http:\/\/twitter.com\/lensipes<\/a>.<\/p>\n[Audio Begins]<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 From the nation\u2019s capital, this is DC Public Safety.\u00a0 I\u2019m your host, Leonard Sipes.\u00a0 At our microphones today is Secretary Michael Brown.\u00a0 Secretary Brown has been there in the State of Kentucky with the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet for the last four years.\u00a0 He has a long history of public service as a judge, as a prosecutor, as a law director for the city of Louisville, U.S. Army as a Captain, he\u2019s a gentleman that\u2019s been around for quite some time, and one of the reasons why we asked Secretary Brown to be by our microphones today, is that he\u2019s gotten a lot of news.\u00a0 We have a couple news services that come into us here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, and the first one that caught my eye was from the dailynews.com, and it said \u201cState\u2019s Two Year Recidivism Rate Hits a 10-Year Low,\u201d and all of us within the criminal justice system were struggling to do just that.\u00a0 We\u2019re struggling to bring down our recidivism rates, that\u2019s enough to make it interesting, but it goes on to the Courier Journal, in terms of Gov. Beshear\u2019s signing a new act in terms of rearranging the way that Kentucky does business, and it goes all the way to the Wall Street Journal, where a recent article says that \u201cStates Rethink Drug Law,\u201d so the state of Kentucky has gotten an awful lot of publicity lately, national publicity, and a lot of people are looking at the state of Kentucky in terms of what it is that they\u2019ve done, but again, for me, the most intriguing part of this is the headline \u201cState\u2019s Two Year Recidivism Rate Hits a 10-Year Low,\u201d and with that introduction, I present Secretary Michael Brown, secretary for the last four years.\u00a0 Mr. Secretary, welcome to DC Public Safety.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 I\u2019m glad to be with you, Leonard.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Okay.\u00a0 Now, what we have with the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, you have an operation much like mine in the 14 years when I was with the Maryland Department of Public Safety, where we had State Police, we had corrections, we had a lot of agencies.\u00a0 You have the same thing for the State of Kentucky, correct?<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 That is correct.\u00a0 It is the largest cabinet in state government, and we have right around 8,000 employees in the cabinet, and my major units include the department of corrections, the Kentucky State Police, our juvenile justice, and then we have medical examiners and criminal justice training and drug control policy, and just a number of agencies that are attached, including our public defenders.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 One of the things that you mentioned in terms of the pre-interview is that at one time, Kentucky had the fastest growing prison population in the country, correct?<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well that is correct.\u00a0 Actually, Gov. Beshears took office in December of 2007, and shortly after his first address to the General Assembly in January of 2008, the Pew Center on the States came out with a report that listed Kentucky as having the fastest growing prison population by percentage in the country.\u00a0 That was something that took a number of us by surprise.\u00a0 We knew that corrections had been an escalating budget item.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t know that we had crossed the finish line first in that particular situation.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Now one of the things that Kentucky, as well as virtually every state in the United States is struggling with is this concept of a corrections budget that a lot of people in a lot of statehouses throughout the country, they\u2019re coming to the conclusion that the corrections budget is growing out of control, that it\u2019s taking up too much of the budget, that there\u2019s no way that you can sustain that level of an increase in the prison population.\u00a0 It\u2019s taking away from funding for college, it\u2019s taking away from funding for seniors, and it\u2019s taking away from funding for schools.\u00a0 It has a tremendous impact on not just criminal justice, but has a tremendous impact in terms of the overall budget, and what a lot of states are trying to do, what they\u2019re trying to wrestle with is this whole concept of how do we rein in the corrections budget without having an adverse impact on public safety, and that\u2019s why I keep coming back to the same issue, recidivism, you hit a ten-year low.\u00a0 How did you do that?<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well that was a target that frankly, we just decided we had to aim at.\u00a0 When we were looking at our population, and clearly, the only way to reduce your, or the main way to reduce your prison budgets, your correctional budget, is by means of population, and when we look at our population, we know it\u2019s made up of basically two segments.\u00a0 We have people who have recently committed a felony that they\u2019re going to be sent to our facilities for, but we\u2019d also found that a fair percentage of all the people who come through the doors each year are coming back.\u00a0 They\u2019re returnees.\u00a0 They\u2019re return customers.