Education and Vocational Assistance

The Correctional Education Association Conference, 2011-The State of Correctional Education in America-DC Public Safety Radio

February 27, 2012 By Len Leave a Comment

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Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2011/07/the-correctional-education-association-conference-2011-the-state-of-correctional-education-in-america-dc-public-safety-radio/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: This is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. We’re broadcasting live from The Correctional Education Conference here in Charleston, West Virginia. We have five hundred people from not only all over the country, but all over the world – over five hundred people who are here to discuss correctional education. As you’re well aware – those of us within the criminal justice system – there are entire states that are cutting out their correctional education programs, vocational programs, educational programs and there are other states cutting back because they feel they have no choice because of budgets. We’re here to discuss what’s going on throughout the country – new and innovative ways to deliver correctional education programs.

The research does seem to be pretty clear that the better prepared they are upon release from the prison systems, the better they do in society, which means that fewer people are victimized by crime and the less money the taxpayers have to put out to put them back into the prison systems. So it’s a win-win situation for everybody. We’re going to be a doing a series of five-minute interviews, short interviews. First up is Susan Lockwood. She is the Director of Juvenile Education in a Midwest state and she is also the President of the Council of State Directors for the Correctional Educational Association talking about computer-based learning, computer-learning skills.

We’re talking to William Byers. He is from the state of Arkansas. He is a School Superintendent for the correctional system there in the state of Arkansas, where they found the 25% difference in recidivism, which is pretty significant. We have Denise Justice. Denise is the CEA Past President and she is a School Superintendent for an entire correctional system in the state. She received their President’s Award for her relentless pursuit of correctional educational and she’s talking about how to promote correctional education throughout the United States to get everybody to understand that the payoffs can be significant. Steve Steurer is up for the next five-minute interview. He is the Executive Director of the Correctional Educational Association. His job is to provide an overview, provide a national perspective as to where we currently are with correctional education.

And finally, the last person up is Cindy Borden. She with a company called Northstar Correctional Systems and she under contract for the Correctional Education Association. They did a four-year piece of research in terms of school programming, post-secondary education, collegiate education and in essence the people who they followed up in a two-year time period, one-third of these individuals were enrolled in college and three-quarters were employed, which is a pretty doggone good piece of research or statistics in terms of correctional educational programs and their results. So, again, short five-minute interviews starting with Susan Lockwood and we hope you enjoy the program.

Len Sipes: This is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. We’re broadcasting live today from The Correctional Education Association Conference in Charleston, West Virginia. Quite frankly, ladies and gentleman I’ve been to correctional conferences throughout the country and Tim Barnes and I have done our fair share of conference support and this is one of the largest correctional conferences I’ve seen. It’s principally people who are involved in correctional education, correctional programs, who have an interest in the whole concept of a fund of reentry and we’re here today talking to a variety of people. First up is Susan Lockwood. She is the Director of Juvenile Education at a Midwest Department of Corrections. But here in her capacity she is President of the Council of State Directors for the Correctional Education Association and, Susan, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Susan Lockwood: Thank you for having me.

Len Sipes: One of the interesting things here, Susan, is this whole concept of long-distance education, the correctional education. There’s a lot of states out there they’re budgets have been decreasing. In fact, one state in particular – California – pretty much wiped out correctional education. So different people are saying are there ways of doing this differently. Are there new and unique ways using unique technologies to do a better job, to stretch the tax-paid dollar as much as possible? And one of the things that I find interesting in what you’re doing is it’s GED in computer-based curriculum and testing, where your individuals that are involved in this program, what they’re doing is they’re learning computer skills. They’re learning how to type. They’re learning how to word-process for them to be comfortable with computer learning. So this is the process of teaching them how to take the GED test but to do it by computer, correct, do it by long-distance learning?

Susan Lockwood: Correct. That’s why we’re going to have to drive our curriculum since we’re anticipating the fact that the GED testing service is going to move to that computer application of… the application of taking the test by computer and a lot of our funders are not ready to do that because they lack those skills. So, yes, we would have to adjust our curriculum and prepare them in order to do that.

Len Sipes: There are a lot of people out there who are still computer-illiterate. I mean…

Susan Lockwood: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: Whether you’re in prison or out of prison. I mean, there’s…I spoke to a gentleman the other day who just absolutely refuses to open a computer keyboard.

Susan Lockwood: Right.

Len Sipes: He’s well-educated. He’s smart, but he is at that age where he’s just not familiar with it. So this is a scary thing for some people.

Susan Lockwood: Sure and a lot of our offenders, especially some of our older offenders who have been incarcerated for long periods of time, obviously, are not technology-literate and so it can be barrier for them if they wanted to take a computer-based test.

Len Sipes: Right. So the whole idea here is to get them comfortable with a computer to the point where they can take their GED test. Now, GED curriculums are an integral part of prison education. We want them to be literate. We want them to know how to read. We want them to get their eighth grade certificate, their reading certificates, their GED certificates. The GED certificate’s sort of at the top of that ladder, correct?

Susan Lockwood: Sure. In our state it serves as a market signal…

Len Sipes: Right.

Susan Lockwood: For whether or not a student is ready or a person is ready to enter post-secondary job training or even an employment situation.

Len Sipes: It’ll make all the difference in the world in terms of that offender. I mean…

Susan Lockwood: Sure.

Len Sipes: If he or she has a GED, he or she suddenly becomes a marketable, far more marketable than without it.

Susan Lockwood: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: So the concept of doing the computer testing is you have to get them comfortable with the keyboard. You have to get them comfortable with the keystrokes.

Susan Lockwood: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: And there’s a lot of work that goes into that.

Susan Lockwood: Right and then there’s also portions of the test that involve writing an essay and so the student would need to be able to word-process to be able to actually type that in and within the time limit of taking the test.

Len Sipes: Now, is there ever the possibility of being instructed… taking your instructions for the GED through a computer or at a long-distance learning or is that in the future?

Susan Lockwood: Sure. There are lots of companies already that offer different curricular that can be delivered via computer. So that obviously would be something that lots of states are looking at, to be able to load that software into a lab and let students have that opportunity to improve themselves and grow academically through a lot of the coursework that would be on the computer.

Len Sipes: Right. One of the questions that was asked of me is why can’t there be somebody sitting in the state of Kansas or, you know, and teaching people in Alaska? Why isn’t that possible?

Susan Lockwood: Well, that would be possible, although, having experienced that kind of a situation myself via distance learning, I think that being on the receiving end of that instruction it’s really more beneficial to not only have that piece, but also to have a person in the room with the students right there on site where they can actually ask the questions, discuss and it’s often a lot more…

Len Sipes: Powerful.

Susan Lockwood: Yeah, definitely.

Len Sipes: Sure. Okay and before we go, before we end this particular part of the program, I do want to touch upon the benefits to society. A person gets a GED and what happens?

Susan Lockwood: Well, the whole thought would be that as part of a process of gaining employment that, again, the GED would be a market signal and so it just allows this person to have an opportunity to be successful and outside the fence, to be able to go out, perhaps get a job, perhaps get further job training and once that a person becomes employed, our research has shown that it impacts recidivism; that employment is…

Len Sipes: Right. There are fewer crimes.

Susan Lockwood: Right.

Len Sipes: There are fewer crimes as a result of it.

Susan Lockwood: Exactly.

Len Sipes: And it eases the tax-paid burden because….

Susan Lockwood: Exactly.

Len Sipes: They’re out there paying taxes instead of taking taxes.

Susan Lockwood: Instead of being a tax liability, they’re paying taxes.

Len Sipes: Our guest today has been Susan Lockwood. She is the Director of Juvenile Education for a state in the Midwest, but in her capacity today she is the President of the Council of State Directors, again, at the Correctional Education Association Conference here in Charleston, West Virginia. Please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

Len Sipes: From the Correctional Education Association Conference in Charleston, West Virginia, I’m really pleased to have William Byers by our microphones. He’s the Superintendent of the Arkansas Correctional School System. He’s in charge of the whole shebang. He’s on the Board of the Correctional Education Association and is also Regional Director with the Correctional Education Association And one of the things that Mr. Byers was talking about – Superintendent Byers was talking about – was the fact that he has a 25% reduction in the rate of recidivism for those people who obtain GEDs. Am I right?

William Byers: That is correct, yes.

Len Sipes: Well that’s incredible, a 25% reduction. Most of the research on reentry programs will basically give 10-20%. Twenty percent seems to be on the outer reaches of the reduction of recidivism. You’re doing 25%. Why is that?

William Byers: Well, we have a very successful program. Number One: We require everyone who comes into the Department of Correction who does not have a high school diploma or GED to attend school while they’re incarcerated. Also, I might add that the Board of Correction is also our school board and they are very supportive of our program. Education, they place a high priority on education. The teachers know that. The students know that. The inmates know that. So I think that’s one thing that contributes to the success. Not only that, but we find that those who get out not only recidivated at a lower level than those who don’t earn a high school diploma or GED, but they also get a better paying job and they’re more likely to have a job.

Len Sipes: Right and they’re more likely to keep a job probably.

William Byers: Exactly, exactly.

Len Sipes: But the interesting thing is that, we in the United States, we’re having a struggle now with correctional education and with reentry programs and vocational educational programs. There are some states that are giving more money towards it and some states that are cutting it out because of their budget situation. The states are in a dire budget situation. What do you say to citizens – somebody sitting out there, somebody from the Governor’s Office, somebody from the PTA – to convince them that correctional education is worthwhile, that it’s in the average citizen’s best interests to do this?

William Byers: I don’t care what studies you look at. You can look at them from the free world, from the prison situation. The bottom line is education helps. It helps society. If you look at populations, the more educated the populous is the higher the level of income and that’s true of the general population; it’s also true of the inmate population. The more educated they are, the better they’ll behave in prison, the more likely they’ll get out and stay out. So it’s beneficial to society if individuals can get an education while they’re incarcerated.

Len Sipes: Being a correctional officer is one of the toughest, most dangerous jobs of the face of the earth.

William Byers: It is.

Len Sipes: These programs…this is very rarely ever discussed, the fact that these programs keep prisoners peaceful.

William Byers: Yes. We deal with 21 wardens around the state in Arkansas and they will tell you that they want education in their unit because not only does it provide something for the inmates to do, but it provides something positive for them to do.

Len Sipes: Sure. You want to have problems, then give them nothing to do. Let them play basketball. Let them sit in their bunks. That’s a dangerous prison. If you have programs in the prison, that’s a safe, sane prison.

William Byers: Plus, they’re around educators. They’re around educated people who mentor them and affect them in a positive way just by being around them.

Len Sipes: How many people do you graduate a year from the GED program? I was very impressed by that.

William Byers: In the state of Arkansas we have over a thousand inmates a year to earn their GED and that compares to…the inmate population in Arkansas is about fifteen thousand, so we have a high participation and we have a lot of people who walk out with a GED.

Len Sipes: Now, we use the word ‘recidivism’ rather loosely. What we’re talking about is fewer people being mugged, fewer people being victims of crime because inmates get GED programs. They go on to live… they have the chance to live a more successful life, make more money, to be in that job longer, which translates into fewer crimes, which translates into individuals paying taxes and not being a tax burden.

William Byers: And that’s something you can’t measure. We say that they’re taxpayers instead of being a tax burden, but also you can’t measure somebody not being mugged or somebody not being raped. That’s one of the benefits that you can’t put a figure on.

Len Sipes: Well, that will be the final word from you. William Byers, B-Y-E-R-S, William Byers – he is the Superintendent of the Arkansas Correctional School System. Thank you very much for being with us.

William Byers: Thank you for having me.

Len Sipes: This is DC Public Safety. We’re at The Correctional Education Conference in Charleston, West Virginia and at our microphones today is a person with a really unique last name: Denise Justice. She is CEA Past President. She is a School Superintendent – and I love all the Superintendents that we’re interviewing today – for a correctional system somewhere in the United States. She received the President’s Award today from the Correctional Education Association and I asked somebody as you why she got the award. It was for relentless pursuit or advocacy for correctional education. So I figured she’d be the right person to ask. Denise, why in the name of God do we do correctional education? A lot of people are out there. There are a lot of other priorities. There’s the elderly. There are people out of work. I mean, there are a lot of issues in the United States today. Why should anybody care about correctional education?

Denise Justice: There are a lot of issues in the United States and we are clear about that, but when we have an incarcerated person in the United States, they are about 99.9% sure that they are going to get released at some point in time.

Len Sipes: At some point in time.

Denise Justice: At some point in time. Very few people go to prison and never ever come out again and when they do come out, they don’t move far away from each one of us. They’re in our neighbourhood. They’re five minutes away from us. They’re next door, wherever the case may be. They’re going to come home. Many of them were incarcerated because they did not have the skills – educational skills, employment skills – in order to be able to be a taxpaying citizen.

Len Sipes: The research says that we interact with people caught up in the criminal justice system every single day whether we go to a restaurant, whether we go to the auto store, whether we go to the tire stores, whether we go…it doesn’t matter. We are encountering individuals who have been caught up in a criminal justice system every single day. So if they’re constantly around us, doesn’t it make sense to be sure that when they come out of the prison system they’re as best prepared as they possibly can be to live a productive life?

Denise Justice: Absolutely because it does save us money. If they can come out and get a job and pay taxes and stay out of the criminal justice system because that costs taxpayers a lot of money, too.

Len Sipes: Sure.

Denise Justice: Then we are actually saving ourselves money. We also…you need to think about do you want your neighbor to have some skills to be able to get a job and pay those taxes or do you want to force them into a situation where all they can do is go out and cause another crime? And maybe the crime is robbing your house, taking your VCR, your TV.

Len Sipes: So what we’re talking about is lessening the crime rate for individuals listening to this program. They become safer because of correctional education programs.

Denise Justice: Absolutely. You can look at any recidivism study that you want to and if you don’t know, recidivism is basically the rate at which people come back to prison or come back into the justice field and you can look and see no matter what study is done, it tells you that people who are involved in education or getting employable skills are going to be less likely at whatever rate – there are different rates, you know – 10%, 20%, 30% differentials, but whatever it is, education makes them less likely to come back to prison.

