Parole and Probation

Sexual Exploitation of Children-DC Public Safety-US Department of Justice

October 19, 2011 By Len 1 Comment

Sexual Exploitation of Children – “DC Public Safety”

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 radio shows, blog and transcripts.

Television Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/video/2011/07/sexual-exploitation-of-children-dc-public-safety/

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

[Video Begins]

Len Sipes: Hi, everybody. Welcome to D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today’s show is about sexual exploitation of children, and you know what? It’s really about a rescue mission. The FBI estimates that on any given day there’s a million pedophiles online looking for your children. The attorney general, Eric Holder, what he did was to frame a national effort to look at what we can do, what we in the criminal justice system can do, and to look at what you as parents can do. To discuss this on the first half of the program, we have Francey Hakes. She is the national coordinator for child exploitation, prevention, and interdiction from the U.S. Department of Justice, and we have Dr. Michael Bourke, chief psychologist for the United States Marshal’s office, and to Francey, and to Michael, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Francey Hakes: Thank you for having us.

Len Sipes: All right, did I frame all this issue? I mean, we have a lot of people, a lot of concern, a lot of individuals involved in exploiting our children. So can you frame it for me a little bit, Francey? And can you give me a sense as to the national effort as announced by the attorney general, Eric Holder?

Francey Hakes: Of course. Some people have described the sexual exploitation of our children as an epidemic. I would certainly describe the explosion of child pornography that way. So last August, the attorney general, Eric Holder, announced our national strategy for child exploitation, prevention, and interdiction. It’s the first ever national strategy by any government in the world, and it’s certainly our first. It’s supposed to have three prongs: prevention, deterrence, and interdiction. What we decided to do is bring together all of the federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, all our prevention partners, all our sex offender management partners, our court partners, and most importantly, our parents and community groups together to bring this effort under one umbrella so that we can fight child sexual exploitation on all fronts.

Len Sipes: The numbers that I’m talking about, they’re going up dramatically. The numbers are astounding. We’re talking about a huge number of individuals trying to violate our kids on a day to day basis, and when I say violate, we’re talking about psychological and physical bondage, are we not?

Francey Hakes: Unfortunately, the children that are being sexually abused, especially the ones whose images are being traded like baseball cards across the internet, across the world, are being violated in increasingly violent ways, and we’re seeing increasingly younger and younger children being violated that way, and that is the reason that the attorney general and all of our partners decided to get together and start this effort, so that we could do something about it, and our ultimate goal is to eradicate child exploitation ultimately.

Len Sipes: Michael, you’re the chief psychologist for the United States Marshal’s office. You are an expert. You understand these individuals; child sexual predators probably better than anybody else. Who are they?

Michael Bourke: Well, for eight years, prior to coming to the Marshal Service, I treated these men in federal prison, and the truth is there isn’t really one mind of a predator, you know, so to speak. These men come in from all walks of life, they’re from all socioeconomic groups, they’re both genders, frankly, and these men tend not to burn out like other types of offenders do. So really, when we talk about what is the sex offender, they, they’re folks that are our neighbors; they’re folks that are our coaches and civic leaders in our communities in some cases. So they, most individuals that offend against children are actually known to those children and some have a very positive relationship in other ways with those children.

Len Sipes: Well, help me frame it Michael, because on one hand, we have, according to the FBI, a million pedophiles online, and they’re trying to entice these kids into meetings, and they’re trying to entice them to exchange images. These images are going to haunt them for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, most sexual exploitations involved people who were known to the victim. They’re the neighbor. They’re the uncle. They’re the coach. I mean, what do you say to parents? I mean, the numbers seem to be overwhelming. What are the chief lessons to be learned here, and what prevention lessons can we put on the table?

Michael Bourke: Yeah, I think, and Francey may have something to add to this, but from my experience, parents need to be aware of what their children are doing online. They need to be aware of who their friends are online, with whom they’re chatting at night, they should be paying as close attention to those friends as they do if their child’s going to go spend the night at someone’s home, and frankly, a lot of parents are a little intimidated by some of this advanced technology on the internet, children have a lot of access and avenues by which to access the internet, including mobile devices, and parents need to just get a little, get some additional education, and they need to pay attention to what these kids are doing online. It’s a very dangerous place.

Len Sipes: They’ve got to be aggressive. We run, by the way, in this program, we run a commercial about parents intervening with their kids and their online experiences, but the parents need to be aggressive. Is that the bottom line? I mean that’s the principal prevention method, if parents are aggressive in terms of what their kids are doing, and keeping an open line of communication, so if that child is approached, he can go to the parent and tell the parent about this experience. Am I right or wrong?

Michael Bourke: Yes, I think that’s accurate. And also that relationship is very important between the parent and child as well. For the parent to have a relationship with the child where the child feels comfortable coming to the parent and saying, someone attempted to solicit, or asked me to send them a dirty picture.

Len Sipes: Right.

Michael Bourke: or something like that, so that the parent can take action because so much can occur despite parents best efforts…

Len Sipes: Right.

Michael Bourke: these children can access the internet in a number of locations in a number of ways.

Len Sipes: Right.

Michael Bourke: so building that relationship and that type of rapport with the child is very important.

Len Sipes: Francey, you mentioned at the beginning of the program that The Department of Justice, for the first time, is bringing a coordination of effort in terms of parents, in terms of community organizations, in terms of law enforcement, in terms of everybody within the criminal justice system. What is the bottom line behind that coordination, is it to be a more effective tool for prevention, a more effective tool for apprehension and prosecution? What is it?

Francey Hakes: Well, like I said, in the beginning, it’s really three prongs. There are three main focuses of the national strategy: prevention, deterrence, and interdiction. Interdiction is traditional law enforcement investigation and prosecution. I’m a federal prosecutor, and I’ve been prosecuting these cases for 15 years. That’s obviously very important and will continue to be very important. But we’re never going to investigate and prosecute our way out of the problem. The numbers are simply too large. So deterrence is very important, and that’s where the United States Marshal Service and others, our state and local partners, through their sex offender management and monitoring, they are so key, and one of our best tools is going to be prevention. We’d rather not have the victims to have to rescue in the first place. We’d rather the children be empowered to protect themselves. We’d rather the parents have the tools that they need to know how to protect their children, and so that’s why organizations like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Netsmarts, these organizations give out free materials, they have websites, they give out free materials for parents, teachers, students, and groups to obtain the information that they need to protect themselves online. It’s not just the parents, it’s not just the students, it’s not just the teachers. It’s all of those groups, plus our community groups, that need to have the materials necessary to protect themselves, not just online, but in their day to day activities, I think sometimes in this internet world, we’ve become, and Dr. Burke is correct, that children have access to the internet through so many devices now that it’s, sometimes, I think, a little terrifying. But we also have to remember that the majority of children who are being sexually abused are being abused by those that they know, and so arming them with the knowledge, the empowerment, the understanding of what is right and what’s wrong and what’s okay to tell, who to go to, a trusted adult, those things are very important.

Len Sipes: Having those age appropriate conversations with the kids, informing them, but not scaring them.

Francey Hakes: Exactly right.

Len Sipes: Now, so all these statistics that I mentioned at the beginning of the program, one million pedophiles, and a 914% increase in the number of child prostitution cases, do we have the capacity to deal with this? Is the criminal justice system at the federal, state, and local level overwhelmed by this process? Do we have the wherewithal to deal with this effectively, or are we fighting an uphill battle?

Francey Hakes: Well I think, sometimes in prosecution, we always used to call it shoveling smoke because it seems like the more you shovel, the more that there is. And I think with respect to child sexual abuse it’s been around for a long time, we hope that we can eradicate it, and where I think, we’ve started well, we’re on a good path. Are we somewhat overwhelmed? I think it’s overwhelming. I don’t think we’re overwhelmed. There are huge amounts of effort going on at the federal, state, and local level, but the key here is what the national strategy was designed to produce, and that is partnerships, collaboration, and cooperation at all levels of government, including globally. This has become, of course, an international problem with the advent of the internet.

Len Sipes: A global issue, right.

Francey Hakes: It is an absolutely global issue. And so we’re working with industry on ways to solve the problem. You probably heard the announcement last week from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Facebook and Microsoft. Microsoft has invented a new technology called Photo DNA. They donated it to the National Center. The National Center, in turn, gave it to Facebook, and Facebook is going to employ this technology throughout their systems which will search for and find known images of child pornography so that they can be eradicated from their systems.

Len Sipes: Wonderful. Michael -

Francey Hakes: So these are things that we have to do to work together and really think creatively between law enforcement, community, and industry.

Len Sipes: Michael, can we persuade people who are child sex offenders, who are pedophiles, not to get involved in this, or is that drive, that’s going to be with them for the rest of their lives–can the system have an impact on their behavior? Can we persuade them not to do this–that we’re taking sufficient actions that’s likely for them to get caught, can we persuade them not to do this?

Michael Bourke: Yeah, it’s a great question, Leonard. I think the answer is, it’s fairly multifaceted, but the short answer is that there is no cure for pedophilia. There’s no cure for these fantasies and these drives, per se. There is, however, for any of these individuals, a possibility of managing that behavior. This is not something inevitable, this is a choice, these men are responsible for those choices, and women, and we can assist them in doing that with creative external management. By that, I mean things like the registrations and outpatient treatment programs and things like that. With proper external management and proper internal management, these men are capable of living a life in which they never harm a child.

Len Sipes: Right, so treatment does work. That’s one of the things I did want to get across. Treatment does work, and we within the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, our sex offender agency, we’re going to talk about that with two people involved in that unit on the second half, but treatment does work, we can really persuade individuals who are on the edge. The commercial that will run between the first and second half, we’ll talk about ìwhen did you become a child sex predator?î Obviously, we’re under the opinion that we can persuade people who are on the edge not to do this. This is wrong; you’re going to get locked up. We can meaningfully intervene.

Michael Bourke: Right, well there are individuals that, with those proper things in place, have a choice not to re-offend.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Michael Bourke: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: The final part of it is aggressive prosecution. We need to go after them in every way shape and form and that’s what we’re trying to do with the federal, state, and local level, is to set up these dummy operations to pretend that you’re the 14 year old, the 13 year old, to monitor whatever it is that we can monitor, and to go after these people and arrest them and prosecute them. Is that correct?

Francey Hakes: Well that’s right, and that’s one of the reasons why we place such a high emphasis on technology and training for our law enforcement and for our prosecutors, because this is often a very high-tech crime, and we need a high tech solution, and that’s why we’re working with industry on things like I talked about, the Photo DNA initiative, but there are lots of other tools that law enforcement uses to keep up with the bad guys who are trying to assault our children. There are very sophisticated groups out there that have banded together to discuss their deviant fantasies and to plan ways to sexually assault children, and we have to find ways to be just as sophisticated to break their encryption, to get into their passwords, to find a way to infiltrate these groups, and we are doing that at the national level in order to make clear to these would-be predators that they have nowhere to hide, and that’s why it’s so important for us to have very strong, firm sentences as well, because that is part of our deterrent prong.

Len Sipes: Okay, we have one minute. So through the national effort, for what attorney general Eric Holder announced, the Office of Justice Programs, US Marshals Office, Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, we can look them in the eye and say that we’re gaining ground, that we have the wherewithal to come after you guys. Stop it.

Francey Hakes: I think the message is, to the would-be pedophile out there is you’re probably talking to a law enforcement officer, and watch out for the knock at your door.

