Topic: Reentry

Providing programs in jail that teach job skills and prepare inmates for employment will reduce the chance that they will return after they are released—saving money in the long run and improving public safety. However, meaningful inmate programming can be costly. Creative use of existing staff and vendors can, nonetheless, yield impressive results, as we found in Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee County House of Correction (HOC), which supervises most of the county’s sentenced population, historically has not offered any substantial inmate educational activities, pre-employment programming, or job training. When County Executive Chris Abele took over management of the HOC in May of 2013 and began working with advocates and experts across the criminal justice system, the HOC was able to implement several programs that give inmates a chance to break the cycle of incarceration and give back to the community.

Although some of the inmate programming activities implemented at the HOC since May of 2013 are paid through the HOC operations budget, many were established by using the expertise and dedication of existing staff, leveraging vendor contracts, and by partnering with community groups. These programs use a small amount of the budget, but provide a significant impact that can assist inmates to become more employable and prepared for reentry upon release.

When using vendor contracts and staff roles to build new programs, it can be particularly effective to involve staff or vendors in the development of a program from the beginning. The Preparation for Success Program, a six-week pre-employment training program implemented in late 2014, was conceived, developed, and implemented by an HOC programs officer. Our program officers typically schedule events or presenters, supervise inmates on work crews, escort them to activities, and make sure programs run on time, in addition to being available for various other tasks as needed. The Preparation for Success program is presented as part of these regular duty activities and only requires a small amount of materials, but successfully promotes self-esteem, empowerment, and confidence by assisting inmates in practical job preparation skills such as filling out applications or drafting cover letters and resumes.

In another case, during a process to hire a vendor to run foodservice operations at the HOC, each vendor was required as part of their bid to propose a culinary job training program for inmates at no cost to the HOC (i.e., the cost of the program would not be paid through a portion of fees paid to the vendor). The successful bid vendor proposed—and has been conducting—a nationally recognized restaurant and food safety training and certification program for the inmates, IN2WORK, since January of 2014.

Other programs do require dedicated financial support, but it can often be obtained by a combination of grants, community partnerships, and small initial investments from existing budgets. For example, the Home2Stay program provides job training in welding, applied mathematics, and machining through a United States Labor Department grant obtained by Word of Hope Ministries. The HOC assists with the screening of participants and provides transportation for inmates to the instruction and training sites.

Earlier this year, the HOC established a Vermiculture operation—or worm farm—on HOC grounds.  The program produces worms to feed reptiles at the Milwaukee County Zoo as well as worm casings to be used as organic fertilizer by groups such as local garden organizations. It develops job training skills, demonstrates entrepreneurship, and provides inmates with an opportunity to give back to the community and make productive use of their time during confinement. The HOC made an initial purchase for supplies and stock from existing programming funds to get the program started, but after that, a portion of the casings that the worms produce are exchanged with a vendor for fresh materials for further processing at no cost to the HOC.

Through the dedication of HOC staff as well as the collaboration of justice system stakeholders, advocates, community organizations, and businesses, in less than three years we have been able to grow from virtually no substantive programming to offering dozens of programs that provide meaningful reentry support, with nearly 78% of eligible inmates involved in at least one (all inmates who are sentenced to the HOC are eligible). We now look forward to making other collaborative changes to the way we use the HOC as one of the jurisdictions selected to participate in the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, a national initiative to change the way America thinks about and uses jails. As our experience shows, budget concerns in strapped local jails across the country should not prevent the development of reentry programming, but encourage it, as creative collaboration will result in supportive options for individuals that can reduce recidivism, improve public safety, and save costs.

As our name says, the concept of community is central to our supervision practices at the Department of Community Justice (DCJ) in Multnomah County, Oregon, which handles probation and parole as well as pretrial supervision in Portland and surrounding areas. We are consistently seeking out research and best practices that provide guidance on how to best supervise those individuals placed on probation and post-prison supervision, such as the use of structured sanctions as a way to hold offenders accountable. This commitment to keeping individuals in their home communities extends as well to those who are awaiting sentencing and disposition through our Pretrial Services Program (PSP).

The majority of jurisdictions in the U.S. rely on bond schedules, which specifies monetary amounts accused persons must pay to be released pretrial, based on the charges they face. In Multnomah County, 61% of people booked into jail are awaiting trial and have not yet been charged with a crime. Many defendants on low-level charges who cannot afford bail plead guilty through negotiations before trial, solely in order to be released from jail. The creation of pretrial diversion options for such cases can have a profound effect on case disposition and sentencing. In Oregon, pretrial services were created in 1973 in conjunction with the abolishment of the commercial bail bond system. It was a joint effort among judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement officers, and correctional officers—and the continued collaboration of all these stakeholders has been the key to the program’s success.

The primary mission of PSP is to evaluate the risk of releasing defendants prior to trial, supervise defendants in the community, and ensure that defendants attend court hearings. PSP supervision allows defendants an opportunity to remain employed or in school, continue to receive medical services (such as drug, alcohol, or mental health treatment), and stay connected to their community pending resolution of their court cases. In 2014, 86% of those receiving PSP supervision showed up for their court dates, demonstrating that pretrial supervision can be a successful pretrial alternative to jail detention.

In addition to pretrial supervision, Multnomah County’s DCJ contributes to the effective management of jail beds through the use of structured sanctions. Research has consistently demonstrated that the delivery of swift and certain sanctions supports reduced recidivism. Oregon established a structured sanctions program in 1993 through a law giving probation/parole officers (PPO’s) the authority to apply immediate consequences to offenders on probation when they violate conditions of supervision. The implementation of this law allows PPO’s to impose a range of sanctions up to and including jail time. Like the establishment of PSP, this law was made possible through the collaboration of justice system stakeholders, and it gave PPO’s the authority to implement sanctions. The public safety partners realized that by not requiring a court hearing to impose short jail stays on probation and parole violators, the process would be more effective, saving time and money.

But it’s important not to overuse jail, even for the limited purposes of “swift and certain” sanctioning. After years of DCJ using more than 600 jail beds daily for this purpose, DCJ and our County Commissioners established a target of using fewer than 450 jail beds a day. Our target is based on research that continues to show that the length of a jail sanction has little impact on an offender’s success in completing probation or parole, and that longer stays are actually detrimental to public safety by increasing the likelihood of recidivism. This has led us to review when and how jail beds are used for sanctioning, and to consciously limit jail stays imposed for purposes of sanctioning violations of probation and parole.  As a result, lengths of stay have declined, and DCJ now uses a yearly average of 379 beds a day to sanction violators. When comparing 2008 to the present, we’re using about 80,000 fewer jail beds a year.

We look forward to continuing this work as one of the 20 jurisdictions selected to participate in the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, a national initiative to change the way America thinks about and uses jails. As we’ve already seen, the result of our commitment—along with that of our local public safety partners—to positively impact those under our supervision and their families by keeping them in the community when appropriate has increased public safety, saved taxpayer money, and contributed to stronger communities.