Len Sipes: Well, the guest before you, William Byers, Superintendent of the Arkansas Correctional School System, I mean he claimed a 25% reduction. That’s large. I mean in a world where you’re happy if you get 7% and you’re satisfied if you get 10% and you’re ecstatic is you get 20%. By heavens, 25% is a huge difference. I mean, if you have seven hundred thousand people come home every year in this country from prison, 25% of that lopped off, 25% of these people going on to be taxpayers instead of tax burdens. That saves states millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, in the long run in terms of construction costs, in terms of operating costs. It saves taxpayers a lot of money.

Denise Justice: Absolutely. We found in the 80s, a lot of states got into prison-building booms. They tried to build themselves out of prison overcrowding and what we discovered was it was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy – if you build it, they will come. So we were building double and triple the number of prisons maybe we had in our state and instead of getting down to a 100% capacity in our facilities we still found ourselves 125%, 150%, 200% over capacity.

Len Sipes: Regardless as to how many prisons we built, they were still overcrowded.

Denise Justice: Regardless of how many prisons, absolutely, and so now we are looking more at the fact that what we need to do is to start the day that people come into our system and to start planning for their reentry, looking at getting them their GED if they have not completed a GED or a diploma. Looking at getting them career tech skills and employability skills so that they can go out dealing with their addictions, dealing with their anger, issues of child abuse and all of those areas and getting them ready to go back out on the street. Getting them to know what linkages is out there that can help them. Whatever areas they needed to stay out.

Len Sipes: Okay. So quick answer on this one because we need a quick answer. We’re just about out of time. So the Correctional Education Association is designed to advocate that throughout the country, is to bring likeminded people…there are over five hundred people at this conference today and over the course of the next couple of days. That’s a large gathering, especially in these economic times. So everybody’s coming together to do what?

Denise Justice: Everyone’s coming together – particularly at our international conferences – is to come together to share problems that you’re having, to come up with solutions, share solutions you maybe came up with at home, to find materials and resources that we can use because of budgetary cuts.

Len Sipes: Ladies and gentlemen, my guest today has been Denise Justice. She is the Correctional Education Association Past President. She’s the Superintendent of a Correctional School System for a state and the award recipient today for the President’s Award at the Correctional Education Association Conference. Please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

This is DC Public Safety. I continue to be your host Leonard Sipes as we broadcast from The Correctional Education Association Conference in Charleston, West Virginia. I really have a lot of pleasure in reintroducing because he’s been to our microphones before, Steve Stuerer. He is the Executive Director of the Correctional Education Association – Steve, welcome back to DC Public Safety.

Steve Stuerer: Thank you for having me again.

Len Sipes: It’s a really interesting conference. Again, Tim and I have been to conferences…Tim Barnes and I have been to correctional conferences throughout the country and we’ve been to government conferences throughout the country dealing with social media and this is by far one of the largest conferences I’ve seen. You have well over five hundred people in attendance.

Steve Stuerer: Well, we’ve been very lucky. West Virginia is terrifically supportive of correctional education and people, I think, the people are bringing themselves together and it’s a tough time. I think it’s actually drawing us together rather than pulling us apart and pulling us down.

Len Sipes: Well, it is a tough time and I do want to emphasize that this is a national conference not necessarily a West Virginia conference. You have people from all over the country. We have a couple of people from around the world and education programs in correctional facilities, correctional systems, throughout the country they’re hurting. California sliced out the entire education program. You have different states that are cutting back significantly.

So what you’re going to do for me today is to put it in perspective. Where are we in terms of correctional education in the United States – whether it’s GED programs, whether it’s vocational programs? Where are we? Are we gaining? A lot of states are saying, “Hey, the way to reduce recidivism and control our costs is to put more programs on the table.” Some states are saying, “I’m sorry. We can’t afford it. We’re in a budget jam.” Where are we? Put it in perspective for me.

Steve Stuerer: On a national level, we’re losing. We just lost all our post-secondary money that we had from the federal government – $17.2m was going out to the states on a formula basis. That’s gone. Not likely to be getting that back any time soon. Some of the states still support post-secondary education – vocational primarily, but with credits – through state funding of various sorts or some inmates actually pay their own way if their families can afford it. So we lost that. GED, we’re hanging in there, but we have a whole new challenge because GED is going on computer and within two years it will be computer-based.

So that’s going to present a real problem financially for a lot of systems trying to retool. So the whole basic education, GED, it’s holding in there, but we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to meet this GED challenge; vocational education, probably losing there, too. The Perkins Act, which has been around for decades, is being severely cut. So a lot of that money would go into corrections as well as into the community. Vocational programs, we’re cut with that. So I think generally speaking in just about every state we’re having some real stress.

Len Sipes: Is that why you have such a good turnout at the conference, though? I mean, I see a lot of enthusiasm and the people that I’m talking to today certainly aren’t down in the mouth. They are enthusiastic about what it is that they do. They’re hopeful about what it is they do. They see the value in terms of what it is they do. So there’s a dichotomy here. On one side, I agree with you that we are struggling in terms of maintaining the number of programs and the quality of programs, but on the flipside is the enthusiasm I see from the membership of the Correctional Education Association. They know the value and they want to move forward.

Steve Stuerer: Yeah, I think it’s kind of descriptive of our membership to see that kind of enthusiasm. They’re used to working in tough circumstances. They’re used to working with people who no one else wants to work with; who have given up on them. So when problems come along, they can gripe and groan just like everybody else and some of them just give up and shake their heads and wring their hands, but I think most of the people respond accordingly: Well, we don’t have much to begin with. Let’s figure out how we can do it a different way. Let’s see if we can find some more resources. Let’s see if…

Len Sipes: Is there a different way of doing it?

Steve Stuerer: Well, we’re trying to see what different ways can be done. I mean, with the GED, for example, we’re going to work very closely with the GED Testing Service, which is owned jointly by GED Testing and American Council of Education and Pearson VUE, which is a company that does a lot of vocational assessment. So we’re going to see. There might be ways to deliver things a little bit differently. At CEA one of the things we do is we train teachers to train inmates to be tutors and what started out was a kind of collaboration between Maryland and Ohio ideas, the concept of tutor training, we put it into a national program.

There’s like six states now that we’ve gone in, we’ve trained thirty… anywhere from thirty to eighty teachers at a time in three-day seminars, how to train inmates to be their aids and most states will allow inmates to act as aids. In Ohio we’re…in the last five years or so, I think it is, they’ve trained over thirty-five hundred inmates who in turn work with the teacher and tutor others in the classroom, so they’re not running around in some disorganized fashion. It’s a little army, so to speak. In Louisiana, they’re about three years into this. They’ve trained over five hundred inmates. In fact, the job is one of the best in the system. Inmates have to be highly qualified to do it and then they get some special privileges. They might get sent to another institution.

Len Sipes: So we really are squeezing that rock for…

Steve Stuerer: We’re squeezing it…

Len Sipes: We’re being as innovative as possible, but one of the other…a question I asked to another person at our microphones this afternoon was why can’t you have a person centrally located somewhere in the United States teaching inmates any place else in the United States through a long-distance learning?

Steve Stuerer: Well, you could possibly do that with some of the folks. I mean, a lot of folks do things online, for example, but I daresay, because I teach online for the University of Maryland University College; it’s an open university and some students have a great deal of difficulty because a lack of sufficient writing skills, reading skills, etc. They are much better served with some face-to-face assistance, whether it’s a mentor or hopefully a teacher, but people need assistance who have a lot of severe deficits and the correctional population, typically, come in…

Len Sipes: Is filled with people who have severe deficits when they come to the education…

Steve Stuerer: All kinds of deficits and complications.

Len Sipes: But before we end the program and we’re in our final minute of the program, I do want to get around to the results because people listen to this program and they’re going to say to themselves, “Okay, you’re the Executive Director of the Correctional Education Association. Sorry, Mr. Executive Director, we’ve got elderly people. We’ve got school kids to take care of. We have so many people unemployed and now you want me to give money and support to this whole concept of correctional education,” and to these people you’re going to respond how?

Steve Stuerer: Well, if I were to talk to a group of elderly people, I think I could get some of them to understand the situation. Things are tough and what are you going to do? Why can’t you reach out to other folks who are in bad situations? What is it about us that we in the United States that we tend to just incarcerate somebody and want to throw away the key? Why isn’t the concept of community, of helping each other, people who are down, who are quite capable if they get the right kind of assistance…why do we want to do that?

Len Sipes: But there are tangible benefits to taxpayers as well.

Steve Stuerer: Sure.

Len Sipes: Look, they’re not going to…their chances of being mugged, their chances of their house being burglarized are significantly reduced if these individuals are trained in prison.

Steve Stuerer: Right, but the reason I bring out this other issue is that we’ve made that argument for years – the reduction of recidivism. We did one of the significant studies in the field and so that really brought the attention of politicians, but right now, all bets are off. You see, what’s happening in states and at the national level. They’re not looking at research in any area. They’re cutting programs. They’re cutting this, cutting that. So I’m trying to see if we can appeal a little more to people’s consciences because there is a big conscience in the United States. Some of the biggest givers in the world in terms of charity and in terms of helping folks and so we’ve gotta take a little bit different tack because right now nobody cares about the recidivism study, you know? So we need to create some sympathy on a humanistic level. So that’s one of the reason why I think the social media, we need to take a good look at it and see how we can reach people. Not just in the dollar in their pocket, but their own feelings about helping others.

Len Sipes: Steve, you get the final word. You had the final word. Steve Stuerer, the Executive Director of the Correctional Education Association, at their Annual Conference in Charleston, West Virginia. Ladies and gentlemen, please have yourselves a very pleasant day.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. We continue to broadcast from the Correctional Education Conference here in Charleston, West Virginia. Again, well over five hundred individuals from all over the country – some people from all over the world – looking at this whole concept of correctional education, looking at correctional programs, looking at reentry programs, looking at what makes a difference in terms of the impact of how people come out of prison. Are they successful? What programs are they engaged in? What programs did they participate in? What programs are successful? What programs aren’t successful? That’s the point of the Correctional Education Conference and before our microphones, we’re going to continue this discussion on research. Cindy Borden, she is with a private company and the private company was under contract to the Correctional Education Association to do some research. Now, needless to say, we can’t endorse a private company, but these are the people who were in charge of the research. Cindy Borden. She is with the Northstar Correctional Educational Services. They are Correctional Education Consultants and the interesting thing here is that what we’re talking about is post-secondary education, i.e. college. A four-year piece of research that shows that one-third, after they’re done a two-year period, one-third are enrolled in college and three-quarter are employed. So those are pretty, pretty, pretty significant findings. Cindy, let’s talk about this. Now, how did you end up with the contract with the Correctional Education Association?

Cindy Borden: CEA asked us to find a funding source and then to recruit states. Started out with six states to participate in this research who were willing to randomly assign students into either the intervention, which was a distance learning program or a control situation, which was basically business as usual. There are local community colleges or correspondence work. So we found the funding source in the Institute of Education Sciences with the US Department of Ed and then they asked us to conduct the field research.

Len Sipes: Now, both of you…and you’re the other person from your company. You’re former principals or superintendents? What were you?

Cindy Borden: We were former teachers and then principals in the prison system.

Len Sipes: So you have a lot of experience in terms of this.

Cindy Borden: I do.

Len Sipes: You have hands-on experience. Now, I do want to explain for our audience that random assignment is the gold standard for research. It’s when a prison…we’re talking about forty-four prisons, right, in seven states?

Cindy Borden: Forty-four prisons in seven states, that’s right.

Len Sipes: Okay and so half were given this program and half were not and it happened by chance. So in other words there’s no research bias.

Cindy Borden: That’s right. They were randomly assigned by computer, generated and half were given the distance learning intervention. The other half continued business as usual.

Len Sipes: Okay. So that is the gold standard. So tell me about this. So you had…this existed for how long in the post-secondary education is a collegiate program and the college program?

Cindy Borden: Yes, it was the first two years of academic college, so basically freshman and sophomore year core course – Gen Ed courses. We went out to the prisons for three years, twice a year. We did pre-testing of the students in the fall and post-testing in the spring. For three years running, we conducted focus groups and we interviewed site coordinators and students. We gave the CAP Critical Thinking exams to all the students in the fall and then post-tested them in the spring.

Len Sipes: Now, believe me. I understand how controversial this is from a public relations point of view. When I was with the state of Maryland I used to do press releases about collegiate stuff, people graduating from collegiate programs and I got quite a bit of pushback from citizens. So there is a concern. People asked me quite blankly…bluntly rather, “I can’t afford to send my child to college, so this guy goes out and commits a violent crime and he gets a free college education. Where’s the fairness in that?” One of the things that I would say in return was that the individuals involved in collegiate programs had the lowest rates of recidivism. That means out of all the things that you could do within a correctional setting these individuals committed fewer crimes, fewer crimes than any other group of individuals and cost taxpayers less money than any other group of individuals. Is that right?

Cindy Borden: That’s absolutely right. An investment in college education for these students brings a cost benefit to the taxpayer that is tremendous. We invest in their college education while they’re incarcerated and the recidivism rate drops significantly for these people. We have discovered in the course of this study that even exposure to a single college course or a single semester of college courses makes a tremendous difference in their decisions once they get out.

Len Sipes: Right, but I mean in this case, what I’m asking is is that this program, these post-secondary collegiate programs in the prison settings are more effective than any other program I’m aware of. That’s the question.

Cindy Borden: They are very effective. Vocational training is also very effective for a separate type of person, but for those who are interested in academic education, yes, college – straight up college – is tremendously effective.

Len Sipes: And I do want to point out the effects. Now, we’re talking about two years out, but that two-year cohort could be people out for two years or people just entering the cohort and being out for a couple of months.

Cindy Borden: That’s right.