Len Sipes: Cool. Michael?

Michael Bourke: I agree. United States Marshal Service has also set up what we call the National Sex Offender Targeting Center. It’s a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary intel and operational hub. We’re looking in all corners for these men. We are going after them when they fail to register, and we’re putting all of our efforts toward this problem.

Len Sipes: We have to close now. I really appreciate this stimulating conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, Francey Hakes, National Coordinator for the Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction from the US Department of Justice, Dr. Michael Bourke, Chief Psychologist for the United States Marshals Office. Stay with us on the second half of the program as we talk to individual parole and probation agents, what we call community supervision officers, who supervise sex offenders on a day to day basis. Please stay with us.

[Music Playing]

Len Sipes: Welcome back to D.C. Public Safety. I continue to be your host, Leonard Sipes, and we continue to explore this topic of sexual exploitation of children. The first half, we talked to two individuals from the Department of Justice, and we framed the numbers, and the numbers are truly staggering, but what does that mean in terms of the local level? We talked about the importance of partnerships, and we talked about the importance of people at the local level enforcing laws and providing treatment services. To talk about what it is that we do here within the District of Columbia; we have two principals with us today. We have Ashley Natoli, a community supervision officer for the sex offender unit of my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, and Kevin Jones, another community supervision officer for the sex offender unit, and to Ashley and Kevin welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Ashley Natoli: Thank you.

Kevin Jones: Thank you for having us.

Len Sipes: All right, Ashley, give me a sense as to this issue of the sex offender unit. What is it that we do? What is it that we do in the District of Columbia that’s unique?

Ashley Natoli: Well, we supervise offenders who have either been convicted of a sex offense, had an arrest for a sex offense, or an offense that is sexual in nature. They come to our unit and are supervised in our unit. There is roughly about 450 active cases in our unit right now, about 670 total of all sex offenders right now.

Len Sipes: Now, the interesting thing is what we at CSOSA do, and this is different from a lot of parole and probation agencies throughout the country, is that if you’ve had a sexual conviction in the past, not your current charge, but 15 years ago, if you had a sexual conviction, or if you had an arrest, you come to the sex offender unit, right?

Ashley Natoli: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: All right. Kevin, I want to talk to you. This is something that’s intrigued me from the very beginning of my time in corrections, that is, is that so many of the offenders on the sex offender unit are so compliant. They dress well, they work, they show up on time, they dot their I’s, they cross their T’s, and they give every appearance of people who are compliant vs. other offenders, sometimes it’s pretty obvious that they have issues. With the sex offender unit, the sex offenders, they can give the impression that nothing’s wrong with me, just spend your time with more troublesome people. You don’t have to really spend that much amount of time with me, look at me, I do everything right. Am I in the ballpark?

Kevin Jones: You’re in the ballpark exactly, Leonard. These guys are the most compliant guys on our caseloads. They actually drug test as scheduled, always on appointments, on time. They’re in the office, they appear to be, have all their ducks in a row. I think our main focus is, what are you after you leave our office? So that’s why we use a lot of our safety tactics, are that, we have a lot of collateral contacts with the offenders and the offenders’ families, and we really get to see what kind of guys they are once they leave our office.

Len Sipes: Now, I guess I shouldn’t brag, but then again, I am the host of the program, and this is our agency, so I am going to brag. We have one of the best sex offender units in the country, in my opinion, and what I’ve heard that from a lot of people, one of the best sex offender units. We have very high levels of contact. We drug test the dickens out of them, we submit them, they have to submit to lie detector tests, polygraphs. We put them in treatment, sometimes through the treatment process we find out about other things, we search their computers. We put them under surveillance, if necessary; we work with local law enforcement in terms of joint supervisions. We go to their home unannounced. You guys do it, and sometimes with our partners in the Metropolitan Police Department, they’re under a lot of supervision, right?

Ashley Natoli: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: Okay, and what does that do for that person, either one of you?

Kevin Jones: That person, as we do unscheduled contacts, it kind of keeps them off balance. Again, he has to be held accountable for, if he has no contact with minors, we assure that by doing home visits, and when we’re in home visits, we’re actually looking for things that might kind of be off the beat, maybe a possible toy, things of that nature in someone’s home, and at that point, they’re questioned.

Len Sipes: Now it’s also extraordinarily difficult, at the same time, with handheld computers, commonly known as smartphones. I mean, the smartphone that I carry every day is as powerful as a desktop computer five years ago. You can do anything you want with a smartphone. So yeah, we have the right to search their computers, but they may not be operating off their computers. They may be operating off of a portable device, correct?

Kevin Jones: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: How do you deal with that?

Ashley Natoli: We look at the smartphones and the handheld devices similar to a computer. We have the ability to search those just as we would a computer, and in most instances, the offenders will be having these handheld devices as opposed to having a computer,

Len Sipes: Right. And the other thing that we are aware of too is a lot of the gaming consoles, such as Play Station 3′s, can be manipulated into being a computer as well, so we have to be looking out for a lot more than just a laptop in the home. We have to be looking into what they’re using as a phone, what they have, and then we’re asking the questions and following up with the searches. And that becomes the intriguing part of this, because it truly is a cat and mouse game. Now I don’t want to overplay my hand here. These individuals, in many cases, are compliant. You’re supervising them, they are in treatment, treatment does work, you can take individuals, and they can control their impulses. They don’t necessarily have to be out there offending. But this is truly the, Dr. Bourke mentioned it in the first half, this is the master psychological game. It is a psychological game, is it not, of cat and mouse, of looking for nuances of listening to individual little things that may not mean that much to another community supervision officer, but to you, means a lot. Am I right or wrong?

Ashley Natoli: That’s correct.

Kevin Jones: Yeah, that’s correct.

Ashley Natoli: A lot of these offenders, they are masters of manipulation and deception, and that’s, in most instances, in a lot of instances, how they ended up offending in the first place, because they have an incredible ability to groom these victims, and they’ve mastered the art of manipulation, and so we have to be aware of that so we aren’t taken advantage of.

Len Sipes: Well, tell me a little bit about the grooming of the victims, because we didn’t get involved in that in the first half. They will go online with them, and they will have, not just hours of conversations, but days or weeks or months of conversation before they ask for a photograph, or then that photograph moves on to a more sexually suggestive photograph. This is a process. They’re very patient individuals. Correct?

Kevin Jones: That’s correct. A lot of the guys that are in the grooming process while on sex offender treatment, a lot of that comes out in the treatment process, and once you find out that a guy might be on supervision, an offender might be on supervision for one offense, during that sex offender treatment process, you will find out that this offender has had multiple victims that he has proposed and that he has groomed, and this makes this offender a little more dangerous than what, from the outside, what it looks like to just this one victim.

Len Sipes: And again, I mean, the idea of going in unannounced, putting on a GPS tracking device, but all of that, we talk about the technology, and I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself with the technology, it strikes me, the most important ingredient we have here in terms of protecting the public is the savviness of the people who are supervising these sex offenders. Do I have it right? It really doesn’t matter about the computer part, the GPS, and the tracking devices, and the lie detector tests, what really matters is your ability to read the tea leaves as to whether or not this person is truly compliant or not. Am I right or wrong?

Ashley Natoli: That’s correct. You have to be very patient and very thorough and leave no detail unturned. Like with the GPS, we’re not just looking at, are they complying with their curfew, are they charging their device, we’re looking at, where are they going during the daytime. So you actually look at all their tracks so you can know, did this offender go to the park, or was this offender near a school, so we’re aware of that, and we can put alerts on there so it helps us to identify that, but we have all this information, and if we’re not doing the right thing with it, then

Len Sipes: And the neat thing about it is we can overlay Google Earth, so we’re taking a look at that intersection, and we’re not quite sure he’s hanging out at the intersection, but when we overlay Google Earth, a-ha, there’s a playground that didn’t show up on a regular map. So we do have the technology tools to try and keep up with the individuals, but it’s really is more understanding who that person is. How long does it take until you get a sense as to that sex offender? How long does it take before you feel that you’re inside that person’s head, that person’s mind, that person’s modus operandi?

Kevin Jones: Well, again, with the treatment modal-, coupled with the GPS, you can probably feel your offender out, I guess, in about two months, maybe, to that nature, and a lot of it is, you’re questioning his every move, which makes him uncomfortable, which is, at the same time, holds him accountable for where he’s going, so as long as he’s knows that he’s being tracked, and that we have exclusion zones from the zoo, from parks, and things of that nature, then that kind of keeps him in compliance.

Len Sipes: And we’ll get word from the Metropolitan Police Department and other law enforcement partners that we saw the guy spending way too much time outside of the St. Francis School. It was a block away, and maybe he has a legitimate reason for being there, maybe he doesn’t, but that’s also the law enforcement partnership feeding us information, right?

Kevin Jones: Yes.

Ashley Natoli: Yeah, definitely.

Kevin Jones: And apart with the law enforcement contact, we do unscheduled accountability tours, and that’s with our partnership with Metropolitan Police Department, and at that time, we also have what we call GPS clean sweep tours, where we will come do unscheduled accountability tours on an offender who has a GPS curfew of 7:00, just to make sure that they’re in place, that there’s no type of shielding, anything of that nature, and we also are really big on the Halloween project, where, that we will come to the offender’s home between the hours of 3 and 11, and he is to be in that home at that particular time.

Len Sipes: Right, and we have found violations on the Halloween tour. We have found kids inside the home, and we have found them, they’re not supposed to be giving out candy, they’re not supposed to be decorating homes.

Kevin Jones: Lights supposed to be off.

Len Sipes: We roll up to the house, and there’s decorations, and there’s candy, so we’re trying to protect the public in that way. The other major thing that we’re trying to do is look at social media, look at Facebook, but there are literally hundreds of sites that kids go onto. I was reading this morning about going onto gaming sites. You know, it’s not a chat room, it’s not Facebook, it’s now gaming sites. So we’re now in the process of taking a look at social media and tracking that person through the social media process, correct?

Ashley Natoli: Yes.

Kevin Jones: That is correct.

Len Sipes: Okay, and there’s a certain point where we are going to be expanding this to other offenders beyond sex offenders, but that’s part of their world, and that’s part of the experience of kids, and if they’re going to be there, we need to be there, right?

Ashley Natoli: That’s correct.

Kevin Jones: Yeah, and we actually have a mechanism where we are monitoring Facebook, and we’ve had situations where we’ve seen our offenders who may have no contact with minors, and in his profile sheet, he’ll be holding

Len Sipes: Right!

Kevin Jones: a child.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ashley Natoli: And it’s not as simple as just searching them by their name. You’re searching their aliases; you’re looking, searching by email addresses and different things, because a lot of it is not going to just be given to us. We have to find the information. It’s there if we search for it, deep enough.

Len Sipes: Right. We’re not going to give away our secrets in terms of how we’ve figured this out, but Cool Breeze was his moniker, nickname seven years ago, and son of a gun if he’s not using Cool Breeze in terms of his Facebook interactions, so there are all sorts of ways of getting at this issue. So the bottom line is this. What do we tell parents? I mean, you guys are there protecting their kids, you’re protecting all of society, just not the kids, but you’re protecting society, protecting kids from further activities on the part of these individuals. You know them better than just about anybody else in the criminal justice system. What do we tell parents? One of my chief messages is having an open conversation, so if somebody approaches that child, that child talks to the parents.

