The Bartholomew County IN sheriff is utilizing unemployed ex-offenders to help with community cleanup projects, according to the IndyChannel.

Felons on probation or house arrest are being assigned to jail work crews three days a week to help with jobs like picking up roadside trash …  “You know, the economy is bad. They don’t have jobs,” said Bartholomew County Sheriff Mark Gorbett. “They have fines to pay and things like that, but at least they’re out here now doing something. If they can’t find a job, they’re picking up trash, at least helping put back into the community.” Officials said it’s also an effort to help the community and motivate ex-offenders to find jobs.”We have some who would just rather sit at home and do nothing and they’re not out even looking for a job,” said Rob Gaskill with Bartholomew County Community Corrections.

vericatrajkova IN Bartholomew County, Inmate Labor

Indianapolis officials on Monday unveiled their plans for spending $6.4 million in stimulus money earmarked for law enforcement activities, according to the Indianapolis Star.

About $2.7 million would be spent on improvements to the criminal justice system, including $1.3 million to upgrade the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s automated fingerprinting system.  Another $1.5 million would go to employment and prisoner re-entry programs, including $904,000 to place 200 ex-convicts into temporary jobs at the Indianapolis Department of Public Works …

Marion County is proposing to spend $1.2 million on juvenile justice programs, including building two new juvenile reception centers to beef up the services and supervision for young offenders. The county plans to spend $580,000 on a nurse and substance abuse services for Community Corrections inmates; $118,000 on training programs for the Indianapolis Fire Department and Community Corrections staff; and $319,000 to contract with a grant manager.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, IN Marion County, Indiana, Juvenile Justice, Re-Entry

From the Chicago Tribune:

Gov. Mitch Daniels has appointed former state Sen. Greg Server of Evansville as the new chairman of the Indiana Parole Board.   Server joins the parole board on May 18 and replaces retiring board Chairman Christopher Meloy.  The five-member parole board weighs all Indiana capital cases and recommends to the governor whether to accept condemned inmates’ requests for clemency or commutation. The panel also oversees inmate paroles, including taking action if a former inmate violates his or her parole.

vericatrajkova Indiana, Probation and Parole

A projected increase in new violent felons and already overcrowded prisons have put Indiana in desperate need of more cell space for maximum security inmates, state Department of Correction officials said Thursday.

Correction Commissioner Edwin Buss told the Senate Appropriations Committee that hundreds of new violent offenders — including murderers, rapists and robbers — are expected to be sent to state prisons by the end of 2011, but space to appropriately imprison them is maxed out.   Buss said the state last built a new prison in 2001, and the last maximum security prison was built in 1991. Yet he said the number of inmates has grown by about 4 percent annually, and more than 100 new crimes or enhanced sentences have been enacted by the General Assembly since 1990.   “So it should be of no surprise that we stand here today asking for prison expansion,” Buss told the panel.

Though Gov. Mitch Daniels has proposed a two-year state budget that would cut most agency budgets by 8 percent and hold the line on education and state police spending, he does want money to expand two prisons.   Daniels wants lawmakers to approve $40 million in bonding authority to expand the Miami Correctional Facility near Peru and the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility near Sullivan. Each would add about 600 beds, and the state would make $3 million in annual bond payments.   The department also is seeking $60 million in new spending for operating costs over the next two years to cover a projected increase in inmates. About 28,000 people are in the department’s custody now, but that is expected to climb to more than 32,000 by fiscal year 2011.

House Democrats have questioned whether prison expansion should be a priority, especially since Daniels’ proposed budget would effectively freeze funding for public schools at current levels and cut spending for higher education. Some Democrats say more emphasis should be placed on alternative sentencing.  But Buss said Indiana was not a “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” state. Indiana imprisons about 57 people out of every 10,000 adults. Of Indiana’s four surrounding states, only Illinois has a lower rate.

