[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
2010

_______________________________________________________________________

HEARINGS

BEFORE A

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES
ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia, Chairman
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia
CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas
ADAM SCHIFF, California ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
MICHAEL HONDA, California JO BONNER, Alabama
C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
Maryland
PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
JOSE E. SERRANO, New York

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Obey, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mr. Lewis, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
John Blazey, Dixon Butler, Adrienne Simonson,
Tracey LaTurner, Diana Simpson, and Darek Newby
Subcommittee Staff
________
PART 6
Page
Major Challenges Facing Federal Prisons Part I................... 1
Major Challenges Facing Federal Prisons Part II.................. 153
Assessment of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative 229
Innovative Prisoner Reentry Programs, Part II.................... 359
``What Works'' for Successful Reentry............................ 397
Justice Reinvestment............................................. 481

________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
PART 6--COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS
FOR 2010
?

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
2010

_______________________________________________________________________

HEARINGS

BEFORE A

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
51-247 WASHINGTON : 2009

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin, Chairman

JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania JERRY LEWIS, California
NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida
ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia
PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana JACK KINGSTON, Georgia
NITA M. LOWEY, New York RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New
JOSE E. SERRANO, New York Jersey
ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut TODD TIAHRT, Kansas
JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia ZACH WAMP, Tennessee
JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts TOM LATHAM, Iowa
ED PASTOR, Arizona ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri
CHET EDWARDS, Texas KAY GRANGER, Texas
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas
LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California MARK STEVEN KIRK, Illinois
SAM FARR, California ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida
JESSE L. JACKSON, Jr., Illinois DENNIS R. REHBERG, Montana
CAROLYN C. KILPATRICK, Michigan JOHN R. CARTER, Texas
ALLEN BOYD, Florida RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana
CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania KEN CALVERT, California
STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey JO BONNER, Alabama
SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
MARION BERRY, Arkansas TOM COLE, Oklahoma
BARBARA LEE, California
ADAM SCHIFF, California
MICHAEL HONDA, California
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
STEVE ISRAEL, New York
TIM RYAN, Ohio
C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
Maryland
BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
CIRO RODRIGUEZ, Texas
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado

Beverly Pheto, Clerk and Staff Director

(ii)

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR
2010

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009.

