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Technology in Corrections

April 11, 2016 by

DC Public Safety Radio

See the main site at http://media.csosa.gov

See the radio program at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2015/04/innovative-technology-solutions-in-corrections/

Leonard: From the Nation’s Capital, this is D.C. Public Safety, I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, the topic for today is technology in corrections high priority needs, a really innovative, really interesting document that came out of the RAND Corporation. We have two people by our microphones today. We have Brian Jackson. Brian is Director of the Safety and Justice Program and a senior physical scientist at RAND. His research focuses on technology issues in public safety, including both the use of technology in policing, corrections and the courts and technological use in crime by adversary groups, which I’d love to hear a little bit more about. Joe Russo is a researcher at the University of Denver, focusing on technology issues in the correction sector. He is currently in support of a number of initiatives for the National Law Enforcement in Corrections Technology Center, a program of the National Institute of Justice. To Joe and to Brian, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Brian: Thanks very much.

Joe: Thank you.

Leonard: All right. Joe’s been at our microphones several times before. Every time we do a show on technology it turns out to be one of our most popular shows. I read this document and I find it fascinating, “Fostering Innovation in Community and Institutional Corrections: Identifying High Priority Technology and Other Needs in the U.S. Corrections Sector”. There’s a variety of documents that comes out on technology or corrections or the criminal justice system. I define this to be a seminal document. I find this to be one of the most important documents I’ve seen within the correctional arena. Am I overplaying my hand here, Brian or what?

Brian: Well, that’s certainly what we’re trying to do here though the goal of this project really is a very ambitious one to try to help catalyze innovation in the criminal justice community. Certainly we hope that this document will be that important but whether it actually is that important will depend on a lot of other actors in the corrections center to take the ideas that came up in this study and put them into practice.

Leonard: What it does is takes virtually every issue that we have in both community corrections and mainstream corrections, analyzes it, prioritizes, but makes it a priority or puts it in rank order, and figures out whether or not there is technology that could have an impact on those particular issues. I mean all the problems that we have today could have a technological solution. If they do you list them and put them in rank order. In the ballpark?

Brian: Yes, that’s certainly what we did. We did it in collaboration with a lot of practitioners from the community to take advantage of their expertise and their on the ground knowledge, and with their help tried to rank them to identify where to start. There’s always a lot of ways that improvements in technology are practiced could help organizations be more effective or more efficient. The challenge is always to figure out where to start so in this effort we not only try to be comprehensive and look at a lot of the challenges facing corrections, a lot of the potential solutions, but then try to winnow them down to the ones that really looked best to practitioners in the area.

Leonard: Joe, how did the University of Denver that supports JustNet, which is an organization funded by the National Institute of Justice of the U.S. Department of Justice, how did the University of Denver get involved in this project?

Joe: [00:03:46] Well, we’re partners with RAND on a larger NIJ funded effort to identify high priority needs across the criminal justice sector. Our role in support of RAND is specific to the corrections community so we assisted with developing this report to assembling the advisory panel and so on.

Leonard: Joe’s been by our microphones a thousand times again producing some of our most popular programs in terms of talking about technology and corrections technology in the criminal justice system. Okay, gentlemen, now that we’ve introduced the document … oh, and by the way, the document is going to be in the show notes, the address for the document on the website www.RAND R-A-N-D .ORG, www.RAND R-A-N-D .org. Oh, before going into further into the show, Brian, for the uninitiated, what is RAND?

Brian: Oh, well certainly. RAND is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. We do research for a wide variety of clients, a lot of them in government, federal agencies, state and local government, but also the private sector. Our mission is to improve policy and decision making through research analysis. We’re a lot of academic researchers but we’re academic researchers that really judge our success by whether what we do makes things better in the real world.

Leonard: For the practitioner community I’ve been following RAND since the beginning of my academic career. RAND has put out some of the most famous and well known studies involved in the criminal justice system. I remember decades ago reading your research on habitual offenders and found it fascinating and that prompted a discussion throughout the criminal justice system. Joe, how do people use this document? How do policy makers, how do practitioners use this document?

Joe: As you mentioned, it’s a seminal document and foundation in a lot of ways. Then part of our approach was to establish the state of the art so we took a look across the spectrum of what corrections is, what it has been and identified the different technologies and different policies and practice that are currently in place. Then from there, as we alluded to, we identified emerging or current needs and tried to develop associated on problems or ways to address those problems.

How various groups can use this information is diverse depending on the audience. Private industry can use this information because it’s a very valuable source of needs from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, from the end users themselves who have articulated what their needs are. Private industry who is interested in making investment in the sector have the blueprint that identifies a starting point of what the needs of the community are. From the federal perspective, funding sources again have that ready made source of that previously identified high priority area so they can target their research and development portfolios accordingly.

Leonard: All right, either one of you can come in and answer this question. There are seven million people under the adult correctional system, the supervision of the adult correctional system, every single day, seven million people. Seven-hundred-thousand people come out of prisons on a year to year basis. That does not include the numbers in terms of the juvenile justice system. That does not include people coming out of the jail system. There are enormous numbers of people. We in the criminal justice system, I’ve heard from my peers throughout the country that they are overwhelmed by the numbers, overwhelmed by the complexity, overwhelmed by the problems. What we’re talking about is, I don’t know, how many problems do we want to look at. Mental health, so if I said mental health from a technology point of view, what would the response of the document be?

Brian: Well, I can jump in on that. Certainly those are two of the really big challenges that the practitioners that we worked with here talked about. It’s simply the ideas of scale and also the challenges of mental health issues in prisoner populations that the correctional system is having to deal with today. I mean when you look at the options that were talked about in the document, they ranged from low tech approaches that are training to help deal with mental health issues, all the way up to high technology activities, better censors or systems to try to prevent suicide attempts in institutional settings, or in the case of the large supervision burden for individuals who are in the community correction system, better technologies to do individual tracking and make that a more effective element of corrective supervision and dealing with offenders in that context.

Really that’s what, for me at least, was one of the most interesting responses or interesting findings that came out of this work is that these very large problems can have multiple solutions to them, some of which may be technological systems, but some of them may be more about policies and practice, how we do things. The opportunities there to match solutions to the needs of different correctional systems and so on is an opportunity to make a broader change across the sector as a whole.

Leonard: Right. There are going to be practitioners throughout the country listening to this program today going, “Oh, thank God.” This is so needed because the discussion throughout the country today is taking about less use on prisons, less reliance on mainstream incarceration and a greater reliance on community supervision. Community supervision is sitting there going, “Oh my heavens, there’s no way we can take on more people.” I mean it would have to be a technological solution because the money isn’t there. The average caseload right now … I don’t think there is a national average but I think it comes close to 150 to one parole and probation agent. I have seen cases where it’s 250, 300 cases for one parole and probation agent.

Here in my agency, the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency in Washington, D.C., we are so lucky. We have under 50 to one ratios but we’re unusual and we’re lucky because we’re a federal agency but for everybody else they’re overwhelmed. They’re saying, “If you can’t give me a technological solution to handling this huge caseload and to provide the services and the supervision concurrently, if you can’t provide me a tech solution, we can’t do this.” Are they right?

Joe: I’ll jump in. I think they’re exactly right. It’s interesting that this issue was brought up by both parts of the panel. The community institutional correction side brought up the issue that a lot of the prison realignment strategies, particularly in California, have created a burden on the local jails. They going to have to identify the need for more alternatives to incarceration to get folks out of the jails. Well, at the same time in a nearby room, the community correction folks were gathering and they said, “Well, you know what, we’re getting all these highly violent folks who we typically would not previously get. Due to realignment efforts across the board now they’re being pushed into the community so we have a situation now known as mass supervision versus mass incarceration, which gets to exactly what you’re speaking about.

We don’t have the resources, we don’t have the tools to deal with this ever growing population. What the community corrections folks said the need was more targeted resources specifically for community corrections so they can meet this challenge. It was interesting how both groups identified similar problems coming from different approaches.

Leonard: What would be the technological solution? What immediately comes to my mind would be global positioning or satellite supervision of individuals, GPS supervision of individual offenders but, as effective as that may be, that puts a brand new set of requirements and a brand new workload onto the shoulders of parole and probation agents. In some cases, technology is a plus and in some cases it is not nearly as good as people make it out to be. I’m not questioning the effectiveness of GPS, I’m simply saying that instead of talking to this person once a week, now they’re getting data points, hundreds of them, every single day and they’re saying that they can’t process all that information.

Brian: Well, figuring out ways to improve technologies as they exist now was a big element at what we covered in the advisory panel discussions. In that case, one of the things that was discussed was better analysis tools, where reviewing those hundreds of data points didn’t produce hundreds of false alarms that were bouncing into the inbox of all of these supervision officers, but analytics that helped filter that data stream to make it possible to focus on the truly important elements of that.

Other pieces of technology, in terms of trying to deal with volume and deal with distance that came up, were ideas like the ability to deliver programming at a distance, whether that’s using a technology like Skype to allow people to more efficiently meet with the people that they were supervising, or in the case of treatment provision, the people that they were treating as part of their supervision. You’ll have better understandings and evaluations of the effectiveness of those alternative models of delivering that could help remove some of the travel burdens, if you will, in a jurisdiction where officers have to travel over long distances to visit their supervervisees in person.

Leonard: To deal with individuals on supervision through video visitation, either through … I don’t know. My app on my iPhone or my iPad gives me the right to instantaneously communicate with my wife through her iPhone or iPad. Technologies along those lines to deliver services to individuals to ask them questions or to supervise them, that’s what we’re talking about?

Brian: Yes, absolutely but the challenge of understanding whether that’s as effective as the traditional ways of doing that, emphasizing that in order to enable inhibition, we both need the good technology ideas and also need the evaluations, so we have confidence going in that the new ways of doing things will work well.

Leonard: Right. People are saying that, mixing radio shows here, because I’ve done radio shows … I just did a show on video visitation. I’ve done a show on correctional education. People are saying that the overwhelming majority of individuals caught up in the criminal justice system do not get the services they need. If it’s not done by video, if it’s not done by distance learning, it’s probably not going to be done at all. I think people need to understand that, out of everybody out there who has a substance abuse problem when they come in the program probation or when they come in the mainstream corrections, the data that I’m looking at is that only a small minority of those individuals get substance abuse treatment or substance abuse education. Some people are suggesting if it’s not done by video it’s not going to get done.

Joe: That’s certainly an approach that should be examined and exploited but what you’re describing there is an efficiency issue, if we can deliver these services in better, more efficiently, more inexpensively and so on. Certainly that needs to be examined. I think Brian is right. At the end of the day we need to evaluate is it truly better than nothing and if so how much better than nothing. These are things that shouldn’t impede agencies exploring these technologies but research is lagging. We’ll have to examine that and look at it and determine the effectiveness and whether it’s worth the investment.