Ashley Natoli: I agree, and I also think parents need to be aware that this is something real and that happens every day, and that a lot of people think, oh, it won’t happen to me, or it won’t happen to my children, but you need to be aware that it is a problem and it will happen, and you need to know what’s going on so that you can educate your children appropriately and know that this is real.

Len Sipes: Well, the FBI is saying one million predators. That’s just an unbelievable number of people. I mean, they’re attacking your kids, correct, Kevin?

Kevin Jones: That’s correct. And a lot of it is, just like we were stating, collateral contacts. You have to build a collateral contact with the offenders’ family members.

Len Sipes: Right, and employers and friends.

Kevin Jones: Employers, friends, significant others.

Len Sipes: The bottom line is that you’ve got to get, and we’re going to close with this question, you’ve got to get a complete psychological profile of who that person is. You’ve got to know that person better than their own mother knows that person, correct?

Kevin Jones: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: All right, we’re going to close on that. Ladies and gentlemen, Kevin Jones, community supervision officer for the sex offender unit, my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, Ashley Natoli, the community supervision officer, again, with the sex offender unit. Thank you very much for watching, and please, protect your children. Please have an open and honest conversation and age appropriate conversation with your children. Watch for us next time when we explore another very important topic in our criminal justice system. Please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Video Ends]

Filed Under: Criminal Justice, Internet Crime, Interviews with Policy Makers, Interviews with Staff, Parole and Probation, Probation, Sex Offender, Sex Offender Registry, Video Podcast

Faith Based Partnerships and Offenders – UDC Sound Advice

May 26, 2011 By Len 3 Comments

Faith Based Partnerships and Offenders – “UDC Sound Advice”

“Faith Based Partnerships and Offenders” features a discussion with a policy maker within the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, a Cluster Coordinator with CSOSA’s Mentoring Faith Based Program and an individual currently under CSOSA supervision.

Guests for this program:

Cedric Hendricks, Associate Director, Office of Legislative, Intergovernmental and Public Affairs – Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA)
Reverend Kelly Wilkins, Cluster A Coordinator for CSOSA’s Faith Based Mentoring Program
Tonya Mackey, an offender on CSOSA Supervision.

The show is hosted by Shelly Broderick, Dean of the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) David A. Clarke School of Law.

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

Television Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/video/2011/05/faith-based-partnerships-and-offenders-udc-sound-advice/

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

[Video Begins]

Shelly Broderick: Hello, I’m Shelley Broderick, Dean of the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law and your host for Sound Advice. In the District of Columbia, approximately 70% of convicted offenders serve some portion of their sentence in the community. As such, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (or CSOSA)’s effective supervision of convicted offenders provides a crucial service to the courts and paroling authority and is critical to public safety. Establishing partnerships with other criminal justice agencies, faith institutions, and community organizations is very important in order to facilitate close supervision of the offenders in the community, and to leverage the diverse resources of local law enforcement, human service agencies, and other local community groups. Approximately 2,500 men and women return home to the District of Columbia from prison every year. Among the challenges they face are the need for housing, health care, education, and employment. With me today to discuss how CSOSA meets these challenges are Cedric Hendricks, Associate Director, Reverend Kelly Wilkins, Cluster A Coordinator, and Tonya Mackey, successful returned citizen and day care assistant. Welcome.

Cedric Hendricks: Thank you.

Shelly Broderick: Let me start with you, Cedric. We go back many years. It’s so nice to have you on the show.

Cedric Hendricks: Thank you.

Shelly Broderick: And I don’t get complacent, we’ll get you back, too! Because you have a lot to talk about. Tell us what CSOSA’s mission is and what its reach is, because it’s hugely important in the District of Columbia.

Cedric Hendricks: CSOSA is a public safety agency responsible for supervising men and women on probation, parole, and supervised release. So we have about 16,000 individuals under supervision on any given day, and about 60% of them are on probation, meaning that they went to court, were sentenced, and went home, and then about 40% are on parole or supervised release, meaning that they experienced a period of incarceration and have come back home.

Shelly Broderick: Okay. And what are, and you know, it’s such a crime what we do, because when we send people to prison, we don’t provide education, we don’t help people get the housing they need, and we don’t, you know, we just don’t take care of business, and so often, people come back and don’t make it. And so that safety net that CSOSA is helping to provide is just critical to people being able to succeed. So how many folks work at CSOSA?

Cedric Hendricks: We have about 900 employees that work at the agency, and we’re a fairly unique federal agency because our mission is focused solely on the District of Columbia, and so the men and women that we supervise, for the most part, are residents here, and what we are trying to help them do is successfully complete their periods of supervision which can involve a few months to several years, and so what we see across the board, and this is what those who are on probation as well as those who have returned home is that, as you’ve indicated, housing, health care, education, and employment are the major challenges that they face, and so we’re very active in trying to partner with the District government, the faith community, and nonprofit resource and service providers to try and help those we supervise meet the needs that they have.

Shelly Broderick: Okay. Tonya, let me turn to you. You’re a returned citizen.

Tonya Mackey: Yes.

Shelly Broderick: You were locked up for how long?

Tonya Mackey: For about five years.

Shelly Broderick: And you came back to the District of Columbia?

Tonya Mackey: Yes.

Shelly Broderick: All set, you were ready to go, everything was perfect?

Tonya Mackey: Not -

Shelly Broderick: No, okay. It’s not surprising. How did you, you went to CSOSA, because you were required to -

Tonya Mackey: Exactly, for reentry.

Shelly Broderick: And tell me what advice they gave you.

Tonya Mackey: The advice they gave me was just some little simple things that, at first, didn’t sound so simple, but I knew I wanted my freedom and I wanted to be on the street, and so I did what was necessary. It took, it wasn’t all good, but at the end, I’m on top because I’m successfully completed, and through CSOSA, what they told me was, is that I needed to, I needed to get some help from some other women, and a lot of times, women like me never really wanted to communicate with other women because we didn’t, I didn’t think that we had anything in common but being a woman, but thank god that CSOSA sent me to a faith based program where I met Reverend Kelley, who is now my spiritual guidance, and I have a mentor from a program which is from women based empowerment, it’s a program called Empowerment for Women. Ms. Mignonne who teaches it, I got a whole lot out of it, and what they help me to do was deal with my mom, coming home in society, dealing with other women, dealing with getting an education, dealing with how to ask someone how you get housing, where to go and ask, believing in myself again and believing in God, and -

Shelly Broderick: Talk about your mom. Talk about your mom.

Tonya Mackey: My mom, who has been there with me for my whole entire life, she, I have always done, I felt like I have always done wrong to her, and now I’m trying to make a difference in her life and my life, actually my life first, and then her life, because that’s the only way I can do it. My mom is a cancer survivor, she’s been diagnosed, she just -

Shelly Broderick: She just found out.

Tonya Mackey: – just found out she was diagnosed with cancer, and I went on actually my first cancer walk with her last year, so -

Shelly Broderick: Wow.

Tonya Mackey: – to be, the grace of God, and I always say, to be, to God, because without him, I know that I wouldn’t be on this journey, and other people that help me along the way so far, CSOSA, and faith based led program.

Shelly Broderick: So you came out of all this in West Virginia -

Tonya Mackey: Yes.

Shelly Broderick: – and you came back, and one of the first things that happened is you found out your mom had cancer.

Tonya Mackey: Yes.

Shelly Broderick: Now is that the kind of stress that can really -
Tonya Mackey: – take me back out, or would have.

Shelly Broderick: That’s right.

Tonya Mackey: Would have.

Shelly Broderick: I mean, that’s the kind of thing that makes people go back on drugs.

Tonya Mackey: Exactly.

Shelly Broderick: As one of my friends, a drinker, says, what’s so great about reality? You know, right? So it’s one of those things that can just turn you upside down.

Tonya Mackey: Exactly.

Shelly Broderick: Reverend Wilkins. You met Tonya around that time.

Kelly Wilkins: Yes, actually, I did, and Tonya, when I first met her, she came to the group. It was Purpose Empowerment, women’s empowerment group. She came to the group, and she really was not participating that much. You know, she really didn’t want to be there. She didn’t really see the reason why she needed to be around a bunch of women because she had never really had any bonding relationships with women before, and so I would say about, let’s say two months into the program, they started in December, somewhere about February, we had that, we had awful snow in the District of Columbia, and I remember people in the group calling me saying, is there a way we can still meet at the church? And I’m thinking, like, no, there’s no way!

Tonya Mackey: We can’t get there!

Kelly Wilkins: So the facilitator who was just, she created the program, and she’s completely committed to it, figured out a way for them to talk on the phone, to really deal with whatever stresses they were dealing with, being locked in the house because of the snow, so I mean, awesome support for Tonya, and I saw her grow. I mean, she just grew so phenomenally from December, and she graduated in May, the first week of May. So yeah, it was a 17-week program at that time.

Shelly Broderick: What does that feel like? Was it hard at first?

Tonya Mackey: At first, yes. I was like, didn’t want to be there, I wasn’t going to participate, I was going to go pass and go through -

Shelly Broderick: Check it off your list.

Tonya Mackey: Right, right.

Shelly Broderick: Check it off.

Tonya Mackey: But after a while, you know, even after I finished the program, now I’m returning back. So it was real, it was a real blessing to me because now I have, like Ms. Kelly says, I have women that I can call, we can talk, we can bond. We can talk about anything that’s going on.

Shelly Broderick: What kinds of things?

Tonya Mackey: We talk about how we hurt our families, we talk about how we can make a difference in other people’s lives, how I can come back, and this right here is even a blessing to me, because I was like, oh wow, somebody’s calling me and asking me to be a power attraction to someone else, whereas I had low self esteem, low self worth, didn’t think that I could become better than what I am today, and I feel real good about where I am today, and where I’m at today is that I’m helping my mom, even with her cancer, the part of surviving, you still have to go back and get treatments, but I’ve been able to be accountable today. You know, I’m not stealing her money today. I’m not lying today. You know, it feels real good. You know, a lot of times, she still may have doubt, but that’s not up to me. As long as I stay on this path, I know that everything’s going to be all right, because she’s along with me to take care of her children today, that she had just started her business, her own day care business, so now I am an assistant to her, and it feels real good, and like I said, I graduated from the empowerment, women’s empowerment program, and I still go back, and I still constantly go down to the courts every now and again, and just to hear cases, and to find out how I used to be and how I can go back, and I don’t want to go back. I want to stay where I’m at today, and being here with you guys makes me feel so good, lets me know that I’m accomplishing something.

Shelly Broderick: It lifted me up, I’ll tell you that! I was a defense attorney for a long time, and I watched some of my clients go away for a good long period of time, and it’s heartbreaking, and sometimes you can feel like it can be a good thing, just put a stop in the action, get away, it’s not a good place you ever want to send anybody, but get to a place where you’re out of this environment and get it together and come back and make it work, and you know, for so many people, it doesn’t work because they come back and they don’t have the safety net and the support system and the help. You come back, you can’t get into housing. You can’t get public housing. Okay, where are you supposed to, oh, back in the old neighborhood!

Kelly Wilkins: Yeah, and let me just say, support is very critical to recovery and reentry. Without support, we can’t do it by ourselves. Even the faith, the faith based community can’t assist returning citizens by themselves. That’s why we need Court Services to be a partner with us.

Shelly Broderick: Tell me what the partnership looks like. How do you enter in?

