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The Challenges of Justice Reinvestment-William Burrell

April 17, 2015 by

The Challenges of Justice Reinvestment-William Burrell

DC Public Safety Radio

http://media.csosa.gov

Radio show at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2014/08/challenges-justice-reinvestment-william-burrell/

LEONARD SIPES: From the nation’s capital this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Back at our microphones, ladies and gentlemen, Bill Burrell. Bill is an independent corrections management consultant and author of a book that I find very interesting. He can be reached at william.burrell, B-U-R-R-E-L-L, at comcast.net. The topic of today’s program is the challenge of justice reinvestment; what’s happening in parole and probation throughout the United States in terms of new ways of doing things, new ways of coping with the criminal justice system. Bill, welcome back to DC Public Safety.

BILL BURRELL: Thank you, Len. It’s great to be with you.

LEONARD SIPES: Bill, before we started the program we were talking about the corollary of mental health back in the 60s and 70s. We did have a massive undertaking throughout the country, where we sort of recognized that these large mental hospitals in virtually every state in the Unites States, and it probably was not a good idea to keep mentally incapacitated people in these large hospitals, these large structures. They probably could be a better treated, better dealt with out in the community. Yet we never did develop the community infrastructure to handle all those people coming out of all of those state mental hospitals and the disparaging fact is that it now seems that the criminal justice system is the principal provider of mental health treatment. Comment on that. Am I right or wrong?

BILL BURRELL: Yes. You’re right on the money there, Len. The idea was a good one. You think about those hospitals. You think about the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. They were pretty horrible places. And once these new psychotropic drugs were developed back in the 50s and 60s they were able to stabilize the symptoms and consider the release of these to the community, which made a whole lot of sense, it’s a lot cheaper, much more humane, and more effective. But, as you mentioned, the community infrastructure, the group homes, residential facilities to house these folks in the community were never built. So we ended up with a good idea that went pretty horribly wrong. And now some 20, 30 years later we’re looking at the jails and prisons being populated largely by some of the socially released with mental problems.

LEONARD SIPES: But what we’re talking about here is that we had a great idea and we implemented it and they went into the community. Without community infrastructure to take care of the mentally ill they end up with us in the criminal justice system. And there’s a lot of people out there who would say that somehow, someway there became a big difference between what was conceptualized and what actually happened.

BILL BURRELL: Well, that’s exactly the problem. We had a great idea, but it was implemented poorly, and that seems to be a very common story in the criminal justice system and maybe in government in general, that a good idea is developed, researchers come up with it, they test it, they evaluate it, and they put it out there, and then once it’s turned over to folks in agencies, for a variety of reasons, some of which relates to the fact that folks are really not trained in large scale organizational change and implementation, the execution of a good idea is flawed and the results that we expected don’t happen, because we really didn’t do the program as it was designed. And that was the lesson I guess we have to learn from the institutionalization of the mentally ill. It was one of the stools on the, one of the legs on the stool, so to speak, was the capacity in the community to have, supervise, and oversee the people released, and that never was completed, and we lost those folks in the community, in the boarding houses and the single room occupancy hotels in cities and they just disappeared.

LEONARD SIPES: Now, our program is called today the Challenges of Justice Reinvestment: The Impact on Parole and Probation because we see the possibility of a connection between that experience, the idea in terms of the institutionalization, dealing with mentally ill, the fact that there was not a sufficient infrastructure created to deal with all these people coming out. So we’re saying today that there’s the possibility that with justice reinvestment or reorganizing the way that we conduct business within the criminal justice system in terms of evidence based practices, in terms, again, of justice reinvestment, that there’s the possibility that the same thing may happen with parole and probation agencies that are not given sufficient staffing, money, resources, to deal with an increasing parole and probation population. Is that the connection?

BILL BURRELL: Yeah. That’s kind of the nub of the problem. Again, we have a situation with our prisons in the United States, they’re massively overcrowded, they’re not good places to house people with addiction problems, lack of education, and a whole variety of other problems. So the justice reinvestment model is saying we need to reduce those prison populations, get people out or don’t send them in, in the first place who are lower risk, nonviolent, less serious offenders, and handle them in a different way, thereby reducing prison populations, and if you can reduce those by enough you can actually close institutions and save money. And the second part of that logic is that a portion of that money would be reallocated or reinvested in community corrections to build the capacity to handle these folks. Now, and that’s a great idea, and where it has happened it has worked pretty well, if we look at the state of Texas and their experience. But part of the challenge is that the probation and parole system in this country is so overwhelmed. We have 70% of the correctional, adult correctional population is under the supervision of probation and parole, which surprises some people though, because they think we’ve locked everybody up over the last 30 years. Well, we have, but we’ve also put a lot more people under community control on probation and parole.

LEONARD SIPES: I think in the seven million, the correctional population between prisons and jails, it’s two million in community supervision, it’s five million. Am I in the ballpark?

BILL BURRELL: That’s right. And what’s interesting is if you look at the historical numbers, you go back to the early 1980s when the Bureau of Justice Statistics starting reporting on probation on parole populations, we have had 70% of the population ever since that time. So it’s been consistent over decades. When you look at the impact of the war on drugs in the 80s probation actually absorbed a greater amount of the results of that war on drugs than did the prison system. So we are, in my experience, when I was with probation in New Jersey, our individual caseloads went from 110 per officer in 1981 to 189 per officer in 1988, which was directly the result of changes in our laws and enforcement practices around drugs. So we have to remember that the base that we’re looking to focus on for these justice reinvestment efforts is pretty resource poor, pretty lacking the capacity to really do the work for the population they have right now, not to mention any increased number of people coming in. And one of the challenges is when you look at diverting people out of prison these could be higher risk people with more needs and problems and demands on a system. It is currently unable to really effectively address the population that it has.

LEONARD SIPES: Now, we at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency here in Washington DC we do have caseloads of 50 or less per parole and probation agent, what we call community supervision officers. But my experience in talking to people from throughout the country, as a result of the radio and television shows that we’ve done and when I go out and do training, it’s no usual they tell for there to be a ratio of 150 or more for every parole and probation agent out there. Now, I do know there are some jurisdictions where it is fairly close to 50 to 1, but my guess, and this is nothing more than a guess, is that the overwhelming majority of the people that I talk to that’s not their experience, the overwhelming majority of the people that I talk to are operating 125, 150 cases per parole and probation agent or more. So when you have caseloads of that size it’s awfully hard to do cognitive behavioral therapy, it’s awfully hard to really get into the lives of these individuals, encourage them to do better, encourage them to look at a different way of doing things, encouraging them to get drug treatment, mental health treatment, vocational programs, encourage them to find jobs and help them find jobs to do the home visits. All of these things are very labor-intensive and very difficult to do when you have caseloads of 150 to 1.

BILL BURRELL: Yeah. Well, you said it very well and my experience echoes yours. When I go to the American Probation and Parole Association conferences twice a year and other conferences and through my consulting and work with APPA I talk to a lot of folks around the country. And the ideal caseload or the optimal caseload of 50 to 1 is a very rare occurrence, unfortunately. And we do see lots of departments, particularly where you have states with county-based probation departments, these caseloads tend to be much higher than recommended, in some cases, as you said, 150 or more. And it’s hard to even keep track of the activities of those folks, no less spend the quality time you need to with them to get to know them, get to know their problems, connect them with resources, follow up, and so on. It’s just it can’t be done with those large caseloads.

LEONARD SIPES: All right, I’m hearing the same thing. When I do the radio shows I would imagine the most popular response to the radio shows is, “Len, I listen to you talk about justice reinvestment, I listen to you talk about evidence-based practices, I’m 100% behind you. That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s what we want to do. We want to have a good relationship with the people under supervision. We want to encourage them to do better. We want to get them involved in programs. We want to work with their families. We want to work with the faith based community. We want to do all of these things. We simply don’t have the resources to do them.” So if that’s true, why is there such a disconnect between the lofty sense of what I hear from my very good friends at the Department of Justice or Pew or Urban or Vera or lots of other organizations, American Probation and Parole Association, Council of State Governments, all of us are solidly behind justice reinvestment, all of us are solidly behind evidence-based practices, so why is there such a disconnect between what all of us want and what the reality is?

BILL BURRELL: Well, that’s probably the 64,000 dollar question. I think some of it has to do with a disconnect between community corrections and policymakers, legislators, governors, officers and so on. We’re kind of a stepchild of the justice system, despite the fact that we own 70% of the workload. You don’t, you can’t go to a probation department and see caseload crowding like you can go to a prison or jail and look at the tiers and see people crowded, double, triple bunked and things like that. We tend to be seen as a, what I would say, a magical expanding resource, that more cases you give us we just expand and we take them in. Well, we put them on the books, but we really are not capable of keeping up with the workload demands. So as you add more bodies to this system the amount of time spent with each one goes down, the quality of that time generally goes down. So you’re diminishing the capacity of the system to do what it needs to do, but it’s very hard to see that physically. And we also don’t do a very good job as a field in terms of communicating performance information, outcomes, results, process measures and so on. We don’t really do a very good job of that.

So it’s hard to convince people of the nature of our problem and the extents of our problem, because we tend to be out of sight, out of mind, we don’t communicate well, we tend to in the field have a sense that we don’t have political and public support for the work that we do. And, fortunately, the research and the polling work that I’ve seen suggests exactly the opposite, that we do things that are valued by the community, and I think that is becoming more and more clear over the last few years, that we create public value for the community and we need to connect that value to the need for support, political support, community support, resource support and so on, to make that case that we do need the resources. We can do a lot better if we’ve got the capacity, the number of officers and staff we need to supervise in cases, and what I also like to say is the capability, the skills, the knowledge, the training, the resources for treatment and so on that will enable to effectively supervise those folks that we’ve already got in our caseloads. And if you want to do justice reinvestment, which everybody seems to be on board with, I just was reading that I think the 27th state just signed up for it, Utah, so better than half the country has signed onto this. And we need to figure out a way to communicate that we could be creating another deinstitutionalization type of situation if we begin pushing people out of prisons and jails into probation and parole caseloads without the capacity to provide effective supervision.

LEONARD SIPES: And what would that do, Bill? Before the program we were talking about the danger of what?

BILL BURRELL: Well, if you put more people and potentially higher risk people into probation caseloads the amount and the quality of supervision is going to decline and the inevitable result of that will be more crime in the community committed by people under the supervision of probation and parole officers. And what keeps me up at night is that the blame will then be placed on the probation and parole agencies, “Well, you didn’t supervise these people effectively.” Well, part of the problem is we have a caseload of 150 and no one, I don’t care who you are, can supervise that size caseload effectively.

LEONARD SIPES: Our guest –

BILL BURRELL: So this…. Go ahead.

LEONARD SIPES: Let me reintroduce you, Bill. We’re more than halfway through the program. Our guest today is Bill Burrell. He’s been at our microphones multiple times before. He’s an independent corrections management consultant and author of a pretty interesting book. – oh, I’m sorry at william.burrell, B-U-R-R-E-L-L at comcast.net, william.B-U-R-R-E-L-L at comcast.net. Bill, you’ve been dealing with parole and probation agencies throughout the country in terms of your consultant role. You spent years with the New Jersey I think Department of Parole and Probation, is that correct?

BILL BURRELL: The Jersey court system, yeah, probation.

LEONARD SIPES: The Jersey court system, probation. So you have decades of experience in this, you’re out and about, you talk to people from throughout the country, you’re very well integrated with our friends at the American Probation and Parole Association, you go to their conferences, so you’re hearing this from more than a couple people.

BILL BURRELL: Yes, yes. And then this is kind of the theme I hear from almost everybody. There’s a frustration because they’ve read about and been trained on evidence-based practices, which is a pretty powerful vehicle for improving the results of what we do, but then they look at the, their organization, their department, and they look at their caseloads and they look at their lack of training resources and so on and they say, “We can’t do it. We don’t have the ability to move up to this new level of performance that we believe in, we think it’s a good idea, we’d like to do.” But it’s the ability to implement EBP, which is a much abused term these days, I think people throw it around very loosely, but really we’re talking about a set of practices that if they are implemented will reduce the risk of recidivism by the population that we supervise, reliably anywhere between 10% to 15%, 20% reductions in recidivism, which is significant. So people are looking at that and saying, “Gee, we’d like to be able to that, we would like to do our job better, we just don’t see how we can do it.”

And some of that relates to another issue that really hasn’t hit the radar screen of too many people yet. We’ve talked a lot about mass incarceration in this country. Some people are now starting to talk about mass supervision, those five million people that are under probation and parole supervision, how many of them really need to be on probation? Are there low-risk offenders there? Are there minor drug offenders? Are there people – there’re lots of people in my experience that’ll get placed on probation just to enable the court to collect fines and restitution fees and so on. So how much of that five million people is the chaff, so to speak, of the caseload that could be handled in some other fashion?

