropriations committee, said the 85 percent mandate is likely going to stay. “I am confident that will not change, at least not in my lifetime,” said Crist …

Without the funding to increase re-entry preparation for inmates, McNeil is relying on more than 10,000 volunteers statewide to teach inmates. He has created two facilities, Baker Correctional Institute in northwest Florida and Demilly C.I. in Polk City, that focus on inmates who will live in those areas by preparing them with work skills and intense education.  Fran Barber, the DOC’s deputy assistant secretary of institutions, said the volunteer-based programs draw from retirees, teachers and programs with sheriff’s offices and community colleges. The agency’s goal is to reduce recidivism, the rate of prisoners that return, from nearly 33 percent to 20 percent.

There is a lot more background in this report from the South Florida Herald Tribune.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, Florida, Inmate Programs, Re-Entry, Recidivism

The Tuscola Residential Re-Entry Program, 30 miles east of Saginaw. Housing 160 parolees, it’s the first large-scale effort by the Michigan Department of Corrections to change how assaultive offenders think.  This story from the Detroit Free Press.

By giving the Parole Board a way to release higher-risk inmates like Nealous, the Tuscola program will help the state shed 3,500 prison beds and control its $2-billion corrections budget. To do that, the board must release more people, and more of those released must stay out.  Up to now, prisoner re-entry in Michigan has focused on jobs, housing and other essential services. But to succeed in the world, some parolees must also learn to consider and respect others, control their impulses and take responsibility.

Unfortunately, Michigan prisons have become virtual warehouses. They’ve done little to help prisoners, many of whom have been abused themselves, develop as people. Too often, the department even discourages inmates’ efforts to improve by cutting activities like art and resisting their initiatives for inmate-run programs. Corrections must rethink its mission if it wants to lower recidivism rates. Other prison systems like Kansas have made so-called cognitive restructuring a major part of the program. In Kansas, such efforts have helped cut recidivism in half …

The 11-week program includes 90-minute group sessions that focus on domestic violence, substance abuse, parenting and criminal thinking. Three times a week, groups of 15 to 20 men talk through the events and emotions that led them to abusive behavior and bad choices. While in the program, the men cannot leave except to work. Nor can they have visitors …

Costing $3.8 million a year, the Tuscola program will take more than 700 parolees this year. They’re men the state otherwise would not release, or would send back to prison. Traditionally, up to half of the 12,000 people a year released from prison go back, and the failure rates for high-risk inmates … are greater. But if even half of the parolees going through Tuscola stay out of prison, it will save taxpayers nearly $13 million a year.

vericatrajkova Inmate Programs, Michigan, Probation and Parole, Re-Entry, Recidivism

The Asheville Citizen-Times published an editorial on Friday suggesting that North Carolina DOC needed a longterm plan to meet a growing inmate population with shrinking budgets.   Some excerpts:

Here’s the math: Depending on the security level, it can cost up to nearly $100 million for a new 1,000-cell facility. North Carolina is approaching the end of a prison-building boom, with six large facilities opened since 2003.   Despite that, North Carolina’s prison population is expected to be about 1,000 over the number that can be housed judiciously, and projections estimate that by 2014 the prison population could stand at 46,000 — close to 4,000 beyond projected capacity. Housing a state prisoner costs more than $27,000 a year.   The rest of the equation: North Carolina is facing a budget shortfall of at least $2 billion.  That math, obviously, does not add up  …

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Rep. Carolyn Justus … inquired about having inmates double-bunked, but noted prison officials viewed that measure as a potential security risk. The paper reported Democratic Rep. Alice Bordsen and Sen. Joe Sam Queen … proposed a hard look at programs cutting recidivism and probation revocations. Also in the mix: A call to revamp the structured sentence concept, which in some cases rules out parole …

One potential pitfall that needs to be looked at very, very closely: Cutting programs designed to keep people who could, with a little nudging, be productive citizens instead of life-long wards of the corrections system. Those programs, ranging from juvenile justice programs on to the state’s mental health system, have long been targets of budgetary neglect. Cuts there, or in family services and, yes, in education, often can translate to more spending later in the corrections system …

The challenge for legislators is clear … Rep. Alice Bordsen, D-Alamance, put it as plainly as it gets.  “If you do anything rational you are then soft on crime … (but) you can’t be tough on crime alone. You must also be smart on crime.”

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, North Carolina, Overcrowding, Re-Entry, Recidivism, Sentencing