Mike Fralick walked out of prison “dead broke” in December, he said, determined to find work, stay sober, and put a life of crime behind him. Reported in the Patriot Ledger.

His two-year debt to society is repaid. An $8-an-hour kitchen job is helping him repay $3,200 to his parents. At the thought that prisoners might soon face a $5-a-day debt to the state, Fralick shook his head.

“What an awful idea,” the 46-year-old said Thursday as he walked from a Quincy parole office to a nearby halfway house where he lives. “Where do they think we’ll get the money?”

A year behind bars in Massachusetts could soon cost inmates more than 365 days of freedom. Try $1,825 for room-and-board, plus $5 per doctor or dentist visit and $3 for prescribed drugs. House lawmakers passed the measure by a wide bipartisan margin as an amendment to their state budget proposal. Approval from the Senate and Gov. Deval Patrick is still needed.

Inmate rights proponents say the measure would create modern-day debtors’ prisons, while making it harder for poor ex-convicts to lead lawful lives. But in an era of tight finances, the cost of incarcerating 11,200 state prisoners – estimated at $45,000 a year each – and thousands of county jail inmates has raised eyebrows. Among lawmakers, there is an appeal to requiring lawbreakers to pay at least part of their way.

“Inmates should be responsible to the degree they’re capable of financing their stay,” Norfolk County Sheriff Michael G. Bellotti said. “Why should it all be on the taxpayer’s dime?”

The model is a fee system used from 2002 to 2004 at Bristol County House of Correction. In that period, Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson said he collected $750,000 from inmates and pretrial detainees, who responded by filing a class-action lawsuit. The Supreme Judicial Court in January ruled that Hodgson lacked the authority to charge inmates, and the court may soon order the money returned.

Sheriff for the past 13 years, Hodgson calls the approach an effective tool to generate needed revenue. As for the debts posing inmates with a new obstacle, Hodgson dismisses such arguments as ‘red herrings.’

“Nobody ever says, ‘What about the poor taxpayer who’s being victimized and didn’t do anything?’” Hodgson said.

Locking up criminals is costly. Next fiscal year’s proposed budgets for the state Department of Correction is $515 million, and $482 million combined for the 14 county sheriffs. But Lois Ahrens, founder of The Real Cost of Prisons Project, a Northampton-based nonprofit dismisses such pay-for-prison plans as a “fantasy.” She said most in jail haven’t been sentenced; they just can’t afford to post bail as they await trial. “That’s how absurd this is,” Ahrens said. “It’s another piece of punitive legislation.”

Charlie Baker, the Republican candidate for governor, in a statement, touted the fees and estimated they’d bring in $10 million to $40 million a year. Yet precise projections involve several variables. For one, each sheriff could decide whether to charge fees at all. And the state prison system, whose inmates have the longest sentences, may be exempted altogether.

Bellotti, president of the Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association, said a “vast majority” of sheriffs support the fees, while a “sub-group” fear it could lead to more expenses than its worth. The daily $5 fee would be taken from accounts inmates use to buy snacks, toiletries and other items. Deposits into canteen accounts, as they’re known, are often made by family or girlfriends. Under the House amendment, indigent inmates – those considered impoverished – would receive a bill upon release, but the debt would be forgiven if they stay out of jail for two years.

Hodgson said the only administrative cost of Bristol County’s system was a $4,000 computer program used to withdraw per diems from inmate accounts. Yet Peter Wegner, head of the Easthampton-based nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, predicts the cost of collecting fees would mostly offset any new revenue. “This is like spending money to squeeze blood from a stone,” Wagner said.

The Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, which is over the Department of Corrections, has opposed the proposal behind the scenes. In a memo to sheriffs, the office cautioned fees could discourage prisoners from volunteering to do low-paid jobs and lead to a higher percentage of indigent inmates.

Diane Wiffin, spokeswoman for the state prison system, said prisoners can earn 50 cents to $5 per day by cooking food, laundering clothes, mopping floors, or performing other duties. She didn’t comment on the pending legislation but said inmates already pay $1.50 for haircuts and $3 for doctor visits. Inmates in work-release programs turn over 15 percent of their earnings.