LEONARD SIPES: But I think that’s the point that most of the folks, again, that I just mentioned, from Pew, from Urban, and, again, are good friends and people who were completely supportive of, from Department of Justice and from other organizations will simply say you take those lower level individuals and you do, quote, unquote, “something else with them”. Their supervised by kiosks, they’re supervised administratively, that we have little contact with people at the lower end of the spectrum so we have the resources to devote towards people who do pose a clear and present danger or a risk to public safety. And you do that through objective risk and needs instruments and properly validated for local conditions and there you go, voila, the problem is solved.

BILL BURRELL: Yeah. In fact, Vince Schiraldi, who was the Commissioner of Probation in New York City up until recently, and Mike Jacobson, who you may have encountered, who was also the Commissioner of Probation for a while, they just wrote a piece called “Could Less Be More When it Comes to Probation Supervision?”, and talking about reducing the amount of people, low-risk people on supervision, and those that are there, reducing the amount of resources that they devote to them. And New York was one of the, I think the first, or the most prominent department to do kiosk supervision. And they had at one point almost two thirds of their population was reporting on kiosks and the re-arrest rate was like 1.5%. It was no different than the general citywide re-arrest rate. So we have lots of folks that did stupid things, were in the wrong place at the wrong time, whatever the scenario you want to present, are really not a risk. These are people that we should have the minimum amount to do with, collect whatever financial obligations we want from them, or whatever else we need to do, and then get them out of the system as quickly as possible, because we’re learning that we can actually make things worse by supervising those people, having them hang out with high-risk offenders in the waiting room in the probation department. Well, guess what. It’s usually the bad guys who make the good guys bad, not the other way around.

LEONARD SIPES: Well, we’re also told that trying to help individuals at the lower end of the continuum also poses a problem, because if you have a person who is a lower risk offender, the judge orders drug treatment for that individual, well, that’s just money that’s taken up that could be reallocated towards a higher risk individual. And if he or she doesn’t complete that treatment or they’re going half the time or they’re creating a problem within the group, bam, they’re revoked and out in a prison.

BILL BURRELL: Yeah. And we have lots of places where judges and prosecutors almost reflexively give probation, and they put on lots of conditions, special conditions of supervision, most of which they have no intention of enforcing, but it makes them feel good, makes them feel like we’re being tough on crime. Well, you got to realize that every one of those people you place on probation has a set of conditions that a probation has to enforce, and, ultimately, they can be brought back into court for failure to do that, to live up to those conditions, and potentially go to jail.

LEONARD SIPES: But help me, because I’m struggling with this, because if we did that then are the folks who at the national level are right? What they’re saying is, is that take that good percentage of your caseload – you just said that two thirds of the probation caseload in New York City was being supervised by kiosk and they had the same re-arrest rate as the general population. Then the question now becomes, is why aren’t we taking that I don’t know what percentage, two third, one third, one half, whatever that is of the lower risk offenders and doing something else with them besides regular and parole, then why aren’t we doing that? That’s what the people at the national level would say. It’s that it’s not a capacity issue; it’s the lack of a willingness on our part to do, quote, unquote, “something else with lower level offenders”.

BILL BURRELL: Well, that’s the I think the new breaking issue right now is focusing on the sentencing decision and the plea bargaining decision and introducing risk assessment into that. And there were just a series of things in the paper; Attorney General Holder came out apparently against using risk assessment in sentencing, which is kind of going against the tide of where the field seems to be going in terms of evidence-based decision-making. But the sentencing decision usually focuses on the seriousness of the crime and the extent of the offender’s prior involvement, prior record, and that’s pretty much it. And that really doesn’t get to the question of risk. To some extent prior record is a driver of risk, but there’re a lot of other factors that are involved. So we have people sentencing offenders for lots of reasons that have little or nothing to do with their risk of reoffending. Now, there may be other objectives of sentencing you want to accomplish, deterrents and punishment and so on, and we have to accomplish, accommodate those. But until we can figure out a way to help judges and defense attorneys and public defenders and DAs get a sense of the level of risk and sentence accordingly, we’re not going to get a reduction in the number of low-risk offenders that are going into probation.

LEONARD SIPES: But they could say the onus is on us. They could say that, “Okay, fine. We imposed all these restrictions. You do with them what you think is permissible.” Again, going back to the example of New York City probation where two thirds are in kiosks. They’re simply going to say, “Hey. We did what we think is proper, now you make the decision in terms of how you handle them.” And all we have to do is shift massive amounts of people into these lower level categories and suddenly we have the resources for the higher level people. What they’re going to say is that’s our job not theirs.

BILL BURRELL: Well, yes, there’s a good deal of truth to that, but one of the problems we see is judges will impose a probation sentence, sometimes three, four, five years, with lots of conditions, and send it over to probation, and probation is obligated to enforce those conditions, and sometimes that’s not possible by putting them on a kiosk kind of reporting. So some of this has to do with the use of probation in terms of the length of time, the number of conditions, even beyond the question of whether they should be on probation at all, because each one of those cases consumes probation resources.

LEONARD SIPES: Sure.

BILL BURRELL: I had a discussion with one of our judges in New Jersey years ago and his favorite sentence was to put somebody on probation until the restitution is collected. So all he wanted was the money. He wanted to get the money to the victim of the crime.

LEONARD SIPES: Right.

BILL BURRELL: He really didn’t want the person being supervised by a probation officer.

LEONARD SIPES: Right.

BILL BURRELL: But I, and I suggested to him there was another mechanism in our criminal code that enabled us in probation to collect that money for him and hold that person accountable without me having to devote a professional probation officer to that case. He said, “Gee, I had no idea.” Well, so shame on me too, you know, that we weren’t really educating folks about the implications of those probation sentences and then also that there were other mechanisms within the criminal code to accomplish the objective that he was looking to accomplish.

LEONARD SIPES: So in the final four minutes, basically what you’re saying, Bill, is that we, within the criminal justice system throughout the country, need to have a very powerful examination as to how we conduct business, how we do what we do, and if we’re unwilling to do something else with lower level individuals then at least give us the resources, the caseloads, the treatment resources, the training, the money to do it well.

BILL BURRELL: Yes. But I would first argue that we need to look at the front end of the system, the whole criminal processing up to the point of sentencing, diversion of low-risk offenders, presentencing into treatment programs if they need them, really begin to sort through that pile of offenders coming into the system and figure out who’s really dangerous, who are we really scared of, who really needs to be punished by going to prison, who are those people with serious problems that need to be supervised by probation officers to get them into treatment and so on. And that group that I call the chaff, the low-risk, minor offenders that we’re just mad at, we’re not scared of, we’re just mad at them, let’s not push them father into the system. Let’s find other ways of dealing with them in the community so that the caseload of a probation department is really moderate and high-risk people. The low-risk people for the most part never get there.

And that means a much more systematic, disciplined sorting process in the presentencing arena so that we’ve taken them out as much as we can so that what we’re left with is the people who really do need supervision. And then when you begin to think about the justice reinvestment side of things, because you go back a couple years, the Pew Public Safety Performance Project published a report, it talked about the amount of money, how the corrections dollar is allocated, and 12% of the corrections dollar was going to probation and parole, even though we have 70% of the population. Most expensive parole supervision was 7,000 dollars a year. And the average prison

BILL BURRELL: Prison cost –

LEONARD SIPES: Yeah.

BILL BURRELL: Was six or seven times that. I said, “I don’t –”

LEONARD SIPES: Yes.

BILL BURRELL: “I don’t even want all of that difference. Just give me, just double what I’m getting and I could do amazing things.”

LEONARD SIPES: The bottom line between it, the bottom line is that our people within parole and probation throughout the country want to do a good job, they’re dedicated to what they’re doing, they’re very important to our public safety, they’re very important to limiting the expenditures of tax paid dollars, they’re dedicated to justice reinvestment, they’re dedicated to evidence-based practices, they simply want a decent shot of doing that job well. That’s the bottom line, correct?

BILL BURRELL: Absolutely. You don’t stay in the field of probation and parole for very long if you’re not interested in helping people. And what we’ve found out from the research on burnout, for example, is that it’s not working with the offenders that burns out probation and parole officers; it’s impossible policies and procedures and organizational structures, which includes very large caseloads, that effectively prohibit them from doing the job that they came in to do.

LEONARD SIPES: Bill, it’s a fascinating conversation. As always, I invite you back to the microphones any time, because you provide a sense of clarity from the field that sometimes we don’t hear from the national organizations. Ladies and gentlemen, our guest today has been Bill Burrell, independent corrections management consultant and author. You can reach at William, W-I-L-L-I-A-M.B-U-R-R-E-L-L at comcast.net. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments, we even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

 

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Offenders and the Affordable Care Act-The Urban Institute

April 17, 2015 by

Offenders and the Affordable Care Act-The Urban Institute

DC Public Safety Radio

http://media.csosa.gov

Radio show at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2014/07/offenders-affordable-care-act-urban-institute/

LEONARD SIPES: From the nation’s capital this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s topic, Offenders and the Affordable Care Act, something of real importance to those of us in the criminal justice system and throughout the country. It’s a real pleasure to have Kamala Mallik-Kane; she is a research associate, Justice Policy Center for the Urban Institute, www.urban.org, www.urban.org. Kamala Mallik-Kane, welcome to DC Public Safety.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Hi, Len. I’m glad to be here.

LEONARD SIPES: Hi. This is exciting, because we have a new study that Urban is going to come out with next week talking about the Affordable Care Act and offenders, how many enroll, and what happens. Tell me about that.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Sure. This is a study that is funded by the National Institute of Corrections, and we are very excited to be doing this work, because it gives us an important preview of what might be happening under the ACA as states are expanding their access to Medicaid. In our study we look at two states that were early adopters of Medicaid expansion. We’re looking at what these states did before 2014, so that we can have some insights about what may happen as Medicaid expansion moves forward post-ACA.

LEONARD SIPES: Now, those of us in the criminal justice system, this is the Holy Grail, and I’ve seen that term “Holy Grail” used in a wide variety of articles. We have said for decades, those of us throughout the criminal justice system throughout the United States, that people in the criminal justice system, offenders, people on supervision, are not getting mental health treatment, they’re not getting substance abuse treatment. I’ve seen surveys that put it at 10% or less within some state correctional systems. People on the outside, again, are not getting substance abuse treatment; they’re not getting mental health treatment. We all see the potential of the Affordable Care Act as being something that’s going to revolutionize the way that we deliver services. Is there a snowball’s chance in Hades of that actually happening?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: I’m optimistic. I think there’s a good chance of that happening. I think it’ll take a while, but I think that this is definitely a step in the right direction. We know that so many people in the criminal justice system suffer from substance abuse problems, mental illness, and various chronic physical conditions, and we know that before the ACA, in most places, that they would be released from prison without health insurance. So what would happen is somebody comes into prison or jail, they get a certain level of treatment while they’re in prison or jail, they get stabilized and they manage these conditions, then they get released without health insurance. And so within a couple of months they are no longer receiving treatment for these conditions and they can spiral out of control.

LEONARD SIPES: When I was with the Maryland Department of Public Safety for 14 years the staff there explained to me that mental health treatment was designed to do nothing more than stabilize their experience while in prison or while in jail, it had little to do with stabilizing that experience in the community. So that’s what you’re talking about in terms of in many cases getting access to mental health treatment in prisons or in jails. It’s not designed for them to transfer to the community and for some sort of services to follow. It’s purely to help them maintain their sanity in the correctional facility.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. My understanding is that many prison and jail systems provide people with a small supply of what they like to call walking meds, and sometimes may set people up with a prescription to get a refill at a community-based pharmacy, but we all know if you don’t show up at a pharmacy with insurance this going to cost you an outrageous amount of money.

LEONARD SIPES: Yes.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: And so having insurance is a key step for people to be able to get those medications in an affordable way.

LEONARD SIPES: Now, there is I think a dollar amount stipulation, that they have to earn less than a certain amount every year to be eligible for the Affordable Healthcare Act.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. With the ACA that is 138% of the poverty level and to qualify for the subsidies for the ACA exchanges I think you can be up to 400% of poverty. And programs in the States vary with respect to what their income thresholds are, because Medicaid is a combined federal state program, and so the states have some discretion too in setting those limits.

LEONARD SIPES: I’ve seen figures like 16,000 dollars, 18,000 dollars, less than that, and I would imagine it does vary from state to state, because, as you said, it’s a combined federal-state program.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. That sounds about right to me. And certainly in the pre-ACA time period that we studied the thresholds for the two states that we looked at, Oregon and Connecticut, were quite different.