Len Sipes: So when you measured this at a two-year period for people out for an entire period of two years and just entering the cohort for a couple of months you found that one-third were enrolled in college and three-quarters were employed.

Cindy Borden: That’s right.

Len Sipes: Now that’s amazing. I mean…

Cindy Borden: It’s a pretty good result.

Len Sipes: Those sorts of statistics are beyond comprehension. I mean, that’s pretty much the best piece of research or the best research findings I’ve ever heard of.

Cindy Borden: It’s much higher than we anticipated. We didn’t expect it to be that high. We were surprised at what that exposure to college produced in their post-release statistics.

Len Sipes: And you would say to the average individual out there who has mixed feelings about this that, what? That these finding trumps just about every other finding that we’ve encountered or what do you say to that person?

Cindy Borden: To the one who says, “I’m paying for my kid’s college. Why should the convicts get it for free?”

Len Sipes: Right.

Cindy Borden: The investment in these people pays off to our communities. What I say to people who say that directly to me is that these people are getting out of prison and they’re going to move next to you and they’re going to move next to your children…

Len Sipes: Or they’re going to be a five-minute drive.

Cindy Borden: Or they’re going to be a five-minute drive and who do you want there? Do you want someone who has had some exposure to college, who’s actually earned a college degree or someone who did nothing with his time while he was incarcerated and then was released and moved in next to your children?

Len Sipes: Cindy Borden, you had the final word. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re broadcasting from the Correctional Education Conference here in Charleston, West Virginia. Cindy is with a private company. Again, we can’t endorse private companies, but she was a contractor to the Correctional Education Association to conduct this research. Northstar Correctional Educational Services at northstarcorrectional.com. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your time and effort and listening and look forward next time to another program on the state of the criminal justice system in America. Have yourselves a very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends}

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Budget Issues, Corrections-Prisons, Education and Vocational Assistance, Interviews with Policy Makers, Parole and Probation, Reentry, What Works Tagged With: Correction Education Association, correctional education, Reentry, rehabilitation

Correctional and Vocational Education: Does it Work?-DC Public Safety Radio

February 14, 2012 By Len Leave a Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2011/04/correctional-and-vocational-education-does-it-work-dc-public-safety-radio-2/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the Nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Today’s program is about correctional education, vocational education. It’s been talked about for decades, the whole concept of preparing people coming out of the prison system. And the research certainly seems to indicate that the better prepared they are when they come out of the prison system, the less they recidivate, the fewer crimes are committed. And in fact, states find themselves saving literally hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of reduced prison costs, in terms of reduced operating costs. It’s a win/win situation for everybody involved. But we have two issues going on today, ladies and gentlemen. We have massive budget cuts at the state level and states are basically saying hey, we can no longer afford to do the sort of programs that are necessary. We understand that they cut recidivism, but then again at the same time, there are budget cuts that need to be made. And with the whole reentry movement, where in essence what the Department of Justice and everybody else is saying is that the better prepared individuals are upon release from the prison system, the better they do. Again, the less they recidivate and the less they cost states. We have two principals with us today to discuss this entire issue, Steve Steurer; he is the Executive Director for the Correctional Education Association of America and Bill Sondervan. He is a professor and Executive Director of Public Safety Outreach for University of Maryland University College. First of all, give me a sort of an overview of the Correctional Education Association and you guys have been around for decades, and in terms of the preshow, we were talking about the whole issue that you all had been pushing this whole issue of reentry for decades. So this concept that we think is new, preparing offenders coming out of the prison system and have that seamless transfer to resources and the community, that is something that you guys had been advocating for decades, correct?

Steve Steurer: That’s correct. CEA has been around, it’s heading towards its 70th birthday in a few years. And we’ve always advocated to educate inmates for preparation for, you know, getting back into society and being productive people, workers, parents, etc. But that’s nothing new. The reentry efforts, I’m very happy that we’ve seen this emphasis on reentry. I think the only thing that I feel badly about is that it doesn’t really focus as much on education as I would like to see. We do have an opportunity to get some educational efforts going through this Second Chance Act and we have taken advantage of some of that. But education seems to get lost. A lot of programs want to go forward for reentry, but if you have a highly illiterate population unprepared, you need to catch them up a little bit with skills and the ability to communicate in order to be successful in other programs.

Len Sipes: But Steve, the bottom line in all of this is that the research does indicate that the better prepared offenders are upon release, especially if they transfer seamlessly in terms of similar programs in the community, the less they recidivate, the less crime there is and the fact that states do save hundreds of millions of dollars in delayed or completely postponed prison construction costs, correct?

Steve Steurer: That’s correct and most people in criminology believe that and understand it because of the research. I mean you can get into the particulars about which programs might be more effective than others, but that nobody really knows precisely. But they do know overall, education programs with basic literacy or post-secondary education, an investment in that pays off tremendously in fewer crimes and fewer re-incarcerations and then costs to the public, you know, in general. But that’s a given for almost all of us. But the problem with budget now is there are all kinds of priorities. And so corrections kind of falls to the bottom underneath public schools, university and education, etc. So we’re fighting for a small number of dollars’ worth, you know, with other priorities. So we’re in a real pickle right now.

Len Sipes: Bill Sondervan, you are a professor and Executive Director for Public Safety Outreach for University of Maryland University College. University of Maryland University College, it just teaches an immense number of individuals. What is it, like 90,000?

Steve Steurer: I think last I looked; we’re up to about 95,000 students or more.

Len Sipes: 95,000, that’s amazing. And one of the things I do want to be sure that people understand before we get into the crux of the conversation today is that you have had a lifetime in the criminal justice system, but you ran Corrections in the state of Maryland for how many years?

Steve Steurer: Len, I was a deputy commissioner for five years and I was the commissioner for five years before a short stay at the American Correctional Association and then coming to University of Maryland University College to run the criminal justice program.

Len Sipes: So both of you have seen everything. Both of you have been around in this system for a long time. Bill, again, I’m assuming that you agree with the proposition that I’ve placed to Steve and that is is that the better prepared they are in prison, the less they’re going to recidivate when they come out and there’s research that shows this, correct?

Bill Sondervan: Yeah, absolutely Len. I think one the realizations that the corrections community came to is that we have to do better than we were doing in the past. In the old days, we did very little research. We did very little to prepare inmates to go home. But there’s been a realization that we need to do research. We need to see what works and what doesn’t work. We need to focus our limited dollars on the programs that work effectively. And when inmates come into the system, like I ran a state system with 27 prisons, and what we all decided that we needed to do is as inmates came into the system, we need to assess them, see what their needs were, get them to a prison that had programs to deal with their needs, do effective things and start preparing them to go home from the time they get in, cause 95 percent of them are going to go home. And in the old days, like in Maryland, we would give them 20 bucks and put them on the bus and that was the end of it. But we’ve got to do a whole lot more on that end. In Maryland I’m proud of the fact that we did some of the initial research, the Department of Justice and others, to determine what those needs were and start putting those programs into place and doing pilot studies to show that we can make a big difference in recidivism rate if we did the proper things. And one of the things that really stood out of that was correctional education. I think correctional education is one of the things that really works. It’s been empirically shown to be effective through studies. And I think it would really be a crime if we didn’t continue to support and expand correctional education the best we can.

Len Sipes: Steve Steurer, I do want to give out the website for the Correctional Education Association, www.ceanational.org, www.ceanational.org, and for Bill Sondervan it’s www.umuc.edu, www.umuc.edu. Okay, well gentlemen, look, we set up the program. We talked about the fact that these programs are necessary. We talked about the fact that these programs are effective. We’re talking about, you know, we’ve pretty much substantiated the fact that the programs reduce crime, reduce recidivism, calls fewer people to be brought up in the criminal justice system, saves the state tens of millions of dollars. Okay, if it’s that clear-cut, why are states cutting back on correctional education programs. And Steve, you told me something I didn’t know before the program began is that the cut-backs also apply from federal funds, that the federal government is cutting back on correctional education programs. So if it’s so clear-cut, why are we facing such a hard time convincing states to not only expand, but keep the capacity they currently have?

Steve Steurer: Well, I like to think it’s not because people are mean-spirited, I think we find a few people in politics who are, but I think politicians operate with a meager amount of evidence when they start trying to do things, so they operate more on what seems to be popular or what the voters are like. The latest example you gave of having cut all the post-secondary funds available in the United States for college education, mostly which went for career and vocational programs after somebody, you know, graduates from high school, their GED. All that’s gone and it was done with a committee that got together with the White House and Congress secretly and decided to cut out 38 billion dollars. Well, they went for all the low hanging fruit. You know the things that could be easy, not just for excellent education but an icon of a program like Reading is Fundamental with zero out. And that’s been a successful book program for years. It’s had terrific effect on helping children read. I mean and so who would argue against Reading is Fundamental? And if they looked at the research, who would argue against prison education? You could argue about whether they should get a Bachelor’s or a Master’s and how much you’re going to contribute to their education. But people get together, politicians get together, they’ll lay everything out, they have meager evidence in front of them on all these things unless they really have a terrific staff helping them sort this out and they go to town. And the result is a lot of stuff like correctional ed. and drug programs, you know, often get cut or other things that are good for, you know, for public welfare. And they’ve got the voters out for these issues, so that’s part of the reason they cut them. They’re low hanging fruit. They’re not anything that people are going to argue about too much.

Len Sipes: Bill, you want to take a shot at the same question?

Bill Sondervan: Well, I think Steve hit the nail on the head, you know, and I’ve been through the budget battles. I had to ask Corrections Commissioner, I had a $620 million budget and that seems like a lot of money. It is a lot of money, but it wasn’t enough money to do all the things you needed to do. It wasn’t enough money to even do the basics. And right now, looking at what’s going on around the country and looking at the states, the budgets are really, really tight and people are cutting, you know, wherever they can and the decisions are being made physically and they’re being made politically. And the money’s really, really tight and folks in the legislature are going to vote for budget expenditures on areas that’s politically helpful to them to get reelected. And unfortunately in corrections, you know, there’s not a big voting block. You know inmates don’t have a big constituency. And I’ve had private conversations with senators and delegates and pleaded my case and asked for money for these sort of things and got a variety of answers. And some of them were, you know what, we like you, we think you’re on track, but if I vote for this, if I approve this, I’ll get voted out of office and I’m not going to do it. So again, I think that the issues are physical and they’re political. I don’t think anybody’s mean spirited. I think everybody or most people who understand the process after it’s explained to them, would want to help you if they could. But times are just really, really tight.

Len Sipes: Now, the PEW Center on the States just came out with a report gentlemen, where they contrasted recidivism rates state by state by state. And they talked about the states that were doing it well and the states that really weren’t doing it well. And we here at DC Public Safety, what we’re now doing is interviewing the commissioners or the public safety secretaries from a variety of states that have claimed reductions in recidivism due to the programs that they’ve put in. I just did an interview with the Public Safety Secretary of the State of Kentucky and he has now cut recidivism rates to a ten year low. So there are states out there, Michigan, Iowa, Kentucky, Oregon, and I’m probably forgetting one, that are claiming reductions in recidivism and we hope to bring them all on this air at DC Public Safety and talk to them about what they think was effective in terms of cutting rates and recidivism. But that’s five states. That’s five states out there that have claimed reductions in cutting recidivism. A couple of other states have also claimed reductions, but they’ve since backed off those claims. So some states are out there and they’re saying okay, we understand the GED programs are necessary. We do understand that drug treatment programs are necessary. We do understand that vocational programs are necessary. And we do understand that when that offender comes out of prison and goes into the community that those services should be there. So again, some states are embracing this and some states aren’t. And everybody’s operating from the same base of knowledge, I think. I mean the research is the same regardless of whether it applies to Michigan or Oregon. Some states are doing it, some states aren’t.

Bill Sondervan: Well politics drives things more than a research Len, and, you know, sometimes that’s a shame. But you know it’s an enormously complex problem. And we did a lot of research on what works and we came up with some good answers and more research is going on. But it involves a lot of things. Not only does it involve assessing inmates when they come into the program to determine their needs. Like Steve said, you know, the average inmate has like a sixth or seventh grade reading level, but it’s more than that. We have to, while they’re in prison, we have to do things like teach them employment readiness skills. We need to teach them how to do, you know, cognitive thinking skills. We need to prepare them to go find jobs, how to interview. We had to do simple things like get them ID cards, so that they can prove, you know, who they are when they go for a job. But it’s more than that, you know? And it’s more than just, Corrections said it’s more than just the prison systems. When inmates get out, there needs to be some kind of a hand off back to the community. And the things that we found that inmates need are temporary housing. They need to have healthcare. They need to have medical care. They need to have people on the outside to help them find jobs. They need to have people on the outside to help them reconnect with their families and other people in their communities. So it’s a very broad spectrum of things and it crosses, you know, several boundaries. And one of the issues that I found at being a corrections commissioner, is that my money, my authority, my funding, everything I had, was all in a stovepipe. And once I wanted to do things that crossed that boundary to reach out to the community, you really had to go out and spend the time to convince people to ask, you know, for help from people to get other organizations to chip in. And what really made that difficult is that the inmates going home, we had 13,000 inmates go home every year, they weren’t all going home to, you know, one community. The bulk of them were going to Baltimore, but they were going to communities all around the states. So all those support things that you need for inmates to help them to be successful when they get out, have got to be replicated in several communities and not just one. And that’s an enormously complex task.

Len Sipes: We’re halfway through the program. Steve, let me go ahead and reintroduce both of you. We’re halfway through the program ladies and gentlemen. Steve Steurer, the Executive Director of the Correctional Education Association, www.ceanational.org, Bill Sondervan, Professor and Executive Director of the Public Safety Outreach Program and the University of Maryland University College, www.umuc.edu. They’re our guests today, talking about this whole concept of correctional education, correctional vocational educations, correctional programs and how that these programs certainly are proven to have an impact in terms of recidivism rates. But the fact is is that the states are struggling financially. And as you said a little while ago Bill, they’re cutting low hanging fruit. So is there a way, are there new techniques or are there new ways of approaching this issue that are cheaper and at the same time more effective. Steve, you and I talked before the program that my folks wanted to ask you is that why aren’t we doing more long distance learning? Why aren’t we having a person sitting in a classroom in Iowa teaching inmates how to read or teaching inmates vocational education in four or five adjacent states? Why, aren’t there more interesting and more powerful ways of conducting business that are cheaper and at the same time more effective?