Still, advocates say the rationale for collecting fees goes beyond bringing in revenue. “The goal is to teach the inmates a little something about the real world and give an incentive toward legitimacy on the outside,” Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald Jr. said. “We have to devise a system that is fair and equitable.”

The House passed the plan last Thursday. The next day, lawmakers returned to engage in a heated debate and called for a new vote. It passed 93-62, losing 13 supporters.

“This will teach prisoners nothing but anger,” said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, which represented Bristol County inmates in their lawsuit. “We as a society have really lost sight of the fact that losing your liberty is a really severe punishment.”

Fralick, the former prisoner at Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater after an armed robbery conviction, recalled, “Prison life is lonely.” He felt lucky to be able to cook meals and cut grass for 30 cents an hour. But he said he relied on deposits of $15 or more each week from his retired parents, mainly to buy food.

“A fee would just punish poor families,” Fralick said. “I couldn’t have survived without that money.”

jchev Economic Issues, Massachusetts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

jchev Massachusetts, Parole, Sentencing

The Patrick administration has shelved plans to build special treatment units for hundreds of seriously mentally ill inmates, two years after advocates for prisoners alleged in a federal lawsuit that the state’s practice of keeping such inmates in solitary confinement 23 hours a day was inhumane and causing suicides. Full story in The Boston Globe.

Citing the state budget crisis, lawyers for top state prison officials said negotiations to settle the civil rights suit by the Disability Law Center against the Department of Correction out of court have ended. The center has asked a federal judge in Boston to schedule a trial for January 2011, while the state wants it to start a year later.

The collapse of negotiations, made public in court filings Friday, marks a startling reversal from where things stood a year ago. Last November, Harold W. Clarke, the correction commissioner appointed by Governor Deval Patrick, and Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said they expected the suit would be resolved shortly with the announcement of plans to build maximum-security residential treatment units.

Inmates would be exposed to more types of therapy in such units, and advocates want the prisoners to have more time out of their cells.

“We’re hoping to be able to say, ‘We don’t have to go to court, we can avoid litigation,’ which I’m certain will serve all parties best,’’ Clarke said in a Globe report Nov. 16.

On Friday, however, lawyers for the prison system filed a document in US District Court that said, “Due to the fiscal crisis, the parties have discontinued formal settlement negotiations.’’ The state’s lawyers did not elaborate on the financial constraints.

The nonprofit Disability Law Center sued the state in March 2007, alleging that hundreds of mentally ill prisoners were kept in closet-size solitary confinement cells in response to unruly behavior. The conditions had led to self-mutilation, the swallowing of razor blades, and numerous suicides, said the center.

The suit, which resembled legal challenges that led to changes in other states, said Massachusetts ignored repeated calls from its mental health providers and consultants to provide high-security treatment units for violent, mentally disturbed inmates.

A Globe Spotlight Team series in December 2007 reported 15 suicides in the prisons from 2005 through 2007, most by those in solitary confinement with histories of mental illness or drug addiction. There had also been more than 3,200 suicide attempts and self-inflicted injuries in the prior decade, the Globe found.

Walker, of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, which helps represent the Disability Law Center in the suit, said yesterday that she was “deeply disappointed that we’re not going to be able to resolve this case short of trial.’’ She said she could not comment further because settlement talks were confidential.

Further details in The Boston Globe.

jchev Massachusetts, Mental Health Issues

The Massachusetts government is considering closing four prison facilities to save as much as $98 million, according to the head of the union that represents about 4,500 correction officers, who met with the head of the prison system today.  Story from the Boston Globe.

Steve Kenneway, president of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, said that Harold W. Clarke, the commissioner of the Department of Correction, also informed him that the state is considering laying off 300 employees, which Kenneway assumed meant correction officers. The administration plans to make a decision on closings and layoffs after it gets a better handle on projected state revenues next month. “Obviously, we’re stunned that the fiscal situation is so egregious that we may be looking at the closure of several facilities in Massachusetts,” said Kenneway. “We believe that public safety is a core mission for Massachusetts government. Period. We can’t let bad people out on the street.”