The larger issue I think we need to talk about GPS and other technological tools to supervise offenders, is most technologies, other than the process type technologies, most supervision type technologies involve work. That’s a point that often people miss is that we just put folks on GPS and that makes it easier, more efficient. Well, that creates a lot of workload. That needs to be examined from the larger context of risk assessment, which is a common theme in the community corrections group as part of this panel. We need better tools to identify who needs what level of service and then targeted resources directed to those folks.

That gets to the larger issue is everyone within this criminal justice system need to be there and the folks that are within that criminal justice system already, do they need the same level of resources. Obviously the answer is no. We need better tools to differentiate who needs what type of intervention.

Leonard: Gentlemen, I want to reintroduce both of you. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re doing a show today on innovative use of corrections technology. Brian Jackson is the director of the Safety and Justice Program and a senior physical scientist at RAND. Joe Russo, back at our microphones, is a researcher at the University of Denver focusing on technological issues within the correctional sector. The document that we’re talking about is “Fostering Innovation in Community and Institutional Corrections: Identifying High Priority Technology and Other Needs in the U.S. Corrections Sector”. Want to give out the websites for both gentlemen and the document for RAND www.RAND.org. We’ll have the direct URL or the address to get you to that document but you can also find it by searching RAND’s website or simply Googling it. Joe is at the University of Denver, www.JustNet J-U-S-T-N-E-T .org O-R-G.

Gentlemen, to enter into this new era of corrections, whether it be mainstream corrections in a prison or whether it be a parole and probation agent who usually comes with a bachelors degree or higher, you’re talking about a fairly technologically sophisticated individual who can handle multiple technological platforms at the same time to supervise his or her community supervision population, or to run a safe and efficient prison system. We’re talking about a level of technology that we do not have now, correct?

Joe: It is in some respects the technology is already in place. The technology will grow and improve and that’s going to be continuous. I think that the point that you’re getting at, Leonard, is that correction is changing to a degree that there’s a large [inaudible 00:19:07] from specialization. If you go into a prison, a newer prison these days, almost everything is wired so the technical skills needed to operate a prison or run facilities within a prison, are much different than they were 20 years ago. That’s going to continue to change. More and more prisons are looking at allowing access to the internet for inmates as part of education reentry services. Almost every security system plugs in or is connected to a network in some way.

A lot of the same things are happening through the corrections whether it’s GPS or social media, monitoring, whatever the case might be. As society changes and becomes more technologically advanced, the supervision services have to keep pace and certainly the job is changing. On the positive side, with millennials and other generations coming into the workforce, they’re more ready and adaptable to that approach.

Leonard: To ask that person … Let’s just say going back to community corrections, and I don’t mean to keep harping on community corrections, but that’s where I’ve spent the last 11 years with Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency here in downtown Washington. To be able to analyze an individual, figure out through some algorithm as to whether or not this person is high risk, medium risk, or no risk, what that person’s needs are, what they’re not, figure out whether or not that person should be supervised at all or placed on the lowest level of supervision or the highest level of supervision, operate a GPS unit, video interface with that person on a fairly regular basis, that requires a certain sophistication. That requires a certain wherewithal and do we have that workforce now?

Brian: In all sectors we have that challenge as technology changes. Me working at a research environment, I use very different technologies and interface with my colleagues in a very different way than what’s happened 20 years ago, and that creates training challenges. Some of that is solved by, as Joe pointed out, the millennials coming in to the sector and bringing with them greater technological familiarity and a comfort level simply because they’ve used a lot of technology similar to this.

In many of the areas, in the discussions with our advisory panel as part of this work, is through the training implications of both technologies and how to use them and how to make decisions about acquiring them, came out as part of the discussion as a key element to thinking about innovation in corrections, whether that is training up individual practitioners to use the technology effectively, or whether that’s figuring out how to present information to leaders who are making decisions about technologies that they have to learn about as they’re making the assessment in procurement decisions.

A lot of this falls into an area of how do we produce that information in a way where the sector can use it effectively, since if we want innovation, part of that is arming the people, who are making the choices and who are using the technologies on a daily basis, with what they need to use it effectively. You can’t get good outcomes just by buying new technology and assuming that it will happen and work well if there’s an investment that needs to be made there to let it be adopted effectively by the organization and its members.

Leonard: Part of the document talks about the poor outcomes on key correctional measures of effectiveness, notably offender recidivism. Offender recidivism measured by … I can think of three historic documents and documents from other individuals and taking a look at individual research programs, is pretty daggone high in terms of recontact with the criminal justice system, rearrest. Generally the mantra has been within three years of two-thirds of rearrested and fifty percent re-incarcerated. You take a look at other reports and you get variations on those figures but in essence the figures are high. How does technology have an impact, have a bearing on improving the effectiveness in terms of offender outcomes?

Joe: Well, I’ll jump in. I think technology in the prison sector can be very useful and then is already being applied to support reentry. I mentioned earlier about agencies being more open to internet access if not complete, that which is not on the table yet, but at least access to internet content to help offenders develop their young vocational skills, education skills, make connections with potential employers and then in resources in the community. Between video visitation, video conferencing in general, giving offenders access to the community before they reach the community, I think technology can be leveraged to a great degree.

Leonard: RAND, interestingly enough, did an overview. Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m pretty daggone sure it was RAND. I think I saw it yesterday. Talking about correctional education in part of that document they suggested that the video delivery of services was as effective as in person. I may be overplaying my hand here but it was pretty encouraging in terms of what you can do through video delivery. Am I right or wrong?

Brian: Yes, that was certainly part of that study done by a number of my colleagues here at RAND who were looking both at the effectiveness overall of educational interventions and the very significant effect and cost effective effect that they have on reducing recidivism after release, but also development of technology in delivering those educational interventions. Again this comes down to resources, where it may be more costly to deliver education in person and be able to deliver it at a distance, whether that’s on a tablet based system or a video based system in a classroom, where the technology can become the force multiplier to let these services to reach more inmates, and as a result hopefully have a better effect for them as they leave to reintegrate into society, and hopefully find other things to do that do not lead them back into the correctional system.

Leonard: There are companies out there and I guess I shouldn’t mention the one company that I have in mind. I’m confronted as a person in the criminal justice system who’s been doing public affairs for the last 35 years. I’m always confronted with new technologies and I’m always confronted with a need to learn. There’s a company out there that provides technological overviews of equipment, of programs, of modalities that don’t assume that you have any prior knowledge of that technology at all. They walk you step by step, bit by bit, to the point where you feel pretty comfortable creating Final Cut Pro and creating a green screen movie in Final Cut Pro. This seems to be a powerful event in our lives in terms of the potential for delivering educational programs, vocational programs, maybe even mental health issues.

Joe: Well, absolutely. I mean often we talk about telemedicine as a way to deliver medical services but it’s established as well as a way to make contact and deliver services to inmates in prisons and even folks in the community. One of the things that came across during our research here was the needs of the rural agencies. Because of isolation, it’s not an efficiency issue in terms of using video to connect with their clientele. It’s not a resource issue. There is no other way to effectively connect with their clientele other than video and other technology approaches so it’s very important.

Leonard: Final three minutes of the program, we have a criminal justice system that is emerging in the technological arena but I don’t get the sense that we’re all that terribly sophisticated. I don’t get the sense that a lot of our agencies are run by people with tech backgrounds. How long will it take the criminal justice system to gear up, fund, train, implement a technological solution across the board for managing offenders, both in the community or managing people behind prison bars?

Brian: Well, certainly innovation across the entire system is a high bar. I mean in our criminal justice system the fact that we do this in a decentralized way means that we have answered to a lot of independent actors that are making their own decisions, that face their own financial constraints and their own legacy systems constraints. If you’re thinking about innovation across the board in the same way, it’ll be a long time, but the advantage that we have in that is that we have a lot of separate agencies that can do experiments and can try things and figure out what works. That provides a benefit to the other agencies that would come after them. On the one hand, thinking about uniform innovation, it will be a long time but what I’m encouraged by, particularly with the great ideas that came up in our advisory panels, is that we’ve got a lot of agencies out there that are trying new things and their experience can help lead the way for other agencies that come after.

Leonard: Yeah, but I’m suggesting that there’s a sense of … I don’t want to use the word panic but apprehension on the part of community corrections saying, “We need this stuff now.” If we’re going to deinstitutionalize, therefore rely more upon community supervision and you’re going to even increase the caseloads that we’re dealing with now, you’ve got to give us tools. I think that what I’m hearing is a need for speed.

Joe: There’s no doubt that there’s urgency but it’s a double edged sword. You don’t want to introduce technologies that haven’t been validated in the field or that potentially create an increased workload like GPS’s so it’s a balancing act. As Brian said there are agencies who are doing things piecemeal. It’s probably not the right term. Here and there they’re experimenting and some are having very good results.

Leonard: All right, Joe. You’ve got the final word. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve had Brian Jackson, the Director of safety and justice programs for RAND, Joe Russo, a researcher for the University of Denver today talking about an extraordinary document, “Fostering Innovation in Community and Institutional Corrections”. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is D.C. Public Safety. We appreciate your comments. We even appreciate your criticisms and we want everybody to have themselves a very pleasant day.

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Parole in America

March 18, 2016 by

DC Public Safety Radio

See the main site at http://media.csosa.gov

See the radio program at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2016/03/parole-in-america-the-marshall-project/

Leonard: From the nation’s capital this is DC Public Safety I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen today’s show is Parole in America and today’s guest is Beth Schwartzapfel. She is a staff writer for the Marshall product www.themarshallproject.org. Beth welcome to DC Public Safety.

Beth: Thanks for having me.

Leonard: The Marshall project give me a quick overview.

Beth: We’re a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers the criminal justice system. We’re very much like a traditional newspaper magazine where all of us come from a world of newspapers and magazines but we don’t rely on advertisers we just rely on foundations and readers to support us.

Leonard: To my listeners I go to the Marshall Project every single day. They give us a nation of news throughout the United States and throughout the world, it’s extraordinary interesting again www.themarshallproject.org. You wrote an article Life Without Parole and I’ve read it several times give me a quick summation.

Beth: Basically we took a look at the system of parole boards across the 50 states in our country and what we found was we’re in this area where there seems to be this political consensus from both sides of the aisle perhaps there is a temporary pause in that consensus as the Republican Presidential candidates battle it out. In any case, until the primary season heated up there seems to have been a political consensus from both sides of the aisle and from all walks of life in this country. That our criminal justice system has gotten out of control. There’s too many people in prison, that when they go they go for too long. That there’s this net that ensnares too many people for way too long for low-level crimes. There’s even been some talk that even for more serious crimes people are there for too long, there’s not enough rehabilitation and they’re not getting out with enough tools to succeed in the outside world.

As we’ve sort of began to examine each step in the process we are having this national conversation about policing, we seem to be having a national conversation about sentencing. There is this giant part of the Criminal Justice System that nobody had really taken a look or accounted for and that’s parole boards. Because in so many cases in this country how long a person serves in prison is actually not decided by a judge or a jury but actually by a parole board.

