Category: High Risk Drug Offenders

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/csosamed/public_html/podcast/transcripts/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116

Comcast Interview with Nancy Ware

November 14, 2014 by CSOSA

This Television Program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/video/2014/11/comcast-interview-nancy-ware/

Yolanda Vazquez: Hello, I’m Yolanda Vasquez, and welcome to Comcast Newsmakers. I am joined now in the studio by Nancy M. Ware, she is the Director of the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency. Nancy it’s a pleasure to have you here in our studio.

Nancy Ware: Thank you, Yolanda.

Yolanda Vazquez: So, I was asking you earlier to give us a little brief history of CSOSA as you call it, and I was saying you established in 1997 by the US Congress but you said actually, that was part of an Act. You were established a little bit later. Tell us a little bit about how you were formed initially.

Nancy Ware: Sure, well originally in 1997 actually, we had the Revitalization Act at Washington DC, which federalized a lot of the law enforcement agencies. And CSOSA was one of those agencies. So they moved probation and parole from the courts and from our parole board, which was in DC, over to this federal executive branch agency. And that’s how CSOSA was formed and we were formally put in place as an executive branch agency in 2000.

Yolanda Vazquez: And the reasoning behind that was to kind of lift some of the burden from the state level agencies?

Nancy Ware: That’s right. That’s correct. And also to consolidate a lot of the functions under one branch, one area of government. We also have other parts of the federal government that have take over responsibility like the prison system which is under the Federal Bureau of Prisons and our US Parole Commission which is part of the Federal US Parole Commission now. So we have a number of functions that have been federalized.

Yolanda Vazquez: It’s good to get a good overview like that. So tell us a little bit more about CSOSA, and what are some of the things that you do and the population that you serve?

Nancy Ware: Well, we’re responsible for supervising men and women who are on probation/parole. We supervise release in the District of Columbia. So although we’re a federal agency, we’re focused specifically on DC code offenders. And although we also have responsibility for interstate, which means that we also work with other states who have people who are on probation/parole or who are also in the District of Columbia, so we have relationships with other states. But primarily we’re focused on those individuals who live in the District of Columbia. And we have about fourteen thousand individuals under our supervision on any given day, and about twenty-four thousand throughout the course of a year.

Yolanda Vazquez: How do you go about prioritizing your list of services to the various populations?

Nancy Ware: Well, we really use a lot of research and evidence based practices in our practice throughout CSOSA, so what we do each year is to take the pulse of emerging trends and emerging issues across the population and also across the District in law enforcement. And as a result of that we’ve put in place specialized units throughout our agency to focus on emerging trends like mental health issues, which we’re finding to be more and more a concern among our population. Mental health and substance abuse have become an issue as well. Well, substance abuse has always been an issue, but we also have co-occurring disorders that we’re working with. And so we’ve put in place specific units and well-trained staff and contractors to work with that population. We also have units for women, domestic violence, we have specialized units working with youth and that’s a new one.

Yolanda Vazquez: Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Nancy Ware: Yeah, that’s one that’s particularly of interest to me because we were having a lot of challenges with our young men in particular under twenty-five. And it was very difficult to get them to comply with their conditions of supervision. So we formed two campuses we call them, the Northwest and then Southeast and Southwest to serve that population better.

Yolanda Vazquez: And it’s been a wonderful experience, the past two or three years for you, working with this?

Nancy Ware: It has. It’s a great agency.

Yolanda Vazquez: It sounds like it is. Well Nancy, we really appreciate you coming in. We had the Director of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Thank you so much for your time and explaining so much to us about what you do.

Nancy Ware: Thank you.

Yolanda Vazquez: Thank you so very much! And that’ll do it for this edition of Comcast Newsmakers. I’m Yolanda Vazquez. Thanks for watching everybody. We will you see you again real soon.

Filed Under: Criminal Justice, High Risk Drug Offenders, Interviews with Policy Makers, Parole and Probation, Probation, Youthful Offender Tagged With: abuse, criminal justice, criminals, drug treatment, health, mental, offender, parole, prison, Probation, Reentry, rime, substance, youthful

Reinventing the Criminal Justice System-Justice Reinvestment-Urban Institute-DC Public Safety

March 7, 2013 by CSOSA

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/2013/01/reinventing-the-criminal-justice-system-justice-reinvestment-urban-institute-dc-public-safety/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today’s program, ladies and gentlemen, is Reinventing the Criminal Justice System, Justice Reinvestment; I think one of the more important topics that we’re going to be discussing and one of the more complicated topics we are going to be discussing this year. Dr. Nancy La Vigne, Director of the Justice Policy Center for The Urban Institute is our guest today. – www.urban.org. We’ll be making reference to that website throughout the program because, ladies and gentlemen, this is, again, an extraordinarily difficult concept to understand, complicated but unbelievably important to the future of the criminal justice system. I’ll try to summarize it and then turn the entire program over to Nancy. Number one, states and locales all throughout the country are complaining of budget cuts, and it really has impacted the criminal justice system. And I’ll read a passage, a quick passage from a publication, “What can county and city managers do reduce these costs without compromising public safety, they can engage in Justice Reinvestment. Justice Reinvestment can help prioritize local justice spending for those who pose the greatest risk to public safety while also informing which individuals would be better off in the community, where services and treatment are more readily available.” And then bottom line, I’m thinking, about Justice Reinvestment are the savings. If there are savings, a portion of those savings go back to the states and local jurisdictions to even provide more programs. Nancy, am I somewhere in the ballpark of even beginning to describe what Justice Reinvestment is all about?

Nancy La Vigne: Yes, you are, and you did it quite succinctly, I will say. It’s a multi-step process and so it does take some time to explain but perhaps we should start with a little bit of history. You did refer to the fact that the impetus behind a lot of states and localities getting on the Justice Reinvestment bandwagon is because of the budget shortfalls, and that’s definitely accurate, but there were other issues as well. First of all, as I think we all know, a lot of those budget shortfalls are being fed by rising criminal justice costs. They may not be the entire – as a matter of fact they’re a rather small, 8% to 10% of the total state budget in any given state but still we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars so with states and localities thinking, “What can we do? How can we save money? How can we deal with these budget shortfalls,” it’s a natural inclination to look at the criminal justice system because those costs continue to rise because the populations have been rising historically. Now you may be aware of recent studies that show that state prison populations are on the decline but actually, as my colleague Jesse Jannetta recently blogged about, that’s driven almost entirely by California.

Len Sipes: By the state of California, that’s right, and those overall declines are not all that dramatic.

Nancy La Vigne: They’re marginal, but states realize that this is an issue and they’ve been grappling with it for a while, and many have tried different efforts to control the growth of the prison population that have been maybe mildly successful but not sustained over time, and arguably it’s because they haven’t engaged in this Justice Reinvestment process which requires a couple of things to be place. First, you need to have all the people in the system, all the key stakeholders at the table and on board. If you only work one end of the system, it’s just going to bulge out somewhere else kind of like squeezing a water balloon so you need everyone at the table. At the state level, it’s critical that you have representation from both sides of the aisle, and you’ve got the support of the Governor and the House leadership, the Senate leadership, minority, majority, as well as the Head of the Department of Corrections, and parole and probation and so forth, and judges, prosecutors, everyone who drives the system. If you don’t have them all on board, it’s not going to work because either changes will be made and they’ll be fought and they won’t get through or they won’t be sustained over time because you don’t have this joint buy-in.

Len Sipes: You’re as good as your weakest link.

Nancy La Vigne: Exactly. Exactly. Some of those weak links are quiet powerful, as you may know.

Len Sipes: Yes! Yes!

Nancy La Vigne: So there’s that. It’s having the right people at the table. And then it’s guiding the decision-making process with hard empirical data, and that data is often supplied by the state or the locality but typically in the Justice Reinvestment model, it’s analyzed by a technical assistance partner, funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs —

Len Sipes: Thank you.

Nancy La Vigne: — in partnership with the Pew Center on the states for the state-level initiative, they together have funded this initiative and supported four technical assistance providers, two that work with states, two that work with localities. I can share who those are if you wish.

Len Sipes: 17 states are doing this?

Nancy La Vigne: 17 states right now are engaged in this process. Some states early on have already engaged in the process and declared victory and moved on. A lot of people point to Texas as an example of that. They were the earliest adopter I can think of, and they were looking towards the future and had planned to spend billions of dollars on new prison construction —

Len Sipes: And did not.

Nancy La Vigne: — and did not. They chose not to.

Len Sipes: And the crime rates have basically gone down in Texas.

Nancy La Vigne: And they took some of the money they would have spent on prisons and funded treatment beds.

Len Sipes: And that is the heart and soul of Justice Reinvestment, is it not? – Using data, doing things differently. If there’s cost-savings, those cost-savings are shared with the states and localities, and they buy more treatment options for people in the criminal option system.

Nancy La Vigne: That’s the way it’s been playing out, not only treatment options or programming. Sometimes it’s to shore up supervision. In some states they’ve identified that the wrong people are being supervised and some people are not being supervised at all so, you know, folks who are maxing out and are exiting after often serving time for pretty serious crimes without any supervision, and of course with supervision comes support. It’s not just about surveillance; it’s about support and providing the necessary programs and services, so shifting who gets supervised, how long they get supervised. You know, some low-level offenders perhaps shouldn’t be supervised at all or certainly shouldn’t be supervised for the length of time that they are. That can save money. But also with those savings, putting it into implementation of graduated sanctions to prevent revocations and other best practices that are supported by evidence.

Len Sipes: One other person – I won’t name this person – this is what he told me, not knowing it, but he said it with all the conviction in the world, that every governor in every state in the United States has had a discussion with his or her Correctional Administrator basically saying that costs have to be reduced. That was his proposition.

Nancy La Vigne: So do you know what I find really frustrating about that?

Len Sipes: Please.

Nancy La Vigne: The assumption that the head of the DOC has control over that population. I mean yes, they are housed within his or her domain or control but that suggests that they’re the ones that drive the growth in the population, and what we’ve learned from the experiences in the states is that’s not really the case.

Len Sipes: True.

Nancy La Vigne: Revocations, often technical revocations, are driving that growth.

Len Sipes: That’s why everybody’s got to be on board.

Nancy La Vigne: Sentencing decisions, sentencing low-level drug offenders, low-level property offenders to increasingly lengthy terms behind bars – that’s not under the control of the head of the DoC. That’s a decision that prosecutors and judges make.

Len Sipes: But after 42 years in the criminal justice system, we are stodgy. We are bureaucrats. We are round-peg in a round-hole kind of people. We’re not used to people coming along and saying, “We’re going to basically readjust/reinvent/change the way that you conduct business.” The criminal justice system, when I joined when I was 18 as a cadet for the Maryland State Police, is basically 90% of the criminal justice system I see as I’m looking at the end of my career.

