As the urban garden movement continues to spread, even inmates in Johnson County are starting to grow veggies. On Thursday, they harvested produce in new garden patches that stand like small islands in a sea of grass outside the Johnson County Department of Corrections Adult Residential Center, near the New Century AirCenter. Story in The Kansas City Star.

This is the first year for the garden, which is tended by residential inmates, work-release prisoners and offenders confined for substance-abuse treatment.

The operation already has donated hundreds of pounds of food to charity.

Kevin Burdick, 31, of Olathe, is one of the gardeners. He engaged in credit card fraud because of a drug addiction, he said, and is getting substance abuse treatment.

Swinging a plastic bag filled with cherry tomatoes, he said people like to sign out of the adjacent treatment center and stroll to the gardens.

“Sometimes you just need to get away,” he said.

He has watched the crops prosper — including squash, onions, peppers, cucumbers and melons. “It makes you feel good,” he said.

The inmates like helping others, but they also like eating some of the vegetables, said corrections supervisor Tom Tysver.

As for their diet otherwise, he said, “You don’t want to say it’s lower end, but the food here, it is what it is.”

Tysver helped organize the first garden, and inmates did the work. They dug, planted and weeded, and now they are harvesting.

A horse farm owner donated manure for the garden at 141 Mission Parkway. Olathe gives compost to citizens and because some inmates are from Olathe, they received some free compost.

Lisa Simkins, 43, of Kansas City, Kan., also was picking vegetables Thursday. She has a forgery conviction and is also getting drug treatment.

“Holy cow,” she said of a big cucumber she picked.

She’s helped water and weed and now pick, she said. “It’s fun; therapeutic, I guess.”

When picking ended, Tysver glanced at the surrounding grass. Someday, gardens could replace it all, he said.

jchev Inmate Programs, KS Johnson County

jchev Jail and Prison Construction, KS Rooks County, Kansas

A Senate committee tabled a bill Monday that would have required the Kansas Department of Corrections to stop granting inmates access to personally identifiable information as they perform data entry and document scanning work for city, county and state government agencies. Reported in The Topeka Capital-Journal.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were content with a promise from KDOC Secretary Roger Werholtz that agency rules would be rewritten by Aug. 1 to limit the opportunity of inmates involved in prison industry jobs to obtain birthdates and numbers associated with Social Security cards, driver’s licenses and bank accounts.

Sen. John Vratil, R-Leawood, made the motion to put Senate Bill 587 on ice to avoid the cost of running the measure through the Legislature. The maneuver had bipartisan support from his colleagues on the judiciary committee.

“The regulations are being reworked at this point,” said Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka. “We probably don’t need the bill.”

Under the administrative rule envisioned by Werholtz, prisoners performing data entry and document preservation services on KDOC contracts wouldn’t be permitted to see personally identifiable information about Kansans that could be used to perpetuate identity fraud. Prisoners in work-release programs won’t be subjected to the new mandate because these men and women wouldn’t be able to hold down jobs if prohibited from checking identification cards.

“The regulation, however, would permit an inmate working for a convenience store as a privately employed work release inmate who is required to check a driver’s license before selling tobacco products to a youthful-appearing customer to do so consistent with state law or his or her employer’s obligations,” Werholtz said.

Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, said placing the requirement in statute would have placed the policy reform beyond administrative rules and regulations that could be modified by a new governor in 2011.

Schmidt said the Legislature adopted a bill earlier in this session prohibiting people charged with crimes from gaining access to personally identifiable information when preparing for trial.

“This is a step worse. We have a group of people convicted,” Schmidt said.

Gov. Mark Parkinson said on Friday state agencies involved in the transfer of personally identifiable information through contracts with the corrections department were taking steps to improve security procedures to thwart illegal use of the information.

The Kansas Department of Transportation and the Kansas Highway Patrol engaged in contracts that funnel private information through prisoner laborers incarcerated at Lansing Correctional Facility. Cities, counties and nonprofit organizations work with prisoners at Norton Correctional Facility to create digital images of old public records, corrections officials said.

KDOT representative Terry Heidner said inmates performed data entry at less cost and with greater accuracy than employees of the transportation agency years ago.

“It has a long and very successful history,” Heidner said.

The approach advocated by the governor would assure “protection of privacy for Kansas citizens” while continuing the jobs program for inmates. Software used by prisoners to input material must be adjusted to make certain key bits of information is beyond the reach of inmates, Heidner said.