Kenneway said Clarke discussed the possible closings at the monthly meeting in Milford between the union’s executive board and top prison managers. He said Clarke’s comments came the day after Ronald Duval, a deputy commissioner, called him with other bad news: the state’s fiscal crisis was forcing the department to cancel in-service training for correction officers and to delay indefinitely the training of a class of 150 correction officer recruits, which was supposed to start next month.

The prison system also plans to close the Massachusetts Alcohol and Substance Abuse Center in Bridgewater on Nov. 6 and transfer people civilly committed there by the courts to other state facilities, Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Correction, said today. The closing will mean that about 100 individuals who are undergoing detoxification and receiving counseling will go to facilities run by the state Department of Public Health, she said. Wiffin said she did not know how much money the state will save by closing the center. But she said the prison system has no plans to close any prisons. “We’re looking at fiscal 2011 now, and it’s too early to project what that could mean,” she said.

Kenneway said his union was aware in July that the state planned to close the alcohol and substance abuse center. He said he was so startled by Clarke’s comments about possibly closing four facilities, that he was not sure whether the substance abuse center was among them or in addition to them. He said Clarke told him the prison system expects the government to cut $35 million from its budget in fiscal 2010 and as much as $63 million more in fiscal 2011, depending on the revenue picture. “Nothing is etched in stone,” he said.

Kenneway’s union has strongly opposed previous steps Clarke has taken to deal with a rising prison population, including double-bunking inmates at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley earlier this year. If four prisons closed, he said, that would result in either more double-bunking or the release of inmates onto the streets. “There’s no place left to put inmates,” he said. “They’re going to force-feed a reentry program that clearly wasn’t supposed to be a reentry program.”

jakking Budgets, Economic Issues, Massachusetts, Personnel Issues

The state budget crunch has hit the Bristol County MA Sheriff’s Department, which like other county sheriff’s offices regularly turns to the state for supplemental funding during the fiscal year.  Report from the Herald News.

“Every year, it’s the same exercise except this year they’re going to the state and the state is saying ‘We don’t have the money to pay you,’” said Bristol County Treasurer Kevin Finnerty, who predicts the department could run out of cash within weeks.   Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s office has not paid inmate health care bills or prison utility bills since January so the office can pay its personnel. He estimates the department needs an extra $5.4 million through the end of June. If not, the sheriff said he’ll turn to the National Guard to take over in Bristol County …

More than a budget deficit is keeping the state from helping out, Hodgson said. The sheriff thinks the lack of supplemental funding is payback because he fought against a proposal backed by Gov. Deval Patrick to shift sheriff departments into part of the state government. Hodgson said he has written to Patrick four times since November to warn that if county-run sheriff’s offices aren’t given better funding that services will need to be cut. The governor has not responded, he said.  Hodgson is planning to write again, telling Patrick that he wants to meet with the National Guard to create a contingency plan, he said. “I don’t know how much more clear I can be.”

Finnerty predicts the sheriff’s office will run out of money by May 7, or perhaps a week later, using conservative revenue estimates. The department owes $1.4 million for inmate health care since November, according to the sheriff.   “They don’t have the money to pay those bills and also pay people to watch the inmates,” Finnerty said.

jakking County-State Issues, Economic Issues, MA Bristol County, Massachusetts

Some states are starting to believe that the solution to problems with corrections is not to throw more money at the system. Instead, they’re talking about putting fewer people in jail.  This report from National Public Radio.

“There’s this long New Hampshire tradition of tough on crime, but there’s a huge New Hampshire tradition of being pretty darn stingy,” says Chris Keating, executive director of New Hampshire’s public defender program.   But being tough on crime can be expensive, and Keating says in New Hampshire, the tradition of stinginess is starting to win out. The insider term is “decriminalization.”

New Hampshire’s state Legislature is considering measures that would take away the threat of jail time for some offenses, and in the U.S., the government only has to pay for a defense lawyer when poor defendants face incarceration. So taking away the threat of jail saves money, and Keating believes New Hampshire is trying to distinguish between people society is mad at and people society is afraid of … “I think they want to move these people and cases through the system because they realize they’ve got finite resources and these cases are just bogging them down.”