Steve Steurer: Yes, and we’re involved with trying to get some of these efforts going. Part of the, I’ll give you a good example of what the problem is. The GED, everybody knows about the GED. Well, the normal way that that takes place now is a face-to-face instruction or maybe some computers that people sit at and receive some instruction that way. And well that’s all going to change. The testing for the GED is normally done with a guy or a gal walking in to test, passes out the papers, times each one of the tests, takes the papers back and then they’re corrected. Well, that’s all going computerized. That’s all going to go online. And at a local jail here in the Washington, DC area, where we’re going to be part of the pilot of this, they thought there already, because they had invested in a lab of 20 workstations a number of years ago, etc. Well the GED testing software is going to require them to have a better fileserver and better workstations than they have. That’s going to be the case all over the country. There are very few states that have the technology inside that is good enough to do just basic stuff like the GED. There’s going to be a best cost on that. So where’s the money going to come from? And GED testing is going forward with it and it’s going to happen at the community colleges, wherever else people go for GED testing. So what is going to happen when somebody like Bill Sondervan, you know, when he was commissioner, goes to Annapolis and says you know, we need to upgrade our computers? We need to do this, you know, and dollars are so tight. So where’s that money going to come from? But it either has to be done or all of a sudden GED passing rates are going to plummet in the nation’s prisons. It’s one of the core programs. It’s one of the things that people in the public would certainly support, the idea of people getting high school diplomas. Where’s the money going to come from? So taking that example and pushing it out there with other kinds of courses, whether it’s adult basic ed., literacy and English as a second language, parenting skills, preparing for work, etc., using computers, it costs money. And people, they have to have staff to run it. You have to pay, you know, fees to bring the Internet in. And the real big sticking point for corrections is it has to be absolutely secure. The inmates cannot get on the internet somewhere else other than what it’s designated in how do you do that? All that can be done. It costs money and you’re going to have to have the right kind of technical support to make it happen. So yes, where do you go from here

Len Sipes: But can it, I guess what people are asking Steve or Bill, can it be done? I mean Bill Sondervan you’re a specialist in long distance education, but you’re dealing with college students. Steve is dealing with prison inmates. Can you really truly effectively do long distance learning remotely? Number one, is it defective?

Bill Sondervan: Well Len, there’s several issues there. You know first of all, correctional systems are really technology deprived. I became the State Corrections Commissioner in 1999. I did not have a computer on my desk. None of the wardens had computers on their desk. Everything was done by stubby pencil, you know? And there’s been big efforts made and strides made to try to computerize operations just for the basic running of the organization. It’s been very, very difficult. And not only are you competing for money for technology for corrections ed., you’re competing for dollars to do technology for security purposes and security reasons. So that being one. I’m a big proponent of online education. I teach at UMUC and you know, probably 75 percent of our students are online worldwide. And I’ve spent the last five years learning a tremendous amount of about it. And it works, it works very well and it produces some really good results. But the issue is again, like Steve said, as a correctional administrator despite the fact that I think that online education works very well; it’s very difficult to do it in a prison system because you can’t allow the inmates to go online. If inmates go online, get onto the Internet and get into other things, things other than what they’re supposed to be doing, it can cause all kinds of problems, all kinds of difficulties and it just won’t work. So to use that kind of technology in prisons, we have to come up with the money. We have to find ways to do it where they can only log onto the sites that you want them to

Len Sipes: Right.

Bill Sondervan: log on, and you know, I think the technology’s coming along but I don’t think we’re there yet.

Steve Steurer: I’d have to say I’d have to differ with Bill on that just because of some things I’ve learned recently. And that it is there, but I don’t think the attitudes are there. I don’t think that the correctional community is ready to buy into when an IT person says we can lock it down. We can make it go just to that one site and that’s it. And we can set it up so somebody sitting at workstation tries to break out, that computer freezes up and a signal goes out and, you know, that somebody’s violated the protocol at that workstation. All that can happen, that can be done. And we’re going to actually pilot that in the next couple of months at one of the local jails. And we’re going to be trying to put GED and all kinds of other programs on that system. But I don’t think that the average secretary of public safety or commissioner is convinced that that’s going to happen yet. There are going to have to be some examples, successful examples that take place for a while that people don’t get out on the internet but are successful in getting a lot of educational learning done with technology that’s on the internet, and then people will start feeling more comfortable with it. I remember years ago we couldn’t even bring a computer in a prison, although there was no Internet. People were afraid that it would cause a security problem. And now that nobody’s really afraid of bringing in a computer into a classroom that’s freestanding, you know, they’re more afraid of the Internet though. So we have to go through some progressive learning here, some attitude changing as well.

Len Sipes: Well the reason I’m asking is because we’re at a dilemma. We’re at a crossroads if the states are struggling as mightily as they are in terms of their own budgets. You know, but some states are obviously, state of California comes to mind; some states are basically gutting educational programs. And, you know, there’s a certain point where, you know, these other states have proven that they can reduce recidivism and other states are basically saying well, that may be but we just don’t have the money. So somehow, someway there’s got to be some sort of solution to this issue of educating inmates within the prison system whether it’s reading, whether it’s getting the GED, whether it’s bricklaying. I know it’s almost impossible to teach bricklaying remotely. But there’s certainly a good part of that component that can be done remotely. What people are struggling with is some sort of intermediate measure, some sort of idea as to where we continue to, can continue to educate inmates and at the same time live within existing budgets. But what I hear from the two of you is that that’s still very problematic.

Steve Steurer: Well, it’s problematic because of the cost, because of the attitudes. And also, one of the other issues I’ll introduce here, Bill and I, you know, we’ve worked together for years in corrections and he’s got me teaching a course in criminology at the University of Maryland University College and I’ve been doing that for about four or five years now, probably driving Bill Sondervan nuts with some of my goofy activities. But, you know, one thing that I have learned since the university is an open one, that there are a lot of students who are just marginal or maybe below margin in terms of their skills to be successful in college courses. As a professor, I can only do so much online. There are services at the university that I can refer them to. You get into the same problem in prison, even in a bigger way, because so many people have marginal skills and there are software programs that help, you know, with lower level literacy skills and all that. But you really need to do a lot more work with these students and probably have a lot of face-to-face assistance as well. So just putting people online, even if you forget about and solve the security problem, you’re dealing with a population that often doesn’t want to, doesn’t know that education’s a good thing because they’ve been so unsuccessful in it. A population that doesn’t know how to use technology very well, and so you’ve got to get them comfortable with it and just all these skills that have to be filled in that they missed somewhere along the line. So technology’s not going to solve it completely, you’re still going to have to have adequate staffing. I mean it’s a huge problem.

Len Sipes: Okay, and the final minutes of the program gentlemen, I can’t imagine anybody better qualified to discuss this issue than the two of you. But what, are we at a stalemate? Is it the fact that states are just going to cut and that’s all there is to it because they feel they have no choice to cut? Is it a matter of education? Is it a matter of getting the word out as we’re trying to do with this program? I mean the Congressional staffers listen to this program. We have people who run correctional systems around the country listen to this program. What do we say to these individuals? Are we missing a golden opportunity here in terms of the reentry world?

Bill Sondervan: Len, I think it’s all the above. I think that first of all, correctional educators and correctional administrators have got to work together, there’s got to be a partnership. We’ve got to be creative in what we can do. I think you’ll never get away from face to face teaching in the classroom. There’s some instruction you can do on self-contained computers. There’s some things that you can do on tape and there’s some things that you can do online. I think we need to pursue all the avenues to make it work the best we can. We’ve got to be part of the budget solution. But I think there’s also an educational component. And what I find is that so many people know so little about corrections, it’s really amazing. I think all us, we’ve got the responsibility to work with our governors and with our legislators to educate them on the importance of this program. And I think what we can show them is that for the few dollars you spend on correctional education, you can get an exponential return in terms of reduced recidivism down the road. And I think we all need to get out there and discuss that and sell the message.

Steve Steurer: I think Bill’s absolutely right. In addition to those things, I just came back from Indiana. They went through a whole revamping of their system, not to eliminate education but to find more economical ways. And in some cases, I don’t necessarily agree with it because they’ve hired teachers with no benefits and everything, and so they’re going to have a tremendous turnover with those people and not a lot of effective teaching going on. But they’re also getting bits from community colleges where teachers, you know, do work with benefits and such. But it’ll save the state some money from, you know, having to pay people, the state employees, with higher benefits. Now that’s what I was and I retired from that, so I like to defend that system. But there are economies that can be made. A number of states have really negotiated with the teachers to create, you know, some economies. There’s going to be a lot more privatization efforts. Ohio is selling five prisons, not privatizing them, selling five prisons.

Len Sipes: Yes, yes.

Steve Steurer: And the Corrections Corporation of America will probably bid and maybe Management Training Corporation. And Management Training Corporation is very big on education. In fact, they’re accredited by CEA. We always fight with them because their salaries are a little lower, but you know, they really put on terrific programs. And I’ve seen CCA education programs that are pretty good too and I’m going to be there next week at CCA to talk to them. They’re talking about working more closely with us. These efforts will probably save money. We’re going to reconfigure, try to figure out more ways to do things more economically. You know, maybe try to convince some technology companies to come in and try some things out. We’re working with the GED tech office to find out ways to make this work in prisons and jails and juvenile facilities. You know, this will all happen. I’m optimistic. It’s going to take a lot of work. If correctional education isn’t at the table, something else is going to be put upon this as educators that might not work quite as well. We need to be there working out all the details. You need to have people like Bill Sondervan who when he was commissioner, Bill and I would work hand-in-hand. I mean I was actually accused by some people in my own department of working for the Department of Corrections instead of the Department of Education. I thought that was a compliment.

Len Sipes: Bill, you’ve got

Steve Steurer: I really did. I thought it was a terrific compliment because I said, you know, you’re working for the state government for the same cause, so who cares if you’re corrections or education? Bill stood for staff training, inmate training, you know, everybody needed to be professional and inmates needed to be retooled and put back out in the community so they could survive and be productive citizens.

Len Sipes: Bill, you’ve got about 15 seconds before I have to close the program. Any final words from you?

Bill Sondervan: Yeah, no, no, I’d just like to say that, you know, we know that corrections ed. works. It’s been empirically proven. I think we all have a responsibility to support it and get behind it and I think if we all do that, I think we have a great chance for success.

Len Sipes: Ladies and gentlemen, our guests today have been Steve Steurer, the Executive Director of the Correctional Educational Association, Bill Sondervan, Professor and Executive Director of Public Safety Outreach. For Steve’s organization for the Correctional Educational Association, it is www.ceanational.org, ceanational.org. And for Bill Sondervan for University of Maryland, it’s www.umuc.edu, www.umuc.edu. Before we close, the American Probation and Parole Association encourages everybody to really try to respect the community supervision officers, the parole and probation agents. There are hundreds of thousands of them throughout the United States, throughout the world, who are out there protecting your safety on a day-to-day basis. They ask you to spend some time and spend some thoughts thinking about people who are out there every day who are protecting your safety and mine. Again, that’s from the American Probation and Parole Association. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. I’ve been your host, Leonard Sipes. Listen for us next time as we look at another very important issue in the national and DC criminal justice system. Have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Corrections-Prisons, Criminal Justice, Education and Vocational Assistance, Interviews with Policy Makers, Reentry, What Works

Successful Offenders – “DC Public Safety”

January 13, 2011 By Len 2 Comments

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts. We now average 200,000 requests a month.

Television Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/video/2011/01/successful-offenders-%E2%80%93-dc-public-safety-television/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Video Begins]

Len Sipes: Hi, and welcome to D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. You know, every year, over 700,000 human beings are released from prison systems throughout the United States, and you’re well aware of the failures, the 50% within 3 years who are returned to the prison systems. You read about them in your newspapers, you’re exposed to them through radio and television, but the question is, what about the other 50%? The 50% who do not return back to the prison system? To talk about the successes, if you will, we have four individuals under supervision with my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency in Washington, D.C. We’re a federal parole and probation agency. We’re going to talk to four individuals currently under supervision for people who have turned the corner, who have crossed that bridge, who are now successes, who are no longer tax burdens, they are now taxpayers. And on our first segment, I want to introduce India Frazier and Tracy Marlow, and to India and to Tracy, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Tracy Marlow: Thank you, Len.

Len Sipes: All right, we’ve had a wonderful conversation before the television show, before filming this show today, about what it is, the stereotypes, when people think of the term “criminal,” “convict,” and they have this image that immediately comes to their mind in terms of what ex-offenders are. Now in the first segment, the two of you, then we’ll have a couple guys in the second segment, but that’s the issue, is it not, Tracy? That stereotype that people have of you. I was watching the other night a couple television shows, just flipping through the channel: National Geographic and A&E, and they had shows about people in prison, and the public comes away with that, saying, thinking that everybody who touches the prison system, they don’t want to hire them, they don’t want to fund programs for them, they don’t want to give them a second chance, they stereotype them. Are you that person that they stereotype?

Tracy Marlow: Yes I am. I’m one of those people that they stereotype. Society always publicizes what we have done, the bad things we have done, but nobody shows what the good things we are doing now. What I was, and what I am today is two different people. I have my own business now.

Len Sipes: You’re going for your third ice cream truck.

Tracy Marlow: My third ice cream truck.

Len Sipes: Your third ice cream truck. You’re your own business owner! You have gone from prison to owning your own businesses!

Tracy Marlow: Yes, yes.

Len Sipes: That’s amazing!

Tracy Marlow: With the help of CSOSA and some groups and other people backing me up in my life, it was not on my own that I done this. It’s not because, I’ve been turned down on jobs so many times, but one person gave me a chance on a job.