Nancy La Vigne: Yeah, and I agree with that. You are stodgy. However – however – when you look at this process, how it plays out in action, it’s a wonder to witness. The Urban Institute is in a role as the oversight coordination and assessment entity for this project so we get to kind of go to all the states and localities and observe how this works, so the Counsel of State Governments, for example, they’ve been leading the charge on the state side. They literally embed people in a state and develop the relationships and share the data and engage in intensive policy conversations and work a tremendous amount of time behind the scenes, getting people on board, educating people, identifying folks that may be reticent to get on board, and finding ways to persuade them that it’s not just in their best interests but in the best interests of the system. They are that neutral outside entity that can speak with authority based on extensive experience working in many states, and presenting the data that can just kind of dispel a lot of the anecdotes that you hear that nay-sayers often argue based on stories rather than fact. They can demonstrate how it is a system-wide problem not just owned by one player, and that can really nudge some stodgy people into action.

Len Sipes: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s give some examples because I’m afraid some of our listeners possibly could be confused with the process. We are talking about in essence focusing our resources on those people who pose the greatest risk to public safety and doing “something else” with those people who do not necessarily pose a great risk to public safety.

Nancy La Vigne: Well, that is one of the many interventions that states have chosen to implement. Really, the interventions should be guided by the identified drivers of population growth so in some states it may be one driver and in some it might be another, and across the 17 states, the most common drivers are revocations, both probation and parole revocations, and a high, high percentage of them being technical.

Len Sipes: In your report, you cited one state with 50% as having histories of parole and probation revocations coming in through their prison system. I spent 14 years with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. At one point for us it was 70%.

Nancy La Vigne: 70%.

Len Sipes: 70%, yes it was.

Nancy La Vigne: Well, I would call that low-hanging fruit. There’s a lot that could be done there. So certainly with the revocation issue, the response to that is to look at what sanctions are in place, do people need to be returned to prison for technical violations, can you create graduated sanctions, can you create incentives for not engaging in technical violations, can you return people for shorter periods of time or return them to local jails rather than to state facilities. All of that saves a ton of money.

Len Sipes: And Project Hope basically said those short, meaningful interventions of a day or two days or three days were effective enough to dramatically reduce recidivism, dramatically reduce technical violations. It was wonderful across the board. So Project Hope is the epitome of an example as to the effectiveness of that approach.

Nancy La Vigne: That’s exactly right, and several of the states who are grappling with high revocation rates did choose to implementation Hope models or Hope-like models. That’s exactly right. But then there’s other drivers, and I mentioned before, sentencing practices and the incarceration of low-level offenders. In Louisiana, for example, non-violent, non-sex offenses represented over 60% of prison admissions so, you know, what can we do with that population? Some may need to go, some may could be diverted, and also what’s stunning to me is that there’s also been a trend in many states of increased lengths of stay for these low-level, non-violent, property and drug offenders So that’s another place where you could look to see making changes. Sentencing reform is tremendously challenging.

Len Sipes: It’s a huge issue.

Nancy La Vigne: It’s very challenging, so most states don’t choose to go the sentencing reform route. They usually look at some kind of back-end way to – although some do pass statutes to change the thresholds by which people should be —

Len Sipes: The research on specialty courts has been very encouraging, diverting people out of the prosecution prison route and going into the specialty courts, and specialty courts have had good returns basically in terms of recidivism and cost-savings.

Nancy La Vigne: Um-hum, uum-hum. It’s true, and then another common driver we observed across states is the issue of delays in parole processing or reductions in the parole grant rate, and these too are relatively simple changes, figuring out what’s slowing things down and how can you speed them up, or how can you change or guide parole boards in a way that they’re incentivized to make decisions to grant parole, perhaps supported by evidence, and the most obvious evidence would be a risk assessment that gives them more comfort in knowing who they should release. In other cases, the parole grants get stalled because people don’t have a home plan. Well, that is an issue of resources often behind bars. If you don’t have a case manager that can help line up a home plan then no one gets released, and then you have this backlog which is really unnecessary.

Len Sipes: And the interesting data in terms of parole is that those paroled have consistently much less of a rate of recidivism than those not paroled, so fewer people coming back to prison, once again, as long as they are released with conditions and those conditions are enforceable.

Nancy La Vigne: Exactly.

Len Sipes: So what else?

Nancy La Vigne: What else?

Len Sipes: It’s very complicated.

Nancy La Vigne: Yes. Well, so what’s complicated about it is how long it takes to explain why it’s called Justice Reinvestment because up till now what we’ve discussed is data-driven, collaborative approaches to reducing the prison population and saving money through identifying the drivers and developing responses to the drivers. Where does this word “reinvestment” come in?

Len Sipes: Yes.

Nancy La Vigne: That comes in at the very, very end with the anticipated savings associated with making all these changes. Now this is very complicated because the savings might not be hard cold cash that you have in your hands and you can put elsewhere, as a matter of fact it’s rarely that. A lot of the savings are projected savings that aren’t realized until several years into the future however the process still encourages states to think about upfront reinvestment. So in looking at prison projections had they done nothing and then the projections associated with the changes that they plan to make, they can anticipate that, you know, five years down the road they’re going to save however many millions of dollars – why not reinvest some of that upfront into programs, supervision, services that help support the entire system and reduce recidivism?

Len Sipes: So the reductions in terms of the cost outlays to the criminal justice system are actually reinvested to make the system even better, so it’s a win-win situation across the board.

Nancy La Vigne: Um-hum.

Len Sipes: All right. Let me reintroduce you, and ladies and gentlemen, we’re a little bit more than halfway through the program. We’re talking about reinventing the criminal justice system – that’s my title – Justice Reinvestment, Nancy La Vigne, Director of the Justice Policy Center, Urban Institute, www.urban.org – www.urban.org. Again, we reemphasize that this is a joint project of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, the Pew Center on the states and the – I’m sorry, the Centers for State Government, correct?

Nancy La Vigne: The Counsel of State Governments.

Len Sipes: The Counsel of State Governments, I’m sorry, my apologies, but this is a massive undertaking on the part of 17 states, a lot of different jurisdictions, with the understanding that people have been talking about reinventing the criminal justice system, doing “something different” with the criminal justice system for a multiple of reasons but budget, in my opinion, seems to be the principle driver behind all of this. People are more than welcome to disagree with my assessment but I do think it’s budget that’s pushing an awful lot of this, and this is exciting stuff because what it does is bring an awful lot of people in one room, data-driven, taking a look at an awful lot of data and saying, “What can we do to reduce the amount of people flowing through the criminal justice system without having an adverse impact on public safety and saving money and taking those savings and reinvesting those savings in terms of either more prosecutors, more parole and probation agents, more programs, more resources for the criminal justice system so they can do a better job to begin with so it can be data-driven in the future so we can continue this philosophy down the road, right?

Nancy La Vigne: That’s right – data-driven and evidence-based.

Len Sipes: Right.

Nancy La Vigne: Before we continue, I do want to acknowledge all of our partners in this initiative.

Len Sipes: Please. Please. Please.

Nancy La Vigne: We mentioned, of course, the Bureau of Office Assistance and the Pew Center on the States are the funding partners. The Counsel of State Governments and the Vera Institute of Justice have both been working with states, and the way that works is that the Counsel of State of Governments helps identify the drivers and the policy options, and gets states to the point where they pass legislation, and then Vera comes in and helps implement. And then at the local level, it’s the Center for Effective Public Policy and the Crime and Justice Institute that are working with counties across the country.

Len Sipes: Oh, lots of different people, lots of jurisdictions involved in this.

Nancy La Vigne: Yeah, a lot of players, a lot of very, very seasoned criminal justice professionals, often former practitioners and/or data analysts that come into states and localities and, as I said before, really embed themselves in the system, develop the relationships and the trust, and really make things happen.

Len Sipes: This is, in my mind, the most significant story of the criminal justice system as we move into the 21st century and yet it gets zero coverage. There’s nobody from the Boston Globe, there’s nobody from the New York Times, there’s nobody from the Washington Post, there’s nobody looking at this systematically, and yet this, in my mind, is a fundamental change in terms of how we within the criminal justice system operate. Why is that? Is it just a bunch of policy wonks sitting with a bunch of budget-cutters and saying, “Hey, what’s the best way we that can rearrange the deck chairs?” or is this really a substantive, hard-nosed examination of the fact that we can do this better without imposing so much of a fiscal burden on the states and counties and cities?

Nancy La Vigne: It’s definitely the latter because it’s not just budget-cutters and policy wonks. It’s all the key players in the system that have a shared interest in doing things differently and getting more bang for their buck. I mean, the return on investment has been really poor. If you look at the increased expenditures on corrections across the country —

Len Sipes: Massive.

Nancy La Vigne: — massive, with no real discernible change in the recidivism rate.

Len Sipes: But isn’t it interesting of how you take a look at conservative politicians – not to touch upon politics in any way, shape, or form – but conservative politicians are demanding that the criminal justice system prove its cost effectiveness, demanding that we get a bigger bang for our criminal justice dollar. I mean, I find that to be interesting.

Nancy La Vigne: This is why it’s been so popular an initiative, it’s because it garners support on both sides of the aisle. The left has always been more sympathetic to rehabilitation spending and perhaps diverting people from prison. The right has observed that this is not just a wise use of taxpayer dollars, and they do, they want to see a better return on the investment and that’s what we’re seeing. You know, we talked at the end of the first segment about the projected savings and how they get reinvested. Across the 17 states that are currently engaged in justice reinvestment, they’re projecting between 9 and 438 million dollars in savings.

Len Sipes: That’s amazing. Now is that per state or is that total?

Nancy La Vigne: An average of $163 million per state.

Len Sipes: An average of $163 million cost savings per state.

Nancy La Vigne: Yes. Um-hum. Yeah. It’s huge!

Len Sipes: Who’s getting the Nobel Prize for this?

Nancy La Vigne: I’d love to see it. Well, we have to see those savings, realized, right?

Len Sipes: Of course. Of course.

Nancy La Vigne: A lot of these are projections and we hope they’re accurate but even if they’re off by 50%, that’s still a tremendous savings. Across all the states, in five years the projected savings is $2.12 billion.

Len Sipes: $2.12 billion.

Nancy La Vigne: And that speaks volumes, I think.

Len Sipes: Well, it does speak volumes if we can hold down the rate of recidivism, if we can ensure public safety, if we focus on those people who pose a clear and present danger to our well-being.

Nancy La Vigne: Well, the beauty of this model is that a lot of the policy responses to the drivers of growth embody those principles. Every single state that engages in Justice Reinvestment is refining their risk assessment tools and validating them, and using them to guide decisions on diversion, on supervision, on everything including on needs and who should great treatment, and everything in between; and that is evidence-based, and we know that that’s tied to better outcomes in terms of recidivism rates.

Len Sipes: In essence what we’re saying is that there’s a certain portion of the population that comes into the criminal justice system, again, recognizing there’s been an almost continuous 20-year decline in crime per the National Crime Survey in crimes reported to law enforcement agencies and through the FBI, there is still a certain portion of the population coming to the criminal justice system that is better served from a public safety point of view and from a recidivism point of view not to process them in the way that we did ten years ago.

Nancy La Vigne: Um-hum. I think that’s right.