William Wren, the commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Corrections, says tough budget prospects are forcing him to look at closing a whole prison and laying off 97 positions. For that reason, Wren wants fewer people sent to prison, and he is asking lawmakers to examine which crimes really deserve time behind bars.   “I’ll give you a good example — our theft statutes, the threshold dollar amount for going from a misdemeanor to a felony crime is $500. That was set 31 years ago. What $500 was 31 years ago is a lot different from what it would equate to today,” he says.

These kinds of conversations are happening across the country.

Chief public defender for Massachusetts, Bill Leahy, says cuts have to come from somewhere.  “We’ve got a 3 1/2 billion-dollar deficiency in Massachusetts this year, all kinds of worthy programs are being cut, and we’re continuing to waste money on prosecuting crimes that are criminal only by statute,” Leahy says …

“I think it’s a major shift,” says David Carroll, the director of research for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association. “We’ve had a hangover on the tough-on-crime movement and realize that to keep going down that path we’re only escalating costs at ever greater rates.”

jakking Economic Issues, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Re-Entry

The Boston Globe reports that the highest court in Massachusetts struck down a law yesterday that allows the state to keep juvenile offenders who are slated to be released at 18 in custody for three more years if they are believed to be dangerous.

The Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional will result in the release of a dozen juvenile offenders whom state officials had kept incarcerated after their 18th birthday.  One of those was among a group of young offenders who had challenged the law. The high court wrote that the law fails to define dangerousness, gives “unbridled discretion” to the Department of Youth Services, and violates the due-process rights of offenders.  “The language contains no indication of the nature and degree of dangerousness that would justify continued commitment and offers the department no guidance on how to make such a determination,” wrote Justice Judith Cowin.

Berkshire District Attorney David F. Capeless, president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said the ruling means “some dangerous young people, those who the DYS have determined continue to pose a real danger to the community despite being under DYS supervision . . . are going to be at large” …

In yesterday’s decision, Cowin wrote that the court warned the Legislature in 2004 that it had “grave concerns” about the constitutionality of the statute because of its failure to adequately define dangerousness, and “invited it to correct the deficiencies.” However, the Legislature did not change the law.

Yesterday’s ruling does not apply to juvenile offenders who, because of the severity of their crimes, were sentenced to state custody until age 21, nor to juveniles who were tried as adults and sentenced to prison terms.

jakking Juvenile Justice, Massachusetts, Sentencing

From a press release issued by the Bristol County MA Sheriff’s Office:

Aware of the economic crisis facing government at every level — federal, state and local — Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson is calling for legislation that will allow the Department of Corrections and all Sheriffs to adopt the $5-a-day cost of care fee that enjoyed such success while it was in effect from 2002 to 2004 in Bristol County … Sheriff Hodgson is suggesting a daily custodial care fee of $5, and a $5 fee for sick call visits, dental visits, a prescription eyeglasses fee and a $3 co-pay for prescription drugs.

Sheriff Hodgson gave an interview to a local TV station where he expanded on his plans.

jakking Booking Fees, MA Bristol County

The number of inmates in Massachusetts prisons is projected to reach about 12,000 next year for the first time, prompting the head of the prison system to call for sentencing changes that ease overcrowding and to proceed with a controversial plan to double-bunk inmates at a maximum-security facility.

About two weeks short of his one-year anniversary as commissioner of the Department of Correction, Harold W. Clarke said last week that he hopes Governor Deval Patrick reintroduces legislation to reform “mandatory minimum” sentences, which Clarke said have led to a surge in inmates, many with no history of violence.  “We’ve been really concerned with mandatory sentencing laws,” Clarke, 57, said at the department’s headquarters here. “We don’t want people backed up in prison that are not posing a risk to the community at large.”

On Nov. 3, the state’s 18 prisons held 11,380 inmates, putting them at 44 percent above capacity, Clarke said. The number is projected to grow by 5 to 7 percent next year, which would put the population at between 11,949 and 12,176.  The prison population declined steadily from 10,990 in 1999 to 9,825 in 2005, but it has surged since then, according to department statistics. The totals include convicted offenders, people awaiting trial, and individuals committed involuntarily – even though they have finished their sentences – because they still pose a danger, such as some sex offenders.