LEONARD SIPES: Again, and it’ll be the last time I’ll beat this point to death, is that we see, those of us in the criminal justice system are so excited about Urban, the fact that you’re coming out with this report next week. I’d really urge everybody to go to the website at the Urban Institute, www.urban.org, www.urban.org, because this whole idea is, again, we in the system understand that they need treatment, we in the system understand that oftentimes the experience throughout the United States is that they’re not getting treatment. We believe that if they got treatment they would do a lot better, recidivate less, cost taxpayers fewer dollars, cost victims of crime – there would be fewer victims of crime. We see this as a huge win for people in the criminal justice system and our ability to control cost.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. I think there’s a lot of research out there showing things like substance abuse treatment with aftercare being effective at engaging people in treatment after release and keeping their reoffending rates lower and similar things with mental health treatment. I think that what we tend to see in the justice system are pretty small-scale programs that are effective but serve a pretty small slice of the total population coming out. But we know there’s such a lot of unmet need. And that’s what makes the potential under the ACA very exciting is that insurance can be extended to a huge swath of individuals who are returning. As long as they meet the program eligibility requirements this is something that doesn’t affect 1% or 2% of people coming out but the majority.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. So we know that the, I would say the majority of people caught up in the criminal justice system have substance abuse history, certainly. I’ve seen self-reporting studies that say 55% self-report mental health issues in the past. I’ve seen studies that say; suggest that 16%, up to 16% of people have diagnosable histories of mental health problems. But physical health problems, if you throw all that in, I think we’re talking about certainly the majority and probably more than that of people caught up in the criminal justice system.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: At Urban we did a study called Returning Home several years back that interviewed people as they were leaving prison and then followed up with them in the community at several times over the course of a year. And when we did interview them in prison we found that when you looked across the spectrum of the types of issues that someone could have it was eight in ten men had at least one chronic physical or mental or substance abuse condition, it was like nine in ten women. So it’s really a huge swath of the population. Of course the severity of these conditions can vary, but in some of the, in some other data that I’ve seen I’ve seen numbers I think around something like 60% having conditions that require active treatment or management.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. So they leave prison, they’re typically uninsured, and their health deteriorates, right?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. And so the bottom line in all of this is, we in the criminal justice system care, but I’m not quite sure the average person out there sees this as that big of an issue, but it really is to them, is it not, in terms of holding down costs of correctional care, holding down re-victimizations?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Sure. I think that the most obvious connection that you can make for an average layperson who’s looking at this is to think about substance abuse and relapse. When someone is clean they are not stealing or victimizing people or doing other harmful things just for the purpose of being able to obtain more drugs. When somebody has relapsed they slide into those behaviors again. I’m not saying that everybody who’s addicted does these things, but it’s a common enough pattern that substance abuse is one of these key drivers of this revolving door phenomenon that we see in the justice system.

LEONARD SIPES: So we all agree that this could have a huge impact. I said I would not bring that topic back up again. What can be done on the part of the criminal justice system? I mean what we have to then, and I’ve seen in some articles where jails and prisons are actually creating staff to help the men enroll, that they’re being very proactive in terms of getting as many people enrolled as possible, but this involves a lot of effort on the part of the criminal justice system in terms of discharge and release planning, treatment referrals, care coordination, so this, the criminal justice system should take an active role in terms of enrolling as many people as possible.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Yeah. I agree with that. And I think that states and localities are doing a number of these various things. They’re engaged in some level of release planning. They make treatment referrals for individuals. I think some of this is triaged so that you’re putting more resources into the people that have greater needs. But Medicaid enrollment is something that is being implemented into release planning curricula or programming in criminal justice systems around the country.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. The report that’s coming out next week – is this, do we have specific findings in terms of how many enroll and what happens? Or what is the purpose of the study? It is it describing what it is that you’re doing or will it have impact findings?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Sure. So our study has two broad goals. One of them is to understand more about the enrollment process, how do you get inmates connected to Medicaid, what are some of the challenges that systems and individuals face, and what are the rates of enrollment when people have the opportunity to apply for Medicaid. So that’s the first part of our study. The second part of our study is a little further down the road. We’re looking at impacts post-release with regard to when people get enrolled in Medicaid, do they utilize Medicaid health services, and are there impacts post-release, one to two years later on employment and recidivism.

LEONARD SIPES: You and I were talking before we hit the record button is that I remember a national researcher, I’m sorry, a national reporter reporting for a national publication was trying to do an article that he was calling ObamaCare and Offenders or ObamaCare and Inmates, and he said he found a general reluctance on the part of those of us in the criminal justice system to talk about this, because we don’t know what the impact will be, we don’t have a clear understanding as to whether or not this will have a huge impact. What he was heard on an off the record basis from so many people was that just because you have health insurance doesn’t mean you act on it, doesn’t mean that you go out and get the mental healthcare that you need, doesn’t mean that you go out and get the substance abuse care you need. You may use it to fund your physical infirmaries, but not necessarily mental health or substance abuse. So we really don’t know what the impact is and we won’t know until your research is completed, correct?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: That’s right. I think that’s a very valid point, just because you have insurance doesn’t mean that overnight you change the way that you seek services or get care or take care of yourself. But having insurance I think is a necessary first step to being able to use preventative health services, to be able to use mental health treatment services and substance abuse treatment that’s out in the community.

LEONARD SIPES: And this study that you all are doing is in Oregon in terms of the prison stage and a jail study in Connecticut.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: That’s right.

LEONARD SIPES: And how – was it difficult to get them involved in this?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Well, in Oregon what we did was we looked historically at an effort that the Department of Corrections had implemented. In Oregon before the ACA Oregon had a very interesting Medicaid program for what’s called childless adults. Have you heard that phrase or should I talk through that?

LEONARD SIPES: That’s fine.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Okay. Just that historically Medicaid had been a program for children and parents and people with disabilities and people with some specific eligibility criteria in addition to being low income. And before the ACA Oregon had expanded its Medicaid program to be more broadly a low income adults program, but because of limited funds in the state what they did was to have a lottery process so that it would be fair who they could provide this to. And so they had been doing this lottery process from about 2008, and we looked at what was going on in the prisons in 2010 and 2011 with respect to signing up for this lottery process, and then if people were selected at random to apply for Medicaid, how many of them did apply given that opportunity.

LEONARD SIPES: We’re more than halfway through the program. What we’re talking about today, ladies and gentlemen, is offenders and the Affordable Care Act. At our microphones is Kamala Mallik-Kane; she is a research associate with the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute, www.urban.org, www.urban.org, coming out with a new study report next week talking about what they plan on looking at in terms of how many enroll in the Affordable Care Act and what happens afterwards, correct?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: That’s right.

LEONARD SIPES: And that’s exciting, because we in the system are really, really looking forward to these findings. Okay. Some of the challenges of getting and keeping inmates enrolled in Medicaid, now, again, you’re talking jail, you’re talking prison, you’re not talking about necessarily community supervision, but some of the releases could be on community supervision at the same time, right?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: That’s right.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. Tell me about that.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: About community supervision in particular or –?

LEONARD SIPES: Well, federal, the federal and state Medicaid rules. You’re not allowed to use Medicaid while incarcerated, a few states let you stay covered but suspend your benefits, so some of this gets technical in terms of the challenges of getting and keeping inmates enrolled in Medicaid.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: That’s right. The timing really matters, timing it appropriately with release so that – the Medicaid rules don’t permit people to be, to receive Medicaid benefits while they’re incarcerated. And this is an old provision in the Medicaid program and one that’s really intended to guard against Medicaid billings that are inappropriate.

LEONARD SIPES: Right.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: But what happens when –

LEONARD SIPES: So they get double billing because they’re already getting healthcare within the prison setting.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. And I think as a way of sort of ensuring that there’s not a community provider that’s billing for somebody –

LEONARD SIPES: Right.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: That’s not out in the community.

LEONARD SIPES: Right.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: But I think the difficulty for people who are frequently in and out of the justice system is that the information technology systems that are out there aren’t particularly good at keeping track of when people are in and out of jail. And so this is an issue that a lot of states are grappling with. I believe that there’s funding through the ACA for Medicaid systems to upgrade their information technology systems for a whole lot of reasons. But places that are attuned to this issue of correctional populations and their need for Medicaid and the challenges of timing things correctly so that the Medicaid system is aware of when people are being released from prison so that they can have benefits when they’re in the community is –

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. But this is specifically – we’re not talking about necessarily medical care within a correctional facility. We’re talking about giving them access to Medicaid so they can get treatment in the community.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. Because in general inmates receive healthcare from the correctional system when they’re in, and so Medicaid is not – the purpose of the Medicaid is to have continuity of care from the prison or jail setting to the community so that –

LEONARD SIPES: Okay.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: They can continue that care when they’re in the community.

LEONARD SIPES: Well, that’s an important distinction. But what if they don’t get like say mental health treatment or substance abuse treatment while in prison, because the studies I’ve seen put that figure pretty low, at around 10% or lower, for most state systems. So what if you’re getting a, what if you’re getting mental health treatment or substance abuse treatment in prison, would Medicaid still provide funding for those particular programs while in prison?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: For mental or for substance abuse treatment in prison?

LEONARD SIPES: Uh huh.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: No. I don’t believe Medicaid funds that.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. All right, so we’re talking about getting them enrolled and when they get out to the community and seeing what happens, and your study is looking specifically at one jail and one prison.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: We’re looking at prisons in Oregon and we’re looking at some jail facilities in Connecticut.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. The level of interest, so we find folks in the criminal justice system are really interested in this, what about the offenders themselves?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. In Oregon what we saw was that given the opportunity – so, again, let me just go back to what I was saying about –

LEONARD SIPES: Sure.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: The way you had to apply before the ACA in Oregon was you had to two stage process. The first stage was that you put your name what they called a reservation list, and so about half of the inmates who were leaving Oregon prisons at the time of our study put their names on that reservation list. Then the state did a random drawing and then based on who they invited at that point then people got mailed a Medicaid application and then they had 45 days to fill out the application, turn in their documentation, and then get it reviewed by the Medicaid agency. What we found that was very interesting in Oregon was that about 4 in 10 of the inmates that got invited turned in their application and this was identical to the level of participation in the general population in Oregon.

LEONARD SIPES: So 4 in 10, and that was indicative of the population across the board that was eligible, not necessarily for people caught up in the criminal justice system.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right.

LEONARD SIPES: And, okay, findings on Medicaid impacts. So you’re working on this data and you’re collecting this data. Are you aware of anybody else out there in terms of your literature review who has looked at this issue previously?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: We’ve seen smaller studies from a couple of years back –

LEONARD SIPES: Okay.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Looking at specific subpopulations. So I know that there are studies of people who are seriously mentally ill and their rates of Medicaid enrolment and how that impacts arrest, for example.

LEONARD SIPES: Do we have any findings?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: I believe that they found a lower rate of rearrest among the people that were enrolled, but I don’t remember too, too clearly to talk about it more than that.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. But in essence, as long as they meet guidelines, as long as they meet the state Medicaid guidelines they’re eligible, as long as they’re under a certain – I know the percentage of gross poverty, whatever – it’s even confusing to me. If they make, what I’ve seen commonly thrown out in newspaper throughout the country, if they make less than 16, 18,000 dollars, it depends upon it at state level, they’re eligible. And so there’s no question about eligibility. You’ve just got to be under that threshold.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. And when we looked at the applicants in Oregon we found that when people got their applications into the Medicaid agency that about 8 in 10 of them qualified, and that was higher than in the general population, because there was more poverty –

LEONARD SIPES: Right.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Among the people who were leaving prison.

LEONARD SIPES: So 8 in 10 are eligible. And so that gives us hope that those of us in the criminal justice system can find sources of funding for substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. This gives people a ticket to be able to –

LEONARD SIPES: Right.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Access those services in the community.

LEONARD SIPES: So what is the sense between yourself or your peers at Urban in terms of what the impact could be down the road? I mean you’re talking to people, again, specifically in Connecticut and Oregon, but you’re probably talking to other people throughout the country. You were quoted in a rather extensive article, ObamaCare for Ex-Inmates: Is Health Insurance an Antidote to Crime?, and I think that was from the Christian Science Monitor, a very powerful article talking about how people around the country feel about the Affordable Care Act and what its potential could be. So what are your perceptions from talking to people?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: I think there’s a sense of a lot of potential and a lot of work ahead of us. I think, yeah, I like to think of having the insurance card as being sort of a ticket that you need to enter, but you need to do a whole lot of other things in order to make the change happen. I think some of the challenges are getting people to use healthcare differently, and I think that involves education.

LEONARD SIPES: Right.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: One of the things in our Connecticut study was as they were doing enrollment there was an eligibility worker who talked with individuals about what kinds of services they could go out and get in the community. But another thing that we saw as we observed these recruitment sessions in Connecticut was that there was some confusion about the program, there was confusion about whether people had Medicaid or not. We had people in our sessions that we felt we had screened and thought them to be needing Medicaid who said, “No, no, I already have it. I don’t need to stay here and I don’t need to apply for this.” So I think people knowing what their status is and knowing how their perception affects what they do out in the community, that’s an important thing for us to figure out.

LEONARD SIPES: So there’s an educational process on the part of the system. This is not going to be an easy process for those of us in the criminal justice system. It’s going to take a lot of work to explain what the rules are, to figure out if they are eligible, to sign them up, to, and, again, try to encourage them to participate if they have funding. So it’s a multi-step process between correctional facilities and community correction facilities and parole and probation agencies, so this is going to involve a lot of work.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: And I would add that also community based health organizations have to be a partner in these conversations, because I think some of the disconnect that we may see are that there are treatment providers that have been serving the criminal justice population that have not been previously Medicaid providers and they may need to do things about the way they run their organizations in order to be qualified Medicaid providers so that the insurance can actually be used to pay for services in those facilities.