Len Sipes: And that’s taking risks, and that’s why a lot of the people at the local level, at the country level, are saying, “Well, why should we take those risks? Those risks have a way of blowing up in our face.” I think that would be the greatest point of reluctance. Why change it? Why take that risk? Why not simply incarcerate that person for a year or six months instead of putting that person into drug court?

Nancy La Vigne: Well, because it’s just not sustainable, that’s why. There’s just not enough room. There’s not enough money to build more prisons and so if you don’t make these hard decisions now, essentially you’re not making strategic decisions about how to use that space most wisely. You want to free up that space for folks who are really a danger to society but if you don’t make hard decisions about who needs to be in and who shouldn’t be in, those decisions should be backed up by risk assessment tools, then you’re actually engaging in really bad practice.

Len Sipes: And isn’t California the poster child for this whole movement where the courts have ordered the release of tens of thousands of offenders from their prison system in California because of the fact that they could not fund properly their health care system? – And they’ve released massive numbers of offenders, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid.

Nancy La Vigne: Right. Exactly. When you said “poster child” I paused for a section. “No, no, don’t hold up California as the example of Justice Reinvestment!”

Len Sipes: No, no, no, I’m not. I’m not.

Nancy La Vigne: No, this is what could happen to you if you don’t engage, yes. Right. Absolutely.

Len Sipes: If you don’t. Right. Right. Right. There are consequences for not managing your population better. There are consequences for not managing your dollars better.

Nancy La Vigne: Exactly.

Len Sipes: And states, I mean, and one state that you looked at in terms of one of our reports, 12% of their overall budget was the state correctional system. That’s astounding!

Nancy La Vigne: That’s right, I think that was Oregon.

Len Sipes: That’s astounding, that 12% of the budget is Corrections. It raised from I think 4% to 12% in terms of the various states but you’re talking about billions of billions of dollars, and if you can divert individuals from coming back into the criminal justice system, you are saving literally billions dollars in terms of future prison costs, building and operating those prisons. That doesn’t have to happen if you manage your population carefully.

Nancy La Vigne: Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Len Sipes: Okay, but we can, through a data-driven process, assure people that this is not going to have an adverse impact on their public safety.

Nancy La Vigne: Again, states, localities, are using risk-assessment tools – some, not all. The ones they are using are not always validated which means they’re not always accurate. By using these tools, and using them in a way that can guide decision-making, I think that they should have confidence. I have confidence that this is no threat to public safety, in fact it’ a wiser and more efficient use of scarce criminal justice resources.

Len Sipes: Right, and the alternative is billions, billions, billions more or the alternative is what’s happening in California with tens of thousands of offenders court-ordered release so if we don’t manage our resources carefully, if we don’t make data-driven decisions, evidence-based decision, we’re not serving the public.

Nancy La Vigne: That’s right, and getting back to the concept of reinvestment, the ways in which states and localities are looking to reinvest a fraction of the savings is in evidence-based programs that are designed to reduce recidivism so you really are getting at recidivism reduction in two ways. You’re getting at it through better use of risk and needs assessments and you’re getting at it through enhanced programs to help people succeed on the outside.

Len Sipes: Um-hum, and that goes all the way from who do you prosecute to what programs do you provide at the end of it because the criminal justice system has done basically a terrible job in the opinion of many in terms of I think, what, 10%, 12% of people get substance abuse treatment while in prison. The numbers for mental health treatment are even smaller. The percentage getting mental health and substance abuse treatment on community supervision is also small, and that’s come back to bite us.

Nancy La Vigne: Yeah.

Len Sipes: To a certain degree, that’s not cost-effective.

Nancy La Vigne: Agreed.

Len Sipes: And the numbers need to drive that in terms of that larger policy discussion with hard-bitten criminal justice people like myself.

Nancy La Vigne: That’s right. We’ve got to get you out of your stodgy ways, Len.

Len Sipes: I would love to do a bit of the fly-on-the-wall for so many of those meetings where people are saying, “Hey, if we don’t do this, we just have the courts release lots of people, and we don’t have the money to continue doing what we’re doing.”

Nancy La Vigne: Right.

Len Sipes: Yeah, it’s a fascinating thing. I really applaud Urban, I really applaud all the partners, and I applaud the Department of Justice of really trying to take a really unique and different approach, and this is why I called the program Reinventing the Criminal Justice System through Justice-Free Investment. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. Your guest today has been Nancy La Vigne, Director of the Justice Policy Center of the Urban Institute, www.urban.org – www.urban.org. And we thank everybody for their time and efforts in terms of all the input that you provide for the radio shows here at DC Public Safety. We appreciate your calls. We appreciate your letters. We appreciate your emails, and we want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Budget Issues, Corrections-Prisons, Courts, Drug Court, Drug Treatment, Education and Vocational Assistance, Employment, High Risk Drug Offenders, Interviews with Policy Makers, Mental Health, Parole and Probation, What Works Tagged With: Justice Reinvestment, Urban Institute

The Success of Drug Courts-The Urban Institute-DC Public Safety Radio

November 20, 2012 by CSOSA

Welcome to “DC Public Safety” – Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system. We currently average 90,000 page views a month.

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

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2012/08/the-success-of-drug-courts-the-urban-institute-dc-public-safety-radio/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety; I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Today’s show is on drug courts and we have Urban Institute research addressing multiple outcomes from multiple places throughout the country, but it’s just not recidivism or return to crime, but it also measures drug use, socio-economics, status and outcomes, family functioning and mental health. It’s one of the most complete evaluations I’ve ever seen in terms of drug courts. Our guest today is Shelli B. Rossman, Senior Fellow, the Urban Institute, www.urban.org. www.urban.org. Shelli, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Shelli Rossman: Thank you Len.

Len Sipes: Shelli, before describing the research I want to state that it addresses 23 drug courts in 8 states. That’s a big evaluation.

Shelli Rossman: Yes, this is the largest drug court study every undertaken and it’s interesting because within those 23 drug courts, in very different demographic areas, we have both large and small courts represented. Rural, suburban and urban courts from major cities, and we selected them so that they represented different parts of the country, where different drug use patterns were represented.

Len Sipes: Now one of the things I did want to get straight from the very beginning is the fact that we’ve had lots of evaluations of drug courts, but this is sort of what we call a meta examination. This is something large, this is something comprehensive, because you know, and you’re talking about different drug courts. So this particular evaluation, I think, is almost the final word on drug courts, or the best assessment that we have in terms of drug courts considering its complexity and the fact that it’s from around the country?

Shelli Rossman: Well, it’s a very comprehensive study. It’s not truly a meta analysis, because it doesn’t do a secondary analysis of data collected by other organizations or researchers. This was really original research in which we selected 23 drug courts based upon a nationwide survey we had done earlier, so that we could find out what the patterns among different drug courts were, and make sure that they were in this study. And then we selected six comparison jurisdictions. So this impact evaluation looks at outcomes for individuals who participate in drug courts compared to similar substance abusers who are participating in whatever is business as usual within their local jurisdiction. So it’s not a comparison of drug court treatment to no treatment, it’s a comparison of drug court treatment to whatever is standard throughout the United States.

Len Sipes: Right, I mean it’s, its pretty close to being an apples and apples comparison.

Shelli Rossman: Yes, it is.

Len Sipes: The title, by the way, is the Multi Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation Executive Summary, again, by the Urban Institute, funded by the Office of Justice Programs of the US Department of Justice, I take it?

Shelli Rossman: That’s correct, and it’s actually the Executive Summary has behind it four very detailed volumes that look at the results of our process, impact, and cost/benefit analysis and all of those are available both on the National Institute of Justice’s Drug Court website, and Urban Institutes website.

Len Sipes: And one of the things that I do want to say, as, as I mentioned before we hit the record button, the fact that, you know, the Urban Institute writes good reports.

Shelli Rossman: Thank you.

Len Sipes: There aren’t too many criminological organizations out there that know how to write and provide clear cut findings and clear cut policy implications for those of us on the practitioner side. So, I wanted to thank the Urban Institute for knowing what very few people seem to know in this country: how to write. I mean, the findings are clear and the findings are pretty interesting. So give me a description of the outcomes.

Shelli Rossman: Okay. Well, first of all I’d like to tell you a little bit about the scope of the study itself –

Len Sipes: Please.

Shelli Rossman: Beyond the jurisdictions. In terms of individual outcomes, we had a sample that was almost 1,800 persons strong.

Len Sipes: That’s a lot of people.

Shelli Rossman: It is, it’s large. It was 1,156 drug court participants and 625 substance abusers who were not offered drug courts, but would have been eligible –

Len Sipes: A large sample size.

Shelli Rossman: So they were a match sample. And the sources, we used several different sources of information to generate our findings. One was a series, three waves of very detailed, one and a half to two hour interviews at baseline, when people were either enrolled in drug court or the alternative comparison condition, and then at six months and 18 months later. At the 18 month administration, for those who were eligible and consented, we did a field test, an oral swap, to actually confirm independently whether or not individuals were using.

Len Sipes: Didn’t take their word for it, you proved it.

Shelli Rossman: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Shelli Rossman: And then we also collected administrative, official Criminal Justice Records from the state systems of the eight states and from the FBI and CIC database.

Len Sipes: As to whether or not they’d been arrested?

Shelli Rossman: Correct, correct and their lifetime criminal history –

Len Sipes: Right.

Shelli Rossman: So that we could compare over time. We also did a process evaluation that had us surveying the drug courts nationwide and using those, that information for the eight, for the specific 23 courts that participated, and we went and spoke with all the stakeholders, the drug court team, the judges. We also used a systematic rating protocol to observe each of the drug courts and to rate them and rank them on various characteristics of the court operations. So that’s the source of our information. What did we find?

Len Sipes: Yeah, what did you find? I mean everybody’s there going, okay, it’s Urban, it’s Department of Justice, we understand that you do good research, what did you find, Shelli?

Shelli Rossman: So the study, there are a number of drug court studies out there but most have focused on whether or not drug courts have an impact on reducing crime for their participants.

Len Sipes: Right, recidivism.

Shelli Rossman: And we certainly looked at that.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shelli Rossman: But as you mentioned earlier, we were also interested in knowing, do they reduce drug use and do they contribute to other positive psycho-social changes?

Len Sipes: Right.

Shelli Rossman: So in terms of drug use, we measured self reported, whether individuals reported the use of marijuana, alcohol, and heavy alcohol, which we defined as more than four drinks per day for women and more than five per day for men, whether they reported use of cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, and hallucinogens and then whether they misused, that is, illegally used prescription drugs, or illegally used methadone.

Len Sipes: All right, so you did the whole gambit, what did you find?

Shelli Rossman: Yes, we did. We found that at the 18 month follow up; looking at their use in the period from six months to 18 months, there was a statistically significant difference between the drug court participants and the comparison group on all drugs.

Len Sipes: All right, statistically significant means it wasn’t by chance, it was the result of the program?

Shelli Rossman: Correct. 56% of drug court participants reported using any of those substances within months six to 18, as compared to 76% of the comparison group.

Len Sipes: Okay, so that’s a 20% difference?

Shelli Rossman: Yes, it is, and that’s quite large.

Len Sipes: That’s a very large difference.

