MInnesota Reducing Recidivism

Minnesota is experiencing promising success in reducuing recidivism through a program based upon the state's TPC model. An article from the Minnesota Depertment of Corrections TPC News Updates is reprinted below:

Issue #16,
December 18, 2013
TPC as a Foundation 
By Lee Buckley, Community Transition Coordinator

 TPC is the foundation for all reentry programming. Take, for example, the Second Chance Act (SCA) High Risk Adult Recidivism Reduction Demonstration Grant funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). The grant uses the Minnesota TPC model to reduce recidivism for release violators transitioning from the MCF-Lino Lakes to communities in Anoka, Dakota, Hennepin and Ramsey counties. The project began in 2011, and is one of seven programs in the U.S. selected by the National Institute of Justice as part of a cross-site evaluation of BJA SCA Adult Reentry Demonstration projects. The project is funded and will operate through Sept. 30, 2015, and an assessment of the initial outcomes indicates a promising ability to change offender behavior and reduce new offense re-incarceration, and significant potential to reduce release revocations. A description and protocols document (posted to the TPC iShare site) details the framework of the project. Its structure includes all four components of the Minnesota TPC Linear Model with a key focus on engaging and collaborating with external stakeholders, case planning and management, and implementation of effective interventions. A “one-stop shop” community-based hub located in North Minneapolis, where offenders receive post-release case management, resources, referrals and more, serves as the core of the engagement and collaboration activity. The success of this demonstration project is a result of a dynamic team that includes staff from DOC Transitions Services, DOC Research, Anoka, Dakota, Hennepin and Ramsey County Community Corrections, the contracted community-based hub and four service providers, and the non-contracted providers who work collaboratively to serve this high-risk and high-need population. The success shows how effective the TPC model can be, and how it can make a difference for offendrs.

Report: Fewer Texans return to prison as state focuses on rehabilitation, treatment

Thanks partly to greatly expanded rehabilitation and treatment programs, Texas sent 11 percent fewer ex-convicts back to prison in recent years a significant drop in recidivism that is being replicated across the country, according to a new study.

The study, to be released today by the Council of State Governments' Justice Center project, shows that Texas' recidivism rate — the number of felons who return to prison within three years after they are discharged or paroled — posted the double-digit drop for prisoners released in 2007.  Read more...

80 Percent Of Male State Inmates Released In 2005 Arrested Again By 2010

Of the 14,400 men released from Connecticut prisons in 2005, nearly 80 percent were rearrested by 2010, and just under half returned to prison with new sentences, according to a just-completed report that contains the most detailed data ever compiled on the state's recidivism rate.

The report, by Office of Policy and Management statistical guru Ivan Kuzyk, is scheduled to be released Wednesday. It also separately tracked sex offenders within the group and found that only a small number committed new sex crimes.  Read more...

Lifers are growing part of prison population

What's behind the increase of older inmates in the state prison system?

Experts point to everything from aging baby boomers and longer life spans to overall prison population growth and a trend toward stiffer sentences.

"Lifers" make up a sizable portion of the elderly state prison population, said Dr. Larry Rosenberg, a Millersville University assistant professor of sociology who teaches a course on modern corrections.

The elderly prison population also includes repeat offenders incarcerated after their "third strike" and inmates serving long sentences for crimes committed in their 40s and 50s, he said.  Read more...

Parole Supervision Helps Cut Recidivism: Montana Study

In a study of Montana ex-inmates, researchers found that offenders released early from prison without parole supervision are more likely to recidivate than those freed with parole supervision. Kevin A. Wright of Arizona State University and Jeffrey W. Rosky of the University of Central Florida believe that offenders who are released early are more likely to recidivate because they are not adequately prepared for reentry into the community. The study was published in Criminology & Public Policy, which is available only by subscription or to members of the American Society of Criminology.


Montana offenders released from prison on traditional parole supervision are required to have a detailed parole plan that includes housing and employment. The authors argue that given current pressures on correctional systems to reduce their budgets, it is unwise to do away with early release procedures. They say attention should be paid to the transition between prison and community reentry. In the same issue, Faye Taxman of George Mason University and Susan Turner of the University of California, Irvine, argue that correctional practitioners should look beyond the basic risk-assessment model of release and focus more on a client-centered approach, like the healthcare field. Journalists who want access to the papers should send a message to tgest@sas.upenn.edu.  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...

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...

No easy fix for California's prison crisis

By Jack Dolan and Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Sacramento and Los Angeles -- California's effort to shift tens of thousands of inmates out of its chronically overcrowded prisons to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order could be undone by the state's tough sentencing laws, persistent recidivism and recurring budget crises, analysts say.

More than 33,000 offenders must be moved out of the prisons under the high court's Monday decision, which upheld an earlier ruling that conditions in the teeming facilities cause preventable deaths and amount to cruel and unusual punishment.  Read more...

NH bill would let parole board decide on release

State parole board officials should have the power to keep inmates behind bars longer, reversing part of last year's prison reform law that said violators could be recommitted for a maximum of 90 days, witnesses told a Senate committee Thursday.

While there was some agreement on changing the recommitment limit, witnesses did not agree whether to change the mandatory release of all inmates nine months before they complete their sentences to they can be placed under intense supervision.  Read more...

Fewer freed inmates returning to prison

The rate of released offenders returned to prison is the lowest it has been in 11 years, the director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said yesterday.

Last year, 34 percent of inmates returned to prison for a parole or probation violation or a new felony conviction, down from 36 percent in 2009, said Director Gary Mohr.