MAJOR CHALLENGES FACING FEDERAL PRISONS
PART I

WITNESS

HARLEY G. LAPPIN, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS

Opening Statement by Chairman Mollohan

Mr. Mollohan. The hearing is now in order. And we are going
ahead with your opening statement.
Good morning. We are pleased to welcome Mr. Harley G.
Lappin, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who will
be talking with us about some of the major challenges facing
the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
This is the first in a series of hearings this week that
will broadly focus on the central challenges we face in
facilitating the successful reentry of offenders into our
communities.
Last week, the Pew Center on the States released a report,
One in Thirty-One, the Long Reach of American Corrections.
According to that report, one in thirty-one American adults
or 3.2 percent of the population is now under some form of
correctional control, whether in jail or under supervision in
the community. That is a staggering statistic and it calls upon
us to reassess the path we have been taking when it comes to
reducing both crime as a whole and recidivism.
The thrust of the Pew Report is that we are not investing
nearly enough in programs to help offenders avoid recidivism.
There are a number of goals associated with offender
reentry, not the least of which is to help these individuals
transition to full and productive lives.
We also have an obligation to protect our communities from
threats posed by returning offenders, who are more likely to
recidivate without support services.
But this is an Appropriations Subcommittee and so we are
also concerned about the direct connection between recidivism
and the growing strains on the resources of the Bureau of
Prisons and State Correctional systems.
Mr. Lappin, you provided information in connection with
last year's hearing indicating that 70 percent of those coming
into the Federal Prison System have prior records of some kind.
To the extent that the federal government can help develop
and support successful reentry programs for state and federal
prisoners, we can reduce the number of individuals being
incarcerated in our state and federal prison systems.
This morning's hearing will focus on the Bureau of Prisons
reentry efforts, including the way they are affected by last
year's enactment of ``The Second Chance Act,'' which imposes
new responsibilities on BOP to prepare offenders for reentry
into communities.
In that context, we also will be discussing the broad range
of challenges facing the prisons, including prison overcapacity
and the adequacy of staffing, because they ultimately affect
the ability of the Federal Prison System to focus resources on
reentry.
Since we do not have a Minority member here at the moment
and it is okay for us to proceed with their permission, your
written statement will be made a part of the record and you can
proceed with your oral testimony. And we welcome you to the
hearing today.
Mr. Lappin. Chairman Mollohan, it is a pleasure to be here
and I look forward to chatting with you and the other
Subcommittee members about the Bureau of Prisons and our
reentry efforts.
I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to
discuss the challenges we face in the Bureau of Prisons in
meeting the reentry needs of federal inmates.
Before I do so, I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman,
and if you would on my behalf thank the other Subcommittee
members, for your assistance last year with the reprogramming
and the supplemental funds that allowed our agency to avoid a
deficiency and also the additional operating funds included in
the fiscal year 2009 House passed Omnibus bill.
Preparing inmates for reentry into the community is a high
priority for the Bureau of Prisons. We are constrained,
however, in our ability to attend to this priority.
A combination of elevated crowding and reduced staffing has
made it difficult to provide inmates with the programs they
need to gain the skills and training necessary to prepare them
for a successful reentry into the community.
And we know through rigorous analysis that both the inmate-
to-staff ratio and the rate of crowding at an institution are
important factors that affect not only program availability but
also the rate of serious assaults on inmates.