LEONARD SIPES: I didn’t even think about that. So not only must the criminal justice system gear up in terms of implementing this, the providers need to gear up to implement it.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right. There was a story in the New York Times recently about an old Medicaid rule about just which types of residential substance abuse treatment facilities they could reimburse or not. And so I think there needs to be that exchange between the provider network that’s out there and the Medicaid structure to figure out whether these are going to be reimbursable services.

LEONARD SIPES: Why is that a question though? I thought it would be pretty much straightforward.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: I would’ve thought that too. But I think that these kinds of details, you have a population that’s been receiving typically non-Medicaid services –

LEONARD SIPES: Right.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: That are now coming into the Medicaid world, and so I think these details haven’t yet been worked out.

LEONARD SIPES: And we need to remind the audience that only half the states are involved in the Affordable Care Act provision, so half the people in the country listening to this are going to say, “Well, yes, this applies to me.” but half it doesn’t apply to the offenders within their states.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right.

LEONARD SIPES: And so what’s the final analysis? In the final minutes of the program, I mean we in the criminal justice system do have to gear up, correct? We probably have to add staff; we probably have to add training. A significant burden falls on us to be sure that people who are eligible enroll. But that’s going to require a lot of effort and probably staffing and training on our part.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Right, and a certain amount of coordination with the Medicaid agency. A lot of what we observed in our Connecticut Study and a lot of what was possible in the Connecticut Study was the result of a year’s long collaboration between the Department of Corrections and their Department of Social Services to establish procedures and workarounds that would let the correctional population enroll.

LEONARD SIPES: Okay. And that’s the other part of it is that we need to need to reach out to all the providers out there, because some who may be eligible to be providers may not want to take upon an offender based population. So we need to do a lot of work on our part to convince people who are the providers to get involved in this and to be sure that they are attuned to our needs and the needs of the people coming out.

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Yeah, absolutely.

LEONARD SIPES: And what else? What is the general sense to the public that they need to understand? You’re talking to aides to mayors, aides to governors through this program. What do they need to understand?

KAMALA MALLIK-KANE: Sure. I think that this is a great opportunity, because I think for years we have all known that substance abuse and mental illness are problems that have been feeding this revolving door cycle that we’ve had in our justice system, and you’ve had people coming in with problems, the problems don’t get resolved, and then they get released without any resources to deal with them. So I think that this is a great opportunity to begin addressing those problems that can slow down this revolving door of recidivism.

LEONARD SIPES: I couldn’t agree with you more. Our guest today has been Kamala Mallik-Kane; she is a research associate, Justice Policy Center, the Urban Institute, www.urban.org, www.urban.org. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments, we even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have themselves a very pleasant day.

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The Impact of Criminal Justice Funding-National Criminal Justice Association

August 11, 2014 by

Welcome to “DC Public Safety” – Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

The portal site for “DC Public Safety” is http://media.csosa.gov.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2014/05/impact-criminal-justice-funding-national-criminal-justice-association/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Lenard Sipes. Today’s show is the impact of criminal justice funding, produced by the National Criminal Justice Association. We’re going to be addressing the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program. The National Criminal Justice Association represents the states and territories as the statewide criminal justice planning agencies. Today we’re looking at the tremendous impact of federal funding as to innovative programs across the country. We have three guests spread throughout the country at our microphones via Skype. We have Carlton Moore; he is the Director of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services. We have Jeanne Smith; she is the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice the Colorado Department of Public Safety. And we have David Steingraber; he is the Senior Policy Advisor for the National Criminal Justice Association and former Executive Director of the Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance. All three, to Carlton and to Jeanne and to David, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Carlton Moore:  Thank you.

Jeanne Smith:  Happy to be here.

Len Sipes:  All right.

David Steingraber:  Yeah. Thanks, Len.

Len Sipes:  Look, this is an extraordinarily important program. We have funding, and I know there’s all sorts of different aspects to this funding, and when we say federal funding. But today we’re addressing specifically the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program. This is absolutely vital to the proper functioning of criminal justice agencies throughout the country, specifically at the state and local level. And so the National Criminal Justice Association is the association that’s been fighting for these funds for decades. And the National Criminal Justice Association finds out what works, what’s innovative, what’s new, what can reduce recidivism, what can protect police officers, what can lower crime, and feeds that information to the rest of the country. David, do you want to start with it?

David Steingraber:  Sure. Lenard, as you correctly noted, there are a number of other federal justice assistance funding programs, they tend to come and go over the years, but the Byrne JAG Justice Assistance Grant Program has endured perhaps the longest and it offers the most flexibility and versatility to the states. It’s currently authorized by Congress at over one billion dollars, but the actual funding appropriations have been closer to 500 million over the years, and in recent years it’s dropped due to primarily the deficit reduction efforts on the part of Congress to something just under 400 million. But that may not, in the grand scheme of things, reflect a large portion of the funds spent across the country on the justice system. As a matter of fact, calculations would probably run somewhere around 1% to 2% of all the money spent in the justice system. But it’s that marginal money that really can make a difference in terms of allowing states to address emerging problems and to particularly deploy more effective and innovative strategies to improve the justice system.

Len Sipes:  Project HOPE in Hawaii comes to mind. This is a program that really provides drug treatment and accountability, strict accountability to people caught up on probation, the riskier probation population who was in need of substance abuse treatment. But they’ve been able to do something tremendous, they reduce recidivism tremendously, they reduce technical violations tremendously. They have a wonderful impact in terms of people successfully completing probation, not going back into the prison system. And states throughout the country are starting to pick up on this and to run with it. And they ran with it because they found out about it because of the National Criminal Justice Association and it was funded by the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program. So that’s just one example of what’s happening throughout the United States in terms of innovative criminal justice programs. Jeanne, do you want to come in and talk about others? Jeanne Smith –

Jeanne Smith:  Sure.

Len Sipes:  Director of Criminal Justice Colorado Department of Public Safety.

Jeanne Smith:  Hawaii HOPE is an excellent example of a program that on its face you think this has to work, but going in and getting taxpayer money to fund it without being able to prove it works yet is the challenge. And that’s why JAG funding is so important, because it gives us an opportunity to experiment with something to be able to prove to the taxpayer entities for funding that it works. In Colorado, for instance, we wanted to change the way that probation officers and parole officers work with offenders, once again, trying to reduce recidivism. And we found that their interviewing techniques were critical to developing a rapport that would cause the offender to want to change their behavior. So we were able through JAG funding to start a center that really trained criminal justice professionals in how to work with offenders, which is not something you generally get in school. It has been proven successful to the point that the state has now come in and adopted it and it is funded through the state general fund, but it never would’ve happened if we couldn’t start the implementation as an experiment with grant funding.

Len Sipes:  Carlton Moore, you’re the Director of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services. Tell me and tell the audience what happens at the state level that’s the process of bringing everybody together, the process of planning jointly, everybody at the table, everybody taking a look at as to what the research has to say and using federal funding to plan for innovative programs. Tell me about that process.

Carlton Moore:  Okay. First let me just say something. We have a fire alarm going off in our building right now. So I’m going to answer your question and then see if I actually need to respond to this fire alarm or not.

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Carlton Moore:  But I just want to kind of build on what Jeanne said about the ability to use Byrne JAG funds to implement things that you don’t otherwise have budgeted in local government or in state government. So here in Ohio we have a number of large cities across our state who have gang issues, whether we have gang homicide issues or felonious assault issues or gangs are responsible for a wide array of criminal justice problems that exist across our state. And so what we were able to do, one of the things that we used Byrne JAG for was to take a strategy that had been tried and true in other parts of the country and implement that here in Ohio. In some places it’s been called ceasefire or pulling levers, it’s been known as The Boston Miracle. It was first implemented here in Ohio in Cincinnati. It was called the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence. It caused a substantial reduction in gang related homicides. All these years later we’re still looking at about a 41% reduction in overall gang related homicides in the city of Cincinnati. Not only did we take Byrne JAG to copy that intervention from another state and then to implement in a single city, we then took what we learned from that city and implemented it all across our state. So in places like Toledo, in Youngstown, in Canton, and Dayton, these cities have all seen tremendous reductions in gang related homicides, and that’s all a result of, one, the network that exists actually learned about this strategy at the NCJA forum in Baltimore, and our ability to make funding decisions with Byrne JAG because of the flexibility that it provides to us to be able to quickly put programs into practice all across the state.

Len Sipes:  So the bottom line in all of this, and this is something I want the audience to know, it’s not Washington DC that’s coming up with the true innovation and the true driving force within the criminal justice system, it’s what’s happening in Cincinnati, what’s happening in Baltimore, what’s happening Honolulu, what’s happening in the different states, and to have the money to try different things, to try new ways of doing things, to be creative, and that innovation is going to come from the county level, that innovation is going to come from the city level, and that innovation is going to come from the state level. But that innovation is only possible if the money is there to try new things, correct?

Jeanne Smith:  That’s right, Len. And you touched on another point that I think is very important. That it’s not the federal government coming in and telling you how to do something. It’s giving locals and states the ability to develop their plans around what the needs are, what the challenges are in each region. Carlton just mentioned a number of cities in Ohio that were able to benefit from a particular program. There may be some cities in Colorado that could benefit from the same thing. But there are others, particularly our rural versus our more urban areas that have completely different challenges. And what they need is the flexibility to plan around their local resources and their local criminal challenges.

Len Sipes:  I noticed in the report that that’s exactly what was happening in one state in particular, assisting rural or local law enforcement agencies in less populated areas to deal with drug dealers coming out of urban areas where they’re catching some heat and going into these areas that are considered safer. Heroin comes to mind, meth comes to mind, the fact that this is happening throughout the country and this is they’re trying to figure innovative ways of taking those resources or these strategies that happen in larger urban areas and applying them to rural areas. I thought that that was pretty doggone interesting.

The report is called The Impact of the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program, How Byrne JAG Is Changing the Criminal Justice System, read the report from the National Criminal Justice Association. So what I’m also finding is that there’s a lot innovation, a lot of effort on two areas, number one, high crime areas, what can we do to focus police and other law enforcement resources, community resources, collaborative resources, and number two, this whole issue of offender reentry, to stop the flow of people going back into the prison systems and to see if we can safely maintain them in the community. There’s a lot of innovation around those. Project HOPE, again, in Hawaii certainly does come to mind. But there are dozens and dozens of others.

David Steingraber:  Well, Len, let me add, I think as both Jeanne and Carlton had implied, one of the great force multipliers is the fact that through the National Criminal Justice Association, information about successful programs can be made available to states who’re experiencing some of the same problems. And clearly I doubt there’s a state out there that isn’t experiencing the strain of correction budgets, their state corrections budgets and local corrections budgets. So, something like a justice reinvestment initiative that really focuses on reducing recidivism can deliver substantial benefits and I think everybody needs to learn about those success stories and be able to adopt that strategy and the programs that accomplish that.

Len Sipes:  But there is a state of the art, right? I mean the bottom line is that we at the state and local level, we are coming up with a collective sense as to what it is we should do, what is the state of the art, and we’re learning how to adapt and do better through application of state of the art related programs, through the application of research, through the application of best practices. But, again, the point is, if you don’t have the money, the budget problem within this country regarding criminal justice agencies has been tremendous. Somebody asked me a little while ago what was the most significant issue facing the criminal justice system over the course of the last ten years and I had a very quick response, budget. Law enforcement, community corrections, mainstream corrections, prosecutorial offices, juvenile justice agencies have all taken a huge hit. If it wasn’t for federal funding I don’t think we would have the innovation, because locals and county agencies and state agencies are strapped for funds. So these grant programs from the Department of Justice as coordinated through the National Criminal Justice Association they’re just not important, they’re essential.

Carlton Moore:  Yeah. I think you’re right about that. The budget problem that most states have gone through really to me it serves as a great opportunity for us, because the responsibilities that folks had prior to the budget problems have not been reduced, those responsibilities are still there. And so what we need to figure out a way to do is to take the limited resources that we do have and figure out how to make smarter investments in criminal justice. And that’s one role that the SAA can play, not only as kind of the clearing house of innovation, but at the same time, the convener of solving problems and making sure that you’re bringing all the right people to the table.

I want to give you just one little example of something that we’re doing in Ohio. Earlier you talked about smaller and rural communities and some of the difficulties that they have. The reality is that in large communities, while they do at times need a push and they certainly need support. If they’re aware of evidence-based practices or if they need analytical support, very often that is available to them if they choose to make that a budget priority. Where we see that difficulty is in smaller communities who don’t have that type of budget flexibility. So what we created in Ohio, it’s called the Ohio Consortium of Crime Science, it’s a partnership between my office and colleges and universities across the state who have expertise in implementation of evidence-based and promising practices.

And basically what we have done with this program is if you are, if, Len, if you’re the chief in a small community and you’re having a specific crime problem and you want to know if there’s something out there that can address your problem you can submit that request to my office, we have a team of experts who will review that, we’ll identify the best practice to solve the particular problem that you’re dealing with, then we will take it a step further, because we have concerns about implementation. We will hire someone to come to your community and help you implement the solution, because the one thing that we want to make sure of is this. If people have the will to implement evidence-based practices, we want to make sure that knowledge and resources are not the reasons that they don’t get an opportunity to do that.