He said the cost to KDOT could be $125,000 in the current fiscal year ending June 30. An estimated $75,000 would be needed in future years to hire non-inmate workers to enter sensitive information, he said.

Eight states, including Kansas, grant prisoners access to personal information despite warnings against the practice by federal officials.

jchev Kansas, Technology

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

Kansas and seven other states give prisoners access to citizens’ Social Security numbers and other personal information despite federal officials’ warnings against it, according to a federal audit. Reported in The Kansas City Star.

And because of that, the Social Security Administration will propose a law to forbid the practice, the administration’s office of inspector general reported in its recent audit. Two pending federal bills also would make it illegal.

The matter raises issues of how far cash-strapped states should go in trying to train prisoners, reduce recidivism and cut costs.

Bill Miskell, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Corrections, said prisoners learn skills and save public money by doing data entry for the state, cities, counties, courts and nonprofits. The state has used such programs since 1985, he said.

Nationwide, the work often involves student transcripts, employee wage statements or other matters, according to the new audit, and five prisons in Kansas use such workers.

In May 2009, the audit says, a Kansas prison inmate was caught trying to steal names, birthdates and Social Security numbers from one of the programs.

Miskell said staffers search such prisoners when they leave the work areas, and some are occasionally caught making such attempts. As far as officials know, he said, “no one has gotten away with it.”

“This is like having the fox practice herding chickens,” said Kansas Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican and chairwoman of the Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee. “This is a really bad idea.”

Colloton said Kansas has a reputation of reducing recidivism by such things as job training. But she did not know of these programs, and she said they go too far.

About 80 percent of prisoners have a drug problem, Colloton said, and identity theft is one of the main crimes of addicts.

She said her committee will study the matter next year and probably will work to end the programs.

Miskell said about 40 screened prisoners are active in the Kansas inmate work programs, and hundreds of others can get such jobs as part of inmate work release.

The eight states that allow such work are down from 13 that allowed it at the time of a 2006 federal audit. The other states that still let prisoners have such jobs are Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and West Virginia, the new audit states.

The practice risks prisoners stealing names and numbers in ways that include simply memorizing them, auditors say, and they note that many other jobs are available that do not require access to personal information.

Linda Foley, a founder of the national Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego, said such access for prisoners, probationers and parolees was “outrageous.”

Her group helped pass a 2005 California law that forbids such programs there. States can end the practice or pass laws faster than federal lawmakers will deal with the problem, she said.

And it is important that such laws apply to all criminals and not just white-collar offenders, she said.

“Those who steal with guns are being laughed at (by other criminals) and being told about identity theft” which usually results in probation instead of prison, Foley said. “They’re all learning about identity theft in prison school.”

Sometimes simple changes can allow programs to continue without prisoner access to sensitive data, she said.

In California, for instance, a program that taught inmates to make eyeglasses and gave them access to Social Security numbers was changed so they no longer saw the numbers.

States should cut inmates off from all access to the numbers, the federal auditors stated. Despite the best state efforts to control such access, they said, “vulnerabilities still existed.”

jchev Inmate Programs, Kansas

The Re-entry Program is crucial to stop the revolving door for prison, but state budget cuts are forcing the Kansas Department of Corrections to cut those programs. “The Re-entry Program and Parole Services are what make our communities safe,” Sharidi Blackwood, Re-entry Program Director, said. News from KTKA.

Blackwood said they’ve had to cut staff and leave positions open, which gives Parole Officers like Donnie Hibler more work and fewer resources to work with. “When we don’t have the resources or the funds the staff to meet all those needs it becomes pretty scary, and it becomes a real safety issue and that is our number one concern,” Blackwood said.

Missy Woodward is a Program Consultant who works with mentally ill prisoners. “A lot of the mental health cases came to us with the shut down of the Topeka State Hospital,” Woodward said.

“The prisons are the new state hospitals now,” Parole Officer Hibler said.

If Missy can’t find the resources, like medication and housing for these mentally ill prisoners, crimes will continue to occur. “It’s going to impact the safety of the community, I hate to say when people get desperate they get desperate,” Woodward said.

Kelli Martinez’s job is to help people coming out of prison find work, but with a failing economy that has made her part of the re-entry program tough, “We see a lot of the jobs that used to be the given, that they could just walk into those aren’t so available now either,” Martinez said.

So with a troubled economy, and cuts to the Kansas Department of Corrections, it leaves many who work with offenders scared what will happen next. “Our biggest concern is safety for the community,” Blackwood said.