\u00a0 And that\u2019s a recidivism rate, those who are coming back after a 2-3 year period of being released, and when we looked at those recidivists, we realized that a fair amount of them are what we call re-entry figures.\u00a0 They\u2019re ones who have gotten out, they\u2019ve gone back out into the community, within, as everyone in this business knows, the likelihood is failure is highest in those first few months to a year, and those individuals then come back.\u00a0 When they do come back, they come back and stay, generally, for a longer period of time than they were in for the first period.\u00a0 So that becomes a, and I\u2019ll give you an example.\u00a0 In Kentucky, if you have a, you committed a crime, and you\u2019re eligible for parole after serving 20% of your sentence, and then you go out and you violate your parole and you\u2019re returned, it\u2019s likely that you\u2019re going to be in for a period of time longer than that initial 20%.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Understood.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 So we, in my cabinet, I cannot control what the courts are doing.\u00a0 We cannot completely control what the legislature is going to do vis-\u00e0-vis what becomes a crime, so our target had to be, by just a natural process, how can we improve our re-entry efforts, how can we cut that recidivism rate, and a cut of 1,000 prisoners at $21,000 or so a year starts to add up to real money if you can succeed at this.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Now you said that you went to the Pew Center for the States, and they provided some technical assistance?<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well, that was well down the road.\u00a0 What had happened was, we had taken a number of different approaches to try to address this issue.\u00a0 The Governor, in January of 2008 had asked me to convene what\u2019s called our Criminal Justice Council, it\u2019s a large body involving all the stakeholders in the criminal justice system, to make recommendations on the penal code and the drug laws, and we came up with reports but were unsuccessful, to a large extent, in getting many things passed through the legislature.\u00a0 Then the legislature itself came up with a joint resolution creating another committee to look at these issues, and then finally, this most recently concluded legislature had come up with a task force on the penal code and substance abuse, which was a very small group.\u00a0 Only seven people.\u00a0 And historically, those seven, it was bipartisan, a Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary, a Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court sat himself, I represented the executive branch, we had a retired commonwealth attorney, a former public advocate, and a county judge executive.\u00a0 We started work on reviewing, particularly targeting what we were going to do with probation, parole, and reentry, and also our drug laws.\u00a0 Then, in the middle of that process, somewhat in the middle of it, the Pew Public Safety Performance Project partnered with us, the legislature put up some seed money of $2,000, and last August, and August of 2010, we announced a collaborative effort where Pew would give us technical assistance, primarily working with the committee I described to come up with a legislative package which was, in fact, introduced in the session which most recently concluded.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Now what do you, the group of, the small group of individuals, did you feel comfortable with a game plan coming out of that, and then Pew was technical assistance beyond that, do I have that correct?<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well, what happened was, the task force had started its work, and we had narrowed the focus of this particular task force, particularly to looking at our drug laws, recognizing that that was the largest driver of, certainly our revolving criminal population.\u00a0 There\u2019s always going to be a place for those incorrigibles and those offenders, the violent ones, but as I looked at Kentucky\u2019s population of 20-odd thousand, clearly, if you took away those who were in as persistent felony offenders and the most violent offenders, that still left about 15,000 individuals that were in, and the bulk, I\u2019m talking about the very large bulk of those 15,000, were in because of something to do with drugs.\u00a0 Now, what the Pew folks brought to us was the ability to bring evidence based, basically studies, and attempts from all over the country on how to deal with some of these issues and boil them down in a manner that we could literally take the best practices from all over the country and then, if they had a recipe, we had the seasoning to make it come out to a Kentucky perspective, so to speak.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s a beautiful description.\u00a0 I love that!\u00a0 What do you think was the most important, give me a couple of the most important policies that came out of all this.\u00a0 Different people have been caught up in crime and drugs for decades, it\u2019s not easy to get them out of that cycle, it\u2019s not easy to break the cycle.\u00a0 What were the principal ingredients in terms of how you proceeded to cut that recidivism rate?<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well, the first thing is, you have to recognize that the cycle needs to be broken, and it\u2019s not simply, it\u2019s not just a matter of \u201cJust Say No.