Len Sipes:  We’re more than halfway through the program. Let me reintroduce our guests. Jeanne Smith; she is the Director Division of Criminal Justice, Colorado Department of Public Safety. We have Carlton Moore, Director Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services. And you’ve done a great job, Carlton, through that smoke alarm. And we have David Steingraber; he is a Senior Policy Advisor National Criminal Justice Association and former Executive Director of the Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance. The program today, ladies and gentlemen, is funding, the impact of criminal justice funding on the states, on the counties, it’s produced by the National Criminal Justice Association. But we all agree, ladies and gentlemen, that the point in all of this is that there is a state of the art.

After decades and decades of research we are coalescing around a variety of things that we believe do work, have the best chance of working. So it’s a matter of making sure that everybody at the state level, the county level, the local level, larger agencies, rural agencies, are aware of what the research has to say and the best way of implementing that and, again, that is happening because of the grant system, the federal grant system, specifically today, the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program. The fact that that exists allows the states to help local agencies and allows local agencies to develop innovative programs, and that’s all based upon an acknowledged state of the art, and that’s all based upon pulling in partnerships, collaborations, everybody coming together, everybody looking at the table, having that argument, having that discussion, and coming to agreements, right?

Jeanne Smith:  Absolutely.

David Steingraber:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  You know? And where do we go to from there? I mean when I started in the criminal justice system as a Maryland state trooper 40 years ago, we had no clue as to what was happening in Ohio, we had no clue as to what was happening in Colorado. And so we have now this general consensus in law enforcement, in corrections, in juvenile justice. Within the court systems here seems to be an emerging bubble of knowledge that all of us can pretty much agree on.

Carlton Moore:  [OVERLAY] –

Jeanne Smith:  I think that’s –

Carlton Moore:  I’m sorry. Go ahead, Jeanne.

Jeanne Smith:  I think that’s really true to the extent that there are certain practices that have been shown to be very effective; others along the way have been discarded because they’ve been shown to be ineffective. One of the benefits for Byrne JAG funding is that it can be used for assessment and evaluation. You talked earlier about the budget limitations and how that has really caused a new look at the justice system and how we’re spending our funding, but it is also constrained funding things beyond direct services, because when you only have one dollar you’ve got to make sure that dollar is going to get a direct benefit.

Len Sipes:  Sure.

Jeanne Smith:  So you discard things like assessment planning and evaluating, because those don’t have the immediate payback that you see for a direct service. So with the JAG funding we’re able to go in and assist with dollars that will assess a program and evaluate whether or not it’s working, and then through the auspices of NCJA and others, share that information, not just on the successes, but on the failures, so we don’t keep repeating the same mistakes.

Len Sipes:  And that’s so important, because that’s what we’ve done throughout the criminal justice system, is we’ve been on our own. And now through federal funding and now through the National Criminal Justice Association we know what’s going on in probation or law enforcement or juvenile justice. So if there’s, if Juneau, Alaska needs to come to grips with a law enforcement issue, they could turn to the National Criminal Justice Association, they can turn to the other statewide criminal justice planning agencies and find out what the best fit is for their particular situation. David?

David Steingraber:  Well, I, like you, have a long history in law enforcement. And I do have to say this, the situation we’re faced with today offers a great deal more in at least a potential ability to share information. I think that where there’s a willingness to kind of look at innovative ways I think the tools are there to do it. I think Carlton kind of summed it up. The budget constraints we’re dealing with right now are likely to become the new normal. And in that context we’ve got to kind of reinvent the way we approach things and that provides the motivation to look for innovative and evidence-based practices. And at least it is my hope and my belief that the National Criminal Justice Association, which is really a collective effort by all the state planning agencies, to kind of provide that resource, both in the way of direct technical assistance in areas like planning and evaluation, and then just sharing information about successful programs such as the document that you’ve referred to several times, is a good example of highlighting the programs that have worked across the country.

Len Sipes:  But there’s been an almost continuous 20 year reduction in crime. Now, for those of us who lived through the 60s and the 70s and the 80s, for those of us who were in the criminal justice system the entire time, it almost seemed at a point where it was hopeless, crime rates were going up year after year after year, and now for the last 20 we’ve had an almost continuous decrease. And I understand fully that in some cities throughout the country and in some urban areas throughout the country, people just have no recognition of any crime reductions at all. And I understand that crime is still a problem within the United States, but there’s been a huge reduction across the board, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics and according to the FBI, two national measures of crime in the United States, has been, again, both indices indicate an almost 20 year continuous reduction in crime. And I think that’s because we’ve gotten smarter, we’ve gotten better, we’ve done a better job of passing information on. And, again, that’s one of the reasons why I like the National Criminal Justice Association as much as I do. You’ve got to share the successes as to what’s happening. If you’ve got a great program, again, not to beat the horse to death, but Project HOPE in Hawaii that has huge reductions in recidivism, if you have a program like that you need to get the word out.

David Steingraber:  Well, and let me say that National Criminal Justice Association really delivers the message in both directions. We like to let those out in the field know what’s working. But Congress and the funders of this program also need to know what’s effective and the importance and significance of the Byrne JAG funding. And I think NCJA is the collective voice of not just the state planning agencies, but the broad criminal justice community as a whole is really important, because Congress needs to learn about what’s working.

Len Sipes:  But does everybody understand that? Carlton, go ahead.

David Steingraber:  Does everybody understand what [INDISCERNIBLE 00:24:08].

Len Sipes:  Carlton, go ahead, please.

Carlton Moore:  Oh, I was just going to talk on a little bit of a different topic, kind of piggybacking on what David was talking about. And that is, you know this movement towards looking at the research and the movement towards evidence-based practices, that movement in terms of the grant programs has also the effect of changing the field. So it’s kind of a cultural shift in terms of people saying, “Well, look, this is the direction that criminal justice is moving, and so I need to move in that direction, because that’s also the direction resources are moving.” And we want to be responsible to those who provide the funding, to Congress, to let them know that we’re making good investments out in the field and that we’re doing our best to reduce funding of programs that do not work and continue to fund programs that do work. And I just want to talk about just one program in Ohio called the Northern Ohio Violent Crime Consortium. And this is a collaboration of the eight largest cities in Northern Ohio. And when we started this program back in I think it was 2006 or 2007 that this started very few of the agencies had analytical support.

And now when we go to a meeting and start talking about implementation of some strategy, it’s not me, it’s the chiefs in the room, it’s the sheriffs in the room, it’s the people from the US Attorney’s Office. And the first thing that we’ll talk about is how to identify this as a problem, so where’s the evidence that there is a problem, what is the solution that we’re looking at, if we have a solution in mind, is it evidence-based, and we’re also looking at what – and we’re getting that information from the analysts; the analysts who in many of these organizations didn’t exist six or seven years ago, and now all of these organizations have made this change where the analysts play an important role in the organization. Not just people who’re off in a room together, but they play a role in terms of when the cops in the street are asking for analytical support and, “Where’s the proof and where do we need to go?”. So this has made an enormous change or impact in resource allocation as well, not just in funding, but where do people put their people in order to solve problems in their communities.

Len Sipes:  Well, that’s it, information sharing, getting the word out to everybody else throughout the country. We only have a couple minutes left. Any final conclusions from everybody as to what this means in terms of federal funding, what the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program means to everybody, what planning means to everybody, what everybody coming together and sitting at the table and forging an agreement and getting that information out to states and localities throughout the country, anybody have any final conclusions as to all that?

Jeanne Smith:  Len, just to get back to the point you were making about the crime rates in the 70s and 80s and how that drove public policy – generally, the policy it drove was incarceration, and that’s a very costly remedy. What we have done with a lot of the programs funded through Byrne JAG is to show that there are other alternatives at various points in the criminal justice system, from prevention all the way through to reducing recidivism after a prison sentence. What we’ve done is be able to show that there are alternatives, there’s a better way to do things. We don’t have to do it the same way we’ve done it for the last 20 to 30 years.

Len Sipes:  Well, we do want to improve the criminal justice system, we do want to lessen the burden on taxpayers and yet at the same time create a more effective criminal justice system, and I think that’s what we’re beginning to do. David?

David Steingraber:  Well, let’s remember the criminal justice system needs to be measured in qualitative terms as well as quantitative terms. I mean it’s a unique system in that we are really needing to function within a constitutional framework, guarantees the rights and due process for everybody. So I think there’s, I think we’re in an environment right now where it’s sort of the perfect storm where we can make all this happen. But I think we still have to, I think the reality is there still is some dogma out there in terms of what works and how to deal with crime, and I think we just have to keep hammering away at it. I hope Congress gets the message that the investment, however limited it is in Byrne JAG funding, is a great investment in helping the states address their criminal justice issues.

Len Sipes:  We only have like ten seconds. It’s essential. The funding level is essential, correct?

David Steingraber:  Absolutely.

Carlton Moore:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  All right, I want to thank everybody for being with us today. Ladies and gentlemen, our guests have been Jeanne Smith, a Director of the Division of Criminal Justice, Colorado Department of Public Safety; Carlton Moore, the Director of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services; and David Steingraber, the Senior Policy Advisor National Criminal Justice Association and former Executive Director of the Wisconsin Office of Criminal Justice. I’d like to thank everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments, we even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Budget Issues, Criminal Justice

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The Green Corrections Challenge-National Institute of Corrections

August 11, 2014 by

Welcome to “DC Public Safety” – Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

The portal site for “DC Public Safety” is http://media.csosa.gov.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2014/04/green-corrections-challenge-national-institute-corrections/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. The program today is Green Corrections produced by the National Institute of Corrections. We have two guests by our microphones. From Oklahoma via Skype, Mike Connelly. He is an instructor at the University of Oklahoma. And by our microphone we have Stephanie Davison; she is a Program Manager for FHI 360. The program, again, is Greening of Corrections. And we have an exciting announcement, ladies and gentlemen. We have a Green Corrections Challenge today. And I want to give out a couple websites, NICIC, National Institute of Corrections, nicic.gov/greencorrections and nicic.gov/greencorrectionschallenge. To Mike and Stephanie welcome to DC Public Safety.

Stephanie Davison:  Thanks for having us.

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Mike Connelly:  Yeah. Thank you.

Len Sipes:  All right, now, Stephanie, I’m going to start off with you. What is Green Corrections?

Stephanie Davison:  Green Corrections are the multiple ways that the corrections community can be engaged in sustainable and cost saving activities.

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Stephanie Davison:  It ranges from greening facilities to reentry programs and everything in between.

Len Sipes:  What we’re trying to do is to be environmentally friendly within the correctional system. And that is the last conversation we had. That creates jobs, does it not, within the correctional institutions?

Stephanie Davison:  Both in the correctional institutions and outside, as offenders are exiting, it can.

Len Sipes:  Okay. So this is a win-win situation for everybody and it does save money for institutions, ordinarily gobs of money, correct?

Stephanie Davison:  Yes. States can save millions of dollars a year if they plan their programs well.

Len Sipes:  And last time that we did this program we had guests on who did talk about immense savings within their own states, right?

Stephanie Davison:  Yes. For example, Washington State, a composting program at one facility can save $30,000 a year.

Len Sipes:  Okay. So we’re just not talking about 30,000, the different states that we were talking about, millions of dollars of savings. And state correctional agencies are constantly looking for ways to save money. So this is a way of saving money, a way of being environmentally participatory, as well as providing jobs for inmates within the correctional institution. So this is a win-win-win for everybody.

Stephanie Davison:  I would add one more piece to it.

Len Sipes:  Yeah, please.

Stephanie Davison:  As offenders become more engaged in their environment and their community there can be a rehabilitation aspect to it.

Len Sipes:  Oh, that’s right. I mean we’re talking about a reentry component to this –

Stephanie Davison:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  Because they can take, these are transferable skills that they can take out into the community.

Stephanie Davison:  Yes, absolutely.

Len Sipes:  Okay. And one of those transferable skills being, we were talking about mulching a little while ago, was going into the landscaping business on the outside. I mean this could be a real bridge for a lot folks leaving the prison system, going out and finding jobs, correct?

Stephanie Davison:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Stephanie Davison:  Building competencies and skills through those programs.

Len Sipes:  Mike Connelly, you’re, again, an instructor at the University of Oklahoma and you have quite a correctional background we were talking about before hitting the start button. Can you tell me and tell the audience a little bit about your background?

Mike Connelly:  Well, my position before I went to University of Oklahoma was basically handle the research office for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. Before that I was the Executive Director of Sentencing Commissions in Wisconsin and Maryland and I also have done work with the Justice Research and Statistics Association working with the Bureau of Justice Assistance on technical assistance to state and local community criminal justice agencies evaluation projects.

Len Sipes:  So the bottom line is that you’ve got a heck of a corrections background.

Mike Connelly:  Or I just can’t keep a job, one or the other.