The Kansas Department of Corrections staff said they will continue to rely on other community programs for help. They said they have to get creative to get prisoners the help they need.

jchev Budgets, Kansas, Re-Entry

As of mid-December, the Shawnee County Department of Corrections had spent $141,856 on medications, including $63,869 in psychotropic drugs. News reported by the Topeka-Capital Journal.

The amount of money spent per month has decreased in the past few months, said Brian Cole, deputy director of the Shawnee County Department of Corrections. However, at times, the county jail has had one of the highest bills for psychotropic drugs in the Midwest.

Sixteen percent of inmates at the county jail suffer from mental illness, and 45 percent of the money spent in 2009 on medications has been to treat those individuals.

Crisis Intervention Team is a program that Shawnee County began implementing a few years ago to try to divert people with mental illness to community-based treatment facilities instead of jail.

“A jail is not a place to stabilize those with mental illness,” Cole said. “We are not a mental health facility.”

CIT was started after Greg Eilert, 45, who was schizophrenic, was shot and killed by Topeka police in August 2006 while in his car near S.W. 29th and Fairlawn. The shooting was reviewed and found to be justified. “His family became very motivated,” Cole said.

Greg Eilert’s mother and sister often share Greg’s story with officers who are receiving CIT training. About 30 percent of all law enforcement officers in Shawnee County have voluntarily received the training, including corrections officers who work at the jail. “We need to continue to build the pool of officers,” Cole said.

The training has several goals, Cole said, including to ensure officers’ safety, reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and increase collaboration among area agencies.

The training is usually 40 hours long and is offered in Shawnee County at the Topeka Police Department twice per year. The next CIT training is in April.

“Our main focus is to diffuse the situation,” Cole said. “We see the need. Topeka, Kansas, and Shawnee County have a high population of people with severe mental illness.”

Usually people with mental illness who are arrested are arrested for minor crimes, such as trespassing, public intoxication or drug-related offenses, he said. Every year, about 800,000 people with severe mental illness are incarcerated in U.S. jails.

At the Shawnee County Jail, a person is evaluated upon their arrival to find out if he or she has a mental illness. Once identified, the inmate meets with a member of the mental health team, which includes two social workers and a psychologist. David Coleman serves as the mental health team leader for Shawnee County. He has been in his field since 1973, he said.

Although the Shawnee County Department of Corrections oversees the mental health team, Prison Health Services, a company made up of more than 3,800 professionals who work in jails, prisons and juvenile facilities nationwide, oversees medication dispensing and prison health. A registered nurse is on staff 24 hours at the jail.

Medication rounds are conducted in the morning, at noon and at bedtime, said Karen Marsh, PHS health services administrator. Inmates have illnesses ranging from severe depression to schizophrenia. Those with mental illness don’t fare well in the criminal justice system, Cole said. Oftentimes they are exploited or manipulated by other inmates, have difficulty coping and can’t make bail.

A U.S. Justice Department study found that 60 percent of people with mental illness in jail don’t get treatment, Cole said. The Shawnee County Jail works hard to make sure inmates get the help they need, the deputy director said. Statistics show the CIT program is working, Cole said.

Since the third quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009, only one person out of 134 calls to which CIT members responded went to jail.

“We are seeing an improvement,” Cole said. “What I want the public to understand is this is a much-needed resource.”

No money from the Shawnee County Department of Corrections goes into the program, Cole said. Volunteers do all of the training, too.

Topeka Police Chief Ron Miller said the CIT program is very valuable. He said the training is helpful because officers are the ones who have to determine if a person needs to be arrested or treated.

“The key for the police officer is assessing the needs of the person,” Miller said. “It is also key to recognize the need and know how to connect the person to the services they need.”

TOP 5 PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS ADMINISTERED
The top five psychotropic drugs administered by Prison Health Services at the Shawnee County Jail are:

1. Abilify, a medication used as an add-on treatment for depression, as well as for the treatment of schizophrenia and manic episodes.

2. Zyprexa, a medication used for the treatment of schizophrenia, acute manic and mixed episodes of bipolar disorder and maintenance treatment.

3. Seroquel, treats the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

4. Risperdal, used to treat schizophrenia and symptoms of bipolar disorder.

5. Geodon, a medicine for the treatment of acute manic or mixed episodes of bipolar disorder and for schizophrenia.

jchev Budgets, Inmate Health Care, KS Shawnee County

Jobs are scarce out there, no matter how impressive the resume. If that resume listed time in a state penitentiary, imagine just how much more scarce. Story reported in The Kansas City Star.