Cedric Hendricks: We came to recognize at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency that we couldn’t do it by ourselves, and that we really needed to have solid partnerships with the natural resources, the natural systems in the community. There are many neighborhoods in the District of Columbia where you can find a church on every block, and all of these faith institutions have ministries. They’re about the business of serving their congregations and their communities in a wide variety of ways, and so what we saw to do was tap into that network. So back in 2002, we put out a call to the faith community through using a strategy called re-entry Sunday, and through having collaboration, communication with faith institutions, we were able to build a network that was willing to work with us, and from the congregations of those faith institutions, many men and women came forward to serve as mentors for those men and women who had come home from prison. So that work continues to this day, and we continue to match men and women who are coming home with mentors so that they can have someone to talk to, as Tonya indicated, many of our mentors are returned citizens as well, and we’re allied with faith institutions across the city who are opening their doors to be helpful in so many wonderful ways.

Shelly Broderick: That’s fantastic. So my first job at a college was at Lorton Prison doing group therapy with inmates. Now why did they hire a 21-year-old white girl? I don’t know! What were they thinking? But anyway, you know, I learned way more than I taught, and I had an opportunity to meet a lot of guys who it was clear to me didn’t need to be there. Guys who got in trouble when they were real young, just 20 to life, right? 20 to life is what everybody got. And they just did maybe 15 years of that, no education, no job training, just, and they were poets: smart, interesting, thoughtful people being wasted, and I think it had a huge amount to do. Actually in college, I worked at a halfway house on Euclid Street for inmates within six months of release. I was at AU, I didn’t know anything. But I was interested. I don’t know why. And then I ultimately went to law school and became a defense attorney. So this is a world that I care very deeply about, and I’m so glad to hear, because it really, it’s so important to put these families back together, because what happens is the kids don’t know Dad or Mom, and there, it’s just, it’s destructive forever if we can’t make this kind of connection and help you make it work.

Tonya Mackey: That’s what, actually, I was getting ready to say something on that part right there about you saying that a lot of times, the parents, you know, don’t really have the time to be there, and then they get subjected to some things you might have just one father, one mother trying to do the best that they can, and a lot of times, we make our own decisions too, you know, but when we get the help that we need. I know it’ll be a lot more than me that would do better than they’re doing. It’s just that we have to want to do the best that we can, and today, I’m just choosing, saying, I wasn’t great, I wasn’t good all my life, and that’s why I’m here saying that if we put forth the effort, we can be the best people that, we can be whatever we want to be.

Shelly Broderick: It’s a wonderful think. So Reverend Wilkins, talk about your church and how this came about for you and -

Kelly Wilkins: Okay. Well -

Shelly Broderick: We love your church, and we want to give them full credit.

Kelly Wilkins: I attend Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ, which is on South Capitol Street SW. My pastors are Drs. Christine and Dennis Wiley, and at our church, I serve as the associate minister of social justice and reentry, and we also have a nonprofit, which is called Covenant Full Potential Development Center, and that’s really how we are able to work with Court Services is through our nonprofit organization, and our church, we have a, we’re a very progressive church. We have a very strong social justice stance in our community, so we, this is our area. We believe that helping the least of these is our calling and our job. We’re located in Ward 8, and Ward 8, which most of the returning citizens return home to Ward 8, a large portion of them, and it’s a lot of poverty in Ward 8, and -

Shelly Broderick: And not very many jobs.

Kelly Wilkins: Not many jobs -

Shelly Broderick: Not housing that -

Kelly Wilkins: That’s right.

Shelly Broderick: – folks have access to.

Kelly Wilkins: But they’re good people in Ward 8, and they just need the support, and they need the support of our faith community as well as our federal agencies, and I think advocacy is really at the top, and when we look at returning citizens, I think the environment, the whole attitude towards returning citizens has begun to change because of advocacy in the community. There are plenty of advocacy groups, and our church tries to partner with as many as possible so people know that, you know, just because you were incarcerated doesn’t mean that you’re not a person, that you’re not human, that you don’t deserve a second chance, that you did pay your dues, so it’s time to allow people to have a second chance, and so our church takes that stand as the lead institution for 7 and 8. When you say Cluster A coordinator, that means I actually recruit mentors and services for 7 and 8, but we do a lot of citywide events and services as well, and so part of our church’s stance on returning citizens is, not to be silent about it. Let’s not be silent about incarceration anymore. I think the, particularly, African American community has felt ashamed about incarceration, where you talk about the number of years that people went away, and we didn’t know the impact of that in our own families. It has exacerbated our families in our communities.

Shelly Broderick: It’s so true.

Kelly Wilkins: And so we didn’t know what the impact of that was going to be, but what has happened is, particularly the black church, but our faith institutions, have always had a strong social justice stance, and so incarceration wasn’t a part of that. So it is the tendency for churches and faith institutions to be silent about it. So we want our partners to talk about incarceration: the pain, the struggle of the family, the needs, all of that. We want to educate pastors and tell them, look, don’t be quiet about incarceration in your family. You have people in your pews who are returning home or families who are struggling because of a family member missing, and so that’s the kind of things that we want to educate our community and our faith partners on as well.

Shelly Broderick: It really, you know, when I was a little girl in Maine, there was a prison called Thomason Prison, and they had a store. They had people doing crafts. And so every time we went past there, we used to go into the store, they had prison inmates working in the store, you know, getting close to getting out, so I grew up thinking prisoners were all white, because in Maine, they’re all white, and they’re really good at crafts! I still have this set of three paintings that we got. I still have the stool in my kitchen made at the prison. My sister gave us each Christmas stocking gifts last summer, all from the prison, because that was my conception as a kid. You know, and because the prisoners I knew were getting close to coming out, it was just all very natural and, you know, we don’t do that. We send our prisoners a million miles away. They are completely hidden from society, and we don’t have that kind of easy give and take back and forth that I experienced.

Cedric Hendricks: Well, you know, one of the challenging things about the District of Columbia is that the District’s prison, Lorton, that you mentioned you worked at closed back in 2001, and all of our inmates were dispersed across the United States. And that has made it, I think, extremely difficult to maintain contact with your loved ones. So if you were locked up in Louisiana, Idaho, you’re not going to get visits from your family. It’s even going to be challenging to get phone calls from your family, and if you’re away for five years, as you’ve mentioned, and you don’t have regular contact with your support system, it does create, I think, challenges to come back, and so it is essential that we have mentors from faith institutions to kind of step in while folks are coming back trying to reestablish connections with the community, because sometimes families are slow to embrace their loved ones when they come home.

Kelly Wilkins: They’re mad. Sometimes they’re mad because you left them.

Tonya Mackey: – you took my stuff and, hey, I just don’t want to be bothered with you, I felt you have to prove a point to me, and I’ve been there, because that in and out of, coming out of jail and nobody believing in you because you said it over and over again, so when do you change? When do we stop? It has to.
Shelly Broderick: Well, you make a good point -

Tonya Mackey: But you have to make a community.

Shelly Broderick: First of all, Alderson is, what, six hours away? You were just right around the corner in West Virginia, but six hours, that’s crazy! You can’t, like, there’s no plane there. It is a trek! It is so hard.

Kelly Wilkins: And if you have children, how do they eat in the ride going down there, when they get down there, do you drive six hours, and then you visit an hour, and then you drive six hours back?

Shelly Broderick: And can you afford to stay in a hotel? Is there a hotel anywhere nearby? A motel or anything? No, it’s crazy. And then, they don’t lock women up very often unless they’ve got a history, so you -

Tonya Mackey: Yeah, I had a history.

Shelly Broderick: You did, in and out -

Tonya Mackey: In and out of jail.

Shelly Broderick: – locally and all that. So you had a mountain to climb.

Tonya Mackey: Exactly.

Shelly Broderick: You had a mountain to climb.

Tonya Mackey: Exactly.

Shelly Broderick: So talk to me about your mentor.

Tonya Mackey: Well, what happens is, a lot of times, when I go to my other program, Empowered by Women, we stay in touch, me and Ms. Mignonne, and me and Ms., my mentor, we stay in touch, Ms. Kelly, and what happens is, just like she called me today, and she was like, well, I need to kind of like, help me out. I’m in a spot. Not a problem, and that’s what it’s about, me being accountable today. Even though I was at work -

Shelly Broderick: I see that. I’m guessing you don’t wear that on Saturday.

Tonya Mackey: But thank god that I’m able to do that today! You know, thank god I was able, like I said, not just come home and get a job, because I still have some things that I have to do, but I’m just helping my mom, because like, she’s going through her cancer situation, which I know God already having, and I’m her only child to speak about it, so I took my mom, when I got locked up, she was locked up, and a lot of us don’t realize that until after we get a certain amount of clean time, people in our life who we can share the real gut level things about how you treated your moms when you was on the street, and then a lot of people don’t have their mom, so I’m real grateful today that I have my mom to talk to, and like I said, I talked to Ms. Willis and them, and Ms. Kelly, like, on a regular, because it’s like, I need people in my life to keep me on the right track when I need to stay outside of myself, when I get angry, and it feels like there’s nobody in my corner, you know, I’ve learned how to pray. I mean, it’s like, I talk to God, at first I was like, I don’t know how, I don’t know where, but I’m like, God, can you just help me. Next thing I know, there’ll be a phone call. I’m here. And that’s only through the grace of God, because, hey, I always wanted to become a positive role model. I just didn’t know how. So today, I’ve learned how to become a better person and a better human being.

Shelly Broderick: We’ve got about four more minutes. You’ve got two, and you’ve got two.

Kelly Wilkins: Okay, great!

Shelly Broderick: What else do we need to know?

Kelly Wilkins: Through the faith-based initiative, we look for faith partners. I’m always…

Shelly Broderick: You’re recruiting right now.

Kelly Wilkins: I guess, I’m always recruiting mentors, and I’m always trying to recruit services that will help our returning citizens -

Shelly Broderick: How do you become a mentor? Somebody who actually wants to, hey, you know what, I’d like to work with somebody like Tonya! I think I could do that! I like her, and I could do that.

Kelly Wilkins: Be a concerned citizen. We are looking for concerned citizens. We have a mentor training that, a mandatory mentor training that we ask that you go through. There’s the application and interview process, and then once you complete that process, then what happens on a regular basis is CSOSA refers clients to me. Their parole officers, or what they call Community Supervision Officers, refer clients to us, and we will match those clients with a concerned citizen in the community, and that person, just an hour or two a week, just to make sure they’re talking to their mentees and making sure, maybe they may have certain needs. We create a mentor plan for them, each individual in the mentor plan. So making sure their needs are getting met -

Shelly Broderick: I lied. We only have one more minute.

Kelly Wilkins: You only have one more minute? Okay.

Shelly Broderick: I’m going to give it to you -

Kelly Wilkins: No problem.

Shelly Broderick: And then you’re going to have to come back.

Kelly Wilkins: Okay, no problem.

Shelly Broderick: That’s what it’s going to have to take.

Cedric Hendricks: Well, let me just say, at CSOSA, what we’re after are people successfully completing their community supervision, and that’s why Tonya’s here with us as an example of what is possible. And so we want to let the community know that, in order to realize the success, we need help. We partnered with the faith community, we actively partnered with the District of Columbia government, so anybody listening who wants to join this effort, they should contact me at 220-5300, and we’ll pull them into the network of help and support.

Shelly Broderick: Absolutely fantastic. I am so glad, especially you, Tonya, but for both of you, just to have you on and let people know there are so many positive things going on, and there is a place to get help and to get support.