Shelli Rossman: Right, and when you, when you remove the two least harmful substances, that is, light alcohol use and marijuana, that difference still stands. 41% of drug court participants report use of the more serious drugs, as compared to 58% of the comparison group. Now –

Len Sipes: So a significant decrease in drug use?

Shelli Rossman: Very.

Len Sipes: And, and we know that drug use is heavily, heavily correlated with criminal activity.

Shelli Rossman: We do, and but we also measured crime independently. But I do want to point out something that’s very important about this. When I’m talking about measuring it through the 18 months, that captures a period of at least several months, post enrollment in the drug courts. So that means that these people have already finished their drug court participation by and large.

Len Sipes: And nobody was watching them.

Shelli Rossman: Exactly.

Len Sipes: And there were no consequences, there were no legal consequences for imbibing?

Shelli Rossman: Correct. Now most drug courts nationwide, and this holds true for most of the drug courts in our sample as well, offer the program for a one year period.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shelli Rossman: But people typically have a number of relapses that extends their stay in drug court.

Len Sipes: And that’s, and that’s a natural part of the whole drug treatment process, something that most people don’t realize.

Shelli Rossman: It’s one of the reasons why the courts use graduated sanctions rather than simply failing people out at the first time that they do not remain sober.

Len Sipes: Right, right. It’s not unusual for a person who even if he or she is committed to drug treatment, committed to kicking drugs, to pull a variety of positives.

Shelli Rossman: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Shelli Rossman: And the practical ramification for operating a drug court is it means that a 12 month program typically takes people maybe around 15 months to complete. And so when we’re doing a measure at 18 months, for most of these people, they’ve been out of drug court for several months and they are still sustaining the gains.

Len Sipes: Before getting into the other variables, I do want to talk about criminal activity, because you know, there is one particular finding that I find astounding. Of those reporting criminal activity at the 18 month follow up, drug court participants reported about half as many criminal acts – 43, versus 88 on average in the prior year. Half as many criminal acts. Now I don’t know of many studies, I’m used to seeing 15%. I’m used to seeing good studies being, I mean, very successful studies being 20%. You’ve cut it by half.

Shelli Rossman: Well we cut it, well, that’s not percentage though, that’s the number of criminal acts they reported.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shelli Rossman: So there are, there’s a difference. There are two different kinds of measurements. So we measured whether or not they reported engaging in crime.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shelli Rossman: And if we, if we used the same measure as we used, the same temporal measurement that we use for drug use, so at 18 months we looked at whether they self reported crime from months six to month 18, and there was a significant difference: 40% of the drug court group reported having engaged in crime as compared to 53% of the comparison group.

Len Sipes: Now that’s not based upon criminal record – that’s based upon surveys?

Shelli Rossman: Self reports.

Len Sipes: Self reports. But you know the interesting part is that there are increasing numbers of research reports based upon self report, and in a lot of cases, self report is not used. When self report is used, a lot of these programs show their full impact or their full potential to have an impact based upon self report. So sometimes I’m wondering why we’re not doing more self reporting and that’s one of the reasons I brought this up.

Shelli Rossman: We did both. And I want to make a couple points –

Len Sipes: Okay, go ahead.

Shelli Rossman: If you’ll let me?

Len Sipes: Oh, of course.

Shelli Rossman: So that, that looked at a one year period prior to the 18 month mark. We shaved that period and said, “Well, what about the last six months?” Because it might be that they were committing their crimes earlier in their program affiliation.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shelli Rossman: And so if we look at only the last six months, 31% of the drug court group, as compared to 43% of the other substance abusing offenders engaged in any kind of crime.

Len Sipes: Okay, that’s 31 to what?

Shelli Rossman: 31 to 43%.

Len Sipes: And that’s based upon official records or interviews?

Shelli Rossman: That’s also self report.

Len Sipes: Self reports, okay.

Shelli Rossman: But, but when we look at the official records, we get similar findings.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shelli Rossman: So we find for instance, that the rearrests, based upon administrative records and that’s at 24 months, 52% of the drug court participants had a rearrest at any point during the 24 months, as compared to 62% of the comparison group.

Len Sipes: Yeah, a significant, a significant difference.

Shelli Rossman: Ten percentage points, right?

Len Sipes: Okay.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Courts, Drug Court, High Risk Drug Offenders, Reentry, What Works Tagged With: DOJ, drug courts, drugs, NIJ, OJP, Urban Institute

Supervision of High-Risk Offenders-DC Public Safety Television

April 5, 2012 by CSOSA

Supervision of High-Risk Offenders – “DC Public Safety”

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

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

Television Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/video/2012/02/supervision-of-high-risk-offenders-dc-public-safety-television/

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

[Video Begins]

Len Sipes: Hi and welcome to DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today’s show is supervising the high-risk offender, and you know, there is a consensus amongst the criminological community at agencies like the U.S. Department of Justice, that agencies like mine, that parole and probation agencies should be spending the bulk of the resources, the bulk of their time on the high-risk offender. To talk about this concept, we’re really pleased to have two national experts with us on the first half; and then we’re going to go to the second half and talk with the people from my agency addressing the implementation of that research. So on the first half; we have Jesse Jannetta, research associate from the Urban Institute, and Bill Burrell, independent community corrections consultant. And again, we’re going to discuss the consensus in terms of the high-risk offender. Bill and Jesse, thanks again for being on the show. Bill Burrell, give me a sense as to what we’re talking about with this national consensus. First of all, is there a consensus; second, what is the high-risk offender?

Bill Burrell: Well, there’s clearly a consensus. It’s based on a robust body of research from United States, from Canada, from other countries around the issue of “Who’s on supervision and how do we handle them?” And what the research tells us is that there is a group of people that are high-risk of re-offending when they’re in the community. Not every offender is the same. They have different backgrounds, different experiences, committed different offenses, their commitment to their criminal career varies; and the people we were concerned about, are the people that pose the greatest risk, the high-risk offender.

Len Sipes: Mm-hmm.

Bill Burrell: The probabilities are very high that they’re going to continue to offend in the community, and these are the folks that we want to keep a close eye on, and provide close supervision to see if we can reduce the risk of them re-offending again.

Len Sipes: Jesse, you’re from one of the premier research organizations in the country, the Urban Institute. You’ve been taking a look at the high-risk offender for quite some time. The bottom line in this is the protection of public safety, is it not?

Jesse Jannetta: It is, and one of the reasons, again, that there has been a greater focus on the high-risk offender – and this is a good instance where research and what it’s telling us is really tracking with common sense in many ways – in a situation where you have many problems, what you want to focus on is the biggest problem where you make the biggest impact, and that’s going to be the high-risk offender, since they’re the most likely to have more offenses and create more victims in the community. And what, in fact, we’ve seen when you look at a lot of the programming interventions for parolees and probationers in the community is that, in fact, that programming is more effective for high-risk offenders; you get greater reduction in their risk to the community. And, in fact, in many cases, if you look at low risk offenders and programming, you may, if you put them into intensive programming, actually make their outcomes worse. And so this has really driven supervision agencies all over the country to think about, “Alright, how can we make sure that we’re putting most of our resources, whether its supervision or treatment or both of them in concert on our high-risk offenders? How can we know who those are, and then how can we move away a little bit from intervening too much with the lower risk offenders to avoid actually making their outcomes worse and having a negative impact on what’s going on in the community in terms of public safety?”

Len Sipes: Bill, back to you. This is a consensus, correct? I mean, within the criminological community, within organizations, within the Department of Justice, within the American Probation and Parole Association, there does seem to be a consensus that we move in this direction. I want to be very clear about that.

Bill Burrell: Absolutely; and this goes back a good 20 years to research that came out primarily in the early 1990s, looking at the question of risk.

Len Sipes: Mm-hmm.

Bill Burrell: And over those years, through conferences and workshops and experience with agencies, that’s begun to seep into the fabric of probation, parole agencies around the country; and few people contest it any more. It really is something that has become an accepted fact that there are high-risk offenders, and if we’re serious about public safety, these are the folks we need to go after.

Len Sipes: Right, and Jesse, the research is supportive. I just read a piece from Abt Associates where they were basically doing what it is that we’re doing now, or propose to do; and they showed substantial reductions in recidivism. And when I say recidivism, we’re talking about real crime. We’re talking about people becoming injured. We’re talking about increasing public safety. So two of the three sites where they implemented this strategy, the best practices within 50 to one case loads, they were able to reduce recidivism and new crimes considerably. The one case where it did not happen, they didn’t implement it fully –

Jesse Jannetta: Right.

Len Sipes: – so there’s good strong data in Abt, and as Bill said in lots of other research, that basically said this is the way to go. So it’s not just a consensus, it’s based upon hard research.

Jesse Jannetta: Right and this is a research base that has, as Bill suggested, been developing over 20 years. And I think one of the things that has led to the consistency in those kind of research results is that we’ve gotten a lot better at working with the high-risk offender. The first piece we’ve gotten a lot better at is identifying who those people are out of all the parolees and probationers –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Jesse Jannetta: – than an agency supervises. So the assessment tools to build risk groups and say, “Alright, these are the people, if you look at this group, they’re the group that’s much more likely to re-offend.” The tools to do that have gotten a lot more sophisticated and performed better. And on the programming front, you know, over the years, we’ve gotten a lot better at both knowing what kind of curriculum, what kind of approaches work for good programming, but also a lot of information about what the staff needs to be like, when you put people in the programming, and so we’re in a much stronger position than we were –

Len Sipes: Right.

Jesse Jannetta: – 20 years ago, to say, “These are the people we need to focus on. We really can identify them in our population, and these are the tools that are going to make them less likely to re-offend.” Twenty years ago, we had ideas about those things, but we didn’t have a strong ground to stand on in terms of having seen the results. But today, we are in that position where you can look at a lot of different jurisdictions and say, “We’ve proven this.”

Len Sipes: The risk and needs assessment that you just brought up, Jesse and Bill, I mean, we’ve come light years in terms of our ability to figure it out – but it’s not foolproof, I want to make it very clear right now – we can be 80 percent, and 80 percent is incredibly good in terms of predicting who’s going to fail and who’s not; but it’s not infallible – but we’ve come light years in terms of the level of sophistication, with validated instruments to figure out who’s antisocial, and who’s going to make it and who’s not.

Bill Burrell: Am important thing to remember about these assessments, and you mentioned, is that they’re not perfect. These are probability statements about groups of people who look alike.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Bill Burrell: They’re not individual predictions to individual offenders.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Bill Burrell: Our technology doesn’t allow us to do that.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Bill Burrell: So we plug into the assessment this body of information about people who’ve been under supervision before, and how they behaved and how they did under supervision, and we use that to develop a model that helps us identify those kinds of people in the existing population.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Bill Burrell: The insurance companies have used this kind of technology for years.

Len Sipes: Yes, they have.

Bill Burrell: Actuarial models.

Len Sipes: Right.