Nearly 700,000 people are released from federal and state prisons to their communities each year, about 25,000 between Missouri and Kansas. Where do they go? Some end up with a job and pick up a rag at the bright orange and blue All Seasons Car Wash.

Here at 1510 Truman Road is found one of the grittier tales of good will toward men — as practiced by Gene Krahenbuhl, owner of that car wash.

Take Nick (no last name, he asked, no need to embarrass family). He’s no saint. Arrests have plucked him off the streets seven times for driving while intoxicated. He thinks himself lucky his actions haven’t killed anyone.

Right now he’s trying to kick the booze and become a productive citizen by earning a living, paying taxes, staying out of trouble. He knows job rejection well. Would-be employers have drawn back in their chair, frowned and stopped listening when they saw his check mark in the “yes” box next to: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

Krahenbuhl is the only one who would hire him.

For 10 years Krahenbuhl has been hiring felons as young as 18 and as old as 60 and convicted of things including writing bad checks, robbery, sex offenses and assault. No murderers though, that he knows of. But Krahenbuhl doesn’t ask for details. He does know that not all his employees have served time in prison, and a few are just down-on-their-luck homeless.

“I don’t really care. I’m not judging. It has become very evident to me that these people just need a chance,” said the 47-year-old Raymore man.

Most employers don’t want to hire ex-cons, even with government incentives such as tax breaks.

“There is a general feeling of risk among most businesses about hiring someone who has been convicted of a felony crime,” said Bill Miskell at the Kansas Probation and Parole Office. Then, too, a lot of jobs are off-limits to anyone with a criminal record. For example, someone convicted of embezzling can’t work as a bookkeeper or in a bank.

On the other hand, said Julie Kempker, re-entry manager for the Missouri Department of Corrections, “There are people in prison who have talent like you wouldn’t believe.”

Two-thirds of released prisoners are arrested again within three years, and about half return to prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Much of the time those who end up back in prison had been unemployed,” Miskell said.

The prison revolving door is expensive for taxpayers, Kempker said.

“We have solid data that says that those who leave prison and maintain employment are less likely to return to prison,” she said. “And the data says that when they are out and working they are not committing crime.”

Eighty percent of inmates are nonviolent, she noted. “People watch too much television. Most of the people in the prison system are not Hannibal Lecter.”

Krahenbuhl believes in second chances, but he has been known to give third — even fourth — chances to the 20 or so felons he employs.

He doesn’t accept government incentives for his hires, and he acknowledges his employees’ paychecks are small (just minimum wage). But he’s not getting rich, either, he said.

“Owning a business is not just about making money. It is also about giving back to the community.”

Washing cars isn’t easy work, Krahenbuhl said, especially in winter, the best season for the business. When temperatures drop below freezing, “people don’t want to get out in the cold to wash their car. They bring it to us.”

Former convicts come and go fairly regularly at the car wash, but a few guys have been with Krahenbuhl consistently for a couple of years and others have worked there off and on for as long as he has owned the place.

All Seasons Car Wash is a starting point: money for rent, food and confidence in one’s ability to go straight.

“I encourage them that if they can get a better job, they should go after it,” Krahenbuhl said.

Workers are taught basic job ethic — show up on time, be courteous to customers and don’t goof off on the clock. A mutual trust is central to employment at the car wash, he said.

No, he doesn’t expect his employees won’t try to get away with some stuff, even steal from him. It has happened — double swiping credit cards and pinching from the cash drawer or pocketing tips that are supposed to be divided among the crew.

Stealing is not necessarily grounds for dismissal. But when caught, “and we always catch them,” Krahenbuhl expects the offender to fess up.

Stealing and then lying about it, now that’s cause for firing, he said.

Those who don’t make it, he noted, “are usually the ones who can’t kick their addiction to drugs or alcohol.

“Nick is a good guy. If he can quit the drinking, he could be a manager here,” Krahenbuhl said.

At 44, Nick is living with his parents in Kansas City for now. But he remembers sleeping nights, before the car wash, out in the cold. He is saving his money to rent his own place.

“If it wouldn’t have been for these guys here at the car wash, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Nick said. “Working here has kept me off the street.”

jchev Kansas, Re-Entry

Prison health care costs are soaring in Kansas as once experimental drugs and procedures are becoming standard treatments.  From Fox 4Kc.