India Frazier: But when you go through your struggles in life, if anything’s ever given to you so quickly, so fast, and easy, you’re not going to appreciate it. You’re not going to hold onto it, you’re not going to build to the next step. You know what I’m saying? So you have to go through your struggles. You have to be patient. And see, that’s what you were.

Tracy Marlow: It comes in believing in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, self-esteem is so important coming out of prison. I didn’t believe in myself. I thought what people, society say, you’re nothing, you’ve been in jail, you’re never going to be nothing. I believed that for so many years until one day, I can’t tell you when I woke up, when I woke up and knew that I was somebody, and I worked on this, and I worked on this now, I’m my own business person. I have people that work for me today, and I have to interview them now. So now, the roles have changed, and I have people that’s been locked up, and you work with money with me, because I have ice cream trucks, and I don’t want to be like the public was with me. So I have to interview these people, and I have to give them a chance, and you deal with a lot of money some days, and I say, wow, God, just give me the strength. Now I haven’t been robbed. And some ones have been good and bad, but somebody gave them a chance like they gave me.

Len Sipes: And I think that’s the point, in terms of the fact that, okay, 50% do go back, 50% don’t, but nobody ever tells the story of the 50% that don’t, and that’s what we’re going to start doing today. India, set up a little bit about your experience, if you will, please.

India Frazier: Well, my experience is, my experience came when I was, first and foremost, I asked God to change my life. Give me a direction that I needed to go into. And I set goals in my life, and then when I came home and I looked into the eyes of my grandson, it was not an option for me to go back to the streets. It was so easy, it’s so easy to fall back into that life, you know what I’m saying? And like I was telling Tracy a minute ago, you have to go through trials and tribulations and struggles to get where you need to go or get where you need to be, so I went through my changes, you know, but unlike you, I’ve always believed in me. I knew I was supposed to accomplish the things that I am accomplishing today. As of right now, I’m driving, I work through the leaf season and snow season for DPW, the Department of Public Works.

Len Sipes: DPW, the Department of Public Works.

India Frazier: Yes, sir.

Len Sipes: In the city of Washington D.C.

India Frazier: In the city of Washington D.C, and I have a CDL Class A –

Len Sipes: Okay, Commercial Driver’s License.

India Frazier: Yes, sir.

Len Sipes: Go ahead.

India Frazier: Yes, sir. And I know I can drive. I love doing what I do. You know what I’m saying? And I love coming home to my family and seeing that my grandson and my daughter’s okay, and I love knowing that my grandmother’s fine. These are the people that believed in me and pushed me to do and be all that I can be, and then I have, Dr. Butler and Miss Ishman, who is my direct parole officer, and she inspires me. I mean, it’s not a point in time that I can’t pick up that phone and call Miss Ishman and say, Miss Ishman, so and so, and so and so, well, Miss Frazier, let’s look at it like this. I might be upset, and then I’ll call her, and then she’ll just get it, she’ll just iron things out for me.

Tracy Marlow: You built a network up.

India Frazier: I built my network.

Tracy Marlow: And that’s what we need to know in society is you can make it if you build a network up.

India Frazier: – people believe in you and give you that chance. See, this is it. You can’t look at me based on a television program, or you can’t understand who I am until you get to know who I am, until you sit down and talk to me and find out who I am, and that despite something happening 10 years ago, it’s where I’m standing at today.

Len Sipes: But society doesn’t give us that opportunity. If society is going to say ex-con, criminal, I don’t like you, I’m not funding programs for you, I’m not going to give you a second chance, I don’t want you in this job, and I understand, all three of us understand the fears of the public. How can you not watch evening television without understanding the fears of the public? But what do you want to tell the public directly? What are the key things that you need the public to understand, because you’re not one of the failures, you’re one of the successes, but yet, you’re still facing the same baggage. So what do you want to tell the public?

Tracy Marlow: I want to tell the public, don’t look at what I’ve done, look at what I’m doing. My past is my past, and only we’re going to leave it behind if you give me a chance. All I’m asking for is a chance. I’m not saying that I’m going to be perfect. I’m not going to sit here and tell this, oh, I’m going to be a perfect and never do this, but I’m going to live for today and try to do the best I can do in society under society laws. It’s not breaking up anymore.

Len Sipes: Right. India? And what do you tell society?

India Frazier: I have to tell society that you can’t base my life today on my past. I’m a totally different person. I’ve worked hard to get where I am today, and don’t look at me and make a judgment call on what’s on paper. Look at me and make a judgment call on how I carry myself.

Len Sipes: We only have a couple minutes left. My heavens, this segment just flew by like wildfire! What is instrumental in your lives? Was it programs, you mentioned, Tracy, the group, or India, you mentioned the group process through Dr. Butler. What is it, drug treatment programs, job programs, what is it that we need to help you and others like you cross that bridge?

Tracy Marlow: Drug treatment first, program, and aftercare. After we come out of treatment, you need some aftercare. You need sessions, groups. The group that Dr. Butler runs is wonderful. Somebody’s talking about everyday life. We need to know about every, going on in your life, this life, productive other people in life. We need groups and more programs.

Len Sipes: If we had sufficient numbers of programs, how many additional people could we create, if you will, taxpayers instead of tax burdens? How many additional people would cross that bridge over to the taxpaying side of the coin?

India Frazier: You would probably have, maybe, at least 25% more instead of a 50% going back in, you might have 25% more. I’m not going to say 50%, because, you know, like Tracy said, it’s not, everybody’s not perfect. Everybody’s not ready to live that right life. You know what I’m saying? Everybody’s trying, some people try to find the easy way out. But you would have at least 25% turnover. I would say at least 60-75% wouldn’t go back.

Len Sipes: If society was willing to look at you as individuals, especially in terms of jobs, and if the programs were available, would that make a significant difference in terms of how many people go back to prison and how many people commit additional crimes?

Tracy Marlow: Of course.

India Frazier: Definitely, yes!

Tracy Marlow: Definitely!

India Frazier: I mean, you have jobs in the District of Columbia that, for real, for real, could save a lot of people’s lives. People gotta eat! You’ve got to feed your family! You know what I’m saying? You’ve got to pay your rent! You know, the rent lady don’t want to hear about, you can’t pay your rent because you couldn’t find a job. You’ve got to pay your rent. So what you going to do? You’re going to go out there and do something stupid and go right back to where you were. So if you have these openings within the District for these ex-offenders, or parole, probation, you know what I’m saying, that would gear them towards working harder toward accomplishing things they need to accomplish, the goals they need to accomplish. It worked for me.

Len Sipes: I think the point is, is that, again, we hear the failures. We are never exposed to the successes. I’ve spent 40 years in the criminal justice system, 30 years talking to people caught up in the criminal justice system. I see a lot of success stories. But those success stories are simply never told. That’s one of the reasons we’re doing this program today, is to talk about the fact that there are successes.

Tracy Marlow: Yes, it is. It is. And I’m definitely one of them, and the best is yet to come! Because I’m not finished. I have kids, I’m raising kids, and they are not going through the system! They are not going to go through the system. I am raising them to understand that, if you break the law, these are the options that happen. We have to break the cycle. The cycle has to be broken.

Len Sipes: And the cycle is broken when mom comes out of the prison system, gets programs, gets treatment, gets a job, and the case, your case, your own three ice cream trucks, you didn’t let anybody stand in your way, Tracy! And you’re saving, not just yourself, you’re saving your kids. India, you’re doing the same thing.

India Frazier: Yeah, I love my family. I love my family, and my grandson, he’s the most inspirational power, power behind every move I make, because I want him, I don’t want him to go through what I went through, you know what I’m saying? I can’t make the choices for him down the line, but I don’t want him to go through what I went through, and I’m going to give him and push him, I say, lead by example, and the rest will follow.

Len Sipes: Right. Now, again, so many people come out of the prison system, and they say, Mr. Sipes, or Leonard, I’m not going to go back. I’m not going back, I’m not going back, I’m not going back. 6 months later, they’re back. Now that’s a reality. There are individuals who cannot make it, or they’re not ready to make it in society, and they go back to the prison system. So we have to acknowledge that. Again, part of the fears and the perceptions on the part of the public, but I’ve encountered, again, hundreds, thousands of people just like yourselves. One out of every 45 individuals caught up in the criminal justice system are in, I’m sorry, one out of every 45 people in the community are caught up currently in the criminal justice system. That’s like one out of 20 minimum, if you count people who have been caught up in the criminal justice system in the past. That means that all of us are running into offenders and ex-offenders and people caught up in the criminal justice system every day! By the scores! We’re running into lots of people. I mean, is the question, do we want them to get the mental health treatment, do we want them to have drug treatment, do we want them to be involved in programs, do we want them to be employed, or do we want to interact with these individuals without those programs, and without those skills?

India Frazier: Well, if you don’t implement programs, if you don’t implement treatment, you don’t set aside a certain amount of money or set aside programs to help these people take their life and create a new person within, you know what I’m saying, or guide them, or steer them towards the goals they need to go towards, you’re going to keep on having a return rate of 50%, you know what I’m saying? So yeah, we need mental health. We need drug treatment. We need voc rehab. We need certain little groups that Dr. Butler be having. You know, you need all of these things because they’re reconditioning your mind to go towards what you need to go towards to be a better person.

Len Sipes: The final minute, Tracy, in terms of, we’ve heard Dr. Willa Butler several times throughout the program. She runs a women’s group where people who have been in the prison system as women offenders, they come together, they talk about their issues, they talk about how to solve their issues, that’s tough. You’ve got only a couple seconds.

Tracy Marlow: Yes it is. Yes, because that is very powerful, because women need women, and when you talk in them groups, you get real deep. You talk about some personal things that’s going on, because one thing, to deal with a person that’s on mental health status, is really something, because first thing society, oh, they crazy! People have complications, anxieties, pressures in the world, and they can’t cope with it and deal with it, all they need is somebody to talk to, and these groups are very important.

Len Sipes: And that’s the point that I wanted to make. Thank you, ladies, for being on the first segment. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for sticking with us as we explore this whole issue of offenders coming out of the prison system who make it, who become taxpayers, not tax burdens. Look for us in the second segment as we continue to explore this topic with two additional guests. Please stay with us.

[music playing]

Len Sipes: Hi, welcome back to D.C. Public Safety. I continue to be your host, Leonard Sipes. Our guests today on the second segment are Cortez McDaniel and Donald Zimmerman, both individuals currently under the supervision of my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. As I explained in the first segment, we are a federally funded, a parole and probation agency here in Washington, D.C. The concept is people being released from prison. 50% go back after 3 years, they go back to the prison system, but 50% don’t. The story of the 50% who don’t go back just doesn’t seem to be told. Again, you’re exposed every day to the media about the stories of people caught up in the criminal justice system who do go back, you’re never exposed to the fact that there are lots of individuals who don’t. To talk about that, Cortez and Donald, welcome to D.C. Public Safety, and Cortez, we’re going to start with you in terms of the second segment, and what is it that you think the public needs to understand about people coming back from the prison system? I mean, they say the word convict, they say the word ex-con, they have another vision in their mind. I’m not quite sure they have you in mind. Correct or incorrect?

Cortez McDaniel: That’s probably correct. What I would have the public to think about is how they’d like to be associated with us as homecomers. We like to refer to returning citizens as homecomers, and understand that these folks are coming home anyway, whether you like it or whether you don’t. Now how the public is associated with them is kind of up to the society as to how they accept them back. They need to understand the impact that we’re capable of having on society in a positive way, the value that we have, the talent that we have is a very, very large talent pool, and a large number of men who are very capable of being productive members of society.

Len Sipes: Okay, and I think one of the reasons, in terms of doing this program, they come to my mind, is employment. There’s literally thousands of individuals under our supervision at Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency who would make perfectly good employees out of the 16,000 on any given day. They are years away from their crimes, they are years away from their last substance, positive substance abuse test. But they can’t find work, and they’re having trouble finding work, and that makes it difficult for them, it makes it difficult for us. To me, that stereotype of ex-con, ex-offender, is the barrier. So what do you say to people in terms of, in terms of that? They have this sense that, you’ve been in the prison system, I don’t want to hire you, that’s all there is to it. I’ve got lots of people to choose from, you were there, you’re not getting this job. What do you say to that person?

Cortez McDaniel: Well, I would ask them to actually look at forgiveness and what that encompasses. If a person has served their amount of time that they’ve been given to serve in prison, if they’ve done that, and they’ve successfully completed that, and they come out, and they do the things that they need to be doing in terms of supervision, then there’s absolutely no reason why this person doesn’t deserve to be able to experience some quality of life themselves.

Len Sipes: Now Cortez, I’m completely at fault, I didn’t properly introduce you when you came onto the program. You were with who? What is your job today?

Cortez McDaniel: Again, my name is Cortez McDaniel, I’m a transitional coordinator with the Father McKenna Center.

Len Sipes: Okay, and what is the Father McKenna Center?

Cortez McDaniel: The Father McKenna Center is a daytime service for homeless men, underprivileged men of Washington, D.C., predominantly African American men who come in for our services during the course of a day. What we do is we assess men, and we act as a triage to link people up with whatever their needs might be, whether it be drug and alcohol rehabilitation, whether it be mental health services, housing issues, whatever the issues might be, we try to work with them and link them up with agencies that will help them in that direction.

Len Sipes: Did you have a hard time getting that job?

Cortez McDaniel: Actually, the way I got that job is I’m also core counsel person on the, with the Phelps Stokes National Homecomers’ Academy, and we were asked, as a result of a newspaper article, to send some people over to speak to that group of men, and once we were there, the people, the administration in place there were pretty impressed with what we had to offer, and so a relationship started with me there –

Len Sipes: And that’s how you ended up getting the job.

Cortez McDaniel: That’s exactly right.

Len Sipes: Okay, Donald, you’re with the same operation, correct?

Donald Zimmerman: Yes, sir.

Len Sipes: And tell me a little bit about your story. You came out of the prison system, and what happened?