As an example of the problems we are facing, for the last
two fiscal years, we have been unable to meet our statutory
mandate to provide residential drug abuse treatment for all
eligible inmates. We would need to hire additional staff, to
open new units in order to reach all the inmates who are in
need of residential treatment.
Traditionally the Federal Bureau of Prisons has offered a
wealth of inmate programs that provide work skills and impart
essential life skills. We have found again through rigorous
research that inmates who participate in Federal Prison
Industries, vocational or occupational training, education
programs, residential drug abuse treatment programs are
significantly less likely to recidivate within three years
after release.
This is important because a study by the Washington State
Institute for Public Policy demonstrated significant cost
savings to the criminal justice system for residential drug
abuse treatment programs, adult basic education, correctional
industries, and vocational training programs.
We have implemented a number of changes to the BOP policies
and practices now required by ``The Second Chance Act.''
For example, our Life Connections Program is a residential,
multi-faith-based program that provides the opportunity for
inmates to deepen their spiritual life and assist with their
ability to successfully reenter the community upon release from
prison.
``The Second Chance Act'' requires that our Life
Connections mentors be permitted to continue to mentor inmates
after their release from custody.
The Inmate Skills Development Initiative is our targeted
effort to unify our inmate programs and services into a
comprehensive reentry strategy.
The three principles of the Inmate Skills Development
Initiative are: one, inmate participation in programs must be
linked to the development of relevant inmate reentry skills;
two, inmates should acquire or improve a skill identified
through a comprehensive assessment; and, three, resources are
allocated to target inmates with high risk of reentry failure.
The Inmate Skills Development Initiative includes a
comprehensive evaluation of strengths and deficiencies inmates
have in nine skills areas related to reentry. We will update
this information throughout incarceration to continually assess
the skills inmates obtain and to guide them to participate in
the programs they need.
Finally, one of our most important reentry programs,
Federal Prison Industries, is dwindling rather than expanding.
This program is essential to the BOP because it provides
inmates with marketable skills and keeps substantial numbers of
inmates at our higher security institutions productively
occupied; and it does so without receiving appropriated funds.
Over the past six years, inmate participation in the
Federal Prison Industries Program has dropped 30 percent due to
various provisions in Department of Defense authorization bills
and appropriations bills that have weakened FPI's standing in
the federal procurement process. Absent any new authority for
FPI to expand its product and service lines, we will need
additional resources to create inmate work and training
programs to prepare inmates for a successful reentry into the
community.
Before closing, I would like to address one additional
issue. I am aware that some correctional professionals and
others are insisting that it is necessary to purchase certain
equipment to enhance inmate supervision and reduce assaults.
Let me assure you that I have no higher priority than the
safety of staff and inmates. And while I desire to purchase
equipment towards that end, I am absolutely confident that our
limited resources are best used to increase staffing at our
institutions.
The addition of line staff positions in BOP facilities will
allow us to supervise and manage the inmate population more
effectively and I believe it is our best use of resources to
enhance safety and security both for staff and for inmates.
Chairman Mollohan, this concludes my formal statement, and
I look forward to answering any questions you or other
Subcommittee members may have.
[Written statement by Harley Lappin, Director, Federal
Bureau of Prisons follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Bonner, I understand you are
substituting. Do you have any opening remarks?