Bill Burrell: So we’re very good at being able to put people into the right groups, but then we have to plug in the expertise of the probation parole officers to go beyond what the actuarial instrument will tell you; to begin the plug in unique things to that individual offender. So what the research tells us is, the instruments do a very good job – a little better job than any of us can do individually – but when you plug in the experience of a probation parole officer on top of that assessment, you get the greatest level of accuracy in terms of who’s likely to re-offend.

Len Sipes: Right. It’s based on a machine read. Somebody’s got to make – somebody’s got to take a look at this and figure out for themselves if it’s correct or incorrect, whether or not it should be overwritten to a lower level, a higher level of supervision. Jesse, the research also says that treatment programs are an integral part of this, so it’s just not a matter of supervision, the research from the past basically says if you only do supervision, the only thing you’re going to do is revoke very high numbers of people and put them back within the correctional system. People who have mental health issues need mental health treatment. People who have substance abuse issues need substance abuse treatment. People who don’t have an occupational background need to be provided with information as to getting jobs, and how to present themselves. Correct or incorrect?

Jesse Jannetta: Yeah, all of those things are correct. And the one thing that I would add to that, where there’s been an emerging consensus as well as the importance of it, is what’s called cognitive behavioral treatment, and this is based on the understanding that a lot of criminal behavior is driven by the way the people make decisions, the values and beliefs and justifications that they have inside themselves that may –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Jesse Jannetta: – support or justify after the fact, criminal behavior. And then the other layer is a lot of their associates. So if you have somebody who is hanging out with, and a lot of their friends are criminally involved, the odds are pretty high that they will be as well. And so a lot of that programming is looking at building skills to make better decision making, to do better problem solving –

Len Sipes: And that’s what we mean by –

Jesse Jannetta: – to be less aggressive.

Len Sipes: – cognitive – better decision-making.

Jesse Jannetta: Right. It’s about, you know, the way people think and make decisions –

Len Sipes: Right.

Jesse Jannetta: – determines a lot of their behavior. And so if you want them to make a different kind of decision than they’ve made in the past, you need to work on that really directly, and have them build skills. And that this often has effects not only in a criminal behavior, but it makes them more successful in employment.

Len Sipes: And that is part of the research base.

Jesse Jannetta: Oh, absolutely.

Len Sipes: The research does back that up. Bill, –

Bill Burrell: I want to –

Len Sipes: Go ahead, please.

Bill Burrell: I want to elaborate a little bit on that –

Len Sipes: Please.

Bill Burrell: – because we started out talking about the high-risk offender, and that’s determining who we’re going to work with.

Len Sipes: Right.

Bill Burrell: And once we’ve determined that, then we need to look at the individual factors as – and Jesse began to suggest – what we call on the field, criminogenic risk factors.

Len Sipes: Right.

Bill Burrell: Things that drive people to commit crime. That’s the second major thing that has come out of this 20 plus year body of research, is now we know what we want to work with offenders on. How do we want to change them? What are the things in their lives –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Bill Burrell: – that drive them to commit crime.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Bill Burrell: So that’s that – it’s kind of a – we know who to work with, what to work on, and the next part is how to go about that, and that’s the cognitive behavioral intervention.

Jesse Jannetta: Right.

Len Sipes: Great.

Bill Burrell: Because much of what we do, the way we think, determines how we act.

Len Sipes: Right.

Bill Burrell: So if you change thinking patterns from criminal to pro-social, you get pro-social behavior and less criminal activity.

Len Sipes: Okay, a very important point now. If we’re going to take all these resources and we’re going to place the bulk of our supervision, the bulk of our treatment sources on the high-risk offender, what that means is that with lower risk offenders, we’re going to do quote/unquote “something else”.

Bill Burrell: Right.

Len Sipes: Now what comes to mind is New York City putting the great majority of the people that they have under probation supervision on kiosks. They’re automatic machines. They look like the bank machine that you go to –

Jesse Jannetta/Bill Burrell: Yeah, right.

Len Sipes: – to withdraw, a ATM machine. Thank you. And that jurisdictions around the country are now using them to lower case loads. They’re using kiosk, but the kiosk example, the thing that surprised me is that up in New York City, they showed less recidivism using kiosks when compared to a control group. So there are ways of safely supervising and interacting with low risk offenders beyond person to person contact, correct?

Bill Burrell: Correct; and I think the kiosk is a real interesting experiment, you know, in this country there is a love affair with technology. So any time you throw technology at a problem, we think it will fix it, but I think Jesse mentioned that intervening with low risk offenders more than you need to, can actually cause problems. So I think what you might be seeing in New York City is that we have reduced the amount of intrusion into those low risk offenders’ lives, and they respond in a positive way to that.

Len Sipes: Right.

Bill Burrell: People resist being told what to do, being forced into programs or services that they don’t really think they need, and we found a way to accomplish the monitoring objectives of supervision without overtly or excessively intruding in their lives.

Len Sipes: But we’re not, Jesse, risking public safety when we do this; every parole and probation agency in this country, whether they cop to it or not, does have a lower level of supervision –

Jesse Jannetta: Right.

Len Sipes: – for lower risk offenders. I mean, so that’s current, that’s happening now anyway.

Jesse Jannetta: Right. I think the greatest challenge for parole and probation agencies in delivering on the promise of working with the high-risk offender, and what we know from research, is the research challenges. You have parole and probation officers all around the country that have huge caseloads –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Jesse Jannetta: – 80, 90, 100 people –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Jesse Jannetta: – and it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to meaningfully work on risk reduction things with all of those people. And working with high-risk offenders, I mean, as we’ve said, we’ve got this research about what’s effective, but this is not a situation where a little bit goes a long way. The kind of programming and interventions they need are intensive. You need to spend time with them not just in the programming, but the parole and probation officers enhancing their motivation, –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Jesse Jannetta: – keeping them moving on the right path, intervening when they might be backsliding a little bit, engaging their families, –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Jesse Jannetta: – their employers, the positive influences in their life –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Jesse Jannetta: – keeping them on track with their plan. You need time in the day to do that, and so there is some need to move around resources. One of the most interesting findings in that kiosk study in New York is that it’s not only the low risk offenders did better –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Jesse Jannetta: – but the high-risk offenders also did better.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Jesse Jannetta: New York City probation was very clear, “We’re going with kiosk for the low risk offenders so we can spend more time with the high-risk offenders, and they did better too.”

Len Sipes: We have a minute left. The key in all of this seems to be the proper balance. The key in all of this seems to be a balance of resources and figuring out where to place your resources, obviously the high-risk offender. But that seems to be the tune-up, if you will, for parole and probation agencies to make them far more effective, and at the same time protect public safety. We are talking about fewer crimes committed. Am I right or wrong?

Jesse Jannetta: That’s correct.

Bill Burrell: And we have to be smart about this. We have to realize that all offenders are alike. They have different characteristics, different levels of risk, and we need to apply our resources in a way that responds to that information.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Bill Burrell: And then once we’ve done that, then we need to use the techniques that have been proven with high-risk offenders to get the results that we want.

Len Sipes: And Bill, you’ve got the final word. Ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate you watching the program today. Stay with us in the second half as we take a look in my agency, the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency, in taking this research consensus that Jesse and Bill talked about, and implementing it within my agency. We’ll be right back.

[Program Break]

Len Sipes: Hi, welcome back to DC Public Safety. I continue to be your host, Leonard Sipes. I represent the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency. We’re a federal parole and probation agency responsible for offenders in Washington DC, and what you’ve heard on the first half, that research consensus from two national experts as to the research on the high-risk offender, well now we’re going to be implementing it; and we have been implementing it throughout the course of the year. To talk about it, we have Valerie Collins, a branch chief of the Domestic Violence Unit for the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency; and Gregory Harrison, again branch chief for general supervision, Court Services and Offenders Supervision. And to Valerie and Greg, welcome to the program!

Valerie Collins: Thank you.

Len Sipes: Greg, the first question’s going to you. We’ve heard the researchers of people representing two stellar organizations in terms of that research consensus within the criminological community, within the government, that we really should be focusing on the high-risk offender. And the integral part of supervising that high-risk offender is first of all, discovering who that person is with a risk assessment instrument, correct?

Gregory Harrison: You’re absolutely correct, and I think what CSOSA has done is actually fallen right in line with the research in terms of showing that we’ve identified the high-risk offenders versus those who are low risk. We’ve challenged our resources in their appropriate domains, and it’s showing that our offenders are pretty much providing, or being provided with the services that they need.

Len Sipes: Right, and so when we’re talking about the high-risk offender, as far as CSOSA is concerned – and I think this matches the national research – we’re talking about sex, we’re talking about violence, we’re talking about weapons, and we’re talking about the ages principally 18 to 25. Now, it doesn’t have to really focus on all the variables that I just mentioned – there could be others – but principally it’s that part of our population, correct?

Gregory Harrison: You’re absolutely correct.

Len Sipes: Okay, Valerie; and we’re also talking about individuals that even though the current charge say is theft or possession with intent to distribute, we’re not taking just a look at the current charge; we’re taking a look at the totality of that person’s criminal history, the totality of that person’s social history, correct?

Valerie Collins: Yes, what we do is we look at the person’s entire history. We look very strongly at what their criminal background has been. We also look at other risk factors that they may have had. As you indicated, a person may be on supervision for something like theft –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Valerie Collins: – but if they’ve had, you know, armed robbery with a weapon, you know, in their past –

Len Sipes: Right.

Valerie Collins: – that is of course going to bump their supervision level up. And they would certainly get closer supervision.

Len Sipes: Either one of you can answer this. We’re talking about somewhere in the ballpark of about a third of our caseload when we’re talking about high-risk offenders, correct?

Gregory Harrison: Yeah, about a third in the high-risk area, one third in the medium, and a third in the low risk categories as well.

Len Sipes: All right, now we said in the first half that the focus needs to be on the high-risk offender, that’s where the resources need to be, the treatment resources, the supervision resources. And, you know, it’s pretty clear that the research throughout the country is that this reduces recidivism, this protects public safety, focusing on that high-risk offender. But what that does mean is that for the lower risk offender, we’ve got to do quote/unquote “something else”, lower levels of supervision. And now we’re implementing the kiosk program where we are putting lower level offenders on kiosks, and so they’re going to be reporting to a machine; and if there are issues in terms of that reporting, they have to then contact a community supervision officer elsewhere, known as parole and probation agents. There still could be drug testing involved, so it’s just not the machine, but it’s going to be principally kiosk reporting for lower level offenders, correct?

Valerie Collins: Yes, and actually there would be an officer who is assigned to those offenders who are on kiosk supervision.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Valerie Collins: They monitor that kiosk supervision, they are able to look at reports to see if the person’s actually reporting in, –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Valerie Collins: – ensuring that they’re still employed.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Valerie Collins: They are also randomly drug tested.

Len Sipes: Right.

Valerie Collins: And so if, you know, the person is positive, then they would come back into the office and we would do intervention with that individual.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Valerie Collins: So we do have a lot of things put in place so that we can actually make sure that we are keeping in contact with those individuals, that they are following the program that has been set up for them –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Valerie Collins: – and again, if they are not in compliance, then swiftly we are able to direct ourselves to those individuals, to have contact with them.