Donald Zimmerman: Well, I came out of the prison system, and initially when I came home, I was a general manager of a trucking company –

Len Sipes: Before or after?

Donald Zimmerman: This was after my incarceration.

Len Sipes: Okay. How did you get a job as a general manager of a trucking company?

Donald Zimmerman: Some friends of the family, you know, they just –

Len Sipes: Okay. You had family connections.

Donald Zimmerman: Yeah. They just hired me on, and I learned the business, and I was doing that for a while until the economy folded, and then I went to school to be a chef, so now I’m currently working at a Hospital through a temporary agency called Food Team, and I do temporary cook positions there, but –

Len Sipes: Can I get into the larger issue? I started off with the larger issue before a proper introduction of both of you, of once again, the stereotype. Now I’m not going to be upset with society about their stereotypes. With the ladies on the first segment, I was watching television, I turned to the National Geographic channel of all channels, and then there was a story about guys in prison, and then I’m flipping through the channels, and there’s the Arts & Entertainment channel, there’s another story about guys in prison, and I sat back and said, you know, if that’s the public’s perception of people caught up in the criminal justice system, there’s no hope. The story they’re telling was a perfectly accurate story. They weren’t being dishonest, but it scares people. The evening news scares people. What happens when they read their newspapers scares people, and then we have the two of you, and you’re not scary. So what does the public need to understand about this issue of people coming out of the prison system? What does the public need to understand to get them to support programs or to get them to give you a chance at a job?

Donald Zimmerman: The first thing that the public needs to realize is that we’re human, and that we have made mistakes like everyone in life, and we have learned to overcome our mistakes. They have to learn to accept us and give us that second chance, as if, like a parent would do with their child. They say, once you finish your prison sentence, that your debt is paid to society. But is that truly happening? We tend to have labels put on us like ex-cons and ex-felons, see, but the thing is, you have to take all them labels away and recognize that I am a man and I am a woman and I will stand for something, and I will push, by any means necessary, I will be accepted, and with that positive attitude, only good things will happen.

Cortez McDaniel: I don’t want to take away from that, the homecomer’s obligation to change their whole approach to life, their whole thought process, and matter of fact, before I came home, about three years actually before I came home, I wrote a book called recidivism prevention workbook. For people that don’t know, recidivism is commonly used to describe the tendency of a person who’s been convicted of a crime to relapse or return back to criminal behavior.

Len Sipes: That’s a wonderful –

Cortez McDaniel: So I thought about that through my own life, and I thought of how valuable it could be to a lot of men. So in a sense, in my own life, I realize that my whole thought process had deteriorated into how my approach to life was a way of criminal thinking, and so I had to change my principal system, my moral judgment, everything about that had to be looked at, and I had to be man enough and willing to change that. So I started, I don’t like to use program again, because it’s beginning and end to that, but I started this class that encompassed criminal thinking and criminal behavior, and it was very successful in prison, and I came out here in society with the same ideology that we are capable of being refocused, and that we have a responsibility to approach life differently.

Len Sipes: How many people who come out of the prison system come out of the prison system with that understanding? Lots of people who have told me, I’m getting out, and when I used to work inside the prison system, I’m getting out, and I’m not going back, came back.

Donald Zimmerman: Well you have a lot of –

Len Sipes: Came back pretty quickly.

Donald Zimmerman: Well, you have a lot of men and women who come out with the intent that they’re not going to go back, but when they get out and they see the situation that they’re, no jobs, or they don’t want to accept a job, because I have the notion that there are jobs, people just don’t want to go work at McDonald’s, don’t want to go work at Wendy’s, whereas when you were in the federal prison system, you work for $5.25 a month. So with that being said, they see their situations, and they don’t have that support system on the outside that will reeducate. See, one, you have to reeducate yourself into, like, your morals and your values, saying, you know, positive things to you, like, you know, you can do better, you can find a job. It’s not how much money you make, it’s what you do with the money you make. You know, when you start to understand the simpler things in life and start, you know, understanding true happiness and just knowing that you have to, you know, first, that you’re on probation or parole, you have to first comply, take it one situation at a time, then you can move to the next step. Once you start to comply, then you can start going to your meetings, then you can start building relationships, and then eventually, as time progress, you will start to reeducate yourself with better understanding and more.

Len Sipes: Okay, so the point in all of this is that, if you are willing to go through that process, and if you’re willing to seek help, you can cross that bridge. You can go from the tax burden to the taxpayer. You can be employed, but it’s really upon you if you, and how much –

Cortez McDaniel: Well, the support system is very, very necessary.

Len Sipes: That’s the point I want –

Cortez McDaniel: And that’s, with Phelps Stokes, that’s what we’re all about at Phelps Stokes, the Homecomers’ Academy. That’s what we’re all about is providing a support system for a homecomer that lets them understand that, and helps to reinforce these ideologies in him and helps him understand that he has certain responsibilities that he needs to live up to, but also that he’s not alone, that he has some support and some assistance in getting to where he needs to get to. A lot of times, people will come out of prison with, have purposed themselves never to go back, but they get out, and the support falls through. A lot of times people have become estranged from their families for different reasons, and they don’t, they lack people who care or people who are willing to take a chance on them.

Len Sipes: And that’s what the ladies said during the first segment. If you’ve got that group of people who can support you emotionally and get you through this process, that really does increase the chances of you doing well.

Cortez McDaniel: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: Okay. So the point is this. The final minutes of the program is that what I said on the first segment is that there are thousands of you guys out there struggling, but they’re ready to make that move. They’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. They’re sick and tired of being caught up in the criminal justice system. They would be good employees, they would be good citizens. There’s a certain point where society does have to recognize who is at risk and who’s trying, who’s struggling and who’s trying to make it, correct? I mean, that is incumbent upon employers and incumbent upon people, I mean, we have to fund a certain amount of programs to help people cross that bridge. Am I right or wrong?

Cortez McDaniel: Well, yeah. I think we have to have entities. Like I said, I don’t like to use the word program, because when I talk about a program, I’m talking about a beginning and an end.

Len Sipes: And this is lifelong.

Cortez McDaniel: But we believe in relationships, and we believe in those relationships being everlasting –

Donald Zimmerman: Brotherhoods and sisterhoods.

Cortez McDaniel: The dynamic may change as things evolve, but we believe those relationships are important –

Len Sipes: And the same with the research on Delancey Street out in San Francisco 25 years ago. That’s exactly what they said in terms of the former offenders coming together as a group to help each other out. So that’s the bottom line.

Donald Zimmerman: What we need is real people dealing with real problems trying to find real solutions.

Len Sipes: Okay. And you’ve got the final word. Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve come in contact with Cortez McDaniel and Donald Zimmerman. This is D.C. Public Safety. We really appreciate the fact that you’ve been with us today to explore this very important topic of people who are successes who have come out of the prison system, and yet at the same time made successes of themselves. We appreciate your attention, and please stick with us and watch for us next time as we explore another very important topic in the criminal justice system. Have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Video Ends]

Filed Under: Corrections-Prisons, Criminal Justice, Drug Treatment, Education and Vocational Assistance, Employment, Interviews with Offenders, Mental Health, Parole and Probation, Reentry, Video Podcast, Women Offenders

Drug Courts in Washington, D.C. “DC Public Safety”

January 3, 2011 By Len 2 Comments

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts. We now average 200,000 requests a month.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/11/drug-courts-in-washington-d-c-dc-public-safety/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From our nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to talk about drug courts. Drug courts seem to have a pretty impressive research history from the U.S. Department of Justice and other sources essentially stating that people involved in the drug court process do well, better than the people who do not go to drug court, people involved in substance abuse, they go to drug court, they interact with the judge, they interact with supervision staff, and generally speaking, the outcomes are positive. To talk about the program that we have here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, we have two principals with us today. Carline Claudomir and Amanda Rocha, they’re both community supervision officers assigned to our drug court, but before we get into the program, our usual commercial, we are up to 220,000 requests for DC Public Safety radio, television, blog, and transcripts. If you need to get in touch with us, and we really appreciate all of the emails, we really appreciate all of the comments in the comment line, and whether it’s criticisms, or whether it’s platitudes, we embrace whatever it is that you have to say to us, and we take it very seriously, and we appreciate all the suggestions in terms of future programs, you can get in touch with me directly via email: Leonard, L-E-O-N-A-R-D – dot-sipes – S-I-P-E-S – @csosa.gov, or you can follow us via twitter at twitter.com/lensipes or you can go to the site itself, www.csosa.gov and look for the radio and television programs, or you can go to media.csosa.gov directly and take a look at these programs and comment through the comment line and back to our guests, Carline Claudomir and Amanda Rocha, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Carline Claudomir: Hi, Len.

Amanda Rocha: Hi, Len.

Len Sipes: All right, Carline. How many times did I butcher that first name? And last name? Carline Claudomir!

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay. And I know I’m going to get the emails saying, Leonard, you can not pronounce names correctly! Amanda, you’ve been before our microphones before, correct?

Amanda Rocha: I have, Len.

Len Sipes: You’ve done some other stuff for us.

Amanda Rocha: Yes, I have.

Len Sipes: All right, so you’re star of stage and screen.

Amanda Rocha: Oh, no!

Len Sipes: And you’re very used to the microphone process. Drug courts. You know, ladies, the research on drug courts is positive, Carline, and the first question’s going to go to you. The research is positive. Drug courts do seem to work. Individuals going into the drug court process do seem to do fairly well. The whole idea behind, or the history of drug courts, for the audience, was to try to provide an alternative to incarceration, and an alternative to doing nothing. If you take a look at national research, out of all of the offenders caught up in the criminal justice system, 11% get drug treatment.

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Now, the overwhelming majority of people caught up in the criminal justice system do not get drug treatment. That’s amazing to me. That’s amazing to me, considering all the social ills that are out there. But here, what we do is provide drug treatment, and in some cases, we simply provide supervision services. We do whatever is necessary to stabilize that person with a substance abuse history, correct?

Carline Claudomir: You’re correct.

Len Sipes: All right, tell me about it.

Carline Claudomir: My name is Carline Claudomir, and I work with the STAR/HIDTA team. STAR/HIDTA stands for Sanction Team for Addiction Recovery. Our program entails the clients being assigned by either their judge and their attorney, or coming through transfer from other teams at CSOSA, or through our pre-trial drug program. Once they come to STAR/HIDTA, they are signing a contract stating that there are a number of things that they will and will not do while on probation, and they understand that there’s immediate consequences for any positive drug test or noncompliant behavior.

Len Sipes: Okay, so if they screw up, there are immediate consequences –

Carline Claudomir: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: – and that’s what seems to work, correctly?

Carline Claudomir: Yes, it’s the blessing and the curse for some of the clients.

Len Sipes: Because we need to understand that people with substance abuse histories, shall I say, always screw up. Recovery, problems are part of the recovery process, so it’s not, go to drug court and never do drugs again. It’s go to drug court and work with that person as that person faces their addiction history and relearns how to live life without drugs.

Carline Claudomir: Yes, and a lot of times, when they come to us, they sit, stand up in court before the judge and say, Your Honor, yes, I want to do probation, Your Honor, yes, I want treatment, then they come to the office, and then they reread the contract and realize it’s not only treatment!

Len Sipes: Oh, my heavens! What have I gotten myself involved in?

Carline Claudomir: Yes, it’s treatment and sanctions, so if you continue to use drugs, unfortunately, there are jail sanctions involved, which are treatment, tough love all the way.

Len Sipes: You’re tough love all the way, but that’s what is necessary. Amanda Rocha, in terms of that sense of tough love, correct?

Amanda Rocha: Yes, absolutely. It really does help to have that median sanctioning, because it puts a little fear in the offenders so that they don’t go back and use, it gives them that second thought before deciding to use, oh, that’s three nights in jail if I go ahead and do that, or oh, you know what? I’m on my fourth sanction or fifth sanction, and now it’s seven nights in jail. So they don’t want to continue going back and forth. It gets old for them to have to do that, and so kind of helps them along the way a little bit.

Len Sipes: Well, I think it’s important for people to understand just that, because, you know, this whole concept of treatment, the research is pretty clear that the reason why most people don’t get drug treatment is not its availability or lack of availability. The principal reason for why people don’t get drug treatment is that they don’t feel they need drug treatment, and in many cases, in terms of the criminal justice system, we basically coerce them into a) getting drug treatment, b) sticking with it because of the sanctions along the way. If you have a positive urine, we don’t care if it’s for marijuana, we don’t care what it’s for. If you have a positive urine, this is what’s going to happen to you, and those punishments, if you will, are going to increase as you continue your substance abuse, correct?

Carline Claudomir: It’s the accountability factor, and a lot of times, they come to us never having to be held accountable for their drug use, never had to be held accountable for their actions, and when they come to us, they realize every time they mess up, there is no passes, there are no passes, so immediately, you go see the judge, and you can explain to the judge why you felt it was okay to make this decision, regardless of the consequences.

Len Sipes: You know, the interesting thing is that there’s an increasing number of research programs out there, studies that, interestingly enough, it’s the judge who seems to be at the centerpoint of a lot of these mental health courts, substance abuse courts, reentry courts, there’s something magical about the judge being involved in this process, I think.

Carline Claudomir: It’s the authority, because if I say he needs treatment and the judge says he needs treatment, that holds a lot of weight. You don’t want to go to a judge and say, no, he doesn’t need treatment. No, it doesn’t work that way. The judge says he needs it, then you’re going to listen, because they’re in the midst of the battle.

Len Sipes: Okay. Now it’s extraordinarily confusing for the people of this audience, because it goes way beyond Washington D.C. 20% of our audience is international, and the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area is not our top city in terms of people listening to this program. So we have to explain that under the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, administratively, we have an entity called pre-trial services who are their own independent agency with their own board and their own mission, but they fall under the generic auspices of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, both are federalized, and they also have a drug court program focusing on pretrial individuals, correct?

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay, and I know you can’t speak for them, but in essence, the gig is that the person goes before a judge, and if he completes, or she completes the provisions of the drug court program, the charges are dropped.