Mr. Bonner Opening Statement

Mr. Bonner. Mr. Chairman, I will be happy to take this
opportunity and apologize for being late.
Director, thank you very much for being here. I on behalf
of the Minority, we join the Chairman in thanking you for
coming to present testimony to us today on the challenges
facing the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Each challenge that you face obviously has a budgetary
aspect. However, we recognize that you are somewhat limited in
terms of the answers that you can give as the details of the
fiscal year 2010 budget requests have yet to be finalized.
Thanks to the statement that you have already provided, I
know that the Committee, Majority and Minority, both appreciate
having an opportunity to go forward with this discussion.
In fiscal year 2008, it took a significant infusion of
funds to reprogramming and a supplemental appropriations just
to continue to fulfill your mission and preserve safety for
prisoners and staff.
And we appreciate your testimony.
And, Mr. Chairman, with that, I think we will go to
questions.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Bonner.

prison funding shortfall

Mr. Lappin, as you know, the Bureau of Prisons had a
shortfall of $287 million in fiscal year 2008 which was
addressed through a reprogramming that Mr. Bonner referenced of
$109 million and supplemental funding of $178 million. The
shortfall was substantially attributed to higher than expected
healthcare costs and growth in the inmate population.
Assuming the enactment of the Omnibus appropriation bill,
do you anticipate a reprogramming for the current fiscal year?
Mr. Lappin. No, I do not.
Mr. Mollohan. Have healthcare costs, inmate population
growth, utility costs, and other variables adhered to your
estimates?
Mr. Lappin. I believe they have. You are talking about
fiscal year 2009, I am assuming?
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, I am.
Mr. Lappin. Yes. We do not anticipate requesting a
reprogramming if we receive the House mark which is in the
Omnibus bill. And our estimates for inflation applicable to
healthcare, to utilities, certainly the increased cost of staff
are on track with what we had projected.
Mr. Mollohan. Have you adhered to the estimates of
healthcare costs, inmate population growth, utility costs, and
any other variables that you track in your estimates?
Mr. Lappin. We have adhered to the areas that we normally
track and monitor. There will without a doubt be challenges in
getting through the fiscal year, but we believe we can do that
without requesting a reprogramming.
So we are going to have to, as we have in the past,
establish our priorities. As I mentioned, our highest priority
with whatever additional funding we have is to hire additional
people.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mr. Lappin. But even given that, we are going to have to
make some choices as to purchasing of equipment, vehicles, the
number of positions we can fill. We are going to have to watch
very closely what programs, if any, we add.
One of which we do plan to add, I know will probably come
up. We are going to add some additional drug treatment
specialists based on funding that is in there, allocated for
that, decrease our backlog.
But beyond that, for us to add anything, we have to look to
eliminate something else. And so we will just go through our
normal assessment of the Bureau's priorities and determine what
are the highest priorities and fund those first. And what
remains will either have to wait until 2010 or look for other
resources.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, what I am trying to get on the
record is where you may have problems and where you anticipate
challenges. As you look at your budget coming into the new
year, you must have estimates in all those areas.
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. And you must be anticipating some challenges
somewhere.
Mr. Lappin. We certainly do, without a doubt. The cost of
healthcare continues to increase.
Mr. Mollohan. Are you providing adequate healthcare to the
inmates?
Mr. Lappin. Yes, I believe that we are. And, again, we
will----
Mr. Mollohan. By what standard do you measure that?
Mr. Lappin. Well, we look at the community standard on most
issues. But there is a list that the medical staff have
identified--those highest priorities of care we provide to
inmates.
We cannot provide everything and there are some things that
one would question we should provide given the fact that some
of these folks come to us having had these conditions long in
the past, long before they came to the Bureau of Prisons.
Mr. Mollohan. Sure. Everybody comes with a certain health
status.
Mr. Lappin. Absolutely. But certainly we are providing
whatever immediate care is necessary and whatever preventative
care we can provide.
Mr. Mollohan. I think I read somewhere where dentistry was
a real challenge in the Bureau of Prisons right now.
Mr. Lappin. When you look at staffing, there is staffing in
general and without a doubt in general, one of our highest
priorities is to continue to add correctional staff. And let me
explain why that is a target and then I am going to talk
specifically about medical and the huge challenge we have
there.
We have taken three approaches. One, given the fact we have
had to downsize in a number of other program areas and redirect
that funding to correctional areas, correctional services, we
have been able to hire a few more correctional staff. In lieu
of--because what we were doing was taking people out of
programs areas and out of support areas temporarily and having
them work in correctional posts. We do not want to do that long
term because they are providing services and programs that we
want to continue to provide.
Therefore, we have been trying to increase the number of
correctional officers to reduce the amount of augmentation that
we are having to do out of those program areas and
administrative areas. And at most places, we have been
successful in doing that.
We have had a special initiative on healthcare across the
board, although it is somewhat geographic. We are only staffed
probably at about 70 percent in medical, maybe a little higher
than that. Now, I have to look to find the exact number, but
between 70 and 75 percent.
Our biggest challenge is doctors, PAs, dentists, and
nurses, somewhat more challenging at some locations than
others. Without a doubt it is most challenging in our more
rural communities where it is very difficult to attract these
professional folks in addition to psychologists and chaplains.
So we have implemented a recruitment and retention
initiative to offer recruitment bonuses and retention bonuses.
It has to come out of our salary budget. So when we do that, we
realize we are spending more than we normally would to attract
and retain that professional, but it is absolutely necessary.
And so that is a special initiative. We have seen an
increase in some areas with our ability to recruit and attract
more of them.
We work with the Public Health Service to attract more
staff out of the Public Health Service, which is a little more
expensive for us, but they bring to us a great addition in the
way of staff and experience. We have about 700 Public Health
Service staff working for the Bureau of Prisons, the majority
of whom are in medical.
But without a doubt, our biggest challenge is the
recruitment and retention of medical staff, psychologists,
chaplains across the board.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. I will follow-up.
Mr. Aderholt.

