Audit adds to criticism of Michigan's parolee program

Lansing — Michigan's Prisoner Re-entry Initiative has won national acclaim for helping ex-convicts stay out of trouble, but critics say the state is undercounting lapsed parolees to make the program appear more successful than it is.

The criticism comes amid an audit of the 6-year-old Department of Corrections program that found other shortcomings, including overcharging vendors for services and allowing conflicts of interest between contractors and subcontractors.

Jim Chihak, a former parole and probation officer who was part of a panel that evaluated the program this spring, said the program's intent — to keep prisoners from returning to prison — is admirable, but "the way it's being handled is a disaster."  Read more...

Gov. Brownback starts faith-based program for parolees

Kansas needs 5,000 volunteer mentors a year for paroled criminals, Gov. Sam Brownback said this week.

He spoke Monday in Wichita at the launch of an effort to merge government resources, social services, churches, businesses and mentors to keep parolees from returning to prison.

He announced the Out4Life faith-based program at the start of three days of workshops in which service providers and others discussed re-entry approaches.

The Kansas Department of Corrections will work with Prison Fellowship, a Christian group that created Out4Life about two years ago.

Brownback said he wants a mentor for each released criminal.  Read more...

2011 Annual Training Conference Presentations

The presentations APAI received from the 2011 Annual Training Conference held May 15-18, 2011, in San Antonio, Texas have now been posted on the website.  You can find those HERE!

NC probation, prison changes backed at Legislature

Significant changes to North Carolina's sentencing and probation laws designed to keep better track of offenders and discourage recidivism while scaling back prison construction are heading to Gov. Beverly Perdue's desk.

The General Assembly gave its final approval Wednesday night to the so-called "Justice Reinvestment Act" developed with the help of outside researchers and interest groups. The House agreed to changes approved by the Senate earlier in the day.  Read more...

Paroled lifers pose high risk of new crimes

More than a third of the most serious criminal offenders paroled in Massachusetts over the past five years were returned to prison for committing new crimes or violating the conditions of their release, a Globe review has found, raising questions about the public risk posed by granting early release to scores of convicted murderers, as well as the state’s ability to supervise violent criminals on parole.

The Globe analysis, undertaken after last December’s fatal shooting of a Woburn police officer by a career criminal on parole from a life sentence, found that the Parole Board freed 201 prisoners serving 15 years to life from January 2006 through December 2010.  Read more...

California Paroling Medically Incapacitated Inmate

COALINGA, Calif. -- A California convict in prison for a violent robbery is the first in the state granted parole under a new law allowing release of medically incapacitated inmates.

A state Board of Parole Hearings panel ruled Wednesday that 48-year-old Craig Lemke, who has served less than four years of a 68-year sentence, poses no threat to public safety because he's a quadriplegic.  Read more...

Political paralysis' in Calif. over prison reform

As California deeply cut spending for public schools, social services and health programs in recent years, state leaders also found themselves grappling with a court order to reduce the prison population by tens of thousands of inmates.

Some civil rights groups and criminal justice experts are now seizing on this perfect storm of chronic deficits and crowded prisons to push for wide-ranging changes to the state's sentencing laws that would transform California's handling of crime and punishment. The California chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups want the state to reduce drug possession and low-level, nonviolent property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, and they want more community-based alternatives to incarceration. Read more...

Field Poll: California Voters Favor Re-Vamping "Three-Strikes Law"

Most California voters see a court order to reduce the state's prison population by 30,000 inmates as a serious problem, and nearly three out of four say it is time to revamp the state's "three-strikes" law, a Field Poll out today finds.

The poll comes on the heels of last month's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court ordering California to address its prison overcrowding problem, and 79 percent of those surveyed said the matter is serious.  Read more...

High Court: Judges Can't Lengthen Prison Terms to Promote Rehab

Federal law bars judges from imposing or lengthening prison terms to promote a criminal defendant's rehabilitation, the Supreme Court ruled today. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, the high court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco. The case involved defendant Alejandra Tapia, who was convicted of smuggling unauthorized aliens into the country.

A judge imposed a 51-month prison term, referring to Tapia's need for drug treatment in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' Residential Drug Abuse Program. Kagan said a lower court judge "did nothing wrong-and probably something very right-intrying to get Tapia into an effective drug treatment program. But the record indicates that the court may have done more-that it may have selected the length of the sentence to ensure that Tapia could complete the 500 Hour Drug Program."  Read more of the ruling...