The Kansas Department of Corrections spent $46.5 million in the most recent fiscal year on inmate health care, up 116 from 2000.   Health care now totals 17 percent of the department’s total operating costs.

Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz said HIV and hepatitis C were once considered terminal illnesses. But now, he says people are being managed with those illnesses for extended periods of time.  And he says the department is obligated to extend that care when medically indicated.

There is no reason to think the prison health care costs are liking to decrease as the prison population ages and their health needs increase.

jakking Aging Population, Inmate Health Care, Kansas

At a ribbon cutting on Friday, Johnson County KS officials celebrated the finish of a $60 million jail expansion that makes the county jail system one of the largest in the state.  Reported by the Kansas City Star.

The expansion at the jail in the Gardner area adds 554 beds, which is a total of 1,088 beds there and at the jail in Olathe. It will allow the county to save millions by ending the practice of housing inmates at jails elsewhere, officials said. Annabeth Surbaugh, chairwoman of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, said the county spent $30 million in the last nine years to house inmates at other jails — about half the cost of the jail addition.

County Sheriff Frank Denning said of the 153,000-square-foot addition, “Building jails is not a happy thing,” but is necessary for society and quality of life. To control the jail population, he said, officials are working to make more use of alternatives to jail, such as work release and other programs. “We are starting to challenge ourselves to reduce our jail population but to keep the community safety where it is,” he said.

jakking Jail and Prison Construction, Kansas

Kansas’ top corrections official said Monday that additional budget cuts for the prison system would make its lockups less safe and force the state to consider lighter sentences for its criminals.  Reported by the Kansas City Star.

Kansas Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz said if his department were required to trim its spending again — after four previous rounds of state budget adjustments — it would have to consider cutting services for crime victims, reducing its supervision of parolees and closing a 554-bed minimum-security prison in Winfield.

He told the House Appropriations Committee that the department already is holding 40 jobs at its prisons open. “It increases the probability that something bad is going to happen,” he said. Werholtz said the state could soon reach the point where it must reduce its prison population and the former inmates it supervises on parole. That would require lesser sentences and shorter parole-supervision times, he said. “There are no good choices left,” Werholtz said after testifying to the committee. “If you can’t maintain the resources, you’re going to have to reduce the workload.”

Werholtz was among the state officials who testified on the opening day of special summer and fall hearings by the Appropriations Committee. The budget-writing panel normally doesn’t meet when lawmakers are out of session, and the Legislature adjourned its annual session in early June. Leaders of the House’s Republican majority, concerned that legislators will face closing another big budget shortfall next year, are trying to get a jump on trying to close it well before the Legislature reconvenes in January.

Chairman Kevin Yoder, an Overland Park Republican, said he doubts the committee has much stomach for further reductions in the Department of Corrections, which saw its budget drop nearly $24 million, or about 8 percent, for the current fiscal year. Such a position would push the committee toward reducing state aid to public schools, cutting social services or trimming more spending from higher education. Most Republicans are ruling out tax increases … But the possibility of additional cuts was real enough to Werholtz, whose department already has cut services for inmates and closed minimum-security prison units. He noted that the Department of Corrections took 447 prison beds offline because of cuts, leaving space to house 8,870 inmates. At the end of June, the department had 8,610 inmates.

jakking Budgets, Economic Issues, Kansas

States trying to fight recession by closing prisons are finding a Catch-22: what saves scarce money costs precious jobs.  Reported by USA Today.

New Hampshire, Tennessee and Kansas are among states that have closed prisons this year as they struggle to balance budgets. In 2008, states spent about $47 billion from general funds on corrections, four times as much as in 1988, according to the Pew Center on the States. Nearly 90% of corrections budgets were spent on prisons, as opposed to probation, parole or other programs.

States are closing prisons by moving inmates, reducing their numbers through increased use of electronic monitoring, boosting support for offenders on probation and declining to return them to prison for every probation violation. That’s been controversial: “Inmates are getting released that wouldn’t have been released in good budget times,” says Tom Tylutki, president of the corrections officers’ union in Michigan, where eight facilities are scheduled to close. “We believe (public safety) is being compromised.”

Towns that have relied on prison jobs for years now find the local economy jeopardized.

• In Michigan, plans to close three prisons and five prison camps will cost 1,000 jobs, including in the tiny town of Standish, where a 19-year-old maximum security prison is the county’s largest employer. If Standish shuts down on Oct. 1 as scheduled, “it will be catastrophic, there is no doubt,” for the town of about 1,800 people, says the Rev. James Fitzpatrick, who organized a rally and prayer vigil to protest the prison’s closing.