There is more detail in the Chicago Tribune article.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, Indiana, Overcrowding

The New York Times‘ Green Inc blog recently published an interesting survey of environmental projects within the corrections’ industry.  A sample:

Instead of reporting to the laundry or the kitchen or the boiler room, a Washington state prison inmate may report to the compost heap [if they are] taking part in a “green work” program at the Cedar Creek Corrections Center. Inmates grow organic produce, compost the prison’s food waste, take part in ecological research projects with a nearby university, and even produce honey from the prison’s own hives.  The Washington State Department of Corrections boasts 34 LEED-certified facilities, with 923,789 square feet of LEED-certified space added in fiscal year 2008 alone …

This fall, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced 16 new green retrofitting projects, which they estimate will save $3 million in energy costs each year. The state already has solar power fields at two facilities, and plans to build six more in the coming year. A new $176 million juvenile detention facility in Alameda County — home to Berkeley and Oakland — recently became the country’s first jail to receive LEED gold certification.  Other green projects — from wind turbines to biomass boilers — have been announced by Departments of Corrections in Virginia, Nevada, and Indiana…

Ken Ricci, of Ricci Greene Associates, is currently working on a new $120 million detention center in downtown Denver, which the company plans to submit for LEED certification. “There’s a recognition that sustainable, or ‘green’ design, is actually a plus for a population that’s confined 24 hours a day,” Mr. Ricci said. “Environment cues behavior. If you treat people like animals, they behave like animals.”  Mr. Ricci … says design elements that earn LEED points, like daylighting and access to views, also improve security. “If you treat them like human beings — that is to say, there’s daylight coming in, the noise level is at a normative level — therefore your adrenaline level goes down, therefore your stress level goes down, the inmates feel safer.”

vericatrajkova CO Denver County, California, Colorado, Environment and Energy, Indiana, Nevada, Prison and Jail Construction, Virginia, Washington

Several months after it was eliminated by the state of Indiana, Porter County officials have come up with a plan to reintroduce a jail booking fee that has funded a successful drug and alcohol program for inmates.  As reported by the NWTimes.

The proposal calls for again charging the $25 fee of everyone booked at the county jail, but returning the money to anyone found not guilty or whose charges are dismissed, County Attorney Gwenn Rinkenberger said … The state did away with the booking fee last summer on the grounds it was not fair, Porter County Commissioner Bob Harper said when the issue surfaced during a meeting in December … Rinkenberger said she disagrees with the state’s ability to eliminate the former version of the fee. She believes the county was within its rights to collect a fee to cover the cost of booking anyone at the jail, despite the outcome of cases.

The move left the county with a diminishing amount of money for the intensive outpatient treatment program provided for inmates by Porter-Starke Services … Until the revamped fee can be approved, the commissioners will dedicate $30,000 to $40,000 of county income tax revenue to keep the inmate treatment program alive, Harper said.  The treatment program costs the county $120,000 a year, Porter County Sheriff David Lain said.

vericatrajkova Booking Fees, Drug Treatment & Diversion, IN Porter County, Indiana, Inmate Programs

To Indiana Department of Correction Commissioner Ed Buss, Kelvin Fuller is the poster child for why, even though Indiana is cash-strapped in this current economic downturn, the state needs to build additional maximum-security cell blocks at two of its prisons.

After serving 12 years of a 20-year sentence for a slew of crimes, including robbery and kidnapping, Kelvin Fuller was moved in 2007 from his maximum-security cell to medium-security confines.  A couple of weeks later, Fuller escaped. He went on a five-day crime spree that included robbing a Fishers bank and attacking and robbing a female bus driver in Merrillville before he was captured in Montana.

Despite double-bunking maximum-security prisoners and even triple-bunking lower-security prisoners, DOC facilities are at 99 percent capacity. With about 7,400 maximum-security prisoners right now and only 6,186 maximum-security beds, Buss fears more Fullers.   “There is no way that he should have been in a medium-security facility,” Buss told lawmakers in a recent Indiana House Ways and Means Committee hearing.   “However, there wasn’t enough beds at the state prison, so you have to take chances. … Unfortunately there’s consequences that come with that” …

The last new prison built in Indiana was in 2001, when Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill in north-central Indiana was expanded by 1,632 medium-security beds. The last maximum-security prison, Wabash Valley Correctional Facility near Carlisle in southwestern Indiana, was built in 1992 … Seeking to address the problem, Gov. Mitch Daniels last month proposed spending $40 million to add 612 beds at Miami and 576 beds at Wabash Valley. They were the only capital improvement projects in his proposed two-year state budget.  At the same time, Daniels proposed boosting the DOC’s budget by $105 million while placing a two-year moratorium on big-dollar university projects, cutting the budget for higher education by an average of 4 percent and essentially flat-lining K-12 education spending.