Len Sipes:  No. I think it’s a heck of a corrections background. All right, before we get into Green Corrections, because I do want to have an exploration of what is Green Corrections, where is it going, what’s happening with that, we have a Green Corrections Challenge. In fact, we’re announcing it on this program. I’m very proud that the National Institute of Corrections has chosen this program to announce the Green Corrections Challenge. What is the Green Corrections Challenge, Stephanie?

Stephanie Davison:  The challenge is a video contest that engages states, students in criminal justice programs, basically anybody interested in corrections, into entering a video about their green innovation. We figure people on the ground know what’s best and we should be learning from each other.

Len Sipes:  All right, so the whole idea is for them to submit video pieces, and that could be through their cell phones, that could be through their Smartphones, it could be through their video cameras. It doesn’t have to be, I would imagine, a professional piece. Anything that documents what is happening in correctional facilities regarding Green Corrections, right?

Stephanie Davison:  Yes. They should visit nicic.gov/greencorrectionschallenge –

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Stephanie Davison:  For the rules.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Stephanie Davison:  But they can make a video up to seven minutes –

Len Sipes:  Right.

Stephanie Davison:  It could be 30 seconds if it really captures it –

Len Sipes:  Right.

Stephanie Davison:  Telling the story of what their innovation is and the impact it’s had.

Len Sipes:  I want to see these. I want to see these, because when you say Green Corrections, and then Donna Ledbetter from the National Institute of Corrections first proposed a Green Corrections program, the first time we did this I’m saying to myself, “Wait a minute. This doesn’t all that interesting.” When you get into it’s very interesting, because it hits every facet of correctional life. So the videos could be what? Give me some ideas as to what these videos could be.

Stephanie Davison:  So they could range, they could be something like an energy performance contract and how an energy system is retrofitted. Or it could be a gardening program. It could be a reentry program where people are reentering into society, learning a skill in a green field. It might be something completely that we haven’t thought of, maybe related to correctional industries, a new way of manufacturing –

Len Sipes:  Right.

Stephanie Davison:  Within a facility.

Len Sipes:  Anything that saves money while being environmentally friendly, that’s what you’re looking for.

Stephanie Davison:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  Now that could be anything.

Stephanie Davison:  It could be anything. We would like people to focus on activities that could be replicated.

Len Sipes:  Right. But I mean that could be a different fuel within –

Stephanie Davison:  Absolutely.

Len Sipes:  The vehicles that correctional personnel use. So that could be a different kind of lighting as long as it doesn’t affect security. That could be beautifying the grounds of correctional facilities. One of the things when I spent my 14 years in the state of Maryland and went into every correctional facility multiple times was how beautiful, this is going to be a contradiction, how beautiful some of these correctional facilities were because they were maintained by inmates who took great pride in terms of how the grounds inside the wire, and outside the wire, if they were on minimum security, looked. I remember bringing visitors and media into some of our correctional facilities and they were astounded as to how nice they looked. So that’s Green Corrections as well. So this has an effect on morale of the correctional staff, this has effect on the morale of the inmates who are in these facilities. It can go on and on and on in terms of what Green Corrections is.

Stephanie Davison:  Absolutely. I love going and hearing stories from Washington State where they say when you’re in the yard it’s so much more calm, because offenders are actively participating in green practices such as gardening and landscaping. Now, Mike Connelly, now as an instructor at the University of Oklahoma are you teaching this, are you a proponent of this. I’m quite sure you were, because you’re on the radio program today. Where do you see the role of Green Corrections going?

Len Sipes:  Well, from the standpoint of state budgets, for example, I think Stephanie’s point early on about the cost savings that are generated from a Green Corrections approach is going to become even more important to facilities on state and local levels for the coming years. We’re looking at a situation where our fastest inmate groups, the aging population of inmates, those that are 50 years of age and older, those with mental health issues, which is not always the same group, physical health problems requiring medical treatment, those groups they add cost to the correctional budgets far beyond what we would call I guess the average costs of an offender would be, and those are groups that are growing the fastest. And so one of the problems that we face is not just that the prison populations are growing, but even the cost of many of those offenders grow at the same time, that we’re trying to divert a lot of offenders from prison. But if you look at a lot of the efforts to divert offenders, the offenders who would be diverted by most of the reform proposals out there are not the ones who are adding to the cost. The average, the rule of thumb for an aging offender, for example, as a cost to the correctional system is like three times the cost of the average offender.

And so and that’s going to vary obviously from the 50 to 60-year-olds as a rule won’t cost as much as the 60 to 70-year-olds and so on. But what that means is that even if we divert people, we’re successful in reducing our prison populations, even if we divert people, if they’re the ones who are the average cost offenders, and we’re increasing our aging or mental health need offenders. At the same time, for example, we would have to divert 300 offenders, the average cost for every 100 of the people who age in, at that 3 to 1 ratio. And that really doesn’t get talked about probably as much as it should. And so we’re looking at that just on top of the normal types of pressures or triggers for correctional population growth in terms of the general population growing and incarceration rates staying the same and also just the problems of state and local governments being able to keep up with the costs that are associated with it right now. It’s a rare state that is in good shape in their correctional budgets. And so one of the things Green Corrections does, as Stephanie said, is to force concentration on how do you best manage your resources and I think that will become more important as the resources don’t keep up any better than they already have been doing at the state and local levels.

Len Sipes:  Either one of you. Mandates and regulations oftentimes serve as a catalyst to implement Green Corrections. I would imagine there are EPA requirements; I would imagine there are state requirements. Stephanie, do you want to take a shot at that?

Stephanie Davison:  Yeah, absolutely. So what I find in most states is the biggest trigger for a state correctional agency to implement energy savings are a governor’s requirement –

Len Sipes:  Right.

Stephanie Davison:  To lower those energy usages.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Stephanie Davison:  And it’s very difficult within the correctional environment because you have people living there 24/7.

Len Sipes:  Sure.

Stephanie Davison:  It’s easier for other agencies that are doing it to office space.

Len Sipes:  I would imagine in terms of having experience and in terms of building prisons, I don’t remember the term Green Corrections coming up. I would assume that in terms of constructing correctional facilities Green Corrections is now an integral component of that construction process.

Stephanie Davison:  Absolutely. The American Institute of Architects has a special Green Corrections subgroup that leads it. Actually the leader of that group helped facilitate the writing of the Greening of Corrections Guidebook, as well as LEED, which is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design by the US Green Building Council, has components that can be applied to Green Corrections.

Len Sipes:  So there are mandates I would imagine governors throughout the country, throughout the territories are saying to their correctional administrators, “Hey, this is something you need to do.”

Stephanie Davison:  Yes. Both reduce energy and sometimes have a LEED certified building.

Len Sipes:  Okay. And that’s why they end up with the National Institute of Corrections and that’s one of the reasons why we’re doing this program today, to assist people in terms of ideas, and also, again, at nicic.gov/greencorrections, and to invite ideas from the community in terms of nicic.gov/greencorrectionschallenge, right?

Stephanie Davison:  Absolutely.

Len Sipes:  All right, so partners can play an important role in the development of Green Corrections. Who wants to take that?

Stephanie Davison:  I can address that.

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Stephanie Davison:  So partnership happens at various levels. We’re thinking about it through the challenge of how states can look at other effective practices. States can also do exchange programs. I often find when one correctional officer visits a facility in another state they come back with ten new ideas –

Len Sipes:  Right.

Stephanie Davison:  That they can implement. That healthy challenge and also learning from each other is critical.

Len Sipes:  And that’s one of the reasons that the National Institute of Corrections exists at all is to exchange information with hundreds of people throughout the United States and the territories so they can figure out the best way of doing things. I mean that’s the hallmark of the National Institute of Corrections and that’s one of the reasons why the National Institute of Corrections is picking up on Green Corrections.

Stephanie Davison:  Absolutely.

Mike Connelly:  You know –

Len Sipes:  Go ahead, Mike.

Mike Connelly:  One of the areas that we need to focus on too I think are the community partnerships with churches, for example. A lot of the offenders, [INDISCERNIBLE 00:13:56] offenders, are going back to communities that will be heavily hit in the future, are being heavily hit, a number of them are what we call food deserts. And as a result, working with the churches, working with the nonprofit agencies in those types of communities to do the sort of thing that Stephanie was talking about, about working offenders into, working their skills that they’ve learned in Green Corrections back into those communities when they come back will be important.

And we actually investigated briefly, it didn’t happen, but we investigated briefly working with one of the large hospital centers in Oklahoma City at one point because they have wellness programs both for their employees and for employee families and they’re interested obviously in the health and medical care of the general community. And we explored for a while working with them to develop a kind of community garden setting in one of their properties. They weren’t able to; there was a water issue that kept us from doing that. But we were really surprised about how – we had never really thought hospitals as being a potential partner for this sort of thing, but until we got to the point where – you do tend to need water for gardens – but till we got to that point it looked like we might be able to really afford a good partnership with someone that we had never really thought of at all.

Len Sipes:  Well, the bottom is that who’s not your partner when it comes to Green Corrections because it applies to so many people in so many ways.

Mike Connelly:  Right.

Len Sipes:  But we’re more than halfway through the program. I do want to introduce, reintroduce the topic. It’s Green Corrections. The program is produced by the National Institute of Corrections. Mike Connelly is an instructor at the University of Oklahoma. Stephanie Davison – Davison –?

Stephanie Davison:  Yeah.

Len Sipes:  Is a Program Manager for FHI 360. What is FHI 360, Stephanie?

Stephanie Davison:  FHI 360 is a human development organization dedicated to improving lives in lasting ways.

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Stephanie Davison:  We take locally driven solutions and work in all 50 states.

Len Sipes:  All right, the program is really, I think, exciting in terms of the fact that we are saving state and federal correctional agencies literally millions of dollars through this use of Green Corrections, and if you’re interested in information on Green Corrections, nicic.gov/greencorrections. If you’re interested in the challenge, which is submitting a video up to seven minutes, and, again, it doesn’t have to be a professionally done video, it could be any video of what’s happening in terms of Green Corrections, in terms of any correctional facility, it could be mainline corrections, it could be community corrections, it could be offender reentry, nicic.gov/greencorrectionschallenge, greencorrectionschallenge.

All right, now in terms of measuring the success of this program, you talk about understanding the consumption of waste, water and energy use is critical to measuring reduction in use, which could be difficult in older facilities. Many states have data tracking systems for energy where they can compare information from utility bills. For waste and water consumption other measures may be necessary, a new recycling program, for example, may measure waste and recycling on a weekly basis, and also monetizing savings. So there’s a variety of ways that different correctional facilities, Stephanie, can take a look at this and measure their results.

Stephanie Davison:  Yeah. So I’d say most states go through four steps. They set a baseline and analyze current use. They implement a program. They measure use. And then they tweak it. So in the state of Maryland they’re looking at energy systems based on utility bills and tracking from there. The state of Alabama just signed a contract with Johnson Controls to look at how much they’re going to be saving in one particular facility based on certain activities that will be implemented.

Len Sipes:  Okay, all right. And this is important in terms of the buy-in of the correctional personnel at that facility. Now, look, I’ve been around corrections for a quarter of a century. It’s a tough job. Any correctional facility is just a really tough place to be. We have some people in there who are not the easiest to manage. Correctional officers are under an enormous amount of stress and strain. So we’ve got to get buy-in from correctional staff if Green Corrections is going to successful, correct?

Stephanie Davison:  Yes. That’s true.

Len Sipes:  All right, Michael, the question goes to you. So if we have the – we have to have buy-in by correctional staff, by the administration, by the average correctional officers. How difficult is that when you mention the words Green Corrections to them?

Mike Connelly:  Well, I think, well, it’s very difficult, obviously. But I think there are things that you can do to facilitate all that, one of them is exactly what Stephanie’s proposing with these videos and the dissemination of them. I think one of the most successful ways of dealing with this is just to take advantage of the interest of staff and the managers in the facilities in doing better with their resources as they’re having to triage and cut back and demonstrate to them that’s it’s not something that’s just out there, where you’re talking about tree huggers and all that sort of thing, but it’s something that actually has an impact and gets around whatever predispositions that they bring to it.

You’re talking about something that in the long run, actually as Stephanie alluded to, is going to make the facility in most cases a safer place to be and a more efficient place to be and just a more congenial place to be. And there are enough places out there that have experience with this that if they’re promoted and the people who have led to the point where they are, such as the Sustainability in Prisons Program that you see in Washington and now extending to Oregon and so on, have the spokespeople for those programs be available to kind of lead the way. You find your successes, you promote them, you send their leaders around, and you answer questions from these folks when you present to them. And then within the facility or within your system, as some move forward and others don’t, you make special effort to recognize and reward and award the people who are actually making the effort and over time that should have a payoff as well. Don’t you think that’s true, Stephanie, I mean?

Stephanie Davison:  Absolutely. I see promoting leadership of the people on the ground who are going to be making the changes over time will have the biggest success. When you look at Washington State, as you mentioned, Dan, who’s the leader of the Sustainable Prisons Project, started out as an officer and has moved up to the second ranking position within the state in the field of corrections.