Tonya Mackey: There’s hope. There’s hope.

Shelly Broderick: If you are interested in learning about CSOSA and reentry programs regarding men and women returning home from prison, please visit CSOSA’s website at www.csosa.gov and click on the offender reentry link or call Cedric Hendrick’s at 202-220-5300. CSOSA and their faith partners, partnerships, are committed to assisting our returning citizens come home and stay home. They invite the public to assist them with achieving that goal. I’m Shelley Broderick. Thanks for watching, and please join me next time for more Sound Advice.

[Video Ends]

Filed Under: Corrections-Prisons, Criminal Justice, Interviews with Offenders, Interviews with Policy Makers, Parole and Probation, Reentry, Video Podcast, Women Offenders

Women Offenders – DC Public Safety Television 2011

May 11, 2011 By Len Leave a Comment

Women Offenders – “DC Public Safety”

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 radio shows, blog and transcripts.

Television Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/video/2011/05/women-offenders-%E2%80%93-dc-public-safety-television-2011/

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 DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today’s program is on women offenders, and one of the reasons we’re doing today’s program is the fact that there are more women coming into the criminal justice system, both in Washington, D.C., and throughout the country. Now the other issue is the fact that women offenders have higher rates of HIV, of substance abuse, of mental health problems. But the thing that really astounds me is the difference between sexual violence when they are directed towards women offenders as children. There’s a huge difference between the women coming into the criminal justice system, and male offenders. To talk about what we’re doing here in Washington, D.C., and the what’s going on throughout the country, we have two principals with us today. From my agency, we have Dr. Debra Kafami. She is the Executive Assistant for my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. We also have Ashley McSwain, the Executive Director from Our Place, DC. And to Debra and Ashley, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Dr. Debra Kafami: Thank you.

Ashley McSwain: Thank you.

Len Sipes: All right. Well ladies, we have this issue of offenders coming into the criminal justice system, and of greatly concern to us. And they’re different from male offenders, and we need to say that straight from the beginning, that there’s a big difference between male and female offenders, people caught up in the criminal justice system. Debra, our agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, we’re reorganizing everything that we do around women offenders. Why are we doing this?

Dr. Debra Kafami: Well, CSOSA is an evidence-based organization, and a lot of research coming out has shown that women are very, very different from male offenders. And we started to look at what were we doing for female offenders. And they were kind of like just in with the men, and we weren’t doing a whole lot of specialized programming for women, yet they have very different needs and they have very different pathways into crime. So we started to realize that the numbers are also increasing. We had probably about 12% of our population ten years ago that were female offenders, and now we’re up to around 16%. And nationally, the women entering the criminal justice system have outpaced the men.

Len Sipes: Right.

Dr. Debra Kafami: From 5% to about 3.3% since 1995.

Len Sipes: Right. Now on the second half of the program, we’re going to have Dr. Willa Butler, she runs women groups for us, and we’re going to have an individual currently under supervision. So she’ll talk more about the practical reality of what we do at CSOSA in terms of dealing with women offenders. But one of the things that Willa’s group has been able to demonstrate is that they have a pretty good success rate, once you take women offenders, put them into a program, put them into a group setting where they can talk through these issues, where they can sort of help and heal each other. So we’re reorganizing in CSOSA, in Washington, D.C., around these groups, correct? And we’re going to add a day reporting component, and all women offenders are going to be reporting to one field agency.

Dr. Debra Kafami: Exactly.

Len Sipes: So we’re just reorganizing everything we do!

Dr. Debra Kafami: Yes. What we decided to do was to create three teams at one of our field sites, centrally located near Union Station and have the women report there. We’re establishing a day reporting center, just for female offenders, so they can come in one place and get services. And their programming will be completely separate from the male offenders, which we did not have before. Women behave differently even when they’re in groups, and they’re less likely to open up when they’re in groups with male offenders.

Len Sipes: Yeah, I’ve attended a couple of Willa’s groups, and I have to ask permission to come in, and the women have to get to know me and like me before they even allowed me inside the group. But once there, it was a really extraordinary experience.

Dr. Debra Kafami: We’re also especially training our staff to work with female offender.

Len Sipes: In terms of the gender specific?

Dr. Debra Kafami: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay. Ashley McSwain, Executive Director of Our Place, DC. First of all, Our Place — and I’ve said this constantly — is maybe the most comprehensive one-stop service for women coming out of the prison system anywhere in the United States. It’s amazing! Instead of sending the people coming out of the prison system over here for legal assistance, over there for clothing, over there for HIV, you’ve got all of these services under one roof. I have no idea as to how you do it. And I’ve heard so many women caught up in the criminal justice system speak so highly of Our Place, DC. So tell me a little bit, what is Our Place, DC?

Ashley McSwain: Okay. We work with women who are currently and formerly incarcerated. So we actually go into the facilities and we offer employment workshops, legal clinics, HIV programming, and we offer case management prior to women ever being released. So we have really good relationships with the prisons, the jails, the half-way house. In addition, when a woman is released, she can come to Our Place and we have a drop-in center where she can just drop in, and we offer her tokens for the metro. We offer birth certificates, identification. We have a clothing boutique where she can get clothing. We have HIV prevention and awareness programming, so she can get condoms, and we have a HIV 101 that every woman is subject to. We have an employment department to help women get resumes. We actually have a legal department, so we have two full-time attorneys on staff, which is one of our biggest programs. We take collect calls from women. We get five hundred calls a month. We have a case management program so we work with women four months before they’re released, and then we work with them after they’re released. So it’s very, very comprehensive. We have a visitation program where we take family members to various facilities to visit their loved ones. So, yeah, we do quite a bit at Our Place.

Len Sipes: That is amazing. We did a radio show a little while ago, and I said, during the radio show, that if anybody out there is looking for a wonderful 501c3 tax exempt organization where they can donate money, they need to look at Our Place, DC. And the website for Our Place DC is going to be shown constantly throughout the television program.

Len Sipes: All right, so CSOSA, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, Debra, our agency, we’re a Federal Parole and Probation Agency. Women are a part of who we supervise, Ashley. Women come into Our Place, D.C. and get all of these comprehensive services. I love the fact that you’re inside the prison system, making contact with women long before they come out. So let’s get to the broader philosophical issues of women offenders, if we could for a second. There’s a huge difference between men and women. Certainly one of those issues is the fact that the great majority of women coming out have kids.

Ashley McSwain: Yes.

Len Sipes: And so, I don’t want to be overly stereotypical, and I’ll probably get phone calls, but the sense that I get from a lot of the male offenders is that they don’t see themselves as responsible. The sense that I get from the women offenders is they want their kids back.

Ashley McSwain: Yes.

Len Sipes: How do you do that? How do you come out of the prison system with all the baggage that you have to carry, in terms of finding work and re-establishing yourself, and taking care of a couple kids? That, to me, almost seems to be impossible. Ashley?

Ashley McSwain: Yes, it’s extremely difficult. And one of the things that’s happening now, since we’re looking at gender-specific issues, is this idea that women have to not only build a foundation for themselves when they’re released, but they also have to build foundation for their children. And acknowledging that as being their reality is helpful, as we help them prepare for their future. It’s very difficult. What we do at Our Place is try to build some of the basic foundations, you know, so housing, and dealing with whatever the underlying legal issues are, and helping them identifying jobs. And then we tackle this issue of getting custody of children and identifying visitation, and those kinds of very serious issues.

Len Sipes: We talked about higher rates of substance abuse, Debra.
We talked about higher rates of HIV. We talked about higher rates of mental health problems, and this astounding issue of the rate of sexual violence being directed towards them when they were younger, a lot of cases by family members and friends. Most of the women offenders that I’ve come into contact with throughout my career have got a rock-hard crust. If we’re going to have any hopes of — I mean, public safety is our first priority. We’re not going to hesitate putting anybody back in prison if that’s going to protect public safety. But if we’re going to really succeed in terms of getting these individuals through supervision successfully, we have to have programs. For the programs to be successful, we’ve got to break through that hard crust. How do we do that?

Dr. Debra Kafami: Well it’s not an easy job, that’s for sure, and that’s where our specialized programming comes into play, with our specially-trained staff that we have. I know Dr. Butler will talk about the Women in Control Again Program, but that’s just one example. We also want to address the substance abuse issues. Many of them don’t get enough treatment while they’re incarcerated, and they need that. We also work with them on traumatization and victimization issues. Housing — housing is another big issue for the women, trying to find stable housing.

Len Sipes: Especially in Washington, D.C.!

Dr. Debra Kafami: They face, really, an insurmountable — almost — number of problems. — And family reunification is another very big one.

Len Sipes: Right. But I mean, getting, breaking through that hard crust, I mean, sometimes they can be as hard as nails. When they come out of the prison system, they don’t trust you. Why should they trust us? We just put them in prison. Why should they trust government? Ashley, isn’t that one of the most difficult things when a woman comes out of the prison system and gets into Our Place, isn’t that one of the most difficult things that you have to deal with, and your staff?

Ashley McSwain: Well, one of the things that happens is that because we are working with the woman prior to her release, we’re actually establishing a relationship, a trusting relationship, with her before she’s released. Our Place has a really good reputation of being a safe place, and so when the women come here, there’s this welcoming environment that says that it’s a safe place, a safe space to be. And not only that, it’s a place where you can trust what it is that you’re sharing is confidential. We don’t send people back to prison. We don’t have those kinds of authorities, and so the dynamics are a little different. So we can build a trusting relationship in a way that CSOSA and other organizations may not be able to.

Len Sipes: Yeah. We would have a hard time because we’re a law enforcement agency, and at the same time we’re trying to break down those barriers and help them in terms of programs. We all agree, the three of us agree, that substance abuse programs, mental health programs, HIV programs, and programs to deal specifically with this history of sexual violence, are all necessary if that individual is going to successfully complete supervision. Am I right or wrong?

Ashley McSwain: Yeah, that’s correct.

Dr. Debra Kafami: Definitely.

Len Sipes: I mean, we’re living in a day and age of cutbacks. We’re living in a day and age of limited government. So we’ve got to be able to tell people that these programs save tax dollars. You know, one of the programs that we have, the great majority of people successfully complete the program, which means they don’t go back to prison, which means they save tax-paid dollars, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of tax-paid dollars. So there’s an economic incentive as well as a social incentive to be doing these things, correct?

Ashley McSwain: Yes. I would also say that Our Place helps a woman begin to implement a plan. So many of the women, while they’re incarcerated, they don’t know where to begin. And so this idea of saving tax-payer dollars, you know, someone has to have a plan in which to begin to develop in order to stay out of prison. And so that’s one of the really important services I think we offer is the ability to work with a woman so that she has some hope and some ideas about what her next steps are going to be.

Len Sipes: Okay. And Debra, the national research does show that if you’re gender-specific in terms of your approach of dealing with women offenders, you’re going to have a much higher rate of success in terms of them successfully completing supervision.

Dr. Debra Kafami: Yes, and better outcomes. And I did want to add that when the offender comes to CSOSA, the first thing we do is a risk-and-needs assessment, and we also come up with a prescriptive supervision or an intervention plan. We work very closely with Our Place staff too, so our Community Supervision Officers are on the same team, with Our Place staff, to try and help guide the offender.