Carline Claudomir: It has an affect on the charges or what is actually ending sentencing.

Len Sipes: All right, there you go. It has an effect. You should be a public affairs officer. But ours, what we’re talking about is post-conviction. We’re talking about probationers.

Amanda Rocha: Yes.

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay, and the probationers, we’re talking about, the incentive here is early termination, it’s where the judge or the attorney feels that this person has a substance abuse background, not necessarily currently doing drugs, but having a substance abuse background, and this person may not be new to the criminal justice system. This person may have multiple arrests and multiple contacts with the criminal justice system, correct?

Amanda Rocha: That is correct. We have people who are 18-years-old up until, well into their 60s, so yeah, it could be somebody who is their first charge, or it could be somebody who’s, it’s their 20th.

Len Sipes: Right, and that part, by the way, the process in terms of people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s and older. I’ve had a chance to encounter them, in terms of the write-alongs that I’ve done with our folks, and that’s sad, don’t you think? I mean, when you walk into this apartment of this guy who’s been through heroin, who’s been through crack, I mean, these older heroin addicts, these older coke guys, you know, they just have the hardest time staying away from drugs. It’s just amazing to me to go into the home of a 50-year-old and 60-year-old because they continue to do drugs.

Carline Claudomir: Can I go back to the incentive process?

Len Sipes: Yes.

Carline Claudomir: I always hear the biggest incentives for our program is the fact that you can come off of drugs, and you can be successful in the community without using illicit substances. We actually have a client right now, he is part of the TAP program, but we also see some of those clients sometimes, and he’s working, he’s successful, he’s drug free. That is the biggest incentive. Most of our clients, however, see early termination, and that’s their goal, and they don’t actually think of, to get there, I have to also be drug free.

Len Sipes: Here’s my guess, and either one of you, feel free to tell me whether I’m right or wrong. My guess is that they think that they’re entering this program, and the early termination is the only thing that’s on their mind, and getting off of drugs is way, way, way, way, way back on the list of –

Carline Claudomir: – priorities.

Len Sipes: Yeah, priorities, because a lot of people, they’ve done drugs the good part of their lives. You know, 12, 13 years old, starting alcohol, 14, 15, starting marijuana, 16, 17, graduating to the harder drugs, a lot of these individuals that we supervise here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, and this applies to any parole and probation agency in the country. You know, they work with people who don’t know how to live life without self-medication.

Carline Claudomir: And unfortunately, in their minds, they believe it’s recreational, even though they have a 20-year history of drug abuse and treatment situations, they still believe it’s recreational, I can stop at any point in time.

Len Sipes: I can handle this.

Carline Claudomir: And unfortunately, when they get in front of, into the STAR/HIDTA program, and there’s consequences, and they realize, well I’m just going to jail because I can’t stop using, is that really worth it? And that’s when it may click in their mind, okay, I really do, I have a problem. I can’t do this on my own.

Len Sipes: We, we have this come to reality be, again, I’ve used other terms, but I don’t want to be disrespectful. Where that becomes a defining moment in their lives, does it not, that they have lived their life with the needle, lived their life with a powdery substance, lived their life smoking reefer, they really don’t know what to do without drugs.

Amanda Rocha: And I think, for example, we have somebody assigned to us right now. Her grandmother had a history, apparently she’s not using now, but of use. Her mother is actively using, and she’s a young girl, 19 years old, and is using, so that, not only has she been using for a good amount of her short life that she has had so far, but she also has been living with this substance abuse through her generations.

Len Sipes: Right. I guess that’s the point that I’m trying to get across to the audience, because we have this extraordinarily simplistic sense as to the problem that we have with people, the 16,000 people that we supervise on any given day, and most of the people in the audience that I talk to understand that out of the 7 million people under correctional supervision, 5 of those 7 million are on community supervision. So when we talk about corrections in this country, the overwhelming majority of these individuals are in the community being supervised in the community. The overwhelming majority of these individuals have substance abuse histories. The overwhelming majority of these individuals just don’t smoke a joint every couple weeks. That investment in drugs is a long term early age of onset life altering experience, but they don’t know how to have a life without drugs. So every time the boss gets in their face, they smoke a joint. Every time life takes a turn, the needle goes in their arm. That’s who they are, that’s what they are in terms of their own self definition. Now am I exaggerating, or am I in the ballpark?

Carline Claudomir: No, even when they’re successful, the way they celebrate is by using drugs!

Len Sipes: That’s right! They reward themselves. We had a case one time when I was with the Maryland Department of Public Safety. The guy comes out of prison, reunited with his family, he’s going to drug treatment, he’s working, he’s getting along with the kids, and he’s doing so well, that what he does is fire up a joint to celebrate! And he kept pulling positives for marijuana! First positive, second positive, third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Now there’s a certain point where we’re sitting down and saying, my man, you’re very close to going back to prison, and your wife let you come home, and the kids, you’re getting along with the kids, and you’re working every single day, and you’re going to drug treatment, and the drug treatment folks say that you’re progressing, and you’re within a hair’s breadth of going back to the prison system! What’s up with you?

Carline Claudomir: Well I have clients like that right now in my caseload. I had a client who, by some confusion, believed that her termination date was a month earlier, and so when I called her in, I said, I need you to come in and drug test, because I’m sorry, you actually terminate in May instead of April, and that drug test was positive for marijuana, and her explanation was, I thought I was off of probation! But she had not tested positive in close to 7 months!

Len Sipes: But that’s not the point!

Carline Claudomir: It’s not the point!

Len Sipes: So you, the criminal justice system, in essence, in these drug courts or other modalities that we have here at CSOSA, when we involve people in long term residential group substance abuse, that is, for the first time in their lives many of these individuals come face to face with the prospect of never using drugs again, and facing the prospect as to why they use drugs to begin with. That is a pretty scary place to be, is it not?

Amanda Rocha: I would think so, yeah. Some of the offenders have already had drug treatment, though, and this is their second time coming around, because like you were saying, it is a scary thought, so maybe that first time they weren’t open to it. They didn’t really reap the full benefits of receiving that treatment, so here they are, back in the criminal justice system, and we’re giving them another chance, and we’re hoping that this time, they are receptive, and they do keep that open mind, and they aren’t so put off by the whole idea of addressing that issue.

Len Sipes: We’re halfway through the program, ladies and gentlemen. This is DC Public Safety today. We’re talking about drug courts. We have two principals with us. We have Carline, let’s see if I can actually pronounce Carline’s last name correctly, Claudomir, and Amanda Rocha, both community supervision officers with drug court. Again, there are two drug courts in the District of Columbia, ours under the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, which is post-adjudication, which means the person’s on probation, and we also have one on the pretrial side of it, and the whole idea is, when the judge or the attorney takes a look at this individual’s background, they say that this person’s involvement in criminal activity is principally due to substance abuse, and that person may not be new to the criminal justice system. This may be the person’s fifth, sixth, seventh, twelfth time, but he has a substance abuse history, she has a substance abuse history, and what we try to do is to get them involved in treatment, but the interesting part of it is that treatment may not be the first stop, correct? We have other, we assess the individual –

Carline Claudomir: When they come in to this, the HIDTA drug program, initially, some clients actually are [INDISCERNIBLE] from either the pretrial or from a request from their judge. A lot of our clients come in, and we assess their drug, their current drug test to see, what level they would actually go into. Some clients come in and never drug test positive, and they had dealt with their issues prior to coming to –

Len Sipes: Or they make the voluntary decision to stop as long as they’re under supervision. So the interesting part, this was the point I was trying to get to, and both of you were looking at me, so why did I, the interesting part of it is research years ago that basically said offenders take vacations from their drug use all the time. There’s a certain point where even the person involved in substance abuse will say, I’m doing it too much. I need my wife or my significant other, or for whatever reason, I’m going to be drug tested, I’ve got to stop for the next 3 or 4 months, and then oftentimes, the person goes right back to it. So this sense of an uncontrollable craving for drugs, that craving is always there, but the person can stop for a certain amount of time.

Carline Claudomir: It depends on the person, but yes, sometimes we do have clients who may have tested positive three or four times at the very beginning, and we never, and then complete their whole probation with no, with no positive drug tests, but then we’ll see them later on in court, and they got another charge, and they tested positive at some other point after they leave the STAR/HIDTA program.

Len Sipes: So with the criminal justice system has the wherewithal, and mothers have the wherewithal, and pardon my sexism, wives have the wherewithal, and in the case of women offenders, husbands have the wherewithal, people who have a certain amount of power regarding the offender, have the ability to get that offender to stop doing drugs, at least for a certain amount of time.

Carline Claudomir: Specifically when the consequences is jail time. A lot of our clients, after they sit, do their first sanction which is a jury box sanction for three days, and they see the judge stepping back, client after client after client for a positive drug test for three nights or seven nights or 14 nights or 28 nights, they look at that and say, oh, I’m not going to do 28 nights for a positive marijuana. I can stop for –

Len Sipes: That’s the point, isn’t it?

Carline Claudomir: Yeah.

Len Sipes: Isn’t that the point? I mean, it’s like we have these endless debates about substance abuse and what works and what doesn’t work. Well, holding a 28 day setback, as we refer to it, of spending 28 days in jail for smoking a joint seems to be an awfully heavy price to pay, and a lot of these individuals under our supervision consciously make the choice not to continue to smoke marijuana because they simply don’t want to spend 28 days in jail, correct?

Carline Claudomir: Correct, but the flipside is those who actually are in the grips of their addiction, no matter how many sanctions you provide, they’re not going to stop.

Len Sipes: They’re not going to stop.

Carline Claudomir: And those are the ones we really try to focus on and really try to get them out of the community immediately, because every time they pick up, they’re, one, they’re breaking the law, and they’re violating their probation contract, and they’re violating probation, and they’re hurting themselves, and they may become a threat to the community, so we try to get them out of the community as fast as we can through treatment.

Len Sipes: All right, and then some cases, through residential treatment.

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay. So let’s walk through those steps, those sanction steps, because we have, sitting in the jury box for three days, which is a real pain.

Carline Claudomir: First violation.

Len Sipes: Okay. Second violation –

Carline Claudomir: – is going to be 30 days on GPS with [INDISCERNIBLE] conference.

Len Sipes: So 30 days being tracked electronically through global positioning system satellite tracking, so wherever you go, you’re tracked.

Carline Claudomir: With a curfew.

Len Sipes: With a curfew.

Carline Claudomir: And sometimes, a stayaway. You can’t go to the neighborhood where you usually get your drugs from.

Len Sipes: There you go.

Carline Claudomir: If you do, we know where you are.

Len Sipes: There you go. So he’s being watched all the time. Okay, so that’s pretty cool. Now the next sanction after that?

Carline Claudomir: Third sanction is three nights in jail.

Len Sipes: Three nights in jail. In the D.C. jail.

Carline Claudomir: D.C. jail.

Len Sipes: Well that’s a lovely place to visit! Is it on the weekend, during the week?

Carline Claudomir: It’s whenever they get their sanction.

Len Sipes: It’s whenever they get their sanction.

Carline Claudomir: It starts immediately.

Len Sipes: Okay. Fourth?

Amanda Rocha: It would be a case staffing. So Ms. Claudomir and I, or our supervisor or other team members get together and discuss this individual’s case to see what we can do at this point, because in the past, what has been going on isn’t working. So a plan, in a sense.

Len Sipes: Is that, is that where you give your riot act pronouncement to the individual, basically saying, hey, you’re this far from going into prison?

Carline Claudomir: They’ve been getting it the whole time! And we tell our clients when they come in, if we get to the case staffing stage, please understand you’re leaving the community and going to treatment. There is no if, but, can I, can I get one more chance? No, your chance was when you stood in front of the judge and said you would be clean and sober.

Len Sipes: And there’s a certain point where we will send them away to residential treatment.

Carline Claudomir: That’s the case staffing stage.

Len Sipes: That’s the case staffing stage. Okay, after that, what happens?

Amanda Rocha: Then we have the seven nights in jail sanction.

Len Sipes: Okay, and then it just basically goes from 7 nights to 14 nights to an entire month sort of thing.

Amanda Rocha: That’s right, and if somebody gets placed in residential treatment and gets discharged unsuccessfully or voluntarily chooses to leave, then that would be 15 nights in jail.

Len Sipes: The average person listening to this program, people within the criminal justice system are going to say, eh, that’s pretty much common business, drug positives and sanctions. The average person outside of the criminal justice system listening to this program would be appalled. They’re going, how many positives, how many bites at the apple are you giving this guy? You’re telling me that he’s got 15 prior contacts with the criminal justice system, and now we’re up to our fifth and sixth drug positive? For the love of good god, put that person in prison! Obviously, that person doesn’t want to comply. Obviously, that person is posing a public safety risk. Just put him back in prison.

Carline Claudomir: But see, you look at the context of the situation, the average individual on probation actually provides a number more of positive drug tests are a lot more noncompliant. We get them immediately, after the first, second, third, fourth, fifth. So in the context of probation, sometimes a client won’t be able to go before the sentencing judge until the 20th plus drug test because we can’t get a show cause until then to tell the judge he is noncompliant with probation.

Len Sipes: Okay, but that’s a technicality, and I’m glad you brought that up, but the principal issue here for the average citizen is, you know, are, the people that we have under supervision are not exactly the most popular people on the face of the earth.

Carline Claudomir: No, but they are your neighbors.

Len Sipes: Well, that’s a good point. That’s a good point. But my, the other point is that, you know, when we go out, the citizens asking them to support, whether it’s mental health programs or substance abuse programs or educational programs or vocational programs, the response oftentimes is, Leonard, we’re going to give to the church, we’re going to give to the schools, let the money go to the kids, let the money go to the elderly, I’m really not all that enthused about giving criminals. Money for programs, so the point is, is that there’s a frustration level and a tolerance level on the part of the average citizen as to how many chances we’re going to give that individual from the standpoint of public safety, and we need to explain why we do that.