Len Sipes:  Well, I want to you a story from a prison Maryland’s lower eastern shore where they went through a lot to maintain the yard and beautify the yard basically using recyclable materials. And the place looked nice, it really did. And anytime you walked inside of that prison you were sort of surprised by how nice the grounds looked. There was a disturbance at that correctional facility and the inmates involved in the disturbance went to great length not to bother the plants and everything else, the shrubbery and the plants that they erected. So it seems to me that they even during tough times took pride in what they had and that had to, it shows that that this is something that was important to them, which creates safer institutions. I think, Michael, I think you’re right. I think Green Corrections creates safer saner correctional institution and makes it a nicer place for correctional staff and inmates. And I think that that’s maybe not an issue that’s brought up enough.

Mike Connelly:  Oh, I agree. I think that’s how it has to be promoted. I think just everybody hears that you need to change your light bulbs and you need to get a more fuel efficient car and all that and I think you become kind of immune to those types of admonitions. But it’s when you’re able to relate it to their day to day work activity, they’re able to see the progress like you’re describing right there, and they’re able to take ownership of it both as offenders and as staff, that you’re going to end up seeing that long-term institutionalization and that commitment to it by staff. And when the people come in, when you have turnover, they’ll get oriented to it in the same way.

Len Sipes:  Are we retrofitting prisons and correctional facilities to make them more energy efficient, is that possible? A lot of the prisons that I experienced in Maryland were just old facilities and they had to be terribly inefficient from an energy saving’s point of view.

Stephanie Davison:  Yes. Older facilities that can be retrofitted are usually the places where you have the easiest gains; they’re sort of the low hanging fruit for energy savings.

Len Sipes:  But it’s not like any other building, it’s not like an apartment building, it’s a high-security facility. So retrofitting can be really difficult within the correctional setting.

Stephanie Davison:  Right. Which is why partnership really comes in.

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Stephanie Davison:  Relying on your state Department of Energy, relying on utility companies that have expertise can really be helpful. And then you can have energy performance contracts. So if the state enters into that and they don’t save $400,000 a year, that company has to give them that money. It’s guaranteed savings.

Len Sipes:  Mike, and then we’re talking about correctional industries. Correctional industries, most people may not know this; it is the job creation part, the job training part within correctional facilities throughout the country, correctional industries. I mean in Maryland, my heavens, it was meat processing, it was [PH 00:24:34] sewing, it was manufacturing. I mean everybody understands that the prisons make license plates. That’s part of correctional industries. But it goes so much more. I mean I even had inmates doing my reading articles from newspapers throughout the state and doing a daily analysis for me. So correctional industries can be an important part of this, right?

Mike Connelly:  Yeah, definitely. It can. I mean one of the concerns that you usually run across with correctional industries is that they’re going to be competing in some way with private industries and you get people complaining about that. But one of the things about there is such a need for both skill levels in the parts of the offenders but also for the materials, that if there were states to start or continue along lines developing their correctional industries to supply those needs to the businesses that are forming around Green Corrections, and green economy is one of the growing areas of our economy, the correctional industries had to play a much, much bigger role both in preparation of the offenders and in doing the supplying of more than – we would buy our desks and chairs and things like that at DOC in Oklahoma, but there’s no reason in the world why the materials that you’re talking about, the retrofitting for – if you’re talking about some of the water harvesting and conservation sorts of things that could be going on, that could be done in ways that would actually probably be beneficial to the businesses that are out there and not necessarily get in the way or cause any kind of political problems with the usual constituencies.

Len Sipes:  Which gets us right back to job creating. We only have a couple minutes left. One of the things that I did want to point out, that there’s a document called the Greening of Corrections:  Creating a Sustainable System. And that can be accessed through the National Institute of Corrections library. And, again, the website for Green Corrections is nicic.gov/greencorrections. Stephanie, if somebody orders the book, what will they see when they order this manual from the National Institute of Corrections?

Stephanie Davison:  So within the guidebook it highlights four areas of corrections that you might want to quote, unquote “green”. One being the facility itself, one being your education and training program, next is reentry, and then also correctional industries, finally, there also sort of a checklist and how-to for how you would implement within your own state or locality.

Len Sipes:  Well, before we end the program I do want to get back to Green Correction Challenge nicic.gov/greencorrectionschallenge. I mean in essence the National Institute of Corrections is crowd sourcing ideas and asking the larger community to submit those videos. Again, it’s up to how many minutes, seven minutes?

Stephanie Davison:  Up to seven minutes.

Len Sipes:  But it could be a 30 second buy-in video.

Stephanie Davison:  Absolutely. Anything that gives us a picture of what you’re doing and how someone else could replicate it.

Len Sipes:  And, again, it could be shot on your cell phone, your tablet, it doesn’t have to be a big fancy production, you’re just talking about a bit of documentation in terms of what’s happening.

Stephanie Davison:  Yeah. Tell us your story, formally or informally.

Len Sipes:  Tell us you story. And you’re going to be taking all of these videos and doing what with them, advertising [OVERLAY] –?

Stephanie Davison:  That’s great. In October we will be holding a symposium in which challenge winners will be announced, we’ll also be hosting these online, and then doing a series of webinars featuring the best practices that we’ve seen in the videos.

Len Sipes:  Wouldn’t it be nice, instead of the public’s perception of correctional facilities as dark and dank places, where they see all of the shrubbery and the flowers and the beautification projects going on, wouldn’t that be a nicer image of what corrections is and how people can relate to the fact that the greenery and the recycling has or could have a positive effect on the lives of the people who’ve got to go into that institution every day?

Stephanie Davison:  Absolutely. If people could really see how Green Corrections can help an offender reintegrate into their community and be a benefit to that community, that would be a best case scenario.

Len Sipes:  Because, Michael, we have 30 seconds. The bottom line in all of this is that, again, as you said, this creates jobs. I mean it’s one of the fastest growing sectors of our economy is not Green Corrections, but environmentally friendly practices. So the person comes out of the prison system, he’s qualified for a variety of jobs in that green community.

Mike Connelly:  Yeah. And that’s something that is going to require our correctional leadership to reorient themselves to really thinking along those lines and making sure that they’re receptive and they’re making sure that everyone below them down the organization understands this is a priority [OVERLAY].

Len Sipes:  All right, Mike, you’ve got the final word with that, because we do have to close. Our guests today have been Mike Connelly; he’s an instructor at the University of Oklahoma. Stephanie Davison is a Program Manager for FHI 360. The program today has been on Green Corrections produced by the National Institute of Corrections, Donna Ledbetter specifically, we always thank her for her wonderful programs. It’s called the Greening of Corrections at nicic.gov/greencorrections, and that video challenge, nicic.greencorrectionschallenge. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments, we even appreciate your criticisms, and have yourselves a very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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Illinois Adult Redeploy Initiative-National Criminal Justice Association

August 11, 2014 by

Welcome to “DC Public Safety” – Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

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Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2014/03/illinois-adult-redeploy-initiative-national-criminal-justice-association/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, today we’re going to be talking about the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority’s Adult Redeploy Program. At our microphones we’ve got people from throughout the United States. Mary Ann Dyar, she is a Program Administrator of the Adult Redeploy Program in Illinois. Jack Cutrone, he is the Executive Director of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. And we have Cabell Cropper, he is the Executive Director of the National Criminal Justice Association. This program is really interesting, ladies and gentlemen. Landmark legislation, it seeks to promote local alternatives to incarceration for low-level, nonviolent offenders. In order to meet this goal, the legislation empowered the Criminal Justice Information Authority to create the Adult Redeploy Program, which provides monetary incentives to help communities pay for evidence-based, rehabilitative and supervision services. In exchange for monetary incentives and technical assistance, localities agree to reduce the number of offenders remanded to the division of correction there in the state of Illinois by 25%. While the initiative is only a little more than two years old, it’s already diverted 1,200 offenders and it saved an estimated 20 million dollars. Ladies and gentlemen, again, Mary Ann Dyar, Jack Cutrone, and Cabell Cropper the Executive Director of the National Criminal Justice Association. Welcome to DC Public Safety.

Mary Ann Dyar:  Thank you for having me.

Jack Cutrone:  Thank you.

Len Sipes:  All right, Jack, give me a sense of the program. You’re the Executive Director of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. You guys, by the way, have been doing this for decades. I can’t, I’m not aware of a state in the Unites States that has been more data driven than the state of Illinois through the criminal justice authority in the state of Illinois. You guys have been around for decades.

Jack Cutrone:  Yes. We have. And we actually have been doing the best job that we can to try and educate policy makers and legislators about the benefit of using evidence-based practices programs in the criminal justice area in order to produce the best results. And the Adult Redeploy Program was enacted through some landmark legislation in Illinois, which was the Crime Reduction Act of 2009, an act that our agency certainly welcomed. It created a much stronger database decision making policy for the state. And one aspect of that was the creation of the Adult Redeploy Illinois Program.

Len Sipes:  And so it’s been in existence for how long, a little over two years?

Jack Cutrone:  Actually a little – the act was passed in 2009. I think the first site went up in early 2011. Is that correct, Mary Ann?

Mary Ann Dyar:  Yes.

Jack Cutrone:  So it’s actually been in operation for about three years, but those were the earliest pilot sites. And Mary Ann has done a wonderful job of promoting the program to local jurisdictions throughout the state and has expanded it immeasurably.

Len Sipes:  And, Mary Ann, why don’t you talk to me about the process of redeploying or throughout the state of Illinois?

Mary Ann Dyar:  Well, the goals of Adult Redeploy Illinois are to reduce crime and recidivism at a lower cost to taxpayers and provide financial incentives to counties or judicial circuits to create effective local level evidence-based services and to encourage the successful local supervision of eligible offenders in the reintegration into the locality. Those goals are stated in the Crime Reduction Act. How we do that is providing grants to local jurisdictions. That might be counties; it might be groups of counties that come together, review the data as to the number of eligible offenders that they’re sending to the Department of Corrections, and when I say eligible, that’s nonviolent offenders, per the statute, that are going into the Department of Corrections on charges that would’ve been eligible for probation. And they look at the data, they look at the gaps in their services and their supervision capabilities.  When I say supervision, again, that would be probation, their probation departments, primarily, and they determine, if funds were available, who would be their target population to reduce the number of nonviolent offenders going to prison, and what would be the target intervention focused around an evidence-based practice. They submit to us a mini-strategic plan that basically gives the context, describes the data, describes their target population, and then what it is they want to do. And an oversight board, that was basically enacted by the Crime Reduction Act as well, reviews those grant requests and makes them in exchange for the commitment to reduce by 25% the number of people they send to prison from that target population they’ve identified.

Len Sipes:  Cabell, you –

Jack Cutrone:  And let me –

Len Sipes:  Go ahead, please.

Jack Cutrone:  I’m going to lose track .

Len Sipes:  Go ahead.

Jack Cutrone:  I was going to pick up on something that Mary Ann was speaking about.

Len Sipes:  Please.

Jack Cutrone:  In terms of the local jurisdictions developing a goal identifying their target population, because the statute provides actually for a penalty if the local jurisdiction doesn’t meet its reduction goal, we through – and I’ll call the Criminal Justice Information Authority CJIA, because that’s a much shorter term that we usually employ – CJIA houses criminal history record information, and once they identify their target population, we run through our database and calculate how many individuals from that population they have sent to the Department of Corrections over the past, over the prior three year period. And that’s how we establish the goal number in order to beat that 25% reduction. So in a way it sort of keeps them honest, but, frankly, none of the jurisdictions have ever had a problem with meeting the goal. For the most part, they exceed it greatly.

Len Sipes:  Well, I do want to talk more about that in terms of how they met that goal and what percentage were and what were the issues, controversies, discussions that the different counties throughout the state of Illinois had. But I do also want to get in the Executive Director of the National Criminal Justice Association, Cabell Cropper. Cabell, the whole idea here is that the project Redeploy has done something wonderful that the National Criminal Justice Association wants to bring to the attention of everybody else throughout the country. And I do want to point out to the listeners that the National Criminal Justice Association has been at the forefront of making sure that everybody out there understands what programs work, the fact that they’re throughout the country, they recognize good programs, programs that really do need attention. So the role of the National Criminal Justice Association has been rather profound in terms of bringing these experiences to the rest of us in the criminal justice system, agreed?

Cabell Cropper:  That’s correct. That’s right on target. And what we’ve been doing nationally as the representative of the state administrating agencies, those agencies in each state that’s designated by the governor to manage criminal justice systems coming from both federal and state governments, we provide support in terms of working with these agencies to put in place comprehensive multi-disciplinary stakeholder driven strategic planning processes. And specifically with the Adult Redeploy Program we have provided some support to Mary Ann and her staff in overall kind of the high-level of strategic planning. And also we then use our experience to bring that program to other state agencies, pointing out the effectiveness and how it is a good example of a data driven strategy that ends up saving money as well as providing better outcomes for both the offenders and the community. So, yeah, so we are, we look to state agencies like the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority to lead the way on these kinds of initiatives. And this particular one is of national significance that we like to bring to the attention of other states.

Len Sipes:  Cabell, before we go back to our friends in Illinois. Am I right in saying that the true innovation within the criminal justice system doesn’t necessarily come from those of us in Washington DC, it seems to percolate up at the county and state and local levels, and that’s one of the real strengths of the National Criminal Justice Association, because you represent all of the criminal justice authorities within the 50 states and territories?