Ashley McSwain: I just want to say, one of the things we do is that we don’t actually create release plans. We help implement the plans that were created by CSOSA and the Bureau of Prisons, which is really helpful for the women.

Dr. Debra Kafami: And sharing information.

Len Sipes: And sharing information. It just strikes me that — and Debra, you and I come from the same system in the State of Maryland — the women offenders just came home and they were home. That’s all there was to it. I mean, there were no programs specifically for them. There were no efforts. We have CSOSA and we have Our Place DC. I mean, there really is a focus now on making sure that that individual woman gets the programs and assistance that she needs, and if we do that, fewer crimes are going to be committed and fewer people are going to go back to prison, saving a ton of tax-paid dollars.

Dr. Debra Kafami: Well, not to mention too, that the women, most of them have children, and that separation from their children is not good for the children or the mother, and if we can help the women be successful and not go back to prison, it’s going to only help their children.

Len Sipes: Right, by every woman offender we help, we’re helping two or three or more other individuals have a much greater chance of having a pro-social life. Research is clear that the rates of the children going into the criminal justice system or having problems in school are much higher if a parent is incarcerated. So this is not only dealing with her, it’s dealing with three or four other human beings.

Ashley McSwain: Right. And that also speaks to this issue of gender-specific. When a woman goes to prison, you’re not only dealing with that person — woman being a mother, she’s someone’s daughter, you know. So all of these people are impacted when she’s incarcerated, and also they’re impacted when she’s released.

Len Sipes: Right. So I think we’re going to out the program with that. I really appreciate the fact that you two were here and set up this whole program. On the second half, ladies and gentlemen, what we’re going to do is talk to Dr. Willa Butler. She runs groups for women offenders, and we’re going to talk to an individual currently under supervision. Please stay with us as we explore this larger issue of women offenders in the criminal justice system. We’ll be right back.

[Music Playing]

Len Sipes: Welcome back to D.C. Public Safety. I continue to be your host, Leonard Sipes. We continue to have a conversation about women offenders. In the first half we did talk about the fact that there are more women coming into the criminal justice system, and the question becomes what is our agency, the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency, doing about it, and what’s happening throughout the country. With the bottom line behind all of that are gender-specific programs, and the research is pretty clear that if you have these gender-specific programs, programs and treatment specifically designed for women offenders, they have much better outcomes. And we have two individuals to talk about much better outcomes, Dr. Willa Butler, she’s a group facilitator for my agency, the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency, and Talynthia Jones is a person currently under supervision by my agency. And to Dr. Butler, to Willa, and to Talynthia, welcome back to D.C. Public Safety.

Dr. Willa Butler: Thank you.

Len Sipes: Willa, this whole process with the group — you’ve run the group. I have seen some of the groups. It is an amazing place to be when the women under your supervision open up. Some of the stuff that they talk about is scary. I always like to refer to it as a trip to Mars, because their experience probably is not your experience. It certainly hasn’t been my experience in terms of all of the issues that they have had to deal with in life. A lot of these individuals come to us battered and bruised, and we’re not making excuses for their criminality, and we’re not saying we’re not going to send them back to prison. We will in a heartbeat if that’s going to protect public safety. But your group has a good track record of getting them through supervision successfully, and considering the issues they bring to the table, I find that astounding. So tell me a little bit about this group process.

Dr. Willa Butler: What it is, WICA — Women in Control Again. It’s a group that I developed some years ago for the agency, and it deals with the issues and concerns of the female offender. — Their pathways to crime, how they got started in the criminal justice system, and knowing how they got started lets us know how we can keep them from returning and breaking that cycle of pain. And what we deal with in group, we deal with first of all we start with who they are. And a lot of women don’t know exactly who they are, because they’ve been out in the drinking and drugging for so long, and at such an early age, it’s like, “I really don’t know who I am today. And now that I’m clean, I’m trying to find myself”, in a sense. And that’s what we deal with, things of that nature. And we deal with the substance abuse, and the whole gamut, the parenting skills, housing, whatever issues that concerns them. That’s mainly what we deal with. There’s basically seventeen critical issues that we deal with in that group process. But the main thing is showing empathy, showing that you care, and developing a trusting environment, where they can not only trust you, but trust each other.

Len Sipes: The criminologists call it cognitive restructuring, and there is plenty of research out there that indicates that that works. Now “cognitive restructuring” to the average person listening to this program is helping individuals think differently about who they are and what they are. My guess is that a lot of the women involved in your groups have never dealt with that subject before in their lives, have never had an opportunity to say, “Who am I? What do I want to do? Where do I need to go?” Is that correct?

Dr. Willa Butler: That’s correct. And when you talk about cognitive restructuring, it’s basically getting to the core, getting to the core factor as to why I do the things that I do. And once we find that out, then we can start changing, because that begins to empower the person. And we know what our limitations are, and we also know what our assets are as well, and it helps us to develop.

Len Sipes: I’m going to go over to Talynthia in a couple seconds. But you and I have had other programs together about this topic, and my favorite story is when I was with the Maryland Correctional System and sitting down with a bunch of women offenders, and they actually told me that prison, in this pre-release center, was preferable to going home at times. And I always found that astounding, why would an individual find prison to be preferable to life on the outside. And they said to me that they’ve never felt safer. They’re getting their GED. They were getting at that point a food certificate, a culinary arts certificate. And they were running groups. And for the first time in their lives, they weren’t trying to figure out who they were and where they were going with their lives. And also, it was safer in prison because they had been so beaten up on the outside. So there’s a larger, really societal issue that is at play here that we’re not going to be able to solve. But Talynthia, over to you. Thank you very much for being on the program.

Talynthia Jones: You’re welcome.

Len Sipes: I really appreciate it. Now you’re currently under supervision by my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, and you’re currently involved in a lot of groups.

Talynthia Jones: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay. Does that group process work for you?

Talynthia Jones: It’s working very well for me. Dr. Butler is a good counselor. She’s helping me to deal with me, to learn me, to get inside myself, to know what’s going on with me and why I keep using, why I keep doing the things that I’m doing to go back in the system. And I’ve been doing this for too long. And as we do the group sessions and the work papers that we do, you know, in the groups, it’s helping us to not just wonder how dominate we can be to stay strong, but how dominate that we can put ourselves into another place, to learn how getting your life together is much better than to just cover it up with some mess. And I’ve just been feeling good about myself here lately.

Len Sipes: Wonderful.

Talynthia Jones: And I love, I love every minute. I get up early in the morning, I’m always there early, because I can’t wait to talk about me. Because I’m tired of just having all this bottled-up junk inside me that’s keeping me going back into the places and the phases that I’ve been doing.

Len Sipes: Is this the first time in your life that you’ve had an opportunity to really sit down and talk with other people about everything that’s happened in your past?

Talynthia Jones: Yes. It’s actually been the very first time that I’ve actually even dealt with women, because I have women issues. And Dr. Butler is teaching me how to communicate with women, how to communicate period. And it is very good, it’s very good.

Len Sipes: Now in terms of sharing that information, I mean, was I right before in the program where I said that a lot of women who come out of the prison system were rock-hard. They don’t trust anybody. They don’t trust any one for any reason. How did Dr. Butler break through that barrier to get to you?

Talynthia Jones: She broke the barrier with me because I don’t see Dr. Butler as a Court Service Agency. I see her as a mother figure.

Len Sipes: Right.

Talynthia Jones: Because she don’t look at us as criminals. She look on us at people, as children, you know, children of God, you know. And she loves us unconditionally, and she’s willing to help us. When other people out in society, they look at us, “Well, she’s nothing but a drug addict. She’s nothing but a criminal. She keeps doing this and she keep doing that.” But Dr. Butler doesn’t see us that way.

Len Sipes: And in terms of this group process, if you weren’t involved in this group process, where would be now? If you came from the prison system and all we did was supervise you and put you under GPS and drug test you and hold you accountable for your actions — if that’s all we did, we didn’t supply this gender-specific approach, this group process, where would be now?

Talynthia Jones: I would be still using. I would be back in the penal system. Because all drugging do is cover up your feelings, covering up your emotions. It’s covering up what you dealing with instead of you dealing with it on your own, or dealing with it with someone that’s going to help you to get involved with yourself, to let all these emotions out so that you won’t cover it up with drugs.

Len Sipes: Right. And how to cope with life without turning to drugs.

Talynthia Jones: Yes.

Len Sipes: And so, you said you had women’s issues or issues with dealing with other women, how difficult was that? — Because you’re in these groups, you share that experience. You share all these ugly things that have happened to you throughout your life, sharing that with a group of women. Was that easy or difficult or what?

Talynthia Jones: It was difficult when I first got in, until I saw Dr. Butler, because I was able to talk to Dr. Butler before. And she really lets you know that it’s okay. It’s okay to talk about what’s going on with you. And see, I’m a person that’s afraid to talk about what’s going on with me because I’m afraid of what somebody going to think of me. And that’s what most women think, you know. And doing the things that we do, if we talk about it, somebody won’t think something bad about us. It’s always come to me and my attention, as brought up, that what I did was my fault. And I know everything that I do is not my fault.

Len Sipes: Right. Well, before we get back to Dr. Butler for the close of the program, getting back to that whole issue of how other people think about you — most people, you’re coming out of the prison system, they’re going to say, “You’re a criminal. I don’t want to fund programs for criminals. I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Let’s give it to the church. Let’s give it to the PTAs. I don’t want programs for criminals, and I don’t want to hire criminals.” Okay, you’re a criminal, technically.

Talynthia Jones: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay. That stereotype — that’s the difference between what people have in their mind of criminal, and there you are, a pretty young woman who’s successfully dealing with all the issues in her life. How do you feel about that?

Talynthia Jones: Well, it makes me feel bad for the people out there, because they don’t realize that the women here are dealing with so much emotional things, and because they are dealing with it in the wrong way, and the people don’t want to help them, it shows that they only think of themselves. They’re worrying about themselves. They’re not caring about what we feeling and what we going through, why we’re doing this.

Len Sipes: And you’re not that stereotype, is the bottom line.

Talynthia Jones: I’m not that stereotype. I want the help. And some women are out here that don’t want the help, they just want to get off paper. But me, I want the help. I know I need the help, not for me, but for my family. And I have to think about me first, because if I don’t care of me, I can’t take care of no one else.

Len Sipes: Understood. Completely understood.

Talynthia Jones: And see, and that’s what the society needs to know, that if we get the help that we need, and not only from the government, well maybe from family members, the support that we need, the love, the care and affection that we didn’t get back in our childhood that causes us to grow up in adulthood to do the things that we do.

Len Sipes: Right. Willa, the great majority of the people that are in your groups complete them successfully.

Dr. Willa Butler: Yes.

Len Sipes: The rate of successful completion is much higher than it is for men. It’s much higher than it is for everybody combined. I think what Talynthia just said, and it was very impressive and I thank you for sharing that story, is the heart and soul of it. She’s getting the help she needs and she’s doing fine because she’s getting the help she needs. Is that the bottom line behind this?

Dr. Willa Butler: Yes. And that is the main bottom line behind, like you say, is to give them the help and support; but not only that, but to have an understanding of what’s happening. Most of the women who have been through the criminal justice system have been raped or molested at a very early age, and that’s something that comes out in the group process. And it gives them an understanding, like Talynthia said, and why we drug through that. We’re not using it as an excuse, but when you’ve gone through a trauma like that, and then there’s no one out there to help you or assist you, and that’s one thing that the women don’t have as children, they didn’t have that support, that healthy network and system. So they turn within by using drugs or whatever else was out there, and then they ended up in the criminal justice system, because they’re trying to support their habit or whatever, and live out of the normal society.