• In Vermont, cost-cutting plans to close a 122-bed prison in St. Johnsbury, in the thinly populated northeastern corner of the state, were shelved by the Legislature over concerns about the loss of jobs. The state had planned to send prisoners out of state at a savings of $2 million.

• In New York, three prison camps and seven prison annexes, all located in the northern part of the state, are to close this year, saving the state an estimated $52 million over two years. About 550 jobs will be lost in a region that has long relied on prisons as a major employer. Camp Gabriels, in Franklin, N.Y., provided jobs for three of Mary Ellen Keith’s sons, a daughter and granddaughter until it closed this year. Inmates also cleared the rural town’s roadsides of brush, something the town can’t afford to do. “Up here, there’s absolutely no industry or anything,” says Keith, Franklin’s town supervisor. Without the prisons as employers, her family “probably would never have been able to remain in this area,” she says. “It’s a hardship.”

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The national recession is taking its toll on what had been one of the fastest-growing areas of state government spending: prisons. Even though state corrections budgets have ballooned in the past two decades amid a surging U.S. prison population, at least 23 states slashed funding for prisons this year, according to a new survey by the nonpartisan Vera Institute of Justice, a research organization based in New York. Thirty-three states responded to the survey, paid for by The Pew Charitable Trusts.  This story is from the Pew publication, Stateline.Org.

A $1 billion cost-cutting plan announced last week by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) will translate into layoffs for more than a thousand state prison workers. In Oregon, a voter-approved plan to hand longer prison sentences to those who commit property crimes was delayed by state lawmakers who said they could not pay for it. Tennessee’s department of corrections has sought to save money by offering inmates less milk and meat in their daily meals. And in Kansas — which has received national attention in recent years for shifting resources from locking up prisoners to rehabilitating them — the state eliminated 85 percent of the slots in its substance-abuse treatment program for inmates, citing budget constraints.

Six states — Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and Washington — cut funding for corrections by more than 10 percent from last year’s levels, according to the study. Kansas saw the biggest recorded decrease, spending 22 percent less than it did last year.

Corrections is the fifth-largest area of state spending after Medicaid, secondary education, higher education and transportation. State spending on prisons has swelled as the nation’s jail and prison population has climbed to 2.3 million people, or about one in every 100 adults. But grim budget realities are forcing state lawmakers’ hand.

According to the Vera survey, many states are wringing savings from their correctional systems by trying to reduce the huge operational costs of running prisons — including by laying off workers, freezing their wages or cutting services to inmates. They also are exploring new ways to reduce recidivism and achieve long-term savings, in some cases easing sanctions on “technical violators” who break conditions of their parole and frequently are sent back to prison. Some states, including Colorado and Oregon, are allowing more prisoners to reduce their prison sentences through “earned-time credits” for good behavior and other forms of early release.

Some of the cost-cutting moves — using videoconferencing to avoid physically transporting inmates for court appearances, for example, and cutting back on inmates’ meal offerings — have targeted the basics of daily prison life and reaped relatively modest savings. But other changes will save tens of millions of dollars and have not come without political fights.

According to Stateline.org’s annual review of states’ legislative sessions, at least seven states — Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Washington — this year decided to close prisons. In some states, those plans touched off resistance among prison unions and in hard-hit communities anxious about losing even more jobs.   New York’s prison workers’ union earlier this year accused the administration of Gov. David Paterson (D) of creating “the most dangerous conditions ever” for correctional officers by closing 10 prisons and packing inmates into other facilities. In Michigan, which has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) is trying to avoid closing some prisons — and laying off prison guards — by accepting inmates from California’s teeming system. Some state officials have backed the idea of housing detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Early releases also have caused alarm, particularly in California, where a federal panel of three judges last week ordered the state to free more than 40,000 inmates — or about 27 percent of its prison population — within the next two years to ease dangerous overcrowding. Attorney General Jerry Brown (D), who is widely expected to run for governor next year, attacked the decision and could appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The early release of thousands of inmates also is being considered in Illinois.   While some criminal justice advocates contend that early releases and other cost-cutting moves could endanger public safety, others say states have not gone far enough in cutting inmate numbers.