Leonard: For the initiated, give me a definition of parole and why it’s different from maxing out which we know is mandatory release and probation. What is parole?

Beth: In many states when someone is given a sentence for a crime or in some states it varies what type of crime whether they’re given this type of sentence but it’s called an indeterminate sentence. That means they might be sentenced to five to ten years, or 25 years to life. What that means is they could be released at any time in that window. In a five to ten years sentence they could be released at 5 years, 6 years, 7 years, 8 year, 9 years, 10 years. The decision about when in that window they get released is made by a parole board.

Leonard: Now let me see if I can summarize this, my impression is this, is that during the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s parole was used a lot and the whole concept was isn’t it better to have this person prepared. Ordinarily the person in the prison system goes through GED courses, vocational courses, substance abuse courses if they are available. They behave themselves while in prison and the parole board rewarded them with an early out in lopping in some cases a significant number of years off of their sentence and releasing them under parole supervision. That at one time was the mainstream method of getting out of prison in the United States and that has shrunk considerably, do I have that right?

Beth: That’s precisely correct. The one thing I will say is at that time it wasn’t even really considered early release because when a judge would sentence somebody that judge would sort of in the back of their mind know that it was in all likelihood that the person would be released at some early point in their sentence if they could prove that they were rehabilitated because that’s just kind of how the system works. Early release is often used interchangeably with parole but I would say that since parole is built into the sentence anyway it is not necessarily early.

Leonard: Good point. But you agree with me that it’s declined and declined dramatically throughout the years and now we are re-examining the use of parole now.

Beth: Considerably. In the 1970s somewhere in the neighborhood of three quarters of all American prisoners were released by parole boards. The number now is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 quarter.

Leonard: What happened?

Beth: A number of things happened, the short answer is the 1990s happened, the tough on crime era. During the tough on crime era there seemed to be this political move towards parole being seen as soft on crime. Parole being seen as we just talked about as early release. Governors who were looking for a way of posturing that they were not soft on crime, would move to abolish parole, not just governors of course legislators too. During this time period parole was abolished in more than a dozen states. In other states that maintain their parole board’s, parole became increasingly hard to get. Part of the reason for that is parole board members are by and large political appointees. In 44 States they are appointed entirely by governors and then almost all of the remaining States they are appointed at least in part by governors.

In many of those states they’re also confirmed by legislators. The parole board members were and are explicitly sensitive to political wins let’s say. During this era when the public was calling for more cops, more prisons, more jails, locking more people up, the parole board was very sensitive to that. So here if somebody came before that would have been a shoo-in for parole, somebody who had really cleaned up their act and did a really good job in prison the parole board would say no way I’m letting out a murderer because this is going to be in the paper tomorrow and the Governor might boot me off the parole board.

Leonard: In the state of Maryland about 20 years ago where I was Director of Public Relations for the Maryland Department of Safety and Correctional Services. Some of my agencies were a piece of cake like the law enforcement agencies, the correctional agencies were a bit tougher but I also represented the parole board in the state of Maryland. I spoke to the various chairs of the parole board, the parole commission throughout my years there. We were all startled buy all the headlines throughout the country about the parole board getting in trouble because this person went out and committed another violent crime. The fear and the acknowledgement of the political liability of releasing folks with history of violence became real. My guess is that if we experienced that in the state of Maryland that experience transcended the state and one throughout the country.

Beth: Certainly and continues to this day. I heard from an inmate in Ohio who went to a little in-service training that the parole board put on for inmates who are eligible for parole to sort of help them to understand what to expect. A large part of the training was this news clip they all had to watch about this guy who got parole and went out and killed somebody. The parole board members as part of this presentation talked about what a very complicated position they are in politically speaking. How they are public servants accountable to the public and the public doesn’t want to see people like them released. Certainly this is a reality every where you go.

That said when you talk to experts who study the issue they all say look you’re dealing with human behavior it’s impossible to expect a parole board to never make a mistake. It’s even incorrect a lot of the time to call them mistakes. Sometimes the parole board does overlook some major red flags or doesn’t have processes in place to get paper or some kind of paperwork that would have indicated the presence of a red flag. More often than not the person really does seem in the board’s best estimation to be rehabilitated.

Nobody has a crystal ball and every parole board member that I spoke with told me this. It’s just impossible to think that they’re never going to release somebody who goes on to commit a crime. It’s just human nature. When a criminologist at Temple University sort of did this post-mortem of the parole board there after one of these incidence, he looked at it and he said the board was just doing their job, they didn’t do anything wrong and it’s unreasonable to say that we should no longer parole people because occasionally somebody goes out and commits another crime. That’s just going to be if you’re going to have parole then that’s just inevitably unfortunately, going to happen from time to time.

Leonard: We’ve been in agreement throughout the program let me try something else. I’ve spoken to a lot of people in the criminal justice system. My counterpart’s spokespeople throughout the country over the course of last 10, 20 years. This is something that I think is somewhat accurate that every Governor has spoken to every Secretary of Public Safety, every Director of Corrections in every state throughout the country saying we are spending way too much money on corrections. I need money for roads, I need money for universities, I need money for education. I need money for all sorts of things and all I see from the corrections budget is that it goes up and up and up. Somehow some way you’ve got to figure out a way of operating and decreasing your budget what can you do. Part of that decreasing of that budget, the decreasing of the prison population would be a reliance upon the parole board to release more people, am I right?

Beth: Certainly. I think there has been instances in recent years of positive ways to implement that kind of strategy and not as positive ways to implement that strategy. For instance, the parole board chair in Nebraska testified to the legislature there that she felt pressure to release inmates that she didn’t feel comfortable releasing. Because the Department of Corrections was leaning so hard on the board to release as many people as possible. These of course were back room hints dropped and meetings where there was subtle or not-so-subtle pressure applied. An alternative way that I’ve seen an approach like that that is in Texas where there was very public hearings where the board through help with some kind of committee adopted a set of target release rates where it was clearly laid out for them that inmates with a certain risk score who had done certain crimes the board should expect to parole X percentages of those people.

When the system is working correctly Texas actually releases a report at the end of each year to show how well they’re meeting these expected benchmarks. Are they actually paroling say, I’m making this number up, but 75% of drug offenders. Are they actually paroling say 25% of violent offenders. Again, I’m making those numbers up but the point is there was this transparent process where the expectations were laid out for the board of how many people in the different categories they were expected to parole each year. Now there are a lots of complaints about how untransparent the Texas system is so I don’t mean to say that they’re doing an awesome job as far as transparency is concerned. What I am saying is that there have been states that have tried to use the parole board positively as a way easing the burden on the number of people that are incarcerated and the millions of dollars that the state is spending on that.

Leonard: Beth I think we’ve nicely set up where the state-of-the-art is now in terms of the parole in terms of the United States. Then I want to get on to a series of questions about the problems in terms of implementing parole. If we have States that are saying to their Secretaries of Public Safety, to their Directors of Corrections you need to decrease the budget, we can no longer pump endless amounts of money into corrections. If we agree to that and we agree that parole is one method amongst many that people are advocating that we use to decrease the pressure on prison systems and to release other people who are deemed not to be a significant risk to public safety then why isn’t it happening, why isn’t it occurring?

Beth: My reporting seems to indicate that it’s largely because of politics. Because the system is set up the way it is, because so many board members are appointed by Governors and confirmed by legislators they are ultimately beholden in some way to public sentiment. Look the average person on the street does not want to see a murderer released from prison. That’s just a sort of knee jerk totally natural reaction of the public. It does not square with the data right of all categories of inmates, murders are actually the very least likely to re-offend probably followed by sex offenders who are also extremely, extremely unlikely to offend. Yet those two categories of offenders are the most despised by the public.

If you have a body that’s responsive to public misinformation, then they’re going to act on that and they’re going to say look it looks to me like you committed this crime in the heat of the moment when you were 20 you’re now 45 you have grandchildren. You have a home to go home to, you have a GED, you have a journeyman’s certificate in plumbing or whatever it is. Get out of here you’re costing us a lot of money and you’re going to cost us even more money as you age. That is sort of the rational evidence-based move for a parole board to take. When you fear that your job is on the line if you make a decision that would be unpopular on the pages the next day then that’s not how you’re going to make decisions.

I did see a number of states that were trying to get away from this model, there are a handful of states where parole board members are civil servants for instance. Where they’re sort of insulated from the political process. There are a couple of states, Hawaii comes to mind where there is a nomination process where it is separate and I think the governor does the ultimate appointing but the names that are floated up to the governor are chosen by this very interesting panel that’s comprised of people from a real mix of backgrounds. Somebody from the state Social Worker Association, somebody from the state’s DA Association. The people who end up in the pool for the governor to choose from have been extremely well bedded and have really deep backgrounds in the subject matter.

Another really interesting system I found was in I believe it was in South Dakota where the coming into prison all inmates have to make a plan for themselves. They sit down with a social worker, there is a system set up where by they layout a map, a road map for their time in prison. They set certain goals and the person works with them to make sure they are realistic goals, such as I will get my GED, or I will complete this anger management class or I will attend AAA every week or whatever that is. If you are found at the end of your incarceration to have been “substantially” compliant with this plan that you made and again the rules of what substantially compliant are clearly laid out. Then you never go to the parole board you just get paroled. If you are not substantially compliant then you go before the parole board and if there are good reasons you weren’t compliant then you can make your case to the board. If you were substantially compliant then there is no deliberation, there is no politics you just get out.

Leonard: Our guest today is Beth Schwartzapfel she is a staff writer with The Marshall Project www.themarshallproject.org. Beth you wrote this article Life Without Parole it’s an extraordinarily interesting article and I’ll put it in the show notes for DC Public Safety so others can get to it. You and I have been having a running e-mail conversation about the effect of the parole. I took a look at the data and it’s aged data I will admit from the Source book of Criminal Justice Statistics. It indicates that those people who successfully complete their time under supervision that people paroled do better than those people who are mandatorily released. Do you have thoughts on that?

Beth: I have not found any consensus in the community of academics who study this on whether people who are released on parole do better than those who max out. I’ve seen studies that say they do, I’ve seen studies that say they don’t. I’ve seen very passionate academics use data to make the case in both directions. I will say that it makes intuitive sense that people who are released on parole do better but not for the reason you would think. I think advocates for parole board say that people who are released on parole do better than those who max out because the parole board is very good at only releasing people who are bound to do well on the outside. To me it seems clear that the parole board’s are so very conservative that they’re really only going to release people who they know are not going to come back to bite them.

Therefore, of course the people who they release are going to do better. Because they’re just not taking chances. If they have somebody who is sort of a jump call, a jump ball somebody who looks like they might do well but they might not, the way the system is set up right now they’re probably more likely to keep them in then to let them out.