\u201d\u00a0 We have, for example, some really successful drug courts here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, but the requirements for those coming into the drug court system, which is somewhat of a diversionary process, were pretty strict, and that really didn\u2019t do much for those who had already offended and managed to find a way into the facilities to stop them from coming back.\u00a0 We have to recognize that breaking that cycle of a true abuser is going to take long term treatment, anywhere from 6-9 months.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just simply going to be, you know, tell them to stop taking it.\u00a0 And it also involves a situation where our probation and parole practices have to be aimed at reinforcing those principles once an individual is either on probation or parole, because there are relapses.\u00a0 Recognizing that, we don\u2019t want the relapse to take someone all the way back behind the fence, as we like to say.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 So in essence, what you have is a prison population, they\u2019re eventually released, they come out onto the street, and a lot of them, and for a lot of states throughout the country, when I was with the Maryland, at times, it approached 70% of the people coming into the prison systems were already on parole and probation.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen figures ranging anywhere from 50% to 70% of the prison intake are those people already on parole and probation, so that revolving door, that sense of life or prison or the criminal justice system on the installment plan seems to be alive and well in most states, so in essence, what I\u2019m hearing is that what you all decided to do was to stop that cycle, to break that cycle, and it sounds like you\u2019re focusing on specifically, is it nonviolent or violent offenders, but your principal goal is to get them involved in long term drug treatment?<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well the first thing, we want to recognize what were the biggest drivers, and the biggest driver in the population was drugs.\u00a0 That entailed us making adjustments to our drug laws which hadn\u2019t been made in many, many years, and to include provisions in those, which are going to drive these individuals, well first, it was going to drive those who are the users.\u00a0 We definitely wanted to separate the traffickers, those who are truly involved in the criminal enterprise, the profiteers, and separate them from what you might call the peddlers, or just the abusers.\u00a0 And we know that that\u2019s how it breaks down.\u00a0 We also needed, in Kentucky, because of our, and I don\u2019t want to call it unique, but it definitely is different from, say, some of the other states we looked at, we have a diverse sort of drug problem.\u00a0 Parts of our state, our drug problem is driven almost entirely by the abuse of prescription drugs.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Ah, that is different.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Pills that generally come in from other states.\u00a0 Florida in particular, if you don\u2019t mind me taking a shot at a governor I won\u2019t name right now, but we have a large influx of prescription drugs that come in from other states, and they are having a devastating effect on one part of our state.\u00a0 Other parts of our state, we see some of the more traditional things that involve meth, cocaine, or heroin to a certain extent, and then of course, you know, I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t mention that Kentucky was the second largest eradicator of marijuana, which is probably our largest crop of any other state in the country.\u00a0 So our drug laws had to be tailored to address this, you know, multifaceted issue, but going for a moment, just to go back to what you were saying about the returnees\u2019 situation, I had it said, and I was actually called cavalier for saying this, even though it\u2019s true, if my population today is right around 20,500, if they live long enough, all but about 105 of those individuals are going to get out of prison and are going to come back in those communities, and that is a percentage that the public doesn\u2019t have.\u00a0 The public perceives that individuals commit a crime, they get caught, they get prosecuted, and then they go away forever.\u00a0 Well they don\u2019t go away from us, and what we have to do is do something about those 95-99% that are coming back into that community.\u00a0 You break that cycle, that\u2019s where you make the real gains in public safety, you make real economic gains, because if you can turn a large segment of those folks back into productive citizens as opposed to where we supply all their needs, my medical budget is around $60 million just for our felony population.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Yeah, and people have no idea how difficult it is to run a huge prison system and how expensive it is to run a huge prison system.\u00a0 I don\u2019t, I just get the sense that people have no clue, but they\u2019re finding out because of all of the controversy as to the money going in the correction systems, and people are saying, gee, wouldn\u2019t this be better spent, in terms of other programs, but again, I reemphasize this, it\u2019s just not a matter of dollars here, it\u2019s just not a matter of reducing the correctional dollars, you\u2019ve been able to cut the rate of recidivism back into the state of Kentucky for a 10-year low, and so you\u2019re doing it and protecting public safety at the same time.