Len Sipes: But then again, that is to free up resources to focus on the high-risk offender, and that’s the person who possibly poses a clear and present risk to public safety. That’s where we should be going.

Valerie Collins: And what that has done has allowed us to work much closely with those individuals who are high-risk –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Valerie Collins: – so that the supervision officers have actually lower case loads for those offenders who we have –

Len Sipes: Right.

Valerie Collins: – identified to be the high-risk offenders.

Len Sipes: Right. So we’re talking about what, Greg? We’re talking about global positioning system tracking. We’re talking about working with local law enforcement, and we’re talking about in terms of a sex offender; a polygraph test. We’re talking about two new day reporting centers.

Gregory Harrison: Yes.

Len Sipes: We’re talking about a whole wide array of strategies to stay in touch with that individual; and I’m going to dare say based upon the research far more than most states stay in touch with their offenders.

Gregory Harrison: Certainly. But one of the things that we’ve done at CSOSA is we’ve made sure that our staff were more than prepared to address and handle high-risk offenders.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Gregory Harrison: We’ve done that by showing that all of our staff were trained in cognitive behavior intervention –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Gregory Harrison: – as well as motivational interviewing.

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: And when we – having done that, we’ve ensured that the staff would be ready to understand the assessments, –

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: – be able to actually articulate their understanding of the assessment to the offender population. Because oftentimes the offender’s always saying, “You’re putting me in this program, you’re putting me in that program or referring me here and there, but you’re not telling me exactly why.”

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: So we’ve trained our staff tremendously in those efforts to ensure that the offenders have a clear understanding of what their expectations are, and why we’re using the resources that we’re using to channel them into using best practice resources –

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: – channel them into the areas of compliance.

Len Sipes: Greg, I’m glad you brought that up. And Valerie, the next question’s going to go to you. In terms of treatment resources, I mean cognitive behavioral therapy where we sit down and teach individuals how to think differently throughout their lives, and people sometimes smirk at that, but the research base is pretty clear that this reduces re-offending, it lowers criminality, it protects public safety. Those sort of treatment resources, whether it be mental health, whether it be substance abuse, whether it be our own facilities where we place people for an assessment, or place people for intensive drug treatment, the bulk of those treatment resources are going to go to that individual.

Valerie Collins: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Valerie Collins: We actually have – we call our Reentry and Sanction Center, and that is designed to do a 28-day assessment on those offenders who are high-risk individuals.

Len Sipes: Right.

Valerie Collins: And what we do with them is that we bring them in–it’s an in-patient setting for 28 days–really look at what their needs are, their treatment needs are, and from there, we develop a plan for them, a treatment plan. And they may go out to another treatment facility; we may look at getting them some type of transitional housing so that they can get some stability in the community. And then, particularly in the Domestic Violence Unit, we have a treatment component where we are doing exactly what we’re talking about. We’re actually looking at, you know, how people think, and actually making some changes in their cognitive behavior –

Len Sipes: Right.

Valerie Collins: – so they will no longer be involved with those types of offenses in terms of domestic violence; giving them some alternatives and some skills so that they can be successful in the community.

Len Sipes: And as we said during the first half of the program, that that treatment emphasis, it’s got to be a combination of supervision and treatment. It’s just not one or the other. If the person comes out of the prison system and he has mental health issues, those mental health issues need to be addressed. I’m not quite sure anybody could disagree with that; if you address those mental health issues, you’re gonna lower the rate of him being back in the criminal justice system. If he has this wild substance abuse history, that needs to be addressed. If he has no work history, that needs to be addressed. That’s what we plan on doing for high-risk offenders.

Gregory Harrison: Yes, you’re absolutely right. And speaking about in terms of mental health, CSOSA has done a phenomenal job in segmenting our population in terms of needs.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Gregory Harrison: We have a unit that deals in services to the mental health population. We have a unit that deals and services the all woman population –

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: – the DVIP population. So we’re really segmented pretty well, and it helps us to channel again our resources in the proper area.

Len Sipes: Right. I mean, best practices. I mean, one of the things that I find unique about CSOSA is use of best practice, and we’ve been basically implementing best practices since the beginning.

Gregory Harrison: Yes.

Len Sipes: I mean, CSOSA has been dedicated to a research-based approach, and we think that that obviously works. Alright, let me get into this. For that lower level offender who is going to get less supervision, they are also going to get less treatment. They’re also going to get fewer interventions; again, designed to free up resources for that person who poses a clear and present risk to public safety. What that does mean is that they’re not going to get drug treatment, say, from CSOSA, our drug treatment, but they will work with people in the community to try to get them drug treatment. But our priority needs to be treatment and supervision services on the high-risk offender, am I right?

Valerie Collins: You’re correct, but I think the other unique thing about CSOSA is that we’ve developed such strong partnerships in the community with law enforcement, you know, with treatment providers, so that we do have a host of resources that we can refer these low risk offenders –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Valerie Collins: – on to, so that they can actually get their services in the community. And when you talk about best practices, when they’re off supervision, they’re already entrenched and embedded in what’s already available to them in their community.

Len Sipes: Right.

Valerie Collins: And we found that that has really helped.

Len Sipes: Well, the partnership part of this is crucial because in terms of public safety, I mean, working with law enforcement, whether it’s the Metropolitan Police Department or the Secret Service or the FBI, we work with them on a regular basis in terms of, you know, who’s doing well, who’s not doing well. I mean, individual officers work with our community supervision officers. So that partnership is there on the supervision side and the treatment side in terms of resources for individuals. My Heavens there is a faith-based program. I mean, thousands of people help getting them, you know, the resources of the faith community in terms of substance abuse or in terms of housing. So it’s the community partnership that is an extraordinarily strong part of what it is we’re trying to do.

Valerie Collins: Yes, you’re right. And as we talked about earlier just with the whole transitional housing piece, you know, that’s something where we have a partnership with our faith-based providers. And not only do they provide transitional housing, they also provide mentors.

Len Sipes: Right.

Valerie Collins: So again, you really have that community support, and that’s what we find that particularly in reentry, that these offenders need.

Len Sipes: Now Greg, you’ve been around a long time, because when people hear this concept of working with the offender, cognitive behavioral therapy, they’re not aware of the research; it’s sometimes a hard issue for them to grasp. But what we have to do is to get through to that individual offender, and not only in terms of supervision, not only in terms of treatment, but also in terms of incentives. We’ve got to break through that barrier, that wall that he or she brings to us, and we’ve got to work with that person as a human being.

Gregory Harrison: Yes.

Len Sipes: And where some people have a hard time hearing that, it’s true. I mean, we can reduce recidivism, better protect public safety, by breaking through and dealing with that individual as a human being; and that includes incentives and that includes working with that individual as a person.

Gregory Harrison: Yeah, and it’s very interesting that you talk about incentives, because oftentimes we deal with when you’re in the world of criminal justice, we always talk about punitive damages and things of that nature –

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Gregory Harrison: – but incentives is something that CSOSA takes pride in, in terms of we do early terminations of some offenders.

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: We make referrals oftentimes for them to come off supervision early. We actually, for those offenders who are on GPS where we’ve implemented curfews on them, we have reduced the curfew timeframe for them.

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: As long as they are in compliance. But what we have to do a better job at is showing that our offenders are absolutely in the know –

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: – about all of the interventions that we’re placing on them, and why we’re placing these interventions on them.

Len Sipes: That individual can work their way off that high-risk status. I mean, we can, you know, day reporting and lots of contact and lots of programs and constant GPS; that’s not forever. As long as he or she goes along with the program, we ease them off that level of supervision. We may even ease them off a level of treatment. So that person can get off this designation, correct?

Gregory Harrison: Yeah, certainly. And what we’ve done a lot of times – Valerie has done it, myself and my other branch chief co-workers – we’ve had what we call “call-ins”. We’ve actually taken focus areas of desire and brought all of those offenders in – whether it’s burglary or GPS offenders and things of that nature – we’ve talked to them about what public safety actually means.

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: And what it means for them to be compliant and maintain a level of compliance, so that we can reduce their supervision that was from high-risk to a lower risk offender.

Len Sipes: Right. And the bottom line in terms of the community watching this, regardless of where they are in the country, or Washington DC, all of this does protect public safety.

Gregory Harrison: Certainly.

Len Sipes: There’s now a national strategy that we’ve been implementing for a long time, but we’re going full throttle in that implementation, and we do believe that this is something which is in the public’s best interest.

Gregory Harrison: But one thing I want to say is this.

Len Sipes: And quickly though.

Gregory Harrison: In terms of low risk offenders, there are no guarantees. If an offender’s on kiosk, there are no guarantees –

Len Sipes: Right.

Gregory Harrison: – that they won’t re-offend.

Len Sipes: Thank you.

Gregory Harrison: But what we’re doing is putting in process in place.

Len Sipes: Thank you, thank you. Alright, you’ve got the final word, Greg. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching the program as we examine the issue from a national and local perspective as to the high-risk offender. Look for us next time as we explore another very important topic within today’s criminal justice system; and please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Video Ends]

Filed Under: Criminal Justice, Drug Treatment, Education and Vocational Assistance, GPS, High Risk Drug Offenders, Interagency Cooperation, Interviews with Policy Makers, Parole and Probation, Reentry, Video Podcast, What Works Tagged With: crime, criminals, dangerous offenders, high risk offenders, high volume offenders, kiosks, Parole and Probation

GPS/Satellite Tracking of Offenders

June 22, 2008 by CSOSA

See http://media.csosa.gov for “DC Public Safety” radio and television shows.
See www.csosa.gov for the web site of the federal Court Services and Offender Services Agency.
See http://media.csosa.gov/blog for the “DC Public safety” blog.

This Radio Program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/?p=67

Len Sipes: Hi and welcome to the radio version of D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host Len Sipes. Today’s program, I think, is extraordinarily interesting. We’re going to be talking about GPS or global positioning system tracking of offenders. It’s also known as satellite tracking of offenders. Today we have with us the branch chief. The person in charge of the Special Supervision Services branch, Kathleen Terri Crusor and we have Carlton Butler. He is the manager for the GPS unit and to Kathy and to Carlton, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Kathleen Crusor: Good morning Len. Thanks. It’s always a pleasure should I have an opportunity to share with the community the innovative supervision opportunities that we have. GPS is just an example of that innovation and how well you’re going to utilize it to supervise offenders.

Len Sipes: Well, there’s a wide array of supervision strategies in terms of what we do here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency and we talk about sex offenders in particular although we’re using GPS or satellite tracking of offenders not just on sex offenders. We’re using it for domestic violence cases. We’re using it for violent offenders. We’re using it as an intermediate sanction. We’re using it in a wide variety of ways but the thing that really interests me is the fact that we now have over, what, 350 offenders on any given day?

Kathleen Crusor: That is correct Len. The program has really grown tremendously in the last year where we’ve gone from 90 offenders where we started retooling the program where we have now in excess of 360 offenders. I’d like Carlton to talk with you all a little bit just about the technology and how the program has grown in the last year.