The numbers are going to be higher on parole, excuse me the recidivism numbers may turn out to then be lower among people who are released on parole then people who max out. I definitely heard skeptical people say is this really the measure we want to be using. What do we mean when we say recidivism does somebody say committed a sex crime did they commit another sex crime or do they commit, did they rob the corner store. That’s not to say one is better than the other of course but it is to ask what do we want from our parole boards and what do we want from our criminal justice system?

Leonard: Inst that a question across-the-board I do want to touch upon that for the rest of the program. It is a matter of perception if we have this sense that we’ve got to decrease pressure on prison systems. Some suggest that we over incarcerate it is true that we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. People are saying what can we do and there is a variety of discussions on a variety of issues talking about ways to reduce the reliance upon incarceration. Many at the front-end many at the back end. People are saying parole you should be doing a better job of releasing more people going back to the models during the 60s, 70s and 80s when most people got out on parole. People don’t seem to have a lot of confidence in the parole process and my guess is that because we’re so secretive about what is parole, how decisions are made, how it operates, what it does. I think people lack confidence in the paroling process and I wanted to get your opinion.

Beth: I think that’s 100% true. As the board chair in New Hampshire told me people can’t trust what they can’t see. The interesting thing is the clip that I was mentioning earlier, the news clip that the Ohio Parole Board shows to people to sort of demonstrate why they’re in such an uncomfortable position. What struck me when I watch that news clip is that the television reporter who did that segment was incredibly frustrated by not being able to get an answer from the board about why they released this guy. They weren’t even calling the board out for releasing him. They were calling the board out for not being able to explain why they released him. I really think and this is what emerged in the course of that Temple University study that I told you about earlier, that when the board can explain why they made the decision that they made when they have really clear guidelines they follow consistently and that they’re transparent about.

I think the people have a lot more empathy towards them and understanding for the reason that they make the decisions that they make. In our democratic society if people understand why the boards are doing what they’re doing and they don’t like it they can pressure their legislators or they can pressure their governor to sort of change the way the system works. If we don’t know what they’re doing, if they’re just hiding behind these sort of veils of secrecy then yeah people are going to be extremely frustrated.

Leonard: Here I go back to my Maryland experience in all states of our national … and we have Federal Privacy Acts but every state has a Privacy Act and in every state medical and psychological information are required prohibitions. I could lose my job and go to prison if I gave out information on an offender that dealt with medical and psychological information. Some states such as Maryland had a sociological provision which what is sociological. If you have all of these privacy laws and all of these restrictions on what you can give regarding a particular offender, how can the parole board’s be open and honest.

You can have a person with a raging substance abuse history, or raging cocaine history and maybe through the process he has gone through the prison system he’s no longer testing positive, he’s been through all of the courses so he seems to have his drug substance abuse problem under control. That may be a really decent reason as to why the parole board chose to parole him considering that there’s very strong evidence correlating the degree of substance abuse and criminal activity. There’s a good reason for moving this person along giving, this person an opportunity but you can’t talk about that.

Beth: I would say that’s never prevented our criminal justice system from transparency before. That kind of material is routinely introduced into evidence in criminal trials and all of the records for criminal trials are public records. I don’t see why the parole board needs to operate under different rules than any other players in our criminal justice system.

Leonard: Because a Judicial System operates under a different set of rules than the executive system. The executive branch of government which we all belong to make these required prohibitions.

Beth: Well what some people would say, what I heard from some people who are calling for the abolition of parole boards for instance the model penal code which is this very influential document written by legal scholars and is revised every number of years. The most recent revisions of the model penal code calls for ending the system of parole and instead implementing a second look system. The Colson Task Force also recommended a system like this a second look system that transfers the function of the parole board back to the Judiciary where after people have served a long portion of a long sentence, they can go before a judge who can evaluate whether circumstances have changed enough to warrant a changing of their sentence. It’s for precisely that reason that our judicial system has all these rules in place to protect and safeguard people’s constitutional rights. Since parole board’s don’t operate under those same safeguards they’re feeling, the feeling of these critics is those kind of decisions really belong in the courtroom.

Leonard: We are going to be doing to radio shows in the near future on the Colson Task Force called reforming Federal Corrections. We’re going to be touching upon all of that in the near future with people, with members of the task force. In the final analysis what we need is a way of mechanism for taking individuals who are of reasonable risks and moving them through the criminal justice system, assuming that they’ve done well on prison. Assuming they’ve taken the proper courses. Assuming that there has been victim input, assuming that they have bettered themselves as much as you possibly can considering the lack of services within a lot of prison systems. They become reasonable risks and society should expect those reasonable risks to take place as we did again, throughout the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80s. Am I right?

Beth: I know as a reporter I’m not here to make policy prescriptions but yes that’s what many people who are calling for the reform of parole board’s are calling for precisely that.

Leonard: The whole idea is as you said a set of specific criteria that if they meet that criteria the presumption would be the presumption to release. If a person went infraction free in the prison system and considering how crowded our prison systems are, that’s very important in terms of running safe and sane institutions. If a person had no infractions, went to his GED courses or completed them, got his plumbing certificate, completed substance abuse. Then the presumption at a certain point from a statutory point of view this is something and acted from a general assembly would be that unless there was a compelling reason that person probably would be released.

Beth: Correct, that is the system in South Dakota and what I will also say is that if you talk to wardens and correctional administrators they all say that a predictable parole policy is a really great behavior management tool. Because if people know and trust that if they follow the rules that they will be awarded parole accordingly. Then they’re much more likely to follow the rules and do what they’re supposed to do. Whereas in states where parole feels arbitrary, like some guys who follow the rules get it and other guys don’t for reasons nobody can’t quite discern. Then it no longer seems like a good incentive to do the right thing. It’s kind of a crap shoot if you do the right thing whether you’re going to get parole or not.

Leonard: Where do you see parole in the next 10 years along the lines of the model that we’ve been discussing?

Beth: That is a really good question. I’ve seen the one place that there seems to be some movement on changing their parole system is Virginia. Governor Terry McAuliffe called a some kind of commission to study whether the state should reinstate it’s parole board. Virginia was one of the states that abolished parole during the 90s. That commission is currently hearing testimony and studying and I honestly don’t know what they’re going to decide to do. Because there is a really big debate going on, if you can call a handful criminologist studying this tiny corner a big debate. But among those that study it there really is a debate of whether it makes sense to rely more heavily on parole as a way to control prison populations.

Assuming you can reform the lack of transparency and the lack of accountability and sort of systematized the way parole board’s do business. Then on the other side of the debate there’s people that just say there’s not enough constitutional protections, there’s just no way to not have the whole process be tangled up in politics. It’s better to just jettison it altogether and build a second mechanism into the judiciary. I really don’t know what direction it’s going to go in.

Leonard: Transparency becomes the key because the average citizen sees a transparent process and understands where they’re going with it, they’re going to be more prone to accept it.

Beth: I certainly think so and one thing I will say is there is this researcher in Canada his name is Ralph Ceron and he’s piloting this structured decision making model that really allows for a new and interesting level of transparency.

Leonard: Our Guest today has been Beth Schwartzapfel she’s a staff writer for The Marshall Project, www.themarshallproject.org. Ladies and gentlemen this is DC Public Safety we appreciate your comments we even appreciate your criticism and we want everyone to have themselves a very pleasant day.

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Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Corrections-Prisons, Parole and Probation, What Works Tagged With: ,

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Comcast Interview with Nancy Ware

November 14, 2014 by

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.

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Filed Under: Criminal Justice, High Risk Drug Offenders, Interviews with Policy Makers, Parole and Probation, Probation, Youthful Offender Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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The Changing Role of Parole in the US-DC Public Safety Radio

May 31, 2013 by

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

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

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2013/05/thechanging-role-of-parole-in-the-us-dc-public-safety-radio/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, our program today is on the changing role of parole, and we’re honored to have Patricia Cushwa. She is a commissioner of the US Parole Commission. The web address there: www.justice.gov/uspc, which stands for “United States Parole Commission.” Pat Cushwa, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Pat Cushwa: Good to see you again, Len.

Len Sipes: Alright, Pat and I go way back, full disclosure. She was chair of the Parole Commission for the State of Maryland when I worked as the director of public information for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. We had a load of correctional and law enforcement agencies, and Pat was chair of the Parole Commission, so Pat and I go way back. Pat is what I consider to be a pioneer within the criminal justice system because, quite frankly, it’s a male-dominated field, and there simply weren’t too many women executives around when I was with the Maryland Department of Public Safety. And Pat Cushwa was not only the chair of the Parole Commission; she was a leader in the criminal justice system in the State of Maryland, as she continues to be a leader with the United States Parole Commission. Pat, did I get all that right?

Pat Cushwa: I think you did, and we’re going back twenty years, and yes, when I came in to Parole in Maryland, there were very few women there – one other person on the board – and then I got to be chair, as you know. And the world changed for me and, I hope, for the better for Maryland’s criminal justice system.

Len Sipes: Well, you did an extraordinarily good job. You have the grace and the knowledge to smooth over ruffled feathers. I think that was one of the things you did extraordinarily well. You treated everybody with kindness and courtesy, but at the same time, you made some extraordinarily good and hard decisions with the Parole Commission, both within the State of Maryland and with the US Parole Commission. What was it like, switching over from the State of Maryland to the US Parole Commission?

Pat Cushwa: Well, as you know, I did serve in the State Senate in the State of Maryland, so state government was a big love of mine, but after twelve years there, getting a presidential appointment through my US senators really has been the capstone of my parole career. And what you learn in the states really informs what you’re doing with the federal government. It’s all local, it’s like politics. It’s all local.

Len Sipes: Everything’s local. Everything’s local. And what was it like? Did people…? Did you have an issue, did you have any issues being a woman leader in the correctional system, in the parole system? Because Parole had to interact with so many other agencies, so it wasn’t in isolation. You were part of the Maryland Department of Public Safety, so I sat there many a staff meeting with all these agency heads, and you were the epitome of reason. And again, you had this ability, a lovely public-relations ability and sense of personal class, but what was it like, being a woman in charge of a major criminal justice agency? Were there any issues for you?

Pat Cushwa: Yes, there were some big challenges, and I don’t think I knew until I got there how many that there would be, and I came into parole just as women were starting to break glass ceilings or break prison doors everywhere. At the end of the day – and I think you’re right – it’s how you communicate with people, it’s your business. There was a lot of skepticism at first. I really felt I had to prove myself. But if you’re a woman at the table, and you’re able to speak up, and you know what you’re talking about, and you work just a little bit more, once you gain the respect of your male colleagues, then they really come forward and help you. And that is what happened.

Len Sipes: So many women I’ve spoken to within the criminal justice system have told that it’s been a little difficult for them, that getting accepted was a bit of an issue. So, I don’t want to belabor this point, but I just want to acknowledge the fact that you were a pioneer in terms of coming in and being commissioner and eventually being the chair of the Parole Commission of the State of Maryland. So, somebody had to like you, somebody had to respect you to give you that responsibility.

Pat Cushwa: Well, I was the first woman in Maryland to chair the Parole Commission. I was the first woman in my hometown of Williamsport to be elected to a town council.