Len Sipes: And you’ve got the final word. First of all, thank you very much, ladies, for being on the program. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching us as we explored this issue of women offenders. Look for us next time as we look at another important topic in today’s criminal justice system. Please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Video Ends]

Filed Under: Criminal Justice, Day Reporting, Interviews with Offenders, Interviews with Staff, Parole and Probation, Video Podcast, What Works, Women Offenders Tagged With: Counseling, DC, Offenders, Our, Place, Programs, Women

Kentucky’s Recidivism Rate Hits 10-year Low–”DC Public Safety”

May 9, 2011 By Len 1 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/2011/03/kentuckys-recidivism-rate-hits-10-year-low-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 the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. At our microphones today is Secretary Michael Brown. Secretary Brown has been there in the State of Kentucky with the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet for the last four years. He has a long history of public service as a judge, as a prosecutor, as a law director for the city of Louisville, U.S. Army as a Captain, he’s a gentleman that’s been around for quite some time, and one of the reasons why we asked Secretary Brown to be by our microphones today, is that he’s gotten a lot of news. We have a couple news services that come into us here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, and the first one that caught my eye was from the dailynews.com, and it said “State’s Two Year Recidivism Rate Hits a 10-Year Low,” and all of us within the criminal justice system were struggling to do just that. We’re struggling to bring down our recidivism rates, that’s enough to make it interesting, but it goes on to the Courier Journal, in terms of Gov. Beshear’s signing a new act in terms of rearranging the way that Kentucky does business, and it goes all the way to the Wall Street Journal, where a recent article says that “States Rethink Drug Law,” so the state of Kentucky has gotten an awful lot of publicity lately, national publicity, and a lot of people are looking at the state of Kentucky in terms of what it is that they’ve done, but again, for me, the most intriguing part of this is the headline “State’s Two Year Recidivism Rate Hits a 10-Year Low,” and with that introduction, I present Secretary Michael Brown, secretary for the last four years. Mr. Secretary, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Michael Brown: I’m glad to be with you, Leonard.

Len Sipes: Okay. Now, what we have with the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, you have an operation much like mine in the 14 years when I was with the Maryland Department of Public Safety, where we had State Police, we had corrections, we had a lot of agencies. You have the same thing for the State of Kentucky, correct?

Michael Brown: That is correct. It is the largest cabinet in state government, and we have right around 8,000 employees in the cabinet, and my major units include the department of corrections, the Kentucky State Police, our juvenile justice, and then we have medical examiners and criminal justice training and drug control policy, and just a number of agencies that are attached, including our public defenders.

Len Sipes: One of the things that you mentioned in terms of the pre-interview is that at one time, Kentucky had the fastest growing prison population in the country, correct?

Michael Brown: Well that is correct. Actually, Gov. Beshears took office in December of 2007, and shortly after his first address to the General Assembly in January of 2008, the Pew Center on the States came out with a report that listed Kentucky as having the fastest growing prison population by percentage in the country. That was something that took a number of us by surprise. We knew that corrections had been an escalating budget item. We didn’t know that we had crossed the finish line first in that particular situation.

Len Sipes: Now one of the things that Kentucky, as well as virtually every state in the United States is struggling with is this concept of a corrections budget that a lot of people in a lot of statehouses throughout the country, they’re coming to the conclusion that the corrections budget is growing out of control, that it’s taking up too much of the budget, that there’s no way that you can sustain that level of an increase in the prison population. It’s taking away from funding for college, it’s taking away from funding for seniors, and it’s taking away from funding for schools. It has a tremendous impact on not just criminal justice, but has a tremendous impact in terms of the overall budget, and what a lot of states are trying to do, what they’re trying to wrestle with is this whole concept of how do we rein in the corrections budget without having an adverse impact on public safety, and that’s why I keep coming back to the same issue, recidivism, you hit a ten-year low. How did you do that?

Michael Brown: Well that was a target that frankly, we just decided we had to aim at. When we were looking at our population, and clearly, the only way to reduce your, or the main way to reduce your prison budgets, your correctional budget, is by means of population, and when we look at our population, we know it’s made up of basically two segments. We have people who have recently committed a felony that they’re going to be sent to our facilities for, but we’d also found that a fair percentage of all the people who come through the doors each year are coming back. They’re returnees. They’re return customers. And that’s a recidivism rate, those who are coming back after a 2-3 year period of being released, and when we looked at those recidivists, we realized that a fair amount of them are what we call re-entry figures. They’re ones who have gotten out, they’ve gone back out into the community, within, as everyone in this business knows, the likelihood is failure is highest in those first few months to a year, and those individuals then come back. When they do come back, they come back and stay, generally, for a longer period of time than they were in for the first period. So that becomes a, and I’ll give you an example. In Kentucky, if you have a, you committed a crime, and you’re eligible for parole after serving 20% of your sentence, and then you go out and you violate your parole and you’re returned, it’s likely that you’re going to be in for a period of time longer than that initial 20%.

Len Sipes: Understood.

Michael Brown: So we, in my cabinet, I cannot control what the courts are doing. We cannot completely control what the legislature is going to do vis-à-vis what becomes a crime, so our target had to be, by just a natural process, how can we improve our re-entry efforts, how can we cut that recidivism rate, and a cut of 1,000 prisoners at $21,000 or so a year starts to add up to real money if you can succeed at this.

Len Sipes: Now you said that you went to the Pew Center for the States, and they provided some technical assistance?

Michael Brown: Well, that was well down the road. What had happened was, we had taken a number of different approaches to try to address this issue. The Governor, in January of 2008 had asked me to convene what’s called our Criminal Justice Council, it’s a large body involving all the stakeholders in the criminal justice system, to make recommendations on the penal code and the drug laws, and we came up with reports but were unsuccessful, to a large extent, in getting many things passed through the legislature. Then the legislature itself came up with a joint resolution creating another committee to look at these issues, and then finally, this most recently concluded legislature had come up with a task force on the penal code and substance abuse, which was a very small group. Only seven people. And historically, those seven, it was bipartisan, a Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary, a Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court sat himself, I represented the executive branch, we had a retired commonwealth attorney, a former public advocate, and a county judge executive. We started work on reviewing, particularly targeting what we were going to do with probation, parole, and reentry, and also our drug laws. Then, in the middle of that process, somewhat in the middle of it, the Pew Public Safety Performance Project partnered with us, the legislature put up some seed money of $2,000, and last August, and August of 2010, we announced a collaborative effort where Pew would give us technical assistance, primarily working with the committee I described to come up with a legislative package which was, in fact, introduced in the session which most recently concluded.

Len Sipes: Now what do you, the group of, the small group of individuals, did you feel comfortable with a game plan coming out of that, and then Pew was technical assistance beyond that, do I have that correct?

Michael Brown: Well, what happened was, the task force had started its work, and we had narrowed the focus of this particular task force, particularly to looking at our drug laws, recognizing that that was the largest driver of, certainly our revolving criminal population. There’s always going to be a place for those incorrigibles and those offenders, the violent ones, but as I looked at Kentucky’s population of 20-odd thousand, clearly, if you took away those who were in as persistent felony offenders and the most violent offenders, that still left about 15,000 individuals that were in, and the bulk, I’m talking about the very large bulk of those 15,000, were in because of something to do with drugs. Now, what the Pew folks brought to us was the ability to bring evidence based, basically studies, and attempts from all over the country on how to deal with some of these issues and boil them down in a manner that we could literally take the best practices from all over the country and then, if they had a recipe, we had the seasoning to make it come out to a Kentucky perspective, so to speak.

Len Sipes: Well, that’s a beautiful description. I love that! What do you think was the most important, give me a couple of the most important policies that came out of all this. Different people have been caught up in crime and drugs for decades, it’s not easy to get them out of that cycle, it’s not easy to break the cycle. What were the principal ingredients in terms of how you proceeded to cut that recidivism rate?

Michael Brown: Well, the first thing is, you have to recognize that the cycle needs to be broken, and it’s not simply, it’s not just a matter of “Just Say No.” We have, for example, some really successful drug courts here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, but the requirements for those coming into the drug court system, which is somewhat of a diversionary process, were pretty strict, and that really didn’t do much for those who had already offended and managed to find a way into the facilities to stop them from coming back. We have to recognize that breaking that cycle of a true abuser is going to take long term treatment, anywhere from 6-9 months. It’s not just simply going to be, you know, tell them to stop taking it. And it also involves a situation where our probation and parole practices have to be aimed at reinforcing those principles once an individual is either on probation or parole, because there are relapses. Recognizing that, we don’t want the relapse to take someone all the way back behind the fence, as we like to say.

Len Sipes: Right. So in essence, what you have is a prison population, they’re eventually released, they come out onto the street, and a lot of them, and for a lot of states throughout the country, when I was with the Maryland, at times, it approached 70% of the people coming into the prison systems were already on parole and probation. I’ve seen figures ranging anywhere from 50% to 70% of the prison intake are those people already on parole and probation, so that revolving door, that sense of life or prison or the criminal justice system on the installment plan seems to be alive and well in most states, so in essence, what I’m hearing is that what you all decided to do was to stop that cycle, to break that cycle, and it sounds like you’re focusing on specifically, is it nonviolent or violent offenders, but your principal goal is to get them involved in long term drug treatment?

Michael Brown: Well the first thing, we want to recognize what were the biggest drivers, and the biggest driver in the population was drugs. That entailed us making adjustments to our drug laws which hadn’t been made in many, many years, and to include provisions in those, which are going to drive these individuals, well first, it was going to drive those who are the users. We definitely wanted to separate the traffickers, those who are truly involved in the criminal enterprise, the profiteers, and separate them from what you might call the peddlers, or just the abusers. And we know that that’s how it breaks down. We also needed, in Kentucky, because of our, and I don’t want to call it unique, but it definitely is different from, say, some of the other states we looked at, we have a diverse sort of drug problem. Parts of our state, our drug problem is driven almost entirely by the abuse of prescription drugs.

Len Sipes: Ah, that is different.

Michael Brown: Pills that generally come in from other states. Florida in particular, if you don’t mind me taking a shot at a governor I won’t name right now, but we have a large influx of prescription drugs that come in from other states, and they are having a devastating effect on one part of our state. Other parts of our state, we see some of the more traditional things that involve meth, cocaine, or heroin to a certain extent, and then of course, you know, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Kentucky was the second largest eradicator of marijuana, which is probably our largest crop of any other state in the country. So our drug laws had to be tailored to address this, you know, multifaceted issue, but going for a moment, just to go back to what you were saying about the returnees’ situation, I had it said, and I was actually called cavalier for saying this, even though it’s true, if my population today is right around 20,500, if they live long enough, all but about 105 of those individuals are going to get out of prison and are going to come back in those communities, and that is a percentage that the public doesn’t have. The public perceives that individuals commit a crime, they get caught, they get prosecuted, and then they go away forever. Well they don’t go away from us, and what we have to do is do something about those 95-99% that are coming back into that community. You break that cycle, that’s where you make the real gains in public safety, you make real economic gains, because if you can turn a large segment of those folks back into productive citizens as opposed to where we supply all their needs, my medical budget is around $60 million just for our felony population.