SECOND CHANCE ACT

Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for taking the opportunity to come and testify
before our Subcommittee today.
One thing I wanted to just ask you briefly about was on
page three of your testimony, you had discussed ``The Second
Chance Act.'' And, of course, you indicate that you have been
able to implement changes, a lot of the changes that are
required by ``The Second Chance Act.''
And I just wanted you to talk a little bit more in detail
about what aspects of that that you have not been able to
implement and some of the things that maybe you are doing to
resolve that.
Mr. Lappin. Well, there is funding, I believe, proposed in
the 2010 budget for further implementation of ``The Second
Chance Act.'' However, I want to go back, I think, and give a
lot of accolades to the folks who drafted this and they were
working with the Bureau of Prisons and looking at what
direction we were going, what we were planning to do, and
building that into ``The Second Chance Act.''
And I am going to speak specifically to Section 231A, B, C,
D, E, F, G, which specifically deal with what we must do to
prepare inmates for release.
And years and years ago, we realized that we were not doing
as good a job as we should be doing in identifying what skills
inmates lack and then leveraging them into programs that
improve those skills.
I was a case manager--I started as a case manager back in
1985. I sat at team meetings and we kind of guessed when we
talked to the inmate. You know, ``what it is you think you need
to do and here is what we have to offer.'' It really was not
very scientific.
So, the staff who drafted this legislation listened to our
staff. And we had a work group at the time that was comprised
of not only Bureau of Prison staff but U.S. Probation officers,
other care providers in the community, people who we were going
to hand these folks off to, to continue supervision; to
identify what skills they see inmates lacking, why are inmates
failing once they transition from the Bureau to the community,
and build that into our program.
And as a result, this group identified nine skill areas,
daily living skills, I can provide a list with detail, mental
health skills, wellness skills, interpersonal skills, academic
skills, cognitive skills, vocational career skills, leisure
skills, character skills.
And upon an inmate's arrival, they will take an assessment.
They will take a little test which is going to measure their
skill level in each of those nine areas.
Then when the inmate, within the first 30 days of
incarceration, sits down with his unit team, they will have
this assessment and we will be able to say to the inmate; ``you
know, you really have good scores on interpersonal skills,
this, this, and this--what you lack is vocational training or,
what you lack is an acceptable level of literacy.''
We need to focus on those areas so that we are leveraging
those inmates, those willing inmates into those programs that
they most need. And then through the course of that, we are
measuring their performance. Are they actually learning
something here that is going to assist them upon release?
So although we have not been fully funded, we have been
doing this type of work. We do look forward to that funding to
allow us to fully implement this.
In addition to that, the big benefit here is what we gain
in our relationship with the United States Probation Service
and other care providers in the community, the residential
reentry centers, that this information will just not stay with
the Bureau.
Our objective is that this information would be passed on
to those folks so that when they receive that person going to
the halfway house or they receive that individual that they are
going to supervise, they will be able to see as well what
skills they performed well, what they did not perform well,
what they volunteered to participate in, or what they resisted.
Because that tells that probation officer a lot about that
person they are going to supervise, if they have been
resistant, if they have been unwilling to participate. It gives
them a better sense of how much risk this person may be
compared to somebody who is a willing participant.
So, I think the other huge gain here is the transmission,
the carryover of this information to halfway houses and to U.S.
Probation staff as they continue to supervise this inmate.
Some will return without a doubt. Our recidivism rate is
about 40 percent, although, for example, last year, we had
70,000 new admissions. Fourteen percent of them were prior
federal offenders. So we saw about 14 percent come back that
year. When they come back, we pick up where we left off and
hopefully we can leverage that person into more programs.
Our downside obviously is within this inmate population of
202,000, you have got willing participants and you have got
unwilling participants. I am confident the majority of them are
willing, but you have got a percentage, 25, 30 percent, who
continue to resist.
Mr. Aderholt. And are you talking about in this assessment
program.
Mr. Lappin. Just in general.
Mr. Aderholt. Oh, just in general.
Mr. Lappin. When they come to prison, they are still
unwilling to accept responsibility sometimes for their behavior
and in doing so recognizing they need to change.
Mr. Aderholt. Yes.
Mr. Lappin. But I still think the vast majority are
typically willing. Sometimes not early on. Sometimes that
transition takes some time for them to begin to accept that