His proposals set off a debate in the Statehouse over whether the state’s spending priorities are out of whack.  “It would be difficult to justify an expansion of prison beds at a time when the governor’s proposed to sort of flat-line education. It emphasizes incarceration over education,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Crawford, D-Indianapolis …

“We’ll have to make a decision this summer to start triple-bunking (maximum-security prisoners) or closing program areas here at Wabash Valley like the gymnasium, maybe the school, and converting them to housing units,” Buss said as he toured Wabash Valley last week with a reporter.   Triple-bunking maximum-security prisoners, he said, is “unheard of.”    “Even California (notorious for prison crowding) doesn’t triple-bunk maximum-security offenders,” he said.

This is just an abstract from the long and interesting article at The Indianapolis Star.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, Indiana, Overcrowding

Governor Mitch Daniel’s 2009 budget met a chilly reception from Indiana politicians.

Daniels has proposed a $28.3 billion budget for fiscal years 2010 and 2011 that essentially flatlines spending for K-12 public education, cuts spending for higher education and gives about the only increases to prisons …

The biggest points of contention, however, are the increases Daniels has recommended to let two state prisons build new wings. Those are the only capital improvement projects recommended in Daniels’ proposed budget. State Rep. Bill Crawford, the Indianapolis Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, questioned the reasoning, arguing that the state should make more use of community corrections for prisoners and that flat-lining education, and cutting higher education, hurts the state’s economic development efforts in the long run.  State Rep. Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale, said he’s an advocate of community corrections, but that the prisons are full of violent offenders for whom such alternatives are not appropriate. If the choice is either new prison wings or letting such people out on the streets, he said, he’d choose the prisons.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, Indiana

Board members who appointed Tom Marendt last month as director of Marion County IN Community Corrections say his management skills will be key for an agency in transition.

The appointee will have to work to regain the confidence of some justice system players who have criticized lax accountability in the agency that provides alternatives to prison and jail. He also will come aboard as agency officials look for ways to free up employees so they can work more closely with people assigned to the agency’s work-release, home-detention and monitoring programs …  Marendt said the new job offered an opportunity “to contribute to the well-being of our city.”

He can learn the ins and outs of the justice system on the job, said Marion Superior Court Judge William Young, the advisory board’s chairman. But Marendt’s management skills, Young added, are more difficult to learn quickly.  “Tom is, first and foremost, a very excellent administrator,” said Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi … “Community corrections needs . . . someone who can provide oversight and accept personal responsibility for what happens there.”  Brian Barton, who directed the agency for 11 years, left in June after months of public sparring with board members over proposed changes and his leadership.

Marendt said once his appointment is final, he will meet with each employee and review the agency’s budget and programs thoroughly.  On the agency’s immediate horizon is a proposed settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana over conditions at the Community Corrections Center, also known as the jail annex … Expected to be filed soon in U.S. District Court, the agreement would end the use of the minimum-security facility to house inmates by February.  Board officials said during a recent meeting that a proposed renovation exceeding $1 million still wouldn’t have brought the aging building up to corrections standards. Only about two dozen inmates remain there, and Young said the Duvall Residential Center, a 350-bed work-release facility opened last year, has extra beds to pick up some slack. The Near-Eastside facility has prompted complaints from neighborhood groups about problems caused by its presence, but Young said agency officials are working to resolve them.

Board members said Marendt will take over amid pushes for several changes:  Shifting caseworkers’ duties so they spend less time keeping tabs on fee payments and paperwork and more time performing individual assessments and helping people in their programs connect with jobs, training and treatment help.  The board is considering hiring a contractor to take over monitoring and technical functions for the home-detention program.  “Our goal at community corrections is for everybody to be reintegrated as successful members of society,” Young said. “It’s not going to be this shotgun approach we’ve taken in the past.”

More on this appointment at the Indianapolis Star.

vericatrajkova Community Corrections, IN Marion County, Private Prisons

A private company that operates Indiana’s New Castle Correctional Facility plans to expand the prison’s capacity for about 400 more inmates.

GEO Group said Friday that it would expand the prison from 2,104 to 2,524 beds. The extra beds will be available starting Monday. Indiana Department of Corrections spokesman Randall Koester says GEO Group is opening two housing units of the New Castle facility that have not been used since the prison was opened in 2002. The units will house medium-security adult male inmates.

About 500 inmates from Arizona and Indiana rioted at the prison in April 2007. Eight prisoners and two staff members suffered minor injuries at the prison about 45 miles east of Indianapolis. Koester said all the Arizona inmates have since been returned to that state.

vericatrajkova GEO, Indiana, Private Prisons