Len Sipes: Yeah, and people have no idea how difficult it is to run a huge prison system and how expensive it is to run a huge prison system. I don’t, I just get the sense that people have no clue, but they’re finding out because of all of the controversy as to the money going in the correction systems, and people are saying, gee, wouldn’t this be better spent, in terms of other programs, but again, I reemphasize this, it’s just not a matter of dollars here, it’s just not a matter of reducing the correctional dollars, you’ve been able to cut the rate of recidivism back into the state of Kentucky for a 10-year low, and so you’re doing it and protecting public safety at the same time.

Michael Brown: Well, that’s the ultimate goal. That’s the win-win. Obviously, public safety is our primary concern, but clearly, when you recognize that by breaking these cycles, and by decreasing that recidivism rate, the benefit there is, in fact, public safety, because that individual doesn’t go out and commit that crime, is not a bane on society anymore –

Len Sipes: Right, and they’re huge savings in terms of crime, in terms of the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to track him down, to convict him, to put him back into the prison system, I mean, this is an ungodly expensive proposition, and what you’re doing is not just saving money, but there are fewer crimes being committed.

Michael Brown: That’s the goal, and we are in a situation, we had, as you know, the states, our state certainly, we have to operate under a balanced budget, so we can’t spend more than we have.

Len Sipes: We’re more than halfway through the program ladies and gentlemen. I want to reintroduce Michael Brown, the Secretary of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet for the State of Kentucky. The website, www.justice.ky.gov. I’ll be giving out that website at the end of the program. Okay, Mr. Secretary, we’ve set up everything, I think, I mean in terms of the 10-year low on recidivism, we’ve set up the fact that you’re trying to break the cycle, that you’re looking not at traffickers, but you’re looking specifically at the users, that you have a prescription drug problem and a marijuana problem there in the state of Kentucky, it sounds like you have across the board cooperation on the part of both sides of the political spectrum, the Republicans and the Democrats coming together and agreeing to this overall philosophy, so that part of it I’ve got correct, correct?

Michael Brown: That is correct, and the recent bill that passed, which is House Bill 463, which Pew assisted us on, and that task force worked on, it passed our Senate, which is a Republican controlled Senate, unanimously, went back to the House of Concurrence and passed 96-1. That’s an overwhelming approval for the work of the task force and recognition of the issues we have to deal with. Now we should only be so cooperative on the other issues in the state, but at least on this one, we had virtual unanimity.

Len Sipes: There’s an organization called Right On Crime, which is key Republicans at the national level who are coming together to endorse this concept, and a lot of individuals have said to themselves, okay, well this is no longer a Democratic issue, it’s no longer a Republican issue, it’s now a bipartisan issue. They want the criminal justice system, they want we within the criminal justice system to be more effective and prove that effectiveness, and that is why I’m beating this point to death. There are a lot of states who are doing this, and they’re starting to do it, and they’re examining it, and they’re putting money into programs in the prison system, and they’re putting money into the programs at the parole and probation level, but they haven’t yet produced data that shows a reduction in recidivism, and to the average person listening to this program, recidivism, again, are people coming back into the criminal justice system because they’ve either committed new crimes or technical violations, but as our people like to point out, a technical is a person doesn’t show up for supervision, that’s a technical violation, so the term technical violation becomes minimized in the minds of some because it sounds trite, but if you don’t show up for supervision, or if you’re ordered to go into drug treatment and you don’t go or you don’t cooperate, those are technical violations as well, so some of this is a matter of taking greater risks with the individual that you have under supervision, that you don’t automatically send them back to prison, you try to stabilize him through programs in the community, and you understand that relapse and problems come with the supervision process, and just because you have 2 or 3, you don’t automatically send the person back to prison. Do I have that correct?

Michael Brown: That is correct. In fact, some of the things that we had done in the budget bill, and that, which have been also codified in a new piece of legislation, is to give our parole and probation officers some additional tools to work with, including, for the first time here in Kentucky, some intermediate sanctions, where rather than, in the prior world, an individual would violate a condition of parole or probation, there would be a warrant issued, they’d be arrested, they’d go to jail, they’d sit in jail awaiting a process involving going before the administrative law judge, the administrative law judge, if they found probable cause, would then turn the case to the parole board, most of that time, that individual continued to sit in jail awaiting the outcome of it, and then if the parole board revoked, they’d go back to prison. We found that a better way to approach some of those individuals, obviously, this doesn’t work for anybody, but is to make use of intermediate sanctions, and they can be a ramped up scale of sanctions, everything from, we’re going to put you on an electronic GPS monitoring device to make sure you don’t go where we told you not to go, maybe have that thing vibrate on your ankle as you approach some place where we know you’re likely to get back into trouble, or we can put you back in jail, but for limited periods of time without having to go through that whole process, so we don’t cut off whatever positive ties someone has created, either with a job or family connections when they have been outside of the institution, because as I’ve said, once they come back on that violation, statistics show us that they’re going to serve a longer period of time having violated than they served initially.

Len Sipes: And the whole idea, I’m assuming, is one of the universal issues that states are struggling with, is that the question becomes, who do you want to be in, who do you want to occupy that prison bed? Do you want a nonviolent offender who’s tied into drugs to occupy that prison bed, that very, very expensive prison bed, or do you want the violent offender, someone who’s posing a clear and present risk to public safety? That dichotomy, I would imagine, exists in Kentucky as well, and I would imagine that was part of your discussions.

Michael Brown: As was said many, many times during our hearings, and as we visited with all the stakeholders, we’ve got to differentiate between the people that we’re scared of and the people that we’re just mad at, and you know, once you get past being mad at these individuals, the key is what do we do, in many situations, to stop them from returning. Now Kentucky had been very fortunate, a few years back, we got one of the grants from the Second Chance Act, we had started our reentry program, we had started working with a new risk assessment tool, and in fact, that use of the risk assessment tool has been so successful that it’s built into the new legislation with the aim that we’re going to get that LSI used from Day 1 that someone comes in the system, so judges will eventually be looking at some of these factors when they’re making bail decisions, so that our pre-sentence officers are making use of that assessment as they give judges recommendations for sentencing, so that when an individual is processed into the institution, we have a lot of data available into what, if any, programs are going to work for a particular individual, and that’s far different from a shotgun effect that we used to take. Our approach before, and I don’t blame anybody for this, this is not throwing a rock at the system, but it’s how you view your job, and our job before was to simply keep these people away from the public, count them and make sure you have the same number you started out in the morning when they go to bed at night, and then do it again. Now some of our focus, both institutionally, and certainly in parole and probation, is to how can we prevent this particular individual from coming back to see us again?

Len Sipes: Well, you’re going towards the larger scale, because that’s not just the state of Kentucky, again, this is something that every state in the United States is wrestling with, the attorney general, Eric Holder, the assistant attorney general, Laurie Robinson, the folks at the U.S. Department of Justice, the people who are trying to develop this whole sense of justice reinvestment, which is essentially, if you save money in terms of people coming back into prisons, the states would put more of that money, so if you save the state, any state, $50 million, and the fact that you didn’t send that many people back, a certain amount of that $50 million would go back into programs and go back into efforts to keep people from coming back into the system, so this is a larger, this is not just a conversation for the state of Kentucky, this is a conversation that’s happening in virtually every statehouse in the country, and again, not to beat a dead horse, but you’re the one who’s proven that you can reduce recidivism. Other states have reduced recidivism, but you hit a 10 year low. That’s what intrigued me, and that’s why, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you.

Michael Brown: Well, and again, a lot of it is, you know, I hate to use the cliché, if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. But if you go around and you really get a focused effort in, these are very smart, dedicated professionals, and it’s simply a matter of saying, here’s what our goal is, this is what our mission is going to be in this situation, and believe me, most of our probation and parole officers, they don’t want to just be in the arrest business. They don’t want to be, they would rather have people succeed, because when they do these home visits, and when they do these assessments, they run up against everyone else who’s touched by these individuals, and it’s much, much better that these individuals succeed than fail on the outside.

Len Sipes: I’ll give you one example. In the state of Maryland, where we had a person come out of the prison system, his wife let him come back home, he was getting along well with the wife, getting along well with the kids, he was working, and he was making his restitution, and he was going to substance abuse therapy, he was doing everything that you want him to do, and yet he celebrated by getting high. He celebrated his successes by getting high, and there’s a certain point where the 4th, 5th, 6th positive drug test, I mean, you have to sit down with him and say to him, look, you’re about to blow the whole thing. We’re about to send you back to prison, there’s a certain point we have no choice. You know, when you have a couple more, and then finally, we were able to intervene, and he finally stopped celebrating his successes by getting high, but if that person had committed a crime while that happened, the newspapers would have come to us and said you knew he was doing drugs, why didn’t you put him back in prison? That’s a big dilemma for people at the state level, that’s a big dilemma for us all within the criminal justice system, because we are taking somewhat increased risks with the people that we have under supervision.

Michael Brown: Well, and that’s where, as I said, the beauty of this law, it’s building in, and one other thing I do want to touch on is the reinvestment aspect, but it’s building in a way to make these risk assessments. Nothing is going to be 100% perfect. But the key is, rather than, sometimes our intuition is just flat wrong. We think that, oh, that looks like a great program. Why? Well, it would work for me. Well maybe your criminogenic factors are not the same as the people you’re actually dealing with. So it might work for you, we’ve proven that it doesn’t work for this population that we have been locking up, so let’s use what works for them. One of the things that 463, this bill did, it codified a way to return some of the money that’s saved back into the reentry systems, and into our local jails and counties. Kentucky also has a fairly unique, when I say fairly unique, it’s just us and Louisiana, where one third of my felon population resides in our county jails. So if we don’t find a way to enhance the programs and what’s going on in those county jails, we also miss an opportunity to cut this recidivism rate, and thereby not take the fullest advantage of our public safety dollars. So 25% of the projected savings from one of our efforts, and please remind me, please ask me about the mandatory supervision provision in this bill, which I think is the key.

Len Sipes: Well, go ahead and say that, but we only have about 30 seconds left, so we have to wrap up soon.

Michael Brown: Well, in wrapping up, then, I’d say one of the key parts of the bill is, we recognized that the early part of failure happens in those 6-9 months, so we’re going to put in a program where the last 6 months of an individual’s sentence are now under mandatory supervision with probation and parole.

Len Sipes: There you go.

Michael Brown: We’re very excited about that.

Len Sipes: Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been talking to Secretary Michael Brown, who has just focused, refocused an entire criminal justice system focusing on high risk offenders, being sure that they’re incarcerated, and taking some chances, and actually doing, getting some great results in terms of a 10-year low in his recidivism rate for everybody else. He’s saved the state and the collective wisdom has saved the state literally, millions of dollars, so Secretary Michael Brown, we congratulate you on these successes. Again, if you want to take a look at the website for the state of Kentucky, it’s www.justice.ky.gov. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. I want everybody to have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Corrections-Prisons, Drug Treatment, Interviews with Policy Makers, Parole and Probation, Reentry, What Works Tagged With: Kentucky, Parole and Probation, prison, recidivism, Reentry, treatment

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

Sexual Exploitation of Children-DC Public Safety-US Department of Justice

Faith Based Partnerships and Offenders – UDC Sound Advice

Women Offenders – DC Public Safety Television 2011

Kentucky’s Recidivism Rate Hits 10-year Low–”DC Public Safety”

Successful Offenders – “DC Public Safety”

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