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s the ultimate goal.\u00a0 That\u2019s the win-win.\u00a0 Obviously, public safety is our primary concern, but clearly, when you recognize that by breaking these cycles, and by decreasing that recidivism rate, the benefit there is, in fact, public safety, because that individual doesn\u2019t go out and commit that crime, is not a bane on society anymore \u2013<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Right, and they\u2019re huge savings in terms of crime, in terms of the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to track him down, to convict him, to put him back into the prison system, I mean, this is an ungodly expensive proposition, and what you\u2019re doing is not just saving money, but there are fewer crimes being committed.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 That\u2019s the goal, and we are in a situation, we had, as you know, the states, our state certainly, we have to operate under a balanced budget, so we can\u2019t spend more than we have.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 We\u2019re more than halfway through the program ladies and gentlemen.\u00a0 I want to reintroduce Michael Brown, the Secretary of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet for the State of Kentucky.\u00a0 The website, www.justice.ky.gov.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be giving out that website at the end of the program.\u00a0 Okay, Mr. Secretary, we\u2019ve set up everything, I think, I mean in terms of the 10-year low on recidivism, we\u2019ve set up the fact that you\u2019re trying to break the cycle, that you\u2019re looking not at traffickers, but you\u2019re looking specifically at the users, that you have a prescription drug problem and a marijuana problem there in the state of Kentucky, it sounds like you have across the board cooperation on the part of both sides of the political spectrum, the Republicans and the Democrats coming together and agreeing to this overall philosophy, so that part of it I\u2019ve got correct, correct?<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 That is correct, and the recent bill that passed, which is House Bill 463, which Pew assisted us on, and that task force worked on, it passed our Senate, which is a Republican controlled Senate, unanimously, went back to the House of Concurrence and passed 96-1.\u00a0 That\u2019s an overwhelming approval for the work of the task force and recognition of the issues we have to deal with.\u00a0 Now we should only be so cooperative on the other issues in the state, but at least on this one, we had virtual unanimity.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 There\u2019s an organization called Right On Crime, which is key Republicans at the national level who are coming together to endorse this concept, and a lot of individuals have said to themselves, okay, well this is no longer a Democratic issue, it\u2019s no longer a Republican issue, it\u2019s now a bipartisan issue.\u00a0 They want the criminal justice system, they want we within the criminal justice system to be more effective and prove that effectiveness, and that is why I\u2019m beating this point to death.\u00a0 There are a lot of states who are doing this, and they\u2019re starting to do it, and they\u2019re examining it, and they\u2019re putting money into programs in the prison system, and they\u2019re putting money into the programs at the parole and probation level, but they haven\u2019t yet produced data that shows a reduction in recidivism, and to the average person listening to this program, recidivism, again, are people coming back into the criminal justice system because they\u2019ve either committed new crimes or technical violations, but as our people like to point out, a technical is a person doesn\u2019t show up for supervision, that\u2019s a technical violation, so the term\u00a0 technical violation becomes minimized in the minds of some because it sounds trite, but if you don\u2019t show up for supervision, or if you\u2019re ordered to go into drug treatment and you don\u2019t go or you don\u2019t cooperate, those are technical violations as well, so some of this is a matter of taking greater risks with the individual that you have under supervision, that you don\u2019t automatically send them back to prison, you try to stabilize him through programs in the community, and you understand that relapse and problems come with the supervision process, and just because you have 2 or 3, you don\u2019t automatically send the person back to prison.\u00a0 Do I have that correct?<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 That is correct.\u00a0 In fact, some of the things that we had done in the budget bill, and that, which have been also codified in a new piece of legislation, is to give our parole and probation officers some additional tools to work with, including, for the first time here in Kentucky, some intermediate sanctions, where rather than, in the prior world, an individual would violate a condition of parole or probation, there would be a warrant issued, they\u2019d be arrested, they\u2019d go to jail, they\u2019d sit in jail awaiting a process involving going before the administrative law judge, the administrative law judge, if they found probable cause, would then turn the case to the parole board, most of that time, that individual continued to sit in jail awaiting the outcome of it, and then if the parole board revoked, they\u2019d go back to prison.