responsibility.
But our objective is to try to, one, make sure we reach out
and we address the needs of those willing participants and we
keep leveraging those unwilling participants. Trying to get
them to accept more responsibility into these programs that we
know will be helpful to them. So in that case, we have started
that work.
There is another program that we have started on which was
the--I will not go into all the areas, but the enactment of the
Elderly and Family Reunification for certain nonviolent
offenders. These are the older folks who have been in custody
for a certain number of years. We have initiated a pilot to
identify those folks and consider giving them some time off
their sentence if they meet the criteria established under the
law.
And we have also started the change of regulations,
applicable to allowing inmates who have a need, up to 12 months
in a halfway house.
So, those are the areas that we have been focused on most
aggressively.
Mr. Aderholt. Of course, my understanding, you all know
this much better than I, but ``The Second Chance Act'' allows
up to 12 months to go into the halfway houses for all inmates.
But the bottom line is, my information that I received, is
that it is sometimes usually about six months. And I have
actually had some constituents that have fallen in that
category.
And right now currently who would be eligible for that 12
month and what percentage would you say that go to halfway
houses go for that 12 month period as opposed to the six month
period?
Mr. Lappin. Well, right now I think all the inmates are
eligible for up to 12 months because when the law passed, it
went into effect. We have had to change the regulation.
But all the inmates who are being considered for halfway
house are being considered for up to 12 months. So they are
being considered.
It really comes down to the needs of the inmate. That is
what it has always been and continues to be. We assess how long
they have been in prison. We assess their community ties. We
assess their skill level and their ability in advance of
acquiring a job, finding a place to live. And based on all
those factors, we determine, you know, how much time does the
individual, on an individual case-by-case basis, need in a
halfway house.
We have found in the past that most inmates can do that in
a six month period. Most inmates when they come out of there,
unless it is a very unusual case, most of them can find a place
to live and typically find a job.
Now, again, we are in very difficult economic times. These
factors that we have no control over are going to impact
offenders' abilities to get jobs. So, that changes over the
course of time depending on economic conditions.
So, there are a lot of people looking for work now. And
when these folks come out, they are going to find it more
challenging to find jobs given the fact they are competing with
more and more people who are out of work. Hopefully, as this
turns around, it will be easier for folks as it has been in the
past.
But typically we have been able to rely on about a six
month stay. We are currently sending inmates for more than six
months. So, there are some inmates who have these needs that we
believe require more than six months. And we have been allowing
that to occur.
I do not know the number. We can get the number for you.
This is one of the priorities, though, I do not want to leave
here misleading anyone. I mean, it costs us more money
sometimes to house people in halfway houses than in our
prisons. It is cheaper for us to keep an individual
incarcerated in a low or a minimum security facility than to
put them into a halfway house.
Now, that is in part our fault because we have, and I think
for the right reasons, we have wanted more and more service
provided in the halfway houses. We want mental healthcare. We
want drug transition. We want job placement assistance.
So, we have asked the providers to build into their
contracts those services. All of those things cost more money.
We think it is money that is a good investment.
On the other hand, when you are limited on funding, you
have got to look at how much money we can invest in community
corrections. We have a budget for that.
And so, what we will try to do with the budget we have
allocated for community corrections is address the needs of the
inmates on a case-by-case basis, and within that budget have
enough money to send those who need time in a halfway house of
more than six months to the halfway houses, and those that do
not to whatever time is recommended.
But if we were just to turn around and push all of them for
12 months, without a doubt, we would have to take money out of
prison operations and put it over into community corrections to
pay the difference. And right now we cannot afford to do that.
So, again, it is really on a case-by-case basis. Those that
we believe have a need we will try to get in for a longer
period of time. But, again, with our experience, we have used
halfway houses for 15, 20 years, probably one of the biggest
providers, 85 percent of our inmates who return to our
communities in the United States transition out through a
halfway house.
Many states, if you compare, are far less than that,
because we believe this is critically important to transition
to the community rather than just dumping that guy out on the
street.
So, we want to get them all some time and we will get them
all as much as we can.
Mr. Aderholt. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Bonner.