With crime rates remaining relatively stable, Clarke said, the main reason for the surge is mandatory-minimum sentences passed by Massachusetts since the 1980s. Many of the laws were approved as part of a harsh nationwide crackdown on drug offenses, but a growing number of judges, defense lawyers, prison administrators, and advocates for prisoners say they often do more harm than good.  As of Sept. 22, about 1,917 inmates were serving a mandatory minimum sentence for a drug offense, said Diane Wiffin, a prison system spokeswoman. Those inmates are ineligible for parole and are forbidden from participating in work-release programs or halfway houses that could ease overcrowding …

In the meantime, Clarke is moving forward with a plan to double-bunk some inmates at a maximum-security prison. As early as year’s end, he said, he plans to move 400 inmates from maximum-security MCI-Cedar Junction at Walpole to Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.  Each of the 400 inmates would share a cell with another prisoner at Souza-Baranowski, which has 1,028 inmates. Cedar Junction would become a medium-security prison that takes in new inmates until they are classified, a role currently played by MCI-Concord. And Old Colony Correctional Center, a medium- and minimum-security prison in Bridgewater, would mostly house inmates with diagnoses of mental illness.

“There are some inmates out there who are going to make a choice whether to accept a roommate or kill their roommate,” he said. “That’s not an exaggeration …We don’t have many options – one, releasing offenders, and two, building more capacity – and I’m not sure that either of those are now palatable,” he said.

More details in the article at the Boston Globe.

jakking Massachusetts, Overcrowding, Sentencing

When convicted child rapist Paul Nolin murdered 20-year-old Jonathan Wessner in 2003, Nolin was one of thousands of unregistered sex offenders who had failed to provide his address to police.

There were more than 6,000 unclassified sex offenders statewide five years ago, but Wessner’s murder prompted dramatic action at the state and local levels to better track sex offenders, including the 302 registered Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders on the Cape today. The state classifies sex offenders on a scale of 1 to 3, with Level 3 convicts considered at highest risk to commit another sexual assault.  There are now 2,000 unregistered sex offenders in Massachusetts, a 65 percent drop in five years …

Wessner’s murder put a spotlight on public safety officials’ inability to track down and classify the more than 6,000 sex offenders present in the state at the time. Before the murder exposed the state’s deficiencies in tracking sex offenders, the biggest problem was the sheer number of convicts ignoring the law that required them to register their address, said Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe.  “As people were released from prison, they were expected to comply voluntarily,” O’Keefe said. “But these were the people violating the laws in the first place, so what would give us any hope to believe they would voluntarily obey the notification provision?”

To help remedy the problem, O’Keefe and Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings used $275,000 in state money in 2004 to start a sex offender management pilot program. Under the program, sex offenders in prison are classified as Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3 convicts before leaving prison, O’Keefe said. Although it remains the convicts’ responsibility to notify local police officials if they move to a new town, O’Keefe said it gives law enforcement officials a head start when convicts leave prison already classified and registered.  Earlier this month, Gov. Deval Patrick announced $1 billion in emergency budget cuts, including $80,000 trimmed from Barnstable County’s sex offender management program. The figure represents half of the program’s funding.  Officers have been making more than 100 visits a year to the reported homes and work places of registered sex offenders to make sure they actually live and work there, Cummings said. “We will only be able to do about half of that now,” he said.

The full article at the Cape Cod Times contains a great deal more operational data.

jakking Community Corrections, MA Barnstaple County, Sex Offenders

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released the 2005 Census of Federal and State Correctional Facilities.  The document has a wealth of data across all States, including the numbers of privately-operated facilities.

The document can be accessed from the Basic Stats list at the top right sidebar.

jakking Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Federal Systems, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Private Prisons, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

• Blair County PA considers starting a drug court …
• … a similar program in Clarion County PA reports saving 2,877 jail days and $130,000.
• NaphCare has signed a $36 million contract to service health, mental health and dental needs for the 1,500 inmates in Essex County MA.
• More problems for the city-run private jail in Hardin MT as Wyoming DOC says no thanks.  (see earlier report)

jakking Drug Treatment & Diversion, Inmate Health Care, MA Essex County, MT Hardin, NaphCare, PA Blair County, PA Clarion County

Coast to coast, authorities are expanding electronic monitoring to fight crime — moving beyond its early use in tracking movements of sex offenders to include gang members who have been released on probation, people accused of repeated violence against women and even truant students at schools.  A recent Reuters report noted:

Massachusetts, one of the first states to employ it in 2006, now has about 700 people fitted with electronic bracelets that send signals via satellite to computer servers if they go places they shouldn’t — so-called “exclusion zones.” The Massachusetts law, which allows judges to impose electronic monitoring as a condition of a restraining order, has become a model for states such as Illinois and Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Senate voted 47-0 in April to enlist GPS technology to protect victims of domestic violence. The Illinois House of Representatives unanimously passed similar surveillance legislation last month.