\u00a0 We found that a better way to approach some of those individuals, obviously, this doesn\u2019t work for anybody, but is to make use of intermediate sanctions, and they can be a ramped up scale of sanctions, everything from, we\u2019re going to put you on an electronic GPS monitoring device to make sure you don\u2019t go where we told you not to go, maybe have that thing vibrate on your ankle as you approach some place where we know you\u2019re likely to get back into trouble, or we can put you back in jail, but for limited periods of time without having to go through that whole process, so we don\u2019t cut off whatever positive ties someone has created, either with a job or family connections when they have been outside of the institution, because as I\u2019ve said, once they come back on that violation, statistics show us that they\u2019re going to serve a longer period of time having violated than they served initially.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 And the whole idea, I\u2019m assuming, is one of the universal issues that states are struggling with, is that the question becomes, who do you want to be in, who do you want to occupy that prison bed?\u00a0 Do you want a nonviolent offender who\u2019s tied into drugs to occupy that prison bed, that very, very expensive prison bed, or do you want the violent offender, someone who\u2019s posing a clear and present risk to public safety?\u00a0 That dichotomy, I would imagine, exists in Kentucky as well, and I would imagine that was part of your discussions.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 As was said many, many times during our hearings, and as we visited with all the stakeholders, we\u2019ve got to differentiate between the people that we\u2019re scared of and the people that we\u2019re just mad at, and you know, once you get past being mad at these individuals, the key is what do we do, in many situations, to stop them from returning. Now Kentucky had been very fortunate, a few years back, we got one of the grants from the Second Chance Act, we had started our reentry program, we had started working with a new risk assessment tool, and in fact, that use of the risk assessment tool has been so successful that it\u2019s built into the new legislation with the aim that we\u2019re going to get that LSI used from Day 1 that someone comes in the system, so judges will eventually be looking at some of these factors when they\u2019re making bail decisions, so that our pre-sentence officers are making use of that assessment as they give judges recommendations for sentencing, so that when an individual is processed into the institution, we have a lot of data available into what, if any, programs are going to work for a particular individual, and that\u2019s far different from a shotgun effect that we used to take.\u00a0 Our approach before, and I don\u2019t blame anybody for this, this is not throwing a rock at the system, but it\u2019s how you view your job, and our job before was to simply keep these people away from the public, count them and make sure you have the same number you started out in the morning when they go to bed at night, and then do it again.\u00a0 Now some of our focus, both institutionally, and certainly in parole and probation, is to how can we prevent this particular individual from coming back to see us again?<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well, you\u2019re going towards the larger scale, because that\u2019s not just the state of Kentucky, again, this is something that every state in the United States is wrestling with, the attorney general, Eric Holder, the assistant attorney general, Laurie Robinson, the folks at the U.S. Department of Justice, the people who are trying to develop this whole sense of justice reinvestment, which is essentially, if you save money in terms of people coming back into prisons, the states would put more of that money, so if you save the state, any state, $50 million, and the fact that you didn\u2019t send that many people back, a certain amount of that $50 million would go back into programs and go back into efforts to keep people from coming back into the system, so this is a larger, this is not just a conversation for the state of Kentucky, this is a conversation that\u2019s happening in virtually every statehouse in the country, and again, not to beat a dead horse, but you\u2019re the one who\u2019s proven that you can reduce recidivism.\u00a0 Other states have reduced recidivism, but you hit a 10 year low.\u00a0 That\u2019s what intrigued me, and that\u2019s why, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well, and again, a lot of it is, you know, I hate to use the clich\u00e9, if you aim at nothing, you\u2019ll hit it every time.\u00a0 But if you go around and you really get a focused effort in, these are very smart, dedicated professionals, and it\u2019s simply a matter of saying, here\u2019s what our goal is, this is what our mission is going to be in this situation, and believe me, most of our probation and parole officers, they don\u2019t want to just be in the arrest business.\u00a0 They don\u2019t want to be, they would rather have people succeed, because when they do these home visits, and when they do these assessments, they run up against everyone else who\u2019s touched by these individuals, and it\u2019s much, much better that these individuals succeed than fail on the outside.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 I\u2019ll give you one example.