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State of the State: New Corrections Policies Take Aim at Underlying Causes of Crimes

Bethany Jaeger
WUIS/Illinois Issues

Within 90 days of being on the job, Illinois Department of Corrections Director Michael Randle announced sweeping changes in the way offenders are either sentenced to prison or diverted to community-based programs.

In September, he joined numerous public officials, reform advocates, criminal justice experts and journalists at a Chicago seminar sponsored by the John Jay College Center on Media, Crime and Justice, as well as the Pew Center on the States. Two days of dialogue offered a new perspective on how the corrections system could deal with unsustainable growth in the prison population, reduced staff levels with mounting overtime costs and chronic “tough-on-crime” laws that enhance penalties without regard to their consequences to the overstretched system (see Illinois Issues, September, page 6). 

Effective January 1, 2010, a new law called the Illinois Crime Reduction Act has the potential to shift the focus away from unconditional incarceration and toward more informed decisions regarding crime prevention and rehabilitation.

The initiative is designed to first understand why offenders commit crimes, then find the most effective way to change their behavior.?The ultimate goal is to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison, reduce recidivism rates and eventually save money.

In a year when state budget cuts exceeded $3 billion, Senate President John Cullerton says fiscal constraints create an opportunity to make smarter decisions about spending money up front rather than spending it on more expensive services later.

For instance, while it costs about $7,363 to imprison a low-level drug offender for a typical 120 days, it would cost $4,425 to provide community-based drug treatment to the same offender, according to the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy at Roosevelt University’s Institute for Metropolitan Affairs. 

That comparison is accompanied by good news and bad news, says Kathleen Kane-Willis, the institute’s interim director.

The good news is that more drug treatment alternatives have become available since 1980. The bad news is that lawmakers have simultaneously increased the penalties for drug crimes, making it more difficult for offenders to become eligible for treatment as an alternative to imprisonment.

Beyond repeated drug offenses, recidivism rates in general are fed by barriers throughout the prison and parole systems. When ex-offenders return home, often to low-income neighborhoods with high crime rates, they’re bound to get caught committing technical violations of parole, says Deanne Benos, assistant director of the Illinois Department of Corrections since 2003.?She adds that the parole system has focused on “gotcha” tactics rather than on rehabilitation.

The new approach starts with an assessment of offenders. It’s supposed to identify the traits that make them more likely to break the law again.

Within one year after the new “risks and needs assessment” project begins, 25 percent of offenders will have been assessed, according to Randle. That figure will climb to 50 percent within three years and 75 percent within five years.

Alison Shames, associate director of the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute in New York, says the new evaluations should reveal whether prisoners have mental health problems, live in unstable environments, lack family support, depend on drugs or have other conditions or attitudes that could make them more likely to violate their parole or the law again.

Once the corrections department knows each of those so-called risk factors, the information is supposed to follow the offenders through the system. 

That could be possible through a new initiative to link courts, probation, prison and parole, so all of those elements can make more informed decisions about each offender. 

For instance, the system is designed to offer graduated parole options, which would consider the risk of an individual re-offending, the severity of the original violation and whether re-imprisonment or home confinement would be most effective. 

Technical violations of parole should not automatically push ex-offenders back into prison. Prison should be the last option for some nonviolent offenders.

If successful, the new system could help offenders transition back into their communities and ensure that they have support needed to follow up on treatment of their underlying issues.

One success story so far is Sheridan Correctional Center. The adult male medium-security prison in north-central Illinois was redesigned as a substance abuse treatment facility to reduce recidivism rates for nonviolent offenders.

Leslie Balonick is senior vice president of the WestCare Foundation, which offers behavioral health treatment at Sheridan and in eight other states. She used to be senior policy and program development administrator for the Illinois Department of Corrections.

From Day 1, she says, Sheridan was designed based on data. In 2003, when then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich announced Sheridan would reopen as a drug treatment prison, nearly 40 percent, or 13,558, of all prison admissions were for drug crimes, according to WestCare. Roughly 30 percent were for property crimes, many of which were believed to support drug addictions. 

Once prisoners were behind bars, they were likely to return. In 2004, more than half, or 53.3 percent, of the 36,000 adult inmates set to be released that year were expected to return to prison within three years.

Sheridan kept that in mind when designing its treatment model. Some inmates stay for nine to 12 months, which research shows is the most effective length of time for that type of drug treatment program to be effective. Other inmates are given one to two years, which allows them to enter more intensive programs that offer vocational training in everything from carpentry and culinary arts to horticulture and manufacturing. They also can access services that teach parenting and anger management, as well as adult education courses. 

Once inmates leave, Sheridan’s reentry program coordinates care with community-based providers so they have a continuing support system.

Data has been collected in real time, allowing Sheridan officials to prove to the General Assembly that its programs work and deserve full funding from the state, Balonick says.

Recidivism rates of those who graduated from Sheridan’s drug treatment and reentry program dropped, according to a 2006 report by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. Sheridan participants had a 44 percent lower reincarceration rate (7 percent versus 17 percent) six months after they were released. Those who spent nine months at Sheridan had a 49 percent lower rate.

Based on lower reincarceration rates, the state saved about $2.1 million, according to the report.

Another way the state could save money down the road, says Cullerton, is through a program dubbed “Adult Redeploy.” Based on an existing program geared toward juveniles, the adult program could give county governments financial incentives for creating alternative sentencing. If counties reduce the number of people they incarcerate by a certain percentage, the state would give them money that otherwise would have gone into the prison system. Counties could distribute that money to local community-based services. On the other hand, they could face penalties if they didn’t reduce the number of offenders they sent to prison.

Illinois Redeploy, the original pilot program for juvenile offenders, has helped reduce the number of incarcerated juveniles by 51 percent, according to a 2008 annual report. The program started in 2005 with four pilot projects in Macon, Peoria and St. Clair counties and rural southeastern Illinois. In all, 382 minors were diverted from incarceration. While it cost about $4.9 million over three years, it saved $18.7 million.

For offenders already in prison, the Crime Reduction Act includes another seemingly controversial initiative — although less so as people become more educated about it — to release about 1,000 nonviolent offenders who have less than a year left to serve. Gov. Pat Quinn and Randle dedicated $2 million to releasing nonviolent drug offenders and giving them ankle bracelets and parole officers.

The concept of early release is supported by the John Howard Association, a Chicago-based prison reform group, as well as Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities. In a statement, Treatment Alternatives president Pamela Rodriguez said, “In our extensive history working with the justice system, we have found that alternatives to incarceration are far more effective ways to reduce crime for the vast majority of nonviolent, short-term drug-involved offenders.”

The Crime Reduction Act shows progress in changing attitudes about dealing with the reasons individuals commit crimes. The initiative has the potential to create a more holistic approach to deal with people who could turn out worse if sent to prison than they were before.

But all of that progress depends on how the programs are implemented and whether they’re adequately funded.

Ensuring adequate funding would require lawmakers to overcome the temptation to pass more tough-on-crime laws. Instead of seeking immediate gratification, they clearly should aim for long-term payoffs.

 

The initiative is designed to first understand why offenders commit crimes, then find the most effective way to change their behavior.

Technical violations of parole should not automatically push ex-offenders back into prison. Prison should be the last option for some nonviolent offenders.

Bethany Jaeger can be reached at capitolbureau@aol.com.

Illinois Issues, November 2009

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