Carline Claudomir: Public safety is our number one concern, so we always talk to our clients in regards from the aspect. When you become a threat to public safety –

Len Sipes: Boom, you go.

Carline Claudomir: – you need to leave the community.

Len Sipes: That’s right.

Carline Claudomir: But up until that point, we have to work with you, because once you leave probation, you’re done with this. You go back into that same community, because you don’t walk around with a sign saying, I am a criminal. You walk around into those churches, into those schools, pick up your children, those same places that the public wants to provide their money, those clients are there with them.

Len Sipes: 1 out of 45 individuals, according to national research are on probation right now or community supervision. Now, if you can, these are active. So if you count people who have been caught up in the criminal justice system, it’s at least 1 out of 20. So every time, regardless of where you go, where you shop, those, you’re going to encounter hundreds of individuals who have been caught up in the criminal justice system. So I think the rationale is, is that we want them to quit drugs, we want them to become taxpayers, not tax burdens, we want them to stop criminality, and I think that’s what we try to do with these individuals in drug court.

Amanda Rocha: That’s right. We want them to make that lifestyle change, so they’re not back in and out of the system.

Len Sipes: We want them to toss off substance abuse for good.

Amanda Rocha: That’s right.

Len Sipes: And stop messing with us.

Carline Claudomir: The problem is, sometimes it doesn’t happen in one try. I have sat in drug court and did my cases in drug court and have turned to the left, and looked into the jury box and saw a client I had a year ago who got off on early termination who is now back on pre-trial.

Len Sipes: That’s exactly right. And it is the process of recovery, and when we do live talk radio, people have a hard time listening to this, because their sense of the criminal justice system is, you’re getting a break, buddy, and maybe one, maybe two, but you hit three, and I want you to go back to prison. I think the average person in the larger community, not in the criminal justice system, feels that way. So we have to be accountable to the average citizen and explain to them that recovery, in terms of substance abuse, is a messy process that takes, in many cases, two, three times at treatment, and in many cases, involves multiple positives for drugs until we can convince that person to stay away from drugs, at least for the period of their supervision, or go to jail.

Carline Claudomir: I have a client who has been on probation since 1995, and he has been through every team at CSOSA, and when he finally made it to STAR/HIDTA, and he started messing up, and we did the warrant initiatives and went into his home and arrested him, and we brought him in front of his judge, the judge said, no, we’re going to give him one more chance, and that is it. One more chance. And it just continues on. But I will say that after this last opportunity, he has been clean and sober for 7-8 months, is working full time, and now, he is back, part of society. But see, it didn’t work the first, second, third, 10th, 15th time.

Len Sipes: You know, the interesting part of this is that the average person hearing it has a low frustration level for people caught up in the criminal justice system, but that is our reality. Our reality is that we have individuals who don’t know how to live life without a needle. They don’t know how to live life without a hallucinogen. They don’t know how to do it, and what we do is we teach them how to live life without using drugs, and that created a much safer society, a much saner society in the long run, and we turn people who are tax burdens into taxpayers, and I think that’s the heart and soul of it. It’s messy, it’s sloppy, sometimes it’s hard to explain to the general public, but we take individuals who are problems and we turn out individuals who are no longer problems, and we do that more often than we don’t, correct?

Carline Claudomir: And sometimes we’re the only ones who hold up that mirror to that individual and make them see how sloppy and messy they are, and they have been living their life, and hold them accountable, and when they think they’re almost done, hold them accountable even more and make them be the successes that they say they want to be when they first came to probation.

Len Sipes: It’s a fascinating process. Most of the people that I’ve encountered after a certain point, especially the older guys, sick and tired of being sick and tired. They are. I mean, it is just a terrible process of being arrested and rearrested and rearrested and reincarcerated and reincarcerated. These aren’t necessarily violent criminals. Most of these people are involved in nonviolent crimes, but there’s a certain point where they just get sick and tired of being constantly put through the criminal justice system, and they finally quit. They finally make that break. So I think what you’re doing is intervening in that process earlier, if at all humanly possible to get them to that point where they understand that they’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, correct?

Amanda Rocha: Well, and also, think about the example that I gave before where this young adult has this generational, you know, substance abuse that she’s been around, and those people who have dropped out of school in the sixth grade, or who have all these different issues, and they’re using to kind of, you know, make themselves feel better about the issue, or they’re trying to fit in with their peers, or with their family. So you have all these issues that are going on, and part of probation’s job is to address those issues, get them into an employment training program, get their GED, so now that they have these positive things in their life that they didn’t have before that would help them to stop using or even wanting to go back and use.

Len Sipes: Or put them back in jail or prison, and either one protects public safety.

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: That’s the bottom line. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re out of time. Carline Claudomir, and I said it for the first time correctly, community supervision officer with our drug court unit. Amanda Rocha, also a community supervision officer with our drug court unit. You can find information about CSOSA at www.csosa.gov. You can also access the radio, television shows, the blog, and transcripts through the CSOSA website, or directly through www.media – M-E-D-I-A – dot-csosa – C-S-O-S-A – dot-gov. You can follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/lensipes, and you can also email me directly, Leonard – L-E-O-N-A-R-D – dot-sipes – S-I-P-E-S – @csosa.gov. Ladies and gentlemen, I want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Courts, Drug Treatment, Education and Vocational Assistance, Interviews with Staff, Parole and Probation, Probation, Reentry, What Works Tagged With: Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, CSOSA, D.C., drug court, Washington

Hiring People Under Community Supervision-An Employer’s Perspective-Andre Marr

November 22, 2010 By Len Leave a Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – Radio and Television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/10/hiring-people-under-community-supervision-an-employers-prespective-andre-marr/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From our nation’s capital, this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. We continue our conversations about employing people under supervision. We have, before our microphones today, Andre Marr. Andre is the CEO and President of A&E Heating and Air Conditioning here in the nation’s capital. He is also involved in something pretty serious. Andre at one time was caught up in the criminal justice system. He wants to give back. He started Product of the Product, which is www.productoftheproduct.org, to train individuals caught up in the criminal justice system. Before getting on to the interview, our usual commercial: thanks everybody, thanks to everybody for listening and all the comments, the letters, the emails, and sometimes phone calls. If you need to get in touch with me directly, you can do so via email: Leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or follow us by twitter, that’s twitter.com/lensipes, and again, before our microphones, Andre Marr, the president and CEO of A&E Heating and Air Conditioning in Washington D.C. to talk about hiring people under supervision. Andre, how are you doing?

Andre Marr: I’m doing great, thank you.

Len Sipes: Now you’ve had this company for about 14 years. At one time, you were caught up in the criminal justice system.

Andre Marr: Absolutely. At one time, I was part of the criminal justice system, and was, last time I was incarcerated was 1984, I’m glad to say.

Len Sipes: And you crossed the bridge, as I like to put it. You went from being a tax burden to a taxpayer, and now you’re hiring people, and you’re hiring not just people under supervision, you’re hiring all sorts of people, but you’re here today to talk about what it takes to hire people, what employers are looking for in terms of hiring somebody who is under supervision, what goes through their mind, but what caused you to make the break, to go from a tax burden to taxpayer, but to business owner?

Andre Marr: Well, just the old adage, sick and tired of being sick and tired, was tired of doing the same thing, getting the same results.

Len Sipes: Yep, and I’ve heard that, in 40 years in the criminal justice system, I’ve heard that about 10,000 times. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. Somehow, some way, this is my refrain, or my response to that, somehow, some way, we’ve got to be able to reach the 25 years old, the 20 year old, and whoever figures that out is going to win the Nobel Prize. You know what I mean? Instead of reaching that guy when he’s 40 when he’s sick and tired of being sick and tired, reach them when they’re young when they’re still full of pee and vinegar.

Andre Marr: Well, actually, it’s not all that difficult. What we decided to do was become a product of what we were trying to create. An example is the best, the best teacher. Don’t ask me to do something you’re not doing yourself.

Len Sipes: Amen. Amen. Example is the best teacher. All right, now you hire people being supervised by Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, my agency, and you also are involved in the training program, product of the product.org, but that’s been three years. You’ve been doing heating and air conditioning for 14 years. What do you look for when you’re hiring somebody? So one of, a person comes out of the prison system, and he’s in Washington D.C., and he comes to you, and so he did five years for assault or armed robbery, and he comes to you, and he’s looking for a job. What’s going through your mind?

Andre Marr: Well, what’s going through my mind is, are you able to maintain clean urines? Do you have a drug problem? Punctuality and attendance. Those three major factors, and the biggest barriers that I find in employment in any sector, not just the ex-offender, people coming out of the criminal justice system, but people in general all suffer from these three major infractions.

Len Sipes: Andre, do people have to be trained to come to you and find employment? I mean, do they have to know heating and air conditioning, or with the right attitude and the right motivation, you will train them?

Andre Marr: Well, attitude is very important. Preferably, we would like for them to be trained. A&E is no different from any other heating and air conditioning company. If you come to us green, in other words, with little or no experience, then our investment in you wouldn’t be reaped for 2-3 years.

Len Sipes: Sure. So there has to, so in your mind, you’re looking for a little bit of training.

Andre Marr: I’m looking for a little bit of training, but I’m looking for a lot of good attitude. Yes.

Len Sipes: You know, I was told a long time ago by a construction company here in town is, and they put it real bluntly, and some people are turned off by that level of bluntness, but they’re, when they were talking to a group of people they were thinking about hiring, they said shut up, show up, no baby mama drama. I expect 8 hours for 8 hours pay, and if I need you to work overtime, if I need you to put in 12 hours that day, that’s what you do. That’s what I’m looking for, and if you do that, I can give you a good career. What’s your response to that?

Andre Marr: Well, my response to that is generally the same. However, different people come with different circumstances, different problems. We’re living in a different world today. Supervision in itself is a challenge. The urinalysis, the reporting to the parole officer, probation officer, a lot of employers aren’t very lenient when it comes to allowing employees to fulfill some of these responsibilities.

Len Sipes: Sure. They want a clean urine, they’ve got to show up sober every day, of course.

Andre Marr: Well, not so much wanting the clean urine, but having to take off to go and –

Len Sipes: I hear you.

Andre Marr: – participate in urinalysis –

Len Sipes: I hear you.

Andre Marr: – go off and participate in this.

Len Sipes: What can we do as a bureaucracy? We’re a federal agency with a local mission here in Washington D.C.? What can this agency do to make it easier for you to hire our people?

Andre Marr: Well, I think what the agencies need to do is to continue to provide the close supervision that they’re providing, the structure, the urinalysis, I can’t emphasize that enough. If we could just stop burning up these cups, a lot of us could become gainfully employed, but the supervision and the structure overall, I think, is great. The prospective employee just has to learn a little patience, and to remember that everything’s happening the way it was designed.

Len Sipes: Is my agency a help or an impediment? I mean, are we there working with you to hire the right person and to come to you and say, look, there’s not an issue in terms of dirty urines, the guy’s going to show up on time, if you have problems with him throughout the course of the day, the week, the month, the next year, come back to us. Are we a help or are we a hindrance?

Andre Marr: Well, in all fairness and honesty, I would have to say there are pros and cons to both sides of that question, but through my experience, I’ve found that your agency has been very helpful, very cooperative when they could. They try to understand when they don’t, and they put forth a great effort. I really do believe.

Len Sipes: One of the things I do want to remind everybody that you can go to our website, www.csosa.gov, www.csosa.gov, again, stands for the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, a federal parole and probation agency serving Washington D.C., and you can go to the section on “Hiring people in community supervision,” and you can provide your own comments, and we really are looking forward to people, and getting their opinions, crowd sourcing this issue from the employment community, the business community, in terms of what it would take for us to do a better job of hiring the people under our supervision. Andre, just a couple minutes left. What’s the bottom line for us as an agency, in terms of convincing people to take another look at our offenders? We have a stereotype, and people look at the evening news, and they read the newspaper, and it’s, a lot of it is people doing terrible things to other people, and so people are skeptical about hiring somebody who’s served time.

Andre Marr: Well, this is true, and that stereotype is going to take a while to suspend. Surely it doesn’t always turn out great, but I believe in most cases that most people deserve a second chance. I guess a lot of us could look at our own lives and say, but for the grace, there go I. It could have been me. A lot of us have committed crimes, just haven’t been caught for them, so it could definitely go the other way, but it’s been my experience that most of these young men and women who have been caught up in the criminal justice system just want the opportunity to provide for themselves and their own family, and you know, to live a productive –

Len Sipes: And that’s rather startling, and that’s a point that a lot of people don’t quite understand that virtually everybody that I’ve ever talked to coming out of the prison system, they desperately don’t want to go back.

Andre Marr: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: They desperately want a clean and sober life for themselves. In some cases, they’re not quite sure how to get from point A to point B, and they continue within the criminal justice system, but people like you, it’s, I don’t want to say everybody’s got to serve time, everybody’s got to come from that life to be part of this. But if you give them an opportunity, in many cases, with our help, with the, the bonding program, and the tax benefits of hiring somebody under those circumstances, and again, with our assistance, I think they’re going to end up doing well.

Andre Marr: Absolutely. I would concur. Absolutely. Someone gave me a chance, and so now it’s just my turn to do the same for someone else.

Len Sipes: I appreciate what you’ve done. Our guest today is Andre Marr. Andre is the CEO and president of A&E Heating and Air Conditioning of Washington D.C. He also, now he’s been doing this for 14 years. He also has a training opportunity that he uses to try to give back, and to train individuals for jobs who have been caught up in the criminal justice system. That’s www.productoftheproduct.org. www.productoftheproduct.org. The telephone number for A&E Heating and Air Conditioning in Washington D.C. is (202)608-1349, (202)608-1349. Ladies and gentlemen, this is D.C. Public Safety. Again, we appreciate all of the comments that you’ve made to us throughout the last 3½ years. We’re up to 225,000 requests on a monthly basis for the radio, television show, blog, and transcript, and we want you to have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Education and Vocational Assistance, Employment, Reentry

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Hiring People Under Community Supervision-An Employer’s Perspective-Andre Marr

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