Cabell Cropper:  Absolutely. That’s exactly right. All the programs that we consider now best practices, the promising practices have come from a state or local level. Starting with drug courts back in the 90s all the way through now to the whole probation program in Hawaii –

Len Sipes:  Yes.

Cabell Cropper:  And now programs like Adult Redeploy. So, yes, definitely, it does not come from DC.

Len Sipes:  So, Jack and Mary Ann, basically we’re sitting here because Illinois has been (a) doing evidence-based research for how long, Jack? I mean I think my entire criminal justice existence, which spans 40 years, I can’t remember the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority not being there.

Jack Cutrone:  It’s actually been in existence a bit over 30 years. There was actually a predecessor agency that had a slightly different name, but, yeah, we’ve been around for altogether probably about 40 years.

Len Sipes:  And have the people in the state of Illinois, the criminal justice authorities throughout the state, the people in the legislature, the governor’s office, has it been your experience that they really pay a lot of attention to the evidence-based research that you’ve been producing for decades?

Jack Cutrone:  It certainly has been a growing movement, not only in Illinois, but nationally, towards applying the principles of evidence-based or empirically driven programming throughout the criminal justice system. It was something that was actually I think adopted from the medical field, initially, where they realized that some of the treatments they were giving there was no data to support their effectiveness. And that idea certainly has taken hold in the criminal justice field and among policymakers and legislators in Illinois.

Len Sipes:  Well, I just wanted to be sure that the evidence, rather, the audience really understands that Illinois was one of the leaders in this country in terms of moving into evidence-based practices. Mary Ann, talk to me about the experience of getting Adult Redeploy into the counties and jurisdictions throughout the state of Illinois. I would imagine at the beginning it was not the easiest of sells, was it or was it not?

Mary Ann Dyar:  There’s a lot of, well, first of all I should mention that the Adult Redeploy Illinois Program is based on a successful Juvenile Redeploy Illinois Program that’s been operating since 2005, and during that time has built up an impressive reputation for bringing down the number of juvenile offenders in the juvenile prison system. In fact, they have beat; generally, the Juvenile Redeploy Illinois sites have beat their 25% reduction goals and have been over 50%. In one site they went from sending 83 kids to juvenile prison a year to 11 –

Len Sipes:  Wow!

Mary Ann Dyar:  Through the interventions, the evidence-based interventions that were funded by Redeploy Illinois. So we were able to leverage that reputation and that understanding from the juvenile side and go into the communities and talk with them about how this might be replicated in the adult criminal justice system. And you’re correct; it wasn’t always an easy sell. Not only are we talking about the difference between the way juvenile offenders may be regarded by the community and their ability to be rehabilitated versus hardened adult criminals, but we’re also talking about the concerns on public safety that are very high-profile to elected officials, whether it be prosecutors, even in our state judges are retained through popular vote. So we did have to talk with them in terms of the evidence base that really does support that. They could be doing more harm than good by sending nonviolent offenders to prison. And this is an opportunity for them to invest in their local communities and get better results.

Len Sipes:  It sounds a bit like the Justice Reinvestment model. I just did a radio program with the Urban Institute, Nancy La Vigne. And we just did this program last week. And the whole idea was to do it smarter, do it better, do it evidence-based, take a look at who you’re incarcerating and why, who you’re putting into the criminal justice system. And that actually has a way of lowering recidivism, making it safer for the public, and at the same time, saving a tremendous amount of money and some of that money is reinvested back into the local communities to provide services. It sounds like what you’re describing with the Criminal Justice Information Authority’s Adult Redeploy Initiative is Justice Reinvestment.

Jack Cutrone:  Indeed. That is correct. It’s Illinois’ version of Justice Reinvestment.

Len Sipes:  And then that works for you. What I just said, that scenario of smarter, better, evidence-based, data driven, lowering recidivism, protecting the public, and saving tax paid dollars, that all applies here.

Jack Cutrone:  Absolutely.

Mary Ann Dyar:  Right. Yeah. And another thing that was mentioned in your program, which I thought was excellent, on the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, is the cultural shift that we’re trying to promote is not only are we trying to demonstrate that you can get better results for less cost with this particular population if you utilize the best research out there and the technology that’s out there in terms of information sharing, but you can also have a different way of looking at the individual who is coming into this system on a nonviolent charge. Particularly if it’s driven by underlying needs in substance abuse, mental illness, even economic conditions can drive people to make decisions that are considered antisocial. If a community can look at that individual and what’s underlying their criminal behavior and then invest in proven practices to address those issues, then you’re talking about a cultural shift from send them away and throw away the key.

Len Sipes:  Well, what I want to do when – I’m halfway; we’re more than halfway through program. Let me reintroduce you and then, Jack, we’ll come back to your comments. Ladies and gentlemen, today we’re doing a program on the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority’s Adult Redeploy Program. Pretty doggone successful initiative as far as I can tell. Mary Ann Dyar, she is the Program Administrator, Adult Redeploy in Illinois. Jack Cutrone is the Executive Director of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. And Cabell Cropper, he is the Executive Director of the National Criminal Justice Association. Again, we’re indebted to the National Criminal Justice Association for this program, and bringing, again, a decade’s worth of exemplary experience from the States to the attention of everybody else, so we can mimic and we can copy. Jack, you were trying to get in a comment.

Jack Cutrone:  Well, I just wanted to amplify on what Mary Ann was speaking about and in response to the topic you brought up about a culture shift. Her job has been made much more difficult in Illinois by the fact that we have a non-unified court system. So each local jurisdiction is run by a chief judge who’s largely autonomous, staffed by a state’s attorney who’s an elected official, therefore, autonomous, answerable to voters. And our experience and our research shows that there is a widely varying point of view about appropriate sentences to be given on individual cases across the state. The same offense in one county might produce a much different sentence in another county, sometimes much harsher. And Mary Ann has done a great job in terms of promoting the idea of producing a better result through the use of proven  practices, rather than just keep going doing the same thing we’ve always done and getting the same results, and she’s a marvelous salesperson with that.

Len Sipes:  Cabell, but the experience that Jack just talked about is something that we’re going through throughout the United States, is it not? This whole idea of having this discussion at the state level, having it at the county level, having it at the local level, everybody coming together and having this grand conversation, which seems to be taking place in thousands of locations. Having a conversation as to how can we do it smarter, better, cleaner, crisper, how can we reduce the burden on state government, and at the same time, how can we create a criminal justice system that reduces recidivism, reduces reoffending, and save money at the same time? That’s a conversation that’s happening everywhere, right?

Cabell Cropper:  That’s correct. By the weakened economic situation in the country we’ve been through the past several years that were pulling out of, but that really provided the impetus to begin to look very critically at how we were spending money in the criminal justice system. And it’s really grown into this movement in terms of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative and some of these other programs like Adult Redeploy that look at how are we spending the money in criminal justice and how can we do a better job of that and be smarter about it

Jack Cutrone:  Oh, sorry, Cabell.

Cabell Cropper:  No. I was just going to, yes, that’s happening in almost every state and now more and more the local communities.

Len Sipes:  Mary Ann, that’s –

Jack Cutrone:  Because I wanted to comment –

Len Sipes:  Go ahead, Jack.

Jack Cutrone:  I wanted to comment on that too, because the Adult Redeploy Program is really exemplary in terms of using federal funding to stimulate pilot projects in the state. When the Crime Reduction Act was passed 2009 creating Adult Redeploy, given Illinois’ current budget issues, the legislature was unable to provide funding. Governor Quinn of Illinois was very interested in promoting the program and we worked with the governor’s office to use four million dollars in American Reinvestment Recovery Act dollars to form a pilot or provide pilot funding for the programs. Once we had it up and running, we were able through our capture of data to take it the Illinois legislature and said, “Look, this is our program. We are saving the state money.”  We were able to persuade the General Assembly even in extremely tight economic circumstances to start funding it with state money; initially a two million dollar appropriation to cover the time period in which the federal funding was running out, and then last year a seven million dollar appropriation, and the governor has requested another seven million dollars this year. So it’s kind of using federal money to create a laboratory in the States to identify and put into effect good practices and programs.

Len Sipes:  Well, I find it amazing, because we have this conversations at the national level, we have them at the state level, but then again, we have Mary Ann who’s done it all at the local level. And, Mary Ann, you were talking about the difficulty, the sea-change, the cultural change, trying to bring everybody onboard and the fact that it was not easy. What do you think the principle at the county level; the principle ingredient was in terms of bringing them on? Because you’ve got 1,200 offenders diverted, you’ve saved the state 20 million dollars, the locals get funding as result of that, but what was the magic ingredient, the secret sauce that actually made that happen at the local level? Was it your pervasive, you being so persuasive, or was it some policy initiative?

Mary Ann Dyar:  Well, I think there’re a number of things that I can point to other than my persuasive or persuasion practices. But essentially, one thing is that we were working from, as you’ve alluded to earlier, a situation where Illinois has been discussing evidence-based practices and has been training actually many players in the system throughout the probation system on evidence-based practices for over ten years. What we often found though, is these individual players in the system got excited about what was possible and excited about the research, excited about the new tools that they were provided, but there was no funding to support it. And in fact, funding continued to be cut back from county probation budgets over the last several years, actually quite dramatically, making it impossible to implement these practices.  When they found out that there was some funding available that would actually incentivize them to implement what they learned, I think we found a lot of players that were just really excited about the opportunity, and they really carried the ball forward on that. I can’t say though that we haven’t been really benefited from or have been benefiting from the national dialogue, and what the National Criminal Justice Association has done in order to promote these conversations about evidence-based practices and the opportunities for getting better results at a lower cost.

Len Sipes:  And that’s one of the beauties about Cabell’s organization, the fact that they act as a central clearing house for state criminal justice agencies to have this discussion. So, again, thanks to the National Criminal Justice Association. Jack, are you coming in?

Jack Cutrone:  Yes. I just wanted to amplify on some of what Mary Ann was saying in terms of how we make it attractive to the local jurisdiction. We are talking about a population of in the criminal justice system that traditionally had gone to the Department of Corrections. The Department of Corrections in Illinois, unfortunately, has a three year return rate, recidivism rate, of almost 50%. These practices that we are talking about we know it’s going to produce a much lower recidivism rate. So when we’re talking to local jurisdictions, what we’re talking about is the basic product of the criminal justice system, which is public safety. And we can demonstrate to the local jurisdictions that these practices mean less crime. Data driven, empirical, empirically driven evidence-based practices, become somewhat esoteric, but if you talk in terms of, “You’re going to have less crime in your county as a result of this program.”

Len Sipes:  It’s less –

Jack Cutrone:  That becomes meaningful.

Len Sipes:  But we really haven’t dived into that point. It’s less crime because of the programs that you all put in place, whether it be drug treatment, whether it be mental health, whether it be vocational, whatever it is, they’re getting, the people diverted are getting the programs they need to stay out of the criminal justice system. There’re lower level offenders that get the programs that they need. Is that the bottom line?

Jack Cutrone:  It’s part of a bottom line. Mary Ann mentioned it earlier. When you take people who are nonviolent, who are low-risk, and you impose a very strong sanction, such as imprisonment in the Illinois Department of Corrections, you are actually increasing the chance that they’re going to commit another crime.

Len Sipes:  Because of the research that –

Jack Cutrone:  So –

Len Sipes:  Says that you’ve got to pick the most dangerous that people that who really needed the high-risk offenders, and that’s where you put your services or your incarcerative resources, and to the lower level people you try to divert. But you divert them in the programs, right?

Jack Cutrone:  Absolutely, absolutely. And I don’t mean to pick on the Illinois Department of Corrections. They, as are all state agencies, being victimized by falling state revenues and lowered budgets. I’m sure the Department of Corrections, if it had adequate funding to put in enough programs in place, would have a much lower recidivist rate, but the fact is in this financial climate that just can’t be done. And Adult Redeploy offers an alternative.

Mary Ann Dyar:  And I should mention that our oversight board, which is defined and established by the Crime Reduction Act, is co-chaired by the Director of the Department of Corrections and our Secretary of the Department of Human Services. And I think that that sends a very strong signal about how the solution to getting better results to drive down crime and recidivism is a collaboration, requires a collaboration between supervision strategies, effective supervision strategies, and human services that address underlying causes of crime.

Len Sipes:  Well, Mary Ann, you’ve got the final word. I think the program, the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority’s Adult Redeploy Program, again, it’s amazing’ 1,200 offenders diverted, saving the state over 20 million dollars, and at the same time, protecting public safety. That is a heck of a combination. Our guests today, ladies and gentlemen, have been Mary Ann Dyar; she is the Program Administrator, Adult Redeploy in Illinois. Jack Cutrone, he is the Executive Director of the famous Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. And we have Cabell Cropper; he is the Executive Director of the National Criminal Justice Association. Again, thanks to them for putting together this program. The website for the Criminal Justice Information Authority and the project Redeploy is www.icjia.org/redeploy. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments, we even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have yourselves a very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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