\u00a0 In the state of Maryland, where we had a person come out of the prison system, his wife let him come back home, he was getting along well with the wife, getting along well with the kids, he was working, and he was making his restitution, and he was going to substance abuse therapy, he was doing everything that you want him to do, and yet he celebrated by getting high.\u00a0 He celebrated his successes by getting high, and there\u2019s a certain point where the 4th, 5th, 6th positive drug test, I mean, you have to sit down with him and say to him, look, you\u2019re about to blow the whole thing.\u00a0 We\u2019re about to send you back to prison, there\u2019s a certain point we have no choice.\u00a0 You know, when you have a couple more, and then finally, we were able to intervene, and he finally stopped celebrating his successes by getting high, but if that person had committed a crime while that happened, the newspapers would have come to us and said you knew he was doing drugs, why didn\u2019t you put him back in prison?\u00a0 That\u2019s a big dilemma for people at the state level, that\u2019s a big dilemma for us all within the criminal justice system, because we are taking somewhat increased risks with the people that we have under supervision.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well, and that\u2019s where, as I said, the beauty of this law, it\u2019s building in, and one other thing I do want to touch on is the reinvestment aspect, but it\u2019s building in a way to make these risk assessments.\u00a0 Nothing is going to be 100% perfect.\u00a0 But the key is, rather than, sometimes our intuition is just flat wrong.\u00a0 We think that, oh, that looks like a great program.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Well, it would work for me.\u00a0 Well maybe your criminogenic factors are not the same as the people you\u2019re actually dealing with.\u00a0 So it might work for you, we\u2019ve proven that it doesn\u2019t work for this population that we have been locking up, so let\u2019s use what works for them.\u00a0 One of the things that 463, this bill did, it codified a way to return some of the money that\u2019s saved back into the reentry systems, and into our local jails and counties.\u00a0 Kentucky also has a fairly unique, when I say fairly unique, it\u2019s just us and Louisiana, where one third of my felon population resides in our county jails.\u00a0 So if we don\u2019t find a way to enhance the programs and what\u2019s going on in those county jails, we also miss an opportunity to cut this recidivism rate, and thereby not take the fullest advantage of our public safety dollars.\u00a0 So 25% of the projected savings from one of our efforts, and please remind me, please ask me about the mandatory supervision provision in this bill, which I think is the key.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Well, go ahead and say that, but we only have about 30 seconds left, so we have to wrap up soon.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 Well, in wrapping up, then, I\u2019d say one of the key parts of the bill is, we recognized that the early part of failure happens in those 6-9 months, so we\u2019re going to put in a program where the last 6 months of an individual\u2019s sentence are now under mandatory supervision with probation and parole.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 There you go.<\/p>\n
Michael Brown:\u00a0 We\u2019re very excited about that.<\/p>\n
Len Sipes:\u00a0 Ladies and gentlemen, we\u2019ve been talking to Secretary Michael Brown, who has just focused, refocused an entire criminal justice system focusing on high risk offenders, being sure that they\u2019re incarcerated, and taking some chances, and actually doing, getting some great results in terms of a 10-year low in his recidivism rate for everybody else.\u00a0 He\u2019s saved the state and the collective wisdom has saved the state literally, millions of dollars, so Secretary Michael Brown, we congratulate you on these successes.\u00a0 Again, if you want to take a look at the website for the state of Kentucky, it\u2019s www.justice.ky.gov.\u00a0 Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety.\u00a0 I\u2019m your host, Leonard Sipes.\u00a0 I want everybody to have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.<\/p>\n
[Audio Ends]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome to DC Public Safety \u2013 radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system. See http:\/\/media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts. Radio Program available at http:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/audio\/2011\/03\/kentuckys-recidivism-rate-hits-10-year-low-dc-public-safety\/ We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http:\/\/twitter.com\/lensipes. [Audio Begins] Len Sipes:\u00a0 From the nation\u2019s capital, this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,8,15,52,18,21],"tags":[69,282,32,70,276,65],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corrections-prisons","category-drugtreatment","category-interviewswithpolicymakers","category-parole-and-probation","category-reentry","category-whatworks","tag-kentucky","tag-parole-and-probation","tag-prison","tag-recidivism","tag-reentry","tag-treatment","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBoKk-ab","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":634,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions\/634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.csosa.gov\/podcast\/transcripts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}