CHANGES IN PRISON POPULATIONS

Mr. Bonner. Director, in looking over your biography, you
have been with the Prison Service for 24 years roughly?
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Bonner. Started out as a case manager----
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Bonner [continuing]. Assistant warden, warden. If you
were speaking, and you are effectively, to the American
taxpayer today, tell us what you have learned in your 24 years.
How has the prison population changed? How have the challenges
changed?
And specifically you talked about it costing more at a
halfway house than mainline incarceration. Give us some feel
for how much money on average it costs because the debate that
we have year in and year out in Washington and in State
Capitols as well is if you put money, say, in education at the
front end, then you may have to spend less money on the back
end in prisons.
What does it cost to house an inmate on average today?
Mr. Lappin. Well, let me go back and just tell you what we
have seen in the change of the inmate population since 1985
when I started at the Bureau.
One, a much larger group of offenders. Back in 1985, we
probably had about 35,000 inmates. We just hit 202,000 inmates.
Without a doubt, the characteristics of those inmates have
changed significantly. One, they are serving more time on
average. Two, we see more violent, more aggressive, more gang
oriented offenders coming into the Federal Prison System than
in decades past given the fact that more laws, federal laws now
are applied to drugs and firearms and sex offenders.
And as a result of that, we are seeing a significant
increase in younger offenders, many of whom are more gang
oriented, more aggressive, more willing to confront the status
quo, which, without a doubt, has forced us to change how we
have operated the Bureau.
Fortunately our classification system has kept up with
those challenges. And I just want to speak to that for a second
because I want to share with you how critically important the
classification is to running safe and secure prisons.
To identify inmates in advance of them coming into the
Bureau, or soon after they are in the Bureau, that may lend
themselves to be a threat to staff and inmates. And because of
the evolution of that classification system, I think we have
been able to manage this changing population quite well. And we
continue to make adjustments to the classification system to
address the changing characteristics of the inmates.
So given that, even though we have seen a surge in the
amount of violence, our assault rates have remained--well,
actually have come down over the last 20 years, and the last
five years have been relatively stable with the exception of
assault rates on inmates in high security institutions.
In the last few years, we have seen an uptick in assault
rates on inmates by inmates. This concerns us, and I will give
you an example of what we are doing to address that and then I
will pick up with what it costs.
Without a doubt, within those 203,000, 202,000 inmates, a
group has evolved that has decided not to listen to us, to defy
our authority, to say no when we tell them to stop, to the
point that unfortunately in the last year or two, we have had
to use lethal force for the first time in most of our
recollection to resolve a conflict between inmates. And that is
just unacceptable in running a safe and secure prison.
So, we have done a couple of things. One, we have tightened
down our high security institutions. I say our classification
system works because most of this is occurring in
pententiaries, which means our staff are identifying these
inmates and, as they should, moving them up into more secure
facilities, which is what we expect them to do. The problem is
more of them now exist in our high security institutions.
So, therefore, we put additional controls in place at our
high security institutions to control inmates in smaller
groups, to have more oversight, to have more custodial staff
wherever possible. We have added some posts, so on and so forth
to try to address that.
I think most importantly is the next thing we are currently
doing. That is, we are going to remove these two or three
thousand inmates, that is my guess, two or three thousand
inmates, who act this way and we are going to convert a
penitentiary and two housing units at two other locations to
special management units. And we are going to move those
inmates out of these high security institutions, out of general
populations into a more structured, controlled environment.
We will have to work through phases of behavior
modification, of them complying to work their way back out into
a regular institution.
We currently have modified those institutions to handle
those inmates. We are working on increasing the staffing there.
We are identifying the inmates. And we will shortly, probably
this week, begin moving inmates into those facilities.
When those are filled, we will step back and reevaluate--
have we reduced these incidents, are we having those types of
conflicts, are inmates carrying weapons? And if they are, I
guarantee you what we are going to do. We are going to go take
another institution until we remove this small element from
these high security institutions who are misbehaving and are
not complying.
Without a doubt, one of the biggest challenges to the whole
thing are gangs and the increase in the percentage of gangs'
members in our institutions, in particular the folks from
Mexico and the Hispanic gangs. They are challenging folks, who
play by different rules. And as a result, we are having to
adjust what we do and how we will manage these types of
offenders.
I am not implying that it is only the Hispanic gangs
because believe you me, if you go to the Special Management
Unit once it is up and running, you are going to find Caucasian
inmates, you are going to find African American inmates, and
you are going to find Hispanic inmates, and probably a few
others from around the world.
But once this initiative is completed, I am hopeful we are
going to see a decrease in those types of incidents.
The cost of housing inmates on average, thank you, Bill, is
$25,895 per year on average. Now, realize when you cut across
the security levels, that varies significantly because a
minimum security inmate is going to be much cheaper than that
high security inmate or that inmate at ADX Florence.
So this is the average $25,895 per year. And our cost, just
to give you an idea of what it--let us see. That is----
Mr. Bonner. That is overall?