Some advocates say state lawmakers have avoided what they see as the “elephant in the room” — tough sentencing policies that have put many low-level offenders behind bars for longer and been a major factor behind the explosive growth in the nation’s prison population since the 1970s, when many of the laws were passed. The federal panel that ruled on California’s prison overcrowding cited sentencing laws as a factor behind the Golden State’s huge prison population.  While New York this year revised its drug sentencing laws to give judges more discretion to keep offenders out of jail, other high-profile sentencing changes in the states have been far more limited in their scope. Texas, for instance, eliminated life without parole for juveniles, a penalty that currently affects only seven inmates. New Mexico abolished capital punishment, but had only two men on death row when the bill was signed into law in March.

Washington state’s legislative session this year was “completely upside down in terms of criminal justice policy,” said state Rep. Roger Goodman (D), vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Goodman said lawmakers cut funding for the wrong programs — such as housing and other transitional services that can help ex-inmates stay out of trouble — and refused to make substantial changes to the sentencing policies that he said have put too many nonviolent and drug-addicted people in prison in the first place. Goodman explained lawmakers’ distaste for making sentencing changes this way: “There aren’t enough political points to be gained by taking this issue on. There are political points to be gained by attacking it.”

While broad changes to criminal sentencing laws remain a tough sell issue in many state capitols, corrections officials are pushing other, less controversial changes to reduce prison populations. Many states have made sick or dying inmates eligible for early parole. Other states, including Florida and Tennessee, have invested more heavily in drug treatment courts and community supervision programs in the hopes of keeping offenders from returning to prison.  “Changing sentences is a very difficult thing to do. And so we’ve gone around it,” Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said during an annual summit of state legislators in Philadelphia last month.

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Learning about different cultures and upbringings would be one way to address the overrepresentation of minorities in the juvenile justice system and to address gang violence, presenters said Monday at the 10th annual Governor’s Conference on Juvenile Justice.  Reported by the Wichita Eagle.

Or as Mark Masterson with Sedgwick County’s Department of Corrections said on a video clip: “Diversity is a business imperative, not an option.”

More than 500 corrections industry professionals gathered at the Hyatt Regency in Wichita for the conference … Topics include things like access to records, preparing young people to make the transition from incarceration back to the community, and dealing with bullying.

Masterson’s session outlined how Sedgwick County is working to reduce the disproportionate number of racial and ethnic minorities in its system. The disproportion, he said, is particularly high at the arrest point.  In 2008, 78 of every 1,000 black youths were arrested for minor crimes compared with nearly 43 of every 1,000 Hispanic youths and 18 of every 1,000 white youths, according to presentation data.  Hiring diverse staff to better mirror the clients the system serves and holding staff trainings that consider race and ethnicity, social status, poverty, gender and other identifiers have helped the system become more culturally competent.

Understanding culture is also helpful when dealing with gangs, said Ruben Salamanca, of the Topeka Police Department, who is president of the Kansas Gang Investigators Association. Salamanca said Hispanic gangs are often territorial, and identify with certain geographic areas or neighborhoods, while black gangs are often motivated by money. White gangs, he said, are often motivated by feelings of racial superiority. In Kansas, he said, it’s not uncommon to see mixed-race gangs, too.  He discussed the importance of law enforcement understanding gang history dating back decades.  “People need to be more culturally competent about who they are and what they’re about,” Salamanca said.

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For now, Sheriff Frank Kelly said, it’s less expensive to keep the overflow of Miami County Jail inmates in neighboring correctional facilities than it would be to build a bigger jail.  Reported by the Osawatomie Graphic.

Miami County’s 44-bed jail, built in 1966, is rated by the Kansas Department of Corrections for 22 beds. It held 19 inmates Friday, and Kelly said nine inmates were “farmed out” to other facilities, although the average runs 12 to 15.  “Right now, we’re doing fine with the farm-outs, but eventually we’re going to have to look at the numbers — that’s what the study was for — to see where we’re at,” Kelly said.

A study completed in 2006 by Shaughnessy, Fickel and Scott Architects Inc., projected the inmate population at the jail would be 32 to 74 in 2010, 82 to 98 in 2015, 97 to 125 in 2020, and 112 to 154 inmates in 2025. It currently averages about 30 inmates.   The study proposed two options, one for building a new jail on state-owned land near the Osawatomie State Hospital and the other for building a new jail at the current site. Both would house 137 beds …

Kelly said with the current number of inmates and the practice of farming them out, Miami County is doing well at this point. The facility regularly passes state inspections, and costs are still manageable.  “But the future is that, someday, the county is going to have to have a new facility,” he said. “The architecture of jails has changed over the years, and that’s what we’re looking at. But right now, we’re fine.”