Saving money is one of the main attractions.

GPS is a cost-effective alternative to prison, said Paul Lucci, deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Probation Service, pointing to a chart taped to his office wall showing a state-wide surge in use of GPS — mostly to track sex offenders but also for others. “These people probably should be in jail but the cost of incarceration can be as much as $30,000 or $40,000 a year. The GPS costs about $3,400 a year,” he said. “I think it’s good on both sides. It is a device to protect the public. Although we can’t guarantee anyone’s safety, it provides an extra level of supervision on somebody. On the other side, for a defense attorney, it is in lieu of incarceration,” said Lucci.

However, while wearing a GPS bracelet clearly serves as a deterrent, there seems to be little longterm change in behavior.

North Carolina’s eastern Pitt County, a rural tobacco-growing region of 138,690 people, adopted the technology in late 2005 to relieve overcrowded jails by freeing more accused batterers on bond and tracking them with GPS before they go to trial. It was expanded last year to four more counties. In a measure of success, police dispatchers receive fewer calls involving the same person when an offender wears a GPS bracelet. Pitt County’s recidivism rate for domestic violence fell from 36 percent in 2004 to 14 percent this year, said Sgt. John Guard of local sheriff’s domestic violence unit. But once batterers finish the program and go off GPS, the rate shot back up to around 40 percent, he added.

There are other concerns.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Linfield warned a Harvard Law School panel in February that GPS may offer only a “high tech illusion of safety” that fails to do more to protect women than traditional restraining orders, according to the law school’s newspaper, The Record … “It’s more than just slapping a GPS on a guy. You have to really have an intelligent coordinated approach to it and then it really can save lives,” said Diane Rosenfeld, a professor at Harvard Law School who helped draft the Massachusetts law.

Other uses for GPS, such as pre-trial monitoring, are also increasingly being used.  Hamilton County OH, for example, just ordered 200 more units specifically “to help jail overcrowding”.    This will push the number of units in Cincinnati to more than 600.  Charlotte NC just agreed to increase its monitoring budget by half a million this year to deal with an increase in crime.

jakking Electronic Monitoring, Illinois, Massachusetts, NC Mecklenburg County, NC Pitt County, OH Hamilton County, Oklahoma

• New jail fees caused by inmate health cost increases squeeze city cops in Columbia SC
• Moving the Utah State Pen is still on the agenda.
• GEO plans to expand its currently idle facility in Baldwin MI. New building will increase beds from 500 to 1,750.
• MA reports 39% recidivism rate over three years from 2002 releases, better than national average of 53%.

jakking GEO, Massachusetts, Michigan, Private Prisons, Re-Entry, SC Columbia, South Carolina, Utah

In a recent interview, Harold Clarke, the new DOC Commissioner in Massachusetts, outlines his policies and plans.

The state’s new prison chief wants to reverse what he sees as the failed “busting rocks” philosophy of the past two decades and make inmate rehabilitation and re-entry a cornerstone of his tenure … “We got tough and what have we gotten for that? Do we feel any safer?” asked Clarke, who began on Nov. 26, 2007, after years at the helm of prison systems in Nebraska and Washington state. “Rates of recidivism are climbing. We are going in the wrong direction and this is getting worse.” He cited statistics that show that 80 percent of state prison inmates read below a sixth-grade level and more than 50 percent were unemployed at the time of their incarceration. “Good re-entry is good public safety,” said Clarke, who most recently ran the Washington State Department of Corrections for two years. “Offenders do not come to prison to be punished. They came to prison as punishment.”

Read all that Commissioner Clarke has to say in the Boston Herald.

jakking Massachusetts, Re-Entry