Len Sipes: Well, I do want to set it up and either you or Carlton can deal with this. Number 1, what is GPS tracking of offenders? What is satellite tracking of criminal offenders? What does that mean? Carlton.

Carlton Butler: Good morning Len. I’d like to also thank you for the opportunity to speak to the public to tell them about the innovated program we’re running here at CSOSA. The satellite tracking of people is 27 satellites actually orbiting the Earth and they’re sending signals to the device that the offender would wear and we’re able to use that data to determine movement and places that the offender has gone for our benefit.

Len Sipes: Right. So, these satellites are constantly moving around the Earth, orbiting the Earth. Now, these satellites are used for a wide variety of other purposes, not just for satellite tracking of offenders but we just tap into that technology and what, we give them an anklet and they wear that anklet and that sends a signal to those satellites?

Carlton Butler: That’s correct. It’s a bracelet device that they wear on their ankle that sends signals and receives signals and then that information is updated to the master system and translated so that we can utilize the data.

Len Sipes: Now, we need to tell the public that there are 2 kinds of GPS systems. There are active tracking and there’s passive tracking. The active tracking is that we have somebody hunched over a computer 24 hours a day, 365 days a year seeing in real time where that offender is going. We use a passive system where the, what we call parole and probation agents community supervision officers, they come in the following day and take a look at that data and find out where that offender has been and whether or not the offender has violated any special conditions of his or her supervision, correct?

Carlton Butler: That is correct Len. The active system actually sends the real time information every 10 minutes. The system is actually sending signals every minute but along with the ability to actually go to any web based system and actually look that information up, I actually could go to my computer, my home-based computer at home and pull that information up at any given time. The passive system is a system as you’ve said already, it does call in information twice a day but it also, we have the ability to update the system any time we want to. In the background of that system, we have the company that provides a 24 hour coverage of the system and they’re getting the notifications of any violations as well and they have the ability to contact the probation officer and or the GPS tech people to tell us when there’s a serious violation they want us to be aware of.

Len Sipes: Okay. So, the community supervision officer known elsewhere as a parole and probation officer comes into his or her computer in the morning, logs in and can see in graphic detail where that offender has been and what that offender has been doing, correct?

Kathleen Crusor: That is the case Len and the good thing about the system is while we have an excess of 360 offenders on the system, the system is set up such that when the CSO, Community Supervision Officer, logs in, they get an actual report and a list of all the offenders they have on the system. So, at any point they can click and push and see exactly what that offender’s been doing. Whether he’s been compliant with a curfew, if he has been placed on a curfew, if he stayed out of areas where he’s been excluded from. So, it gives him a snapshot. It also has the feature that allows them to immediately recognize where an offender has been in violation. So, you don’t have to go through every thing on that list but the system will actually alert them to this is the offender I need you to look at now.

Len Sipes: Right. So, the idea, say, we mandate that that offender stay home at night. We mandate that offender stay away from all schools and areas where kids hang out and if this offender is suddenly, you know, next to a playground and spent a half an hour at that playground, we know immediately that that offender is in violation.

Kathleen Crusor: Absolutely. That is correct. As soon as they log on their system to check it, they will get an alert that this offender has gone in an area that the system has been set up to notify us as an exclusion.

Len Sipes: Okay. And if we have somebody in terms of domestic violence case and he has a stay away order from that other person and if he is in proximity of that person’s house, we also get that alert immediately.

Carlton Butler: That’s correct also Len. We have the ability to build what we call an inclusion and exclusion zone. The inclusion zone is the zone that we build around the offender’s home or the place that we want them to report to that tells us what time they reported and what time they actually left. The exclusion zone also places where we want the offender to stay away from and the moment that he or she goes in that area, we can immediately get notifications. And I also want to say by the way too, it’s not always with the computer. We have the ability with this particular software to set it up so we can receive instant notifications by way of pagers and cell phone notifications as well that can ultimately alert us to go to the computer and actually see more details but we also have that extra added as well.

Len Sipes: Right. If you have a high risk offender and this individual is really known to be out there actively engaged in this sort of thing, the CSO can go to that computer at any time of the day or night and intervene immediately if necessary in terms of contacting MPD, Metropolitan Police Department or other law enforcement agency saying that this individual that we’re really concerned about is hanging out at the playground again. Correct?

Kathleen Crusor: Absolutely. That is the ability that technology has and we also have a partnership with the local law enforcement to include not only metropolitan police department but the U.S. capital police, Prince Georges county police who also have been trained and given access to the VariTrac system which is a data system that the information is dumped into so when we and our partner in information sharing meetings identify an offender who is known to have high risk behavior.

Len Sipes: Then they can go on that system and track him themselves.

Kathleen Crusor: Absolutely. They have the ability to go in and see from time to time or as often as they would like. Just, what’s going on with this offender and it’s been very helpful because there are times when just the street level parole, excuse me, patrol officers with the computers in their cars have contacted the supervisors to say, I’m in this area, I see this individual, according to their tracks, he’s in a violation because he’s got to stay away from this area. Do you all want me to initiate an arrest or should I have him report to you? So, it gives us the ability to type of partnership communication as well as let the offender know, you’ve got a lot of eyes out in the community watching you. So, we can immediately act and that’s particularly important when you’re looking at domestic violence situations and stay away so we don’t want to have another victim.

Len Sipes: Sure. So, we have that level of corporation. MPD can pull it up in their computers in their cars; can pull up the VariTrac system. Detectives can do that as well if they have a particular concern about a particular offender.

Carlton Butler: Yes Len. That is and I want to add also to that is that the metropolitan police and the law enforcement partners in the area are also using our system for the purpose of determining whether or not our offenders may have been involved in or may have been a witness of any new crime in the city. Actually, they can go in the software and plug in a specific time and a date of a particular crime and run it and see whether or not one of our offenders may have been either in the area and or a witness to a crime. So, it’s a really nice system. It allows all the partners in law enforcement to have an extra additive to prevent reoccurrences of crime in the city.

Len Sipes: Sure and to catch the bad guy if the bad guy goes out there and does a bad thing. Okay. I wanted to bring up a couple background issues. California is in the process of mandating that everybody leaving the prison system with a violent offence have GPS tracking. They’re in the process of starting that. We have just reviewed a piece of research out of New Jersey in terms of high risk sex offenders where they studied 250 high risk sex offenders who were under GPS monitoring and only 1 out of the 250 had committed another sex crime. Now, the violation rate, the official violation rate for sex offenders re offending with another sex offense is about 5%. Now, we all know that that’s an under count. We all know that the vast majority of sex offenses are not reported to law enforcement. We know that that’s a real problem. In fact, there’s research that basically says that as far as they’re concerned that the actually re offending rate is actually 2 to 3 times as much and for some extremely high risk sex offenders, it’s much more than that. So, there’s a movement throughout this country to place more offenders on GPS tracking. The fact that we have in the city of Washington, D.C. 360 offenders on any given day, that’s an amazing amount of offenders. That’s a lot of people. There are states throughout this country that don’t have that number on any given day. So, little D.C. seems to be taking the lead and other states also seem to be vigorously perusing this whole concept of GPS tracking of offenders. So, my question is why? Why are we doing this? What benefit does it have to public safety? What benefit does it have across the board?

Kathleen Crusor: Well, Len. I’m happy to say that we’ve been very proactive here at CSOSA in the District of Columbia recognizing the utilities of the technology. When you start talking about the benefits of it, they’re broad. It’s an opportunity to increase levels of public safety by being proactive and tracking those offenders and monitoring behavior patterns of offenders where either their criminal histories or behaviors or information, particularly in the instance of sex offenders that comes out through supervision activities or treatment processes that suggest that they need to be monitored more closely. This technology gives us the ability to actually do that. As you’ve indicated, New Jersey has recently started to utilize an increased amounts of GPS tracking and I think the other jurisdictions recognize just the opportunities there are to prevent additional crime. One of our mottos here for the sex offender units are no new victims. This technology gives us an opportunity to better insure that because of the ability that we have to monitor, curtail, and basically direct an offender’s behavior outside of the sex offender unit. It’s been particularly useful in the areas of domestic violence and supervision. As you know, the media has shown some of the very violent crimes whether dousing the fire with other things. This gives us an opportunity to safe guard the victim, as well as contain the offender’s behavior by showing that he is not stalking or involved in any negative behavior as it relates to re offending. So, overall I think folks in the law enforcement community recognize the advantage it gives us to have an extra set of electronic eyes if you will out there on the offender.

Len Sipes: Okay. Now getting back to the story before, it’s just not sex offenders. We use it for domestic violence and we use it for violent offenders across the board. Now, do we use this as what we in the business call it an intermediate sanction where the person is for lack of a technical and more appropriate term, screwing up, under supervision and we basically say, look we’re sick and tired of this. We’ve given you a variety of chances. You haven’t reformed your behavior. You’re now on GPS monitoring. By the way, you’ve got to stay at home at night, you have a curfew. If you step out of that home at night, we know instantaneously that you’re away from that house. So, you’re allowed to go from your house to work and back and beyond that, you’re under a curfew. I mean, that’s a pretty powerful tool. We can confine that person to a certain section of the city. We can confirm that person to a particular part of the community and we can confine that person to his house.

Kathleen Crusor: Absolutely Len and unfortunately, the offenders who now recognize, for them the disadvantage of having to be locked down as well call it; it’s been a very effective deterrent in some instance to modifying and changing some of the behavior because not only can we lock you down for certain periods during the day, we lock you down for entire weekends. If there’s no viable reason that you need to be outside of your house from Friday night until Monday morning, you can be placed on weekend house arrest, if you will, utilizing this technology. We’ve also used it to sanction folks from anywhere from missed office visits to positive drug tests; even to motivate individuals to get employment and we found it to be particularly effective in that area. Interestingly enough, many of the supervision officers have utilized strategies of same until you get employment from this time to this time; you need to remain at home unless you’re not out there doing something productive in the community. And we’ve seen our levels of employment with offenders increase. All of a sudden they can find jobs Len which is funny.

Len Sipes: We have a day reporting unit and that is for those guys who just can’t seem to find employment and we say, okay, you’re spending your days doing nothing. You’re now going to spend your days with us learning how to do a GED, learning how to develop an interview strategy doing a resume, and suddenly the whole slew of these guys suddenly find work before they will go to that day reporting center. I’m assuming the same sort of thing applies to GPS. It’s like, no you haven’t found work over the last 2 months, we’re tired of this, you’re not coming and telling us what you’re doing to develop that job capacity, so you’re now going to be on GPS and you’re going to be on GPS until you find work.

Kathleen Crusor: And all of a sudden, miraculously, the skills that they did not have, they secure employment Len. So, it’s been a very effective deterrent and tool for the offenders and a sanctioning as well of a motivational option that the CSO’s have begun to use as well as we can put an offender on from anywhere from 2 weeks up to 6 months so we have the ability of setting those to interrupt and change behavior.

Len Sipes: Now, do we start off any offenders at the beginning of their supervision on GPS? Carlton.

Carlton Butler: Yes we do start off some offenders first. Actually, Len we’re actually receiving in some examples court orders from judges placing people on GPS as a part of the condition for the release but also I wanted,

Len Sipes: Did that include probation as well as people coming out of the probation system?