Last year's recidivism rate is the lowest since 1997, when it was also 34 percent.

The national recidivism rate averages about 50 percent, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics says.  Read more...

Budget cuts slice programs for ex-inmates

Cuts in probation and parole programs to reconcile state budget deficits could undermine recent successes in shrinking bloated prison populations, criminal justice officials say.

In some states, the number of people committing new felonies while on probation or parole has inched up, in part because of cuts to programs that helped former inmates stay out of prison. Other states are weighing substantial budget cuts to all parts of their criminal justice systems, including probation and parole programs.  Read More...

States Help Ex-Inmates Find Jobs

Faced with yawning budget gaps and high unemployment, California, Michigan, New York and several other states are attacking both problems with a surprising strategy: helping ex-convicts find jobs to keep them from ending up back in prison.

The approach is backed by prisoner advocates as well as liberal and conservative government officials, who say it pays off in cold, hard numbers. Michigan, for example, spends $35,000 a year to keep someone in prison — more than the cost of educating a University of Michigan student. Through vigorous job placement programs and prudent use of parole, state officials say they have cut the prison population by 7,500, or about 15 percent, over the last four years, yielding more than $200 million in annual savings. Michigan spends $56 million a year on various re-entry programs, including substance abuse treatment and job training.  Read more...

Sir David Latham questions life prisoner reoffending

Reoffending rates among life sentence prisoners may be higher than figures suggest, according to the chairman of the Parole Board of England and Wales.

Internal estimates indicate that, each year, between 1% and 2% of lifers freed on parole commit further crimes.
But Sir David Latham told BBC News the current statistics were not "robust" and it was hard to be sure if the right parole decisions were being made.

He also warned of the "danger" of an "over-reaction" to high-profile cases.  Read more...

Parolees rarely kill again, study says

Until recently, Reginald Powell was free on parole, one of 936 convicted killers in New York state back on the street.

If he did kill Mamaroneck mom Jennifer Katz, as authorities suspect, he would be part of the distinct minority who went on to kill again.

Of 368 convicted murderers granted parole in New York between 1999 and 2003, six, or 1.6 percent,were returned to prisonwithin three years for a new felony conviction — none of them a violent offense, according to a study by the state Parole Board.  Read more...

Gov-elect Rick Scott's team bucks GOP ideology, urges easing prison policy to cut costs

TALLAHASSEE — Conservatives have been known to be tough on crime. Now they're saying they have to be tough on criminal justice spending as well.

Rick Scott's "law and order" team is telling Florida's incoming governor, who considers himself a conservative's conservative, to cut costs by diverting nonviolent offenders to drug treatment and requiring inmates to get an education and vocational training.

Those actions, which the transition team said could reduce the number of criminals returning to prison and allow the state to stop building new prisons, sound more like past Democratic suggestions than traditional conservative approaches to criminal justice.  Read more...

Attorney General Eric Holder Convenes Inaugural Cabinet-Level Reentry Council

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder today convened the inaugural meeting of the Cabinet-level "Reentry Council" in Washington to identify and to advance effective public safety and prisoner reentry strategies.

In addition to the Attorney General, the council includes Departments of Education Secretary Arne Duncan; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack; Interior Secretary Ken Salazar; Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan; Labor Secretary Hilda Solis; and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. Members also include Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michael Astrue; Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, R. Gil Kerlikowske; Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Melody Barnes; Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Joshua DuBois; and Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Jacqueline Berrien.  Read more...

Reforming Sex Offender Laws: California's Chelsea's Law rethinks the way state manages sex offenders who will return to society

After the rape and murder of Chelsea King, a San Diego County teenager, California legislators decided they had to do something. Amid the emotions of the tragedy, they passed a rational, thoughtful law.

That was an unexpected outcome, because many of the approaches that states take to prevent sex crimes are based more on fears than hard evidence. That’s as true in California as any other place. There, with the support of most of the state’s key politicians, voters approved a 2006 ballot initiative, known as Jessica’s Law, that barred sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools, day-care centers, parks or churches.  Read More...

Who's going back to prison (again and again)

San Francisco has one of the highest recidivism rates in the state—some 78.3 percent go back to prison within three years of release—according to a report released today by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

The study tracked about 108,000 inmates released from state prisons between 2005 and 2006 over the course of three years. Overall, the state recidivism rate, which has long been among the highest in the country, clocks in at 67.5 percent, which is not a significant change from previous statewide tallies.

“The recidivism rates in general, while not surprising, are disheartening, and attest to the complete failure of our prison system in achieving deterrence, rehabilitation, or both,” UC Hastings law professor Hadar Aviram writes in an email. “It is telling that the statistics haven’t changed significantly over time, despite increased punitive measures. Clearly, what we are doing under the title ‘corrections and rehabilitation’ does not correct or rehabilitate.”  Read More...

N.J. Parole Board teams up with U.S. marshals to bring down violators

It was a sunny morning in Jersey City when the unmarked police cars pulled into the Walgreens parking lot. As shoppers shuttled back and forth, officers clad in bulletproof vests with pistols on their hips clustered together.

Bill Cannon, the ranking U.S. marshal on the scene, passed around copies of a mug shot. The target was Jamal Roach, a fugitive who walked away from a Newark halfway house in July. On this day, he was hanging out at a bodega in his hometown.

Every month in New Jersey about 145 people skip out on parole supervision, failing to show up to meetings or leaving low-security community programs. Some stay clean. Others commit new crimes, from dealing drugs to murder.  Read More...