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Kansas prisoners will soon have access to limited electronic banking, e-mail and video family visits, according to AP.

The Department of Corrections says it has entered into a contract amendment with Embarq Corp. in Overland Park for the new services. The company already provides inmate telephone services. The deal is expected to improve security and reduce contraband while reducing staff time screening regular mail. There is no cost to the state, and the department will make money from commissions when inmates use the services. E-mails will cost inmates 43 cents apiece.

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Kansas Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz today announced that the operations at the El Dorado Correctional Facility (EDCF) – North Unit will be suspended no later than July 1, 2009.

“The Omnibus Spending Bill which included an additional 2.75% cut in agency budgets will require the Department of Corrections to reduce its FY 2010 budget by approximately $6 million,” Secretary Werholtz said.  “The North Unit at EDCF has an annual operating budget of approximately $1.2 million and suspending operations there is one of the first of several steps the Department will take to meet the most recent budget reduction.”

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The Kansas House has passed a budget that would essentially cut all department budgets by 10% to counter a $680 million deficit.  A large amount of Federal stimulus money has been taken to scale back even deeper cuts.   For the Kansas Department of Corrections:

Public safety spending trimmed by 9 percent. Funding for community corrections programs, re-entry programs for parolees and juvenile detention facilities is sharply cut …

Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican, urged lawmakers to return $5 million to the state’s prison system to avoid reduced funding for community corrections programs and initiatives helping parolees overcome addiction and mental health issues.   Lawmakers credit such programs with reducing recidivism and eliminating the need for new prisons. Now, with funding cut, “crime will increase,” Colloton warned. “Our prisoner population will go up.” Lawmakers agreed to restore about $1.2 million of the funds.

Excerpted from a much longer article on the budget at the Kansas City Star.

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Kansas Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz has told department staff the prisons at Winfield and Norton would stay open under a revised budget — boosted by federal stimulus dollars — proposed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.  Report from the Winfield Daily Courier.

Cuts already announced in corrections would amount to $14.8 million, Werholtz said in a memo issued Friday, Feb. 27. This is about 5 percent of the department’s total spending. Werholtz said approval of the governor’s revised budget would allow the department to continue funding a number of programs that have been considered for possible reduction or elimination. “Specifically these include the suspension of operations of the facilities at Winfield and Norton,” he said. The department would also avoid significant reductions in parole services and community corrections, Werholtz said, and “elimination of special enforcement officers and virtual elimination of the remainder of offender programs” …

The state expects to receive $1.7 billion in stimulus funds. The Sebelius administration has allocated $81 million of that money to the department of corrections over two years, according to Werholtz.

jakking Economic Issues, Kansas

In this time of economic turmoil some legislators in Kansas and elsewhere say the price of justice is too high. They have introduced legislation to take the death penalty off the books over financial concerns. CNN reports.

“Because of the downturn in the national economy, we are facing one of the largest budget deficits in our history,” state Sen. Carolyn McGinn, a Republican, said in an opinion piece posted on TheKansan.com Friday. “What is certain is we are all going to have to look at new and creative ways to fund state and community programs and services.”   The state would save more than $500,000 per case by not seeking the death penalty, McGinn wrote, money that could be used for “prevention programs, community corrections and other programs to decrease future crimes against society” …

A 2008 study by the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy research group based in Maryland, found that an average capital murder trial in the state resulting in a death sentence costs about $3 million, or $1.9 million more than a case where the death penalty is not sought.  A similar 2008 study by the ACLU in Northern California found that a death- penalty trial costs about $1.1 million more than a non-death-penalty trial in California …

New Mexico, which also has a bill before the Legislature to abolish the death penalty, has already seen a case where costs dictated the outcome. Last year, the New Mexico attorney general’s office agreed to drop the death penalty for two inmates involved in the stabbing death of a guard, Ralph Garcia, during a 1999 riot at the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility.   The change came after the state Legislature failed to provide additional funding for defense attorneys contracted to handle the case by the public defender’s office.  In court documents filed at the time, Attorney General Gary King said his office could not “in good faith under these circumstances” pursue the death penalty against Robert Young and Reis Lopez …

In Colorado, House Bill 1274 proposes to put the anticipated savings from abolishing the death penalty toward the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s cold case homicide team.

Other States with bills for an economic end to the death penalty include Washington, Montana, Nebraska, Texas and New Hampshire.

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