COST PER-PRISIONER

Mr. Lappin. Overall $70.75 a day. That includes every
single penny that goes into running the Bureau of Prisons,
training, administrative staff, movement of inmates. Everything
goes into that.
Our cost of putting someone in a halfway house, I think I
have that here, is about $65.20 per day. That is our average
cost per day for inmates in halfway houses.
Mr. Bonner. Sixty-five?
Mr. Lappin. Sixty-five twenty-five. So, for example, an
inmate at a minimum security institution, it is about $53.65 a
day. So, you can see for us to put that person in a halfway
house, it is 12, 13, $14.00 more per day.
So that is why you have got to adhere to a budget. You got
to watch it. You have got to manage it. But I commit to you we
are going to continue to put inmates in halfway houses for as
much time as we can.
Mr. Bonner. Do you know how these amounts compare with
inmates at private facilities or at state run facilities?
Mr. Lappin. Well, the state, it is a very difficult
analysis because you can go into journals and you can look at
the list of states in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The
problem is they all come to that conclusion with different
numbers.
For example, in some states, healthcare is provided out of
the health services budget. In some states, the education
funds, it comes out of the education funds. In some states,
they have no cost for hiring employees because it is a
centralized system for the entire state and they do not put
those costs applicable to their prison system into those
numbers.
The State Directors of Corrections realize this and we
actually have a committee that has been ongoing for about eight
years to try to reconcile that so, that a more apples-to-apples
comparison could occur. That is not possible right now.
But we have 13 private contract facilities. Now, understand
these are all low security inmates, the less risky offenders.
So, it would be unfair to compare what it costs for us to house
them in that low with our average cost necessary. We are going
to need to compare more with what it costs us to house inmates
in the lows.
But our cost of private contracts is about $60.00 a day
right now per inmate. Again, all low security inmates, less
risky inmates, because that is all we contract are low security
inmates. Most all of them are non-U.S. citizens. The contracts
probably do not afford as much programming as we provide in our
own institutions, so there is a little adjustment there as
well. Our cost for a low security inmate is about $63.00 a day.

RECIDIVISM RATE

Mr. Bonner. Correct me if I'm wrong, one of the statistics
we were given states that about two-thirds of all the released
prisoners go on to commit another crime.
How does that percentage compare with those who have gone
through your halfway houses?
Mr. Lappin. Our recidivism rates are 40 percent. That was
our last assessment a few years ago. So, the two-thirds number
is applicable to the average of the states. Ours fortunately,
and in part because to be honest with you, as we reflect on
what has changed in the Bureau, I have to tell you that from
the 1980s, from the time I became aware, until 2002, the Bureau
was cared for and funded well. And through the course of that
time, we added a lot of inmates, but we added a lot of prisons.
In doing so, we added a lot of staff and we were able to
provide a lot of programs, far more than what many states could
afford. As well as the fact that we are structured a little
differently than the states in that all of our staff are law
enforcement staff.
So our program staff--we can hire more programs folks
because when we need them to be correctional staff, they can
assume that responsibility. But when we do not need them in
that capacity, they can be teaching, providing vocational
training, providing counseling, and many other programs where
in many states, there are two different groups of people. So
that has been very beneficial to us.
So we are seeing a recidivism rate of about 40 percent. And
I do not know for sure, and I have asked Tom who handles our
Research Department to reassess that we have been able to
maintain that since 2002. In part because given the limited
resources--and, again, I am not questioning that, I know there
are many priorities, not only Department of Justice, but far
beyond. But without a doubt, we have been unable to put as many
people into those program areas and into the administrative
areas which would support those types of functions. And,
therefore, I kind of question that we are having quite as much
success.
We do, I believe, Tom, research on inmates who go to
halfway houses and we do see a lower recidivism rate for them.
I am not sure I have that number with me. I do not, but I think
we can----
Mr. Kane. We can provide it.
[The information follows:]

What Is the Recent Recidivism Rate for Inmates Who Go to Halfway
Houses?

The research study conducted by the BOP in 1994, confirmed that
inmates who were released through an RRC are less likely to recidivate
than inmates who were released directly from a correctional
institution. According to the 1994 study, 31.1 percent of inmates
released through a halfway house recidivated, compared