Carlton Butler: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay. So, we have probationers and paroles who are under GPS tracking?

Carlton Butler: That’s correct. We do.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Carlton Butler: But I wanted to add one more thing that Kathy touched on a little bit and that was in some examples we found it to be a benefit to some of the offenders to be in the program and in fact we’ve had some that have come in the office to be taken out of the program and asked us to call their probationer’s office and ask for an extension because they didn’t want to come off the program because they believe that it added some structure to their lives.

Len Sipes: And that’s one of the things that I wanted to imply and get to because people listening to this program are going to,some people could say you guys are just being too heavy handed. There’s a lot of individuals in our experience and I’ve been around for a long time in terms of working with offenders. You guys know a thousand times more than I do and a lot of individuals need structure. They need the heavy hand of fate over top of them and suddenly they’re getting their GED, suddenly they’re getting employed, suddenly they’re completing their drug treatment or complying with drug testing. There’s a lot of people out there who simply need the structure that GPS provides to do what it is that they should do to begin with, correct?

Kathleen Crusor: That is true Carlton and it does assist them in keeping their behavior and activities structured. And for many of them, it even assists them in dealing with some of the issues of peer pressure because where before they’re not comfortable telling one of their buddies on the street, man I’ve got to get out of here or I’ve got to get in because you know I’m just not supposed to be doing this. It’s the right thing to do. They now utilize the fact that I’ve got this on my ankle guys. You know they’re going to be on me. So, they utilize that to stand up to their peers.

Len Sipes: I’ve heard that story a thousand times where they’re all on the street corner and there is a J being passed around and they’re talking about doing something that they shouldn’t be doing and they lift up that pants leg and everybody goes, we understand. We understand why you can’t get involved in that behavior because we understand that you’re under GPS tracking.

Kathleen Crusor: Right. So, until they get the wherewithal or the esteem or ability to themselves to stand up and say, hey guys I can’t do this. I don’t want to go back in. They utilize that to say look you know I’m strapped as they would call it. So, I’ve got to get out of here. So, it’s been very effective in that way of changing the behaviors of those offenders.

Len Sipes: And I think that’s a very important point but just to elaborate on it a little bit more because yeah we do have an immense amount of power and we’ve got to be cognizant of that power. We don’t put people back in the prison willy nilly. We give them multiple, multiple opportunities to straighten out their behavior. And so it’s not necessarily a heavy handed program. In a lot of instances, you will find people who will get in as you said before Kathy, the idea of finding employment. GPS is a great motivator for doing what it is that you should do. There are people involved in treatment and who are successfully completely treatment. There are people who are getting their GED’s. There are people developing resumes. There are people who are doing the things that they should have done to begin with. They simply had to have the structure that the GPS program gives them. If they know that they’re being watched 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, you can’t say, hey I went to the employment office but the crowds were endless and you can look at the GPS system and go, no you didn’t go. I want the drug treatment but it was closed that day. No you didn’t. We know exactly where you were at that hour of the day.

Kathleen Crusor: Exactly and it minimizes a lot of the manipulation that the offenders have traditionally utilized to avoid supervision accountability.

Len Sipes: Now, everybody tests the system at the beginning. Everybody will go outside that exclusion area to see what happens. Everybody will try to take the GPS device off to see what happens. Everybody wants to tamper with it just to see what happens. So, they test the system at the beginning correct?

Carlton Butler: Yes they do Len. They do test the system but one of the exciting things about the system is that the moment that they do, we automatically get alerts and things that will tell us that something has occurred and we can follow up with that. I also wanted to say, the system itself just so you know a little bit about the system is that not only do we have the ability to see everywhere the offender go, we have the ability to also pull up pictures of the system that actually tells us too. So, if one of the offenders tells us that he or she went to a specific location, we can not only do tracks to see that they actually went there, we’re able to pull up pictures of the building as well to see that’s where they went. One of the most important tools,

Len Sipes: Wait. Let’s develop that a little bit because I’m glad you brought that up because when the demonstration was there, we have maps of the entire city and we have what is it, Google earth that we use on this particular program? So, we can actually overlay Google earth and overlay the maps of the city. So, if the map doesn’t give the detail that we’re looking for, we zoom in on Google earth and we go, okay. The map doesn’t show that there’s a playground here but Google earth very clearly shows it. That’s why he’s doing what he’s doing. So, it’s a really sophisticated system.

Carlton Butler: It is a very sophisticated system because sometimes we don’t always know that a violation has occurred but by going through and looking at the tracks and looking at the actual movement of that particular day of the offender, we can learn then that there may have been a violation that we might want to address. One of the things the system also will tell us, not only as I said earlier, pull up pictures, but it also tells us how long the offender was in a specific area. It will tell us how he traveled. Whether or not it was by foot or if he traveled by car or bus. So, we’re able to tell all kinds of things by simply looking at the system and again sometimes it tells us a little more by viewing the points as opposed to actually waiting for some kind of alert.

Len Sipes: Alright and I just want to emphasize again that mode of travel, if there’s a robbery on the subway, we instantaneously go in, plug in the time, plug in the coordinates and find out which of our offenders were in that area at that particular time. So, we can solve a crime instantaneously that would not be solved before.

Kathleen Crusor: And that is true and we have actually utilized the system to assist the police in solving crimes where an offender has adamantly sworn I was not there, I had nothing to do with it but the tracks put him there at the exact time. But also on the flip side, the offenders have an appreciation for the fact it’s also proven that they haven’t been somewhere to do something. So,

Len Sipes: And that’s a way of clearing their name instantaneously. So, they could have the police department, one of the law enforcement agencies or the metropolitan police department can suspect that it’s Len Sipes and it automatically clears Len Sipes away because it was clear that he was 2 miles away from that area at the time the crime occurred.

Kathleen Crusor: Absolutely and we’ve had instances where other people have tried to kind of put the crimes off on an offender because they know they have that history. So, that particular perpetrator figured, okay, well I can put it off on him and we’ve been able to clear that individual and sometimes identify who that was based on relationships the offender has with other people. So, it’s a powerful tool for supervision. Not only us but a crime fighting tool with the whole crime mapping and all that we do with the technology.

Len Sipes: And the constant information that we share with the metropolitan police department and other law enforcement agencies because this department is, court services and offender supervision agency is very proud of its relationships with local law enforcement. We share information and intelligence every day with hundreds of folks in local law enforcement. Let’s get back to the treatment process a little bit if we could. The sex offenders, I mean, we use polygraph machines. We have the capacity to go in and take a look at their computers. We have a capacity to see their computers remotely. I can never, there’s no politically correct way of saying this but there’s a device that measures arousal and I’ll just leave it at there. There’s a wide array of technology that we have at our disposal. Again, not necessarily to track down the person; although, public safety is our first responsibility but also at the same time to assist that person in terms of the overall treatment process. And that treatment process applies to domestic violence offenders and can apply to violent offenders in terms of anger management therapy. So, it’s just not, again, there’s just not a way of catching them doing something wrong or clearing them from accusations of crime. Once again, it is also a vital tool in terms of making sure that that person completes the treatment process that we say is absolutely necessary for public safety; for the offender’s successful reintegration into society.

Len Sipes: That is correct Len. It’s another opportunity for us to assist the offender in being accountable and it’s often seen as a way of supporting them to insure that they work through and get through the system and the treatment modalities that they’re involved in whether it be the sex offender, the mental health, the anger management and even the substance abuse because it helps them to as you said, stay within the boundaries. In instance of substance abusers, if they know the areas where folk are using, then in some instances they may speak what their CSO’s and request, can you put an exclusion area round this. I’m not strong enough to handle this now but maybe if I can get an exclusion area here, that’s some added support for me there. Also, knowing that you can see whether I went to treatment or not, knowing in the situations of anger management, offenders who we have them in groups on the days that I went. It just gives them added support and accountability for the supervision process.

Len Sipes: And that’s something I think a lot of people don’t quite understand that in my 20 years of directly dealing with offenders, structure is such an extraordinarily part of to such an extraordinary aspect of their well being because people say, well you drug test them to much or you watch them to much or you supervise them to much or now you’ve got GPS and my response is, believe it or not, this is in their best interest. Believe it or not, these are individuals through either the treatment process or the drug testing process or the supervision process. They need this level of structure because if they’re by themselves, they’re going to re offend. This gives them every opportunity not to re-offend again and in some cases as we said before, provides them with an excuse to their fellow offenders not to re offend again.

Kathleen Crusor: That’s absolutely correct Len. All of us need structure. I know if I didn’t have to get up and go to work every day and pay my bills and all, I might not be motivated.

Len Sipes: You wouldn’t do this for free?

Kathleen Crusor: To do this for free so my structure is accountability. Well, the offenders don’t quite have that internal motivation yet. So, this helps them get there in some instances to know that I’ve got to be accountable to a process. We all need structure. Our children in their lives need structures, the offenders. This is an opportunity to help them build that structure until they can do it themselves.

Len Sipes: Speaking of structure, I’ve often threatened with my daughters to put GPS tracking devices on their cars and they look at me and they smile and go you’re kidding aren’t you dad? And I’m going, no.

Kathleen Crusor: Let me just say, every parent with a teenager would have an appreciation for this technology.

Len Sipes: Amen. Where do we go to in the future? I mean, we have 360 offenders on any given day. That’s a lot. We have 15,000 offenders on any given day. So, I mean, do we expand this to 600 in a couple years? Do we go beyond this? Is 360 where we need to be?

Kathleen Crusor: Len, we have recently just looked at the possibilities and just assessing our need for expanding the use because we have been so successful with the technology. We’ve increased the budget allocations that go to the program which will allow us in the upcoming year to utilize GPS tracking for more offenders. As the technology grows, we have an opportunity to increase and look at how we utilize it and to have the offenders as well as the CSO’s have an opportunity to benefit from the technology.

Len Sipes: Carlton, final words as we close out the program? That’s always a tough question, I realize.

Carlton Butler: That is a very touch question.

Len Sipes: We’re all very proud of this.

Carlton Butler: Yes I’m really excited about the program. I think that it adds a lot of benefits to public safety. I believe that, again, there’s some appreciation from the offender for the program and I’m just excited about where we have the ability to go in the future with the program.

Len Sipes: Carlton, I’m going to let you have the final word. Ladies and gentlemen, this is D.C. Public Safety. My name is Leonard Sipes. Look at our website which is www.csosa.gov for more information on the court services and offender supervision agency. Please have yourselves a very pleasant day.

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, High Risk Drug Offenders, Interviews with Staff, Reentry, What Works Tagged With: GPS Satellite Tracking Offenders DC Public Safety

Comcast Interview with Nancy Ware

Reinventing the Criminal Justice System-Justice Reinvestment-Urban Institute-DC Public Safety

The Success of Drug Courts-The Urban Institute-DC Public Safety Radio

Supervision of High-Risk Offenders-DC Public Safety Television

GPS/Satellite Tracking of Offenders

Recent Posts

Bookmarks

Pages

Archives

Categories

Meta