Len Sipes: Williamsport, Maryland.

Pat Cushwa: Yeah, little Williamsport, Maryland. But yes, I was made chair by Governor Glendening, who actively was recruiting women for cabinet positions, and he was looking for somebody with administrative experience – if you’re going to run an agency of some ninety people. And mostly victims’ issues were coming into Parole, and everybody thought it would be the death of Parole. Victims’ issues saved Parole. And I had started a spouse abuse agency in Washington County called Casa.

Len Sipes: Yes.

Pat Cushwa: And he knew I was very involved in women’s issues, domestic violence, and in victim issues, and it worked out well, both for victims’ issues and for me. And as you know, Len – and we do go back, you travelled the state without our Lt. Governor – people had bad ideas about where domestic violence was. They were focusing on a city, and you get into the rural areas, you get where there’re sex offenses, incest. You’re looking at rural areas and where you should put money, so policy became a big part of it, but not a lot of money in the state – you better allocate your resources correctly.

Len Sipes: Okay. We were talking today, the title of today’s show is The Changing Role of Parole in the United States. One of the things that I find a bit interesting is that, if you take a look at data over the course of years on how well people do when they come out of the prison system, there is no question that those paroled versus those not paroled – either mandatorily released or come out under supervised release but they’re not paroled, they basically serve a percentage of their sentence until the state or the federal government can no longer legally hold them – and then they come out and the people paroled versus the people non-paroled, there is a substantial difference in every single year. I’ve seen, of data that I’ve seen, there’s a substantial difference. Parolees do better than those not paroled, yet the dichotomy is that, for years, parole was almost a dirty word.

Pat Cushwa: And it’s still almost a dirty word in some areas, but you know, what parole – the old parole is gone and it should have been. There wasn’t risk-assessment, there were people just trying to make judgments based on their past careers. Nowadays, the sexy new word for parole is “reentry.”

Len Sipes: Is “offender reentry,” right.

Pat Cushwa: Yes, it absolutely is. And you’re right, in state and in the federal government, people that go out under parole, even if it’s only two years at the end of their sentence, you have somebody to supervise and guide.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: They’re not coming back with violent crimes. So the buck has to stop somewhere. Without a parole agency looking at what happens right before release and right after, you’re just going to have recidivism.

Len Sipes: The question is whether or not you want the person supervised upon release or not, or assisted upon release or not. That’s the bottom line. We should explain what parole is, because there are going to be different people listening to this program. Parole is a discretionary release from prison. A mandatory release is, you’ve hit the time that a state can legally hold you – that plus whatever credits you get in prison – you have to let the person go. So, there’s a difference between saying, “I release you at fifty percent of your sentence, but I release you with these conditions: substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, you have to make restitutions,” those sorts of things. So, there, generally speaking, seems to be conditions attached to the parole for the privilege of getting out before you could legally get out. Is that right?

Pat Cushwa: Yes, that’s right. You’re making an important distinction, because any time you pick up a newspaper, it will say, you know, “Parolee on a rampage.” Most of the time, well, sixty, seventy percent of the time, that person has not been released by parole.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: They’ve been released through law, through the prison system.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: So, “parolee” became a generic term.

Len Sipes: Yes.

Pat Cushwa: And people shouldn’t use it and they do, and it’s a big, I think, a public relations issue to let people know how people are getting out and what is a safer way to get out.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: So, ninety-eight percent of people in state and federal prisons are going to be released at some period, no matter who they’re released by. So, you know, “do the crime, do the time” means do eighty-five percent of the time, or get some good credits to get out. I think where parole is better is, some of the worst people in the system know how to do time. People leave them alone. You know, they don’t want to be near you, they’re afraid of you, so you can have a perfectly clean institutional record, no disciplinary actions. That doesn’t mean that you’re not a risk for reoffending, and that’s what parole does. The federal parole board was the first to ever have risk-assessment, the salient factor score, so that you have something to guide you. Just like the Sentencing Commission has guidelines, we have guidelines based on the person’s personal history, as well as the severity and the type of the crime. So, a parole commission can say, “This person should get every bit, every day that we can get until we’re ready to supervise, because prison is for people like this.”

Len Sipes: The other thing that I do want to clarify is that, at the federal level, parole ended. Parole ended when?

Pat Cushwa: 1987.

Len Sipes: Okay. And so now, offenders, when they go to a federal prison, they serve eighty-five percent of their sentence and, interestingly enough, offenders within Washington, D.C., when they’re committed – when they’re convicted of a D.C. Code violation, they also go to federal prison and you have jurisdiction over them as well.

Pat Cushwa: Exactly. We have jurisdiction in the federal system, anybody who committed their crime before 1987.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: So, there are people and Mafia figures, big figures, big crime areas where the conviction doesn’t happen until after ’87, they’re still under our jurisdiction, and we have about 2,500 still in federal parole. And in D.C., it was 2,000. Anybody, any D.C. Code offender who committed a crime before the year 2000.

Len Sipes: Right, August of 2000.

Pat Cushwa: Yes. And then we took over supervised release, and that’s where we work with CSOSA, with your supervision agency sometimes.

Len Sipes: Well, and that’s the other point that I wanted to emphasize, is that even though parole is ended, even though that they are coming out by law at eighty-five percent, we or federal probation, we supervise these individuals, and if there’s an issue with that last fifteen percent, you are the final arbitrator of issues.

Pat Cushwa: Yes. With D.C. supervised release, those that are going out under new law that were sentenced after ’87, the courts oversee that part of the supervision. They have to be paroled for US Parole to oversee on that level.

Len Sipes: Ah, so even the “mandatories” go back to the courts for…

Pat Cushwa: After ’87, yes.

Len Sipes: After ’87, okay.

Pat Cushwa: But if you look at our… There are about 22 thousand federal offenders that are out on release —

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: — that we have jurisdiction over. That’s our jurisdiction. And I think the good thing is, here you ask about recidivism – they’ve done, they’ve had careful supervision, they’ve done longer sentences. The last I checked, there were only 300 warrants out on 22 thousand people, so you’re looking at about a two percent recidivism. In your business, you know, that’s darn good.

Len Sipes: That’s wonderful. Alright, so you’ve been chair of the Parole Commission in the State of Maryland. You are a commissioner with the United States Parole Commission at the federal level. You’ve seen everything. This has been your bread and butter; you’ve been in a leadership role. And I’ve mentioned before the difference between the recidivism rates of people on parole versus people who are legally released, they’re mandatorily released. You know, so parole obviously has a role, and now, you know, the states are really complaining that they can no longer afford to build more prisons. Parole is now coming back in vogue. Parole, philosophically, people are saying, “Hey, they do better under parole, and we can’t continue to build prisons in the way that we have, and we do want to be sure that we have the prison beds available for the violent offenders and the people who pose a clear and present risk to public safety. We’ve got to be sure that those that don’t fall into that category are somehow, some way released earlier, under supervision, and that includes paroles.” So it’s been a bit of a 180 degree turn in the ship of state and public opinion in terms of the concept of parole.

Pat Cushwa: I don’t think people ever like the concept of early release, but I think you hit the point there. The difference between violent and non-violent offenders. The public overwhelmingly would rather see a drug… druggie treated and go on the streets clean than to go into a prison and come out and go through the same old cycle again. And I think, again, I think that parole will begin to exist. It is a changing role. There’re going to be review boards, there’re going to be prison safety valve boards. They’re going to go out and they’re going to perform a reentry role. And I think that you’re going to see parole boards across the nation changing their names to reflect what they honestly do, that “parole” no longer really says what it is they’re doing.

Len Sipes: Yeah. It’s not going to stop newspapers from claiming “parolee does this” or “parolee does that,” but I understand what you’re trying to say. Will break now. We’re just about half-way though the program. This program is flying by very quickly. Ladies and gentlemen, our guest today is Patricia Cushwa. She is a commissioner with the United States Parole Commission – www.justice (J-U-S-T-I-C-E). gov/uspc, which stands for “United States Parole Commission.” Pat Cushwa has been around as commissioner of the Parole Board for the State of Maryland, as well as a commissioner with the United States Parole Commission.  She has done just about everything there is in terms of parole. So, do you think we should rename it – to pick it up from where we were before the break – instead of “Parole,” it should be “The United States Board of Reentry”?

Pat Cushwa: Well, I think perhaps in the case of the federal system, where parole has been abolished and we’re doing supervised release and beginning to look at non-violent offenders, yes, it should be “The US Board of Sentence…” “The US Sentence Review Board” is what I would call it. It’s that you’re reviewing a portion of a sentence to decide what is going to be the best public safety release.

Len Sipes: What about at the state level? I mean, do we do away with the name “parole” and go back to “reentry”?

Pat Cushwa: Some states have. I would say there are probably twelve to fourteen states who have prison review boards who call themselves by what they’re actually doing. And you shouldn’t be playing games, but you should label yourself as you are, and if ninety percent of what you’re doing is not a discretionary release, why are you claiming you’re doing it?

Len Sipes: Right. But I mean, that’s that heart and soul of people’s objection to parole. It’s the fact that the offender goes to prison for a five-year sentence – and let’s just say he’s a burglar –and he does only fifty percent of the sentence, maybe two and a half years. Maybe he does two years on five, which is not unusual for a quote-unquote non-violent offender. He comes out, even under supervision, you know, there’s still every possibility that he could be rearrested, he could be reconvicted, and we can have somebody standing there and saying, “Why in the name of heavens was this person with a criminal history before this burglary, why in the name of heavens was this person released early?” And that’s a very legitimate question. I mean, if we’re talking about victims and being sensitive to victims’ issues, that’s a very legitimate question.

Pat Cushwa: Well, you went through this with state parole, and probably that was one of your bigger challenges in Maryland, is trying to get these issues across. You have to look at non-violent offenders and assess them and release them differently so the violent offenders stay in. When you meet with victims, when you talk to victims, most of the time, in Maryland, if we say, “If we parole them, they’re going to go out with three years’ supervision and they’re going to be on this kind of a registry with stay-away orders, or we can say no and they’ll go out through the prison system and there won’t be any supervision. What do you want?” Well…

Len Sipes: Right. Right. But that needs to be explained. It needs to be explained in a way that the average person can understand, and also making room for the truly dangerous. I mean, somebody suggested to me some time ago that we have to distinguish between those people who are a pain in the butt to society versus those people who are dangerous to society. And we cannot afford – and states are saying this, all throughout the United States. I mean, they’re being abundantly clear that we cannot continue the massive prison-building program that we’ve had, thus we come to a conundrum. How do we protect public safety and not spend massive amounts of tax-paid dollars to build more prisons, and how do we do it in such a way that increases the odds for public safety? We can’t say “eliminate crime” because there are no guarantees under community supervision. Parole and objective risk instruments, and experienced people making experienced decisions, seem to be in our best interest.

Pat Cushwa: Yes, and a lot of these people have to come off the street even for a short amount of time. So, it could be a half-way house that you’re putting somebody in. I think that it’s “build it and they will come.” You could build prisons forever and you could fill them up with people, and let’s just say a lot of them are not even people that even should be in a prison. Prisons inherited – when we got away from civil commitment, guess who got people with mental challenges?

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: And certainly, a prison is to punish people and put them away, and help if you can, but they are not capable of doing mental health treatment. They’re not drug treatment facilities.

Len Sipes: Part of this philosophy is that, if you want parole, a counselor in a prison system sits down with you and says, “Alright, John, you have a history of mental illness, you have to be in this program. You have a history of substance abuse, you have to complete this particular program. It wouldn’t really hurt if you got your GED and your plumbing certificate. And oh, by the way, don’t act out in prison, don’t hurt anybody, don’t threaten anybody; go along with the rules.”  So that when that person is up for parole and they come to you, then they are saying, “Hey, I got my GED, I got my plumbing certificate, I completed these programs and I’m more than willing to complete these programs out in the community,” you say, “Okay, either we’ll reconsider you so you can finish up your programming, or parole you at the fifty percent level, but you have these conditions.”

Pat Cushwa: Exactly. Well, you’re pointing out something that people often overlook. It’s that parole can be a management tool within a prison. How do you take a prison with 3,000 men in it, or 2,000 women, and get compliance? You know, they’ve got the stick – what’s the carrot? So, if you behave well, if you do right, if you go in these programs, the carrot is, you’ll get out a little bit early. And it helps the prison system. So, parole and the prison administration can work very well together.

Len Sipes: It seems a relationship made in heaven, because those of us who have been in prisons – and I know I have, hundreds of times; you have, hundreds of times – we know how chaotic and how difficult running a prison can be. If you have hope for the future and you have hope of improving yourself, that creates a much calmer correctional institution, which is really important for those people who work in correctional institutions to keep it as calm and as orderly as humanly possible. So, the parole and the possibility of parole increases that level of safety within prison systems.

Pat Cushwa: It’s a good way for oversight. You’ve got somebody completely getting a file ready, looking at somebody, “Will you be parole-ready?” Then you have parole officials, who go and say what you said: “We’ll let you out in two years if you do this, if you do B, if you do C.”

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: So, all along the line, they’re preparing people to go out to earn some money and to not lapse back into crime, because even if you are locked up for a non-violent drug crime, if you’re desperate for drugs when go out, you’re going to do something violent.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: So, you’ve got to have somebody who understands the system overseeing the system. And “parole,” “sentence review,” “reentry,” whatever terminology you’re using, is reducing recidivism. You know, it’s costs, but human costs as well as dollar costs. We can’t just go on the way we’ve been going on. And I’m hoping that you will have us back, because we have just finished a pilot program that is looking at how we can handle non-violent offenders differently. It’s, when we put people back in, how long we have to keep them, what they’re doing to get them ready, and this will be the first study on recidivism that’s really done with only an urban population. You see all these state-wide studies, and they’re wonderful. This is going to be with only D.C. Code offenders, so we’re going to get a good snapshot in time of evidence-based program for D.C. Code [PH] then.

Len Sipes: The offenders who are under our supervision —

Pat Cushwa: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: — Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, my agency. Okay. And you’ve got preliminary – a sense as to how that’s turning out?

Pat Cushwa: We sure do. We’re looking at 800 cases that we will have done in a year and a half. The recidivism rate is drastically lower. They’re serving four months instead of sixteen months. We’re able to get them out and keep them out. We have – the people that do come back are for low-level violations. They’re not reporting, they haven’t connected with the program, they’re not coming back with new offenses. And we have avoided about fifteen million dollars in bed days at the jail and supervision costs by doing this.

Len Sipes: I’m confused. Are these people who were on supervision and are close to going back, and you…?

Pat Cushwa: No. Okay, these are people who we put back in prison who may have been on supervised release —

Len Sipes: Right…

Pat Cushwa: — who weren’t in compliance. They’re all administrative violators.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: These are not people who’ve committed new crimes.

Len Sipes: Understood.

Pat Cushwa: They’re people who were released —

Len Sipes: Okay.

Pat Cushwa: — or who were on supervised release through the courts, that never did go into jail —

Len Sipes: Alright.

Pat Cushwa: — that we are now handling because they were having low-level violations.

Len Sipes: And what did you do, what did the US Parole Commission do?

Pat Cushwa: We started a program that we call SIS, Short Intervention for Success.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: Very similar to Project Hope out of Hawaii.

Len Sipes: Ah…!

Pat Cushwa: That we’re looking at drug offenders, we’re looking at people who don’t know how to get to an appointment at time.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: We’re looking at people that we’re putting back in for sixteen months, like we did with the old Federal Offender, but not getting bad recidivism, we’re not getting good results.

Len Sipes: So this is something that happens in prison, or is this principally something that happens in the community upon release?

Pat Cushwa: It happens in the community upon release, and then US Parole would take these D.C. Code offenders, along with CSOSA, and we would lock them up because they weren’t reporting, because they were using drugs and testing positive.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: And we were putting them back in a prison for sixteen months, and they were sitting in a jail for five months, waiting for a hearing.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: And it wasn’t doing any good. So we called in Dr. Jim Austen, who does research.

Len Sipes: Yes. The famous Jim Austen.

Pat Cushwa: Very famous Jim Austen, that we wanted a pilot program that we wanted evidence-based. What could we do that would stop recidivism, what could we do to shorten a term that would actually help instead of hurt the recidivism rate?

Len Sipes: So they would come out of the correctional institution earlier, be under enhanced supervision by my agency.

Pat Cushwa: Exactly.

Len Sipes: Ah, and that enhanced supervision and that enhanced provision of services reduced the rate of recidivism.

Pat Cushwa: And when your agency said to our agency, “You know, this woman” – there are women in the system – “is not reporting, she isn’t paying her rent,” in the old days, we’d put her in for sixteen months. Now, we’re going to connect her with your agency, we’re going to put out a warrant and do a hearing within seven days instead of seven weeks.

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: And we’re going to say, “What does this person need? Does she need drug treatment, does she need a job?”

Len Sipes: Right.

Pat Cushwa: We will maybe put her out on time served and connect her with what she needs to be successful.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Pat Cushwa: And rather than the jail being overcrowded and the courts screaming, you empty half the beds and put these people where they need to be.

Len Sipes: They get the supervision and the services that they need to be successful.

Pat Cushwa: Exactly.

Len Sipes: And that’s able to lower the recidivism rate considerably in terms of your comparison group.

Pat Cushwa: Oh, oh, yes.

Len Sipes: It’s amazing.

Pat Cushwa: Yes, and we’re going to come back. Dr. Austen has the report ready; he’s going to present it at a national conference and Dr. Calvin Johnson, your researcher, has been working with him, been a great cooperation, so that we can both say, “What can we do that’s better?”

Len Sipes: That’s great.

Pat Cushwa: Instead of pointing fingers at one another, we’re kind of holding hands.

Len Sipes: Do we do that…?

Pat Cushwa: No, no…!

Len Sipes: Alright. You mentioned women offenders a little while ago, and I think this is extraordinarily important. What the parole commission can do is to do surgical slices and dices, depending upon that kind… that individual’s problems, whether it be alcohol, whether it be mental health, whether it be – in some cases, women offenders, because women offenders have their own unique needs and their own unique trauma, and we’ve documented that extensively here at the national level, at the local level here at CSOSA. So, with women offenders or with any other sort of “surgical interventions,” the Parole Commission can tailor programs specifically for that individual. And to try to be, again, evidence-based and as successful as humanly possible.

Pat Cushwa: Yes. We call them now “justice-involved women,” and up until very recently, there was nothing that assessed women differently – the fact that they seldom ever come back, that they don’t come back with violent crimes – yet we were holding them to standards that were based only on males. And we’re not starting new risk-assessment, and CSOSA, I have to say, your agency, with its yearly program, with its Dress for Success, with its emphasis on job-placement, has really helped Parole to realize what we can do. So, yes, we’re just now – and thank God – we’re looking at women in the federal system. That’s our next focus.

Len Sipes: This is a terrible question because we only have a couple of seconds left. You and I have been through incidents in the state of Maryland where a person has gone out under parole and committed another crime, and that’s something, I just want to say, at the end of it, that neither you or I – it’s never cavalier. We do feel it personally, correct?

Pat Cushwa: Len, a commissioner once said to me, “When do I start to feel comfortable about making these decisions?” I said, “Well, the day you do is the day you retire, because…” No, there’s nothing worse than to think that somebody that’s been released, no matter how, is going to go out and endanger one of our citizens.

Len Sipes: There’s no guarantee even [PH] on community supervision. There are no complete guarantees.

Pat Cushwa: We can just do better.

Len Sipes: Our guest today has been Patricia Cushwa. Pat, I really appreciate you stopping by and look forward to you, in the future. Patricia Cushwa, commissioner US Parole Commission, www.justice (J-U-S-T-I-C-E).gov/uspc, it stands for “United States Parole Commission.” Ladies and gentlemen, this is D.C. Public Safety. We really appreciate all the comments we get from you, and even criticisms. And we want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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Supervising and Treating Mentally Ill Offenders-DC Public Safety Radio

May 31, 2013 by

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

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

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2013/03/supervising-and-treating-mentally-ill-offenders-dc-public-safety-radio/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentleman, our show today is on the supervision and treatment of mental health offenders. We, within the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, we say that 37% of our offenders have had contact with mental health providers or claim a mental health issue. Reports from the Department of Justice several years ago, they suggest a self-report figure of over 50%. To discuss this emerging issue within the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency and throughout the country, we have three guests today. We have Ubux Hussen, she is the Mental Health Program Administrator; a Community Supervision Officer – Supervisory Community Supervision Officer Marcia Davis; and Supervisory Community Supervision Officer Robert Evans. And to Ubux and Marcia and to Robert, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Female: Thank you, Leonard, for inviting us.

Female: Thank you.

Robert Evans: Thank you.

Len Sipes: All right. You know this is an extraordinarily important topic for us. It really is and it’s an extraordinarily important topic for every court, every parole commission, every parole and probation agency throughout the United States. It really is an emerging issue because it seems to – it seems to me that the numbers increase – continuously increase. Every time I read a piece of national research or local research, they tell me that they’re sort of astounded by the high numbers of people who have had contact with mental health providers and who claim to have a mental background. Like I said, there was a Department of Justice report that suggested that over 50% of the individuals who they interviewed caught up in the criminal justice system; they claimed to have a mental health problem or had contact with a mental health system in the past. So, Ubux, the first question is going to you. How many people out of the 15,000 individuals that we have on supervision on any given day, both parolees and probationers, how many are involved in our mental health unit?

Ubux Hussen: In our mental health unit, approximately 2068…

Len Sipes: That’s a lot of people.

Ubux Hussen: It is a lot of people spread across six or seven mental health men and women’s teams. The observation you made about the number of people – you know, back in the ’70s and ’80s, we did this deinstitutionalization from state mental health hospitals and a lot of those people have cycled through both state, federal, and local jails and prisons which really have become very innovative in mental health service delivery because of the need of the people under their care. So there are a lot more people who probably qualify than the 2068…

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: …who are currently assigned to our branch. So I’ll stop there.

Len Sipes: Well, that is an important piece of context for people to understand that one time we had within this country a fairly extensive community-based and hospital-based mental health system. They went through a process of deinstitutionalization, I think, back in the 1970s and at one time, there were thousands of people caught up in community care and in terms of intuitional care, but they’ve taken down most of those institutions from various states and they did not support the community component. So, in essence, we’ve heard individuals suggest that the criminal justice system is now the de facto provider of mental health services to a lot of people caught up who are in the system who are mentally ill and that’s shocking. You know, to me, it’s shocking. Marcia, who gets to be on our mental health unit? Describe that kind of person.

Marcia Davis: Okay. So the individuals who come to supervision come to us by way of the United States Parole Commission after they have been placed on supervisory list of parole or through the DC Court System after being placed on probation.

Len Sipes: Uh huh.

Marcia Davis: And in most cases, they’ve been either court ordered or ordered by the USPC to either undergo a mental health assessment, participate in mental health treatment, or be supervised by the mental health unit.

Len Sipes: Okay. Now, so they come either from the courts or they come from the US Parole System.

Marcia Davis: Right.

Len Sipes: Can a community supervision officer– what most people throughout the country call parole and probation agents, can a community supervision officer here within Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency can they mandate that a person receive an evaluation? Robert?

Robert Evans: Well, not necessarily mandate but one thing that is important to know is that we kind of train our staff to be very observant. We train them to have a listening ear and also be observant of when someone is experiencing some sort of breakdown or issue. And so what they’ll make – what they’ll do is make a recommendation and they will make a referral. So they will refer to our mental health program administrator to review a situation, most likely try to get this person a mental health assessment so that we can kind of gauge what this person is going through. So anybody who has a mental health assessment and assessment basically says that they have a current issue they’re dealing with, a mental health diagnosis, then we’ll take another look at that to see if they qualify for our unit.

Len Sipes: Well, from the beginning of the show, I do want to establish two things: a) Because an individual has a mental health issue does not mean that they’re going to be part of the criminal justice system and I want to make that abundantly clear.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: There are endless millions of people floating throughout the United States, throughout the world, who have mental health condition who never come into contact with the criminal justice system. However, if you are schizophrenic, if you have one of dozens of mental health diagnosis, if you are depressed in some ways that does correlate, however, with substance use that does correlate, however, with a contact with the criminal justice system. Did I phrase it correctly, Ubux?

Ubux Hussen: Absolutely. There also other environmental or psychosocial factors – poverty, low educational level, a fragile limited or non-existent family or social support network.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: In terms of poverty, access to health insurance whether you’re able to get the medication that allows you to have stability in your life so that you’re not engaging in criminal activity. So there’s both the diagnosis and then there is what’s called the ecology of the person’s life.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Ubux Hussen: So who else is in your life and what else is in your life that serves as a prosocial stabilizing factor?

Len Sipes: But we have to establish as well in terms of a baseline for this discussion people on parole and probation supervision both within Washington DC and throughout the country. It applies equally across the board. They come often with substance abuse backgrounds.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: They come often with multiple contacts with the criminal justice system.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: They come often with tough upbringings, oftentimes single parent family, often time I’ve heard dozens and dozens and dozens of people caught up in the criminal justice system describe the fact that they raised themselves, that they were basically on their own, that they basically got up, fed themselves, and took themselves to school. Individuals caught up in the criminal justice system have dozens of disadvantages. Most of the female offenders that we have do things, number one, the large number have children so it’s not just taking care of themselves as they come out of the prison system. Somehow someway they want to reunite with their children. My heavens, when you start stacking deck – when you start considering all the different things that an individual caught up in the criminal justice system has to deal with and you throw mental health issues on top of all those things, it becomes scary. It becomes what some people have claimed almost to be a school to prison pipeline because they’re saying how do you overcome all those obstacles?

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: Anybody feel to comment from a mental health point of view?

Robert Evans: Yeah. I’m glad you’ve mentioned that because you know we – we throw the word mental health around and it’s kind of – there’s a stigma that comes along that word just mental health.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: And we need to be clear that everybody has mental health. If you have a brain, you know. So everybody has health that they’re dealing with and you know, issues face us all. If you have death in the family, if you are struggling in life, so all these things that people have come along with, they deal with them differently.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: You know and how do they – how do they deal with it. And so, one thing that we have to mention is that – especially here in DC, there are services that people can get…

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: …as a result of having “mental health issue” and so that can also add to why people are getting into this system – the mental health system because, for example, you have people that are in – who are locked up and once they realize that they can get special treatment for being in mental health now that they want to fake issues. So there’s another, you know, a sort of layer of the whole mental thing that we should visit because it’s more than just you know people have in “mental health issue.” It’s a huge sort of box that they can be opened up. You know, people can get SSI checks, people kind of once they get a diagnosis they kind of rely on at some time.

Len Sipes: Okay. So it’s a fairly complex issue.

Robert Evans: It’s very complex.

Len Sipes: All right. Let’s start from the beginning then now that we’ve laid this groundwork. So a person either comes from the courts or comes from the parole commission with a mandate that we evaluate them for mental health services. What happens when we receive that piece of paper?

Marcia Davis: And then let me also add because we kind of touched on it a little bit but I want to add sometimes, like you said, people go to general supervision and while they’re in general supervision, the CSO may notice that there’s some things that may not be totally right with this person.

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: So they will refer them for an assessment and once they get assessed, they could be deemed appropriate for the mental health unit and be transferred over.

Len Sipes: Okay. Okay. What happens when that happens? Either through the CSO in general supervision or the parole commission or the courts? So somebody says I think this person has an issue, what happens?

Ubux Hussen: Usually, either through a supervisor or the actual CSO, I will receive an e-mail…

Len Sipes: Okay.

Ubux Hussen: …with an attached mental health assessment.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: That has to be current and not older than 12 months.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Ubux Hussen: We want the most current information about the person. That assessment is reviewed for whether the person has what mental health clinicians call a severe and persistent mental illness.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Ubux Hussen: And so that’s your schizophrenias, that’s your bipolar disorder, etcetera.

Len Sipes: Right. Right.

Ubux Hussen: We also, however, supervised other people who have developmental delays, who are mild to moderately what used to be called mentally retarded. We now have a – I’m noticing a trend as everybody is getting older, we have an older population of supervisees who have age-related cognitive deficits and so it is in just do they have a serious mental illness, it’s what else is going on that might impede their successful supervision.

Len Sipes: Okay, fair enough. But we get an evaluation from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Ubux Hussen: Yup.

Len Sipes: We get an evaluation from a mental health clinic. Do we do our own evaluations?

Ubux Hussen: Yes, sometimes.

Len Sipes: Okay. So who does those evaluations?

Ubux Hussen: We have consultants that we contract with.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: One of the things in the DC area that’s really hard to get is a psychological evaluation.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: And so the agency pays for those. If the information is conflicting, if it’s inadequate, if somebody for example has experienced trauma to the head while they’ve been in the community and we just need more information, we will pay for those services for them to get this assessment.

Len Sipes: Okay. So CSOSA does their own evaluations when necessary.

Ubux Hussen: Yes, that’s right.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Marcia Davis: And we also use the Department of Mental Health.

Ubux Hussen: Yes.

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: The DC Department of Mental Health Agency does assessments, too.

Len Sipes: Okay. So the person comes in, we diagnose them, we figure out on what level of deficiency they have and then they’re placed in the mental health unit with well over 2000 people under supervision. Right?

Ubux Hussen: That’s correct.

Len Sipes: Okay. So what happens at that point? So you get this person, not only does he have to make restitution, not only does he have to get a job, not only does he have to get his GED, not only does he have to get his plumbing certificate, not only does he have to obey all law…

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Len Sipes: …he now has to go through some sort of intervention in terms of his mental health problem and I’m assuming that that ranges in terms of the degree of severity of the mental health problem, right?

Robert Evans: Correct.

Len Sipes: Okay, talk to me about that.

Robert Evans: So, basically, the guy comes from my unit and he’s assigned to community supervision officer to supervise him. Now, this supervision officer has been trained to make sure that this person is connected with the mental health services. They’re going to make sure that they connect either for Core Service Agency. This person is going to be connected with a case manager or a therapist if necessary depending on the person’s need. Once they go to that Core Service Agency, the agency would do an intake and they’ll see what this person needs and so, now, this officer needs to follow up with the case manager or whoever they’re connected with…

Len Sipes: Okay.

Robert Evans: …to be sure that they’re following through with that.

Len Sipes: And that connection could be authorities from the District of Columbia. That connection could be with the Veterans Administration.

Robert Evans: Correct.

Len Sipes: That connection could be with lots of different agencies. So okay.

Marcia Davis: Correct. Private organization…

Len Sipes: Private organizations. It could be a private counselor. Now, but do all of them get the counseling they need? I mean, you know, all we hear are budget cuts, budget cuts, budget cuts and my guess is that not everybody is going to be getting counseling – not everybody is getting counseling, not everybody is going to get “therapy.” My guess is that people on the high end of the spectrum with serious mental health issues such as bipolarism or schizophrenic – or being a schizophrenic, they will get it and the people at the lower end don’t. Am I right or wrong?

Robert Evans: Well, you’re right. You’re right. In DC especially, you know, people are overwhelmed with clients. You know, the case mangers that we deal with have extremely high case loads so they’re trying to do the best they can to make sure that they meet these individual’s needs. Bu in most cases, the people that need the intensive service, what they’ll do is get connected with what was called the ACT team, which is Assertive Community Treatment.

Marcia Davis: Assertive Community Treatment.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Robert Evans: So this ACT team is going to be assigned to this client who has a very severe issue.

Marcia Davis: A severe need.

Len Sipes: A severe need, right.

Robert Evans: And so what that would do is get this person more specialized treatment but even in those cases, it’s very difficult. The difficulty that we face is we have to make sure that this person is following through with the recommendation but we can’t hold their hand, we can’t take them to treatment, we can’t pick him up from their home and take them to the case manager so –

Len Sipes: But in many cases – and that I want to get to this right after the break – in many cases, we are the principal pro-social entity in that person’s life which I find astounding…

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: …in terms of doing previous radio programs about this topic.

Ubux Hussen: Yes.

Len Sipes: Ladies and gentleman, we’re talking to Ubux Hussen. She is the Mental Health Program Administrator. We’re talking to Marcia Davis and Robert Evans. They’re both Supervisory Community Supervision Officers with my agency, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, here in Washington DC. We are a federal independent agency offering parole and probation services to the great city of Washington DC. Our website is www.csosa.gov, www.csosa.gov. Talking about the issue of mental health and how parole and probation agencies treat mental health problems and again getting back to the issue that I’ve brought up right before the break that for so many individuals under supervision, we are, in many cases, the sole stabilizing pro-social force in their life, coming into contact with them and asking them: a) Are you taking your medication?; b) Are you going to the counseling clinic but we have liaisons, we know whether or not they’re complying with this counseling clinics; and c) To sit with that individual and we’re not therapist…

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: We’re not therapists but we do talk with that individual and try to help that individual through the various crises of their lives, and d) often times when they find themselves in crisis, we’re the first people that they turn to. So I talk to be all that.

Marcia Davis: Okay. So what we’re seeing now with the co-service agencies is that collaborations work tremendously. In the female unit, we have a group of women with unique needs. When we look at the pathways to crime for our women, these are women who have a history of childhood victimization. They’ve been –

Len Sipes: Childhood sexual assault.

Marcia Davis: Right. They’ve also been sexually assaulted as adults. They have a history of trauma. They have serious chronic mental illnesses. They are homeless.

Len Sipes: Yes.

Marcia Davis: They have low education, low appointment.

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: They’ve been separated from their children. Their self-esteem is low.

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: But with this population, the collaborations between the different agencies, with CSOSA, with the Core Service Agency, with the treatment staff, with the faith-based mentoring staff. If we come together and we work as one, we can see how those collaborations work. Just yesterday, we had a case, a high-risk offender who has a serious mental illness. She is 7-1/5 months pregnant. She is using substances and we had a team, a multidisciplinary staff, and where we had her Core Service Agency case manager, we had our mental health administrator, Ms. Ubux, we had the CSO, we had the individual from our central intervention team who provides substance abuse treatment, and we had our mental health treatment specialist and together, we came up with a plan to help this individual. So we see as – if we work together it’s so much better than each entity trying to do it alone in this –

Len Sipes: Right.

Marcia Davis: It takes away from the offender’s ability to play one agency against the next because working together we come up with one plan. We’re all on one co-work and it just works out better for everyone involved.

Len Sipes: I do want to point out to our audience that we do have a variety of special emphases. Am I correct? Saying that am I grammatically correct in terms of three groups. Number one, we’ve reorganized around women offenders, we’ve reorganized around high-risks offenders and now, we’re in the process of reorganizing around young adult offenders.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Marcia Davis: Right.

Len Sipes: And, we’re finding mental health problems in all three groups.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: And with – especially with the high-risk offenders and especially the young adult offenders we’re finding real problems in that group with both recidivism and mental health problems. We have to prioritize…

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Len Sipes: …what it this we do to the highest risk offender. Correct?

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Robert Evans: Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to also go back to your point because I think it’s really important to really highlight that even in my serious case, her community supervision officer was the one that orchestrated all of that.

Marcia Davis: Yes, because –

Robert Evans: Because, you know, when the offender comes home, they’re reporting to the CSO and the CSO is between them and the releasing authority and that’s the freedom right there. So, now, it’s up to that CSO will be the one that can try to connect…

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: …with all these other people .

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: And so, like you said, that community supervision officer is a lifeline…

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: …in most cases.

Len Sipes: Well, I have talked to a wide variety of people in going on 10 years now with the core services and the federal supervision agency, they’ve been – women offenders, Marcia, you and I have talked and the people under supervision have talked and I’ve talked to more than just a couple who are on the mental health program and they basically say, you know, Mr. Sipes, if it wasn’t for that CSO, again, community supervision officer, I don’t know where I’d be.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: He’s the one – she’s the one who constantly says, are you taking your medication, show me your medications, show me that you have your prescription in hand, show me that you’re not abusing this drug, are you going to counseling, or are you hooking up with your faith-based mentor, where are you on your life. And that provides a lifeline. Again, I’m making the same point twice but I do want to reemphasize it. The employees of this organization become sometimes the lifeline…

Ubux Hussen: Yes.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: …in the life of that individual and becomes the major difference as to whether or not that person succeeds or does not succeed.

Robert Evans: Right. And that’s gonna be really heightened when you’re talking about the young population because this is a population who’s in a predicament and most likely because their family may not be there…

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: …or they have turned their back on them.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: So, now, you have somebody who is playing that role in addition to authority but now we have the sort of kind of train you up, you know, and teach you to be an adult. You know, so that…

Len Sipes: It’s cognitive behavioral therapy, restructuring how they think about things in life.

Robert Evans: It’s all [indiscernible]

Len Sipes: Do we do group therapy with some individuals in the mental health unit?

Ubux Hussen: We do. There are – we have two types of groups. We have mental health intervention groups, for example, where Marcia is located. There is a trauma group that targets women and then we do what are called sanctions groups which is for technical violations of your supervision agreement.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: We’re now restructuring ourselves because at the base of everything – what you were saying earlier about people raising themselves and so forth – is underlying trauma that hasn’t been addressed.

Len Sipes: Right.

Ubux Hussen: And so we’re reconfiguring the group so that we’re offering more treatment-oriented groups and fewer sanctions groups.

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: You know, it’s interesting, the average person listening to this program especially if they are familiar with their parole and probation agency and people are more than welcome to write me, leonardsipes@csosa.gov, leonard.sipes. Call me, send with a nasty letter, do what they will but what we’re talking about is unrecognizable to them because: a) we have a ratio where we come in of community supervision officers, a lot of parole and probation agents and people under supervision of somewhere in about ballpark of 50:1. For mental health teams, it’s less than that but we come into contact with individuals at higher levels of supervision at least four to eight times a month, two of those have to be community contacts and, at the same time, they have all the mental health contacts. Most parole and probation agents in this country, you know, at the highest levels, come into contact with that individual two times a month and when it comes to mental health services, they say go to your mental health clinic and report in. That’s it. That’s most jurisdictions’ response to people with mental health problems. What we do here at CSOSA as cumbersome as it is at times and as frustrating is at times is generally leaps and bounce better than most parole and probation agencies. Now, am I right or wrong?

Robert Evans: You’re absolutely correct and it’s unacceptable if we see anything less.

Marcia Davis: Right.

Robert Evans: You know, because, you know, the bottom line is the consumer. We’re thinking about the offender, you know. We say that but really we’re looking at them like the customer and our job is to assist then through the process. We’re trying to help them get the supervision so that they don’t come back.

Len Sipes: Well, we’re trying to protect public safety.

Robert Evans: Exactly.

Len Sipes: If we get them through supervision that means they’re not out there committing crimes.

Robert Evans: Exactly.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Len Sipes: It means they’re not a burden to society.

Ubux Hussen: Correct.

Marcia Davis: Right.

Len Sipes: That means they’re no longer tax burdens and they’re tax payers.

Robert Evans: Exactly.

Len Sipes: So a lot of people have a lot of investment in making sure that that person succeeds under supervision including us.

Ubux Hussen: Right.

Robert Evans: Absolutely.

Ubux Hussen: Right. Not the least of which the one million children whose parents…

Len Sipes: Yes.

Ubux Hussen: …at various times are involved with criminal justice systems. So it’s really in societies enlightened self-interest at some point, budgets are finite, and people have to come home and –

Robert Evans: Right.

Len Sipes: I’m sorry. Finite and declining.

Ubux Hussen: Finite and declining and so people have to come home and we have to be able to, in terms of those of us charged with public safety, be creative in identifying the reasons for how you got involved in the criminal justice system.

Len Sipes: Okay. But you say creative and so many of us in the criminal justice system, people sitting all throughout the country, listening to this program going creative shamative [PH]. It takes money. It takes resources to do this and – and that’s – that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Ubux Hussen: Yes.

Robert Evans: I would say that’s false. I would say that, you know, when we talk about being creative, we’re talking about being evidence-based and what the evidence says is that you don’t need money to show empathy.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: And so – and that is what our unit is all about. You know, we train people to be able to build a rapport. A big huge part that you were talking about is this person sitting in front of me has to build trust.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: So we’re all about trying to make a connection with this person so that this person will respond to what we’re trying to put in place for them to be successful.

Len Sipes: But this is a difficult population to supervise because I’ve did what you’ve done with your lifetime and they come out of the prison system in many cases and I do note that 65% of our people on our supervision are probationers, not coming out of the prison, but those who would come out of the prison have – what I say a chip on their shoulder the size of Montana.

Robert Evans: Big time.

Len Sipes: And you add mental health to that. You’re breaking through that barrier and so to the point you can get them to point – that person to the point where you can help them is a monumentally difficult task. How you break through that barrier?

Robert Evans: You don’t personalize it. The biggest thing that I’ve learned is to not to personalize it, you know. Just to give you a real life example, a young guy, you know, they – like you said, the chip on your shoulder, I’m seeing that more and more with the young population.

Len Sipes: Yep.

Robert Evans: He comes in. He’s cussing out his officer. This officer called me. Mr. Evans needs you. He came to the cubicle. He’s cussing me out.

Len Sipes: Right.

Robert Evans: So he said he was done. I let him walk out. Ten minutes later, he came back.

Len Sipes: Uh-huh.

Robert Evans: And he had a different attitude. Now, a typical person may have taken it personal, may have said, you know, what? You walked out, we’re done. But we have to not personalize that process and we have to realize that he is here, we’ve got a body to work with, and let’s rock and roll.

Len Sipes: That is I think the only way it can be done in terms of breaking through. If we do not break through their lives as individuals, we might as well just give it up. We might as well just send them back to prison.

Robert Evans: Right.

Marcia Davis: Now, when it comes –

Len Sipes: Go ahead, either one. We have one minute left.

Marcia Davis: When it comes to female unit, the females appreciate the programs that we have developed on the female unit that are geared and unique to addressing their needs. So they’re participating in these programs and they’re saying that, okay, finally, our needs are being addressed because, for so many years, their needs were never addressed and they haven’t been able to address the issues that they need to address in order to stop the cycle. So just then seeing that we’ve taken the time to develop these programs that were develop for – specifically for females, they appreciate that and they see the direction and appreciate the direction at the agency is doing.

Len Sipes: And I am – never in my 42 years in the criminal justice system have I been as impressed with anything as impressed as I am with the women’s unit and the fact that they come out with so many strikes against them but yet, at the same time, they succeed in greater numbers than I would ever expect and considering the efficiencies that they have to deal with. All of you, who deal with the female population, should be congratulated and all of you who deal with the mental health population should be congratulated. Ladies and gentleman, this is DC Public Safety. I am your host, Leonard Sipes. Our guests today have been Ubux Hussen, she is the Mental Health Program Administrator; Marcia Davis and Robert Evans, they’re both Supervisory Community Supervision Officers. Ladies and gentleman, again, DC Public Safety. We appreciate your letters. We appreciate your e-mails. We appreciate your phone calls and all of the suggestions in terms of new shows, even criticisms, and we want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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Filed Under: Anger Management, Audio Podcast, Interviews with Staff, Mental Health, Parole and Probation, Reentry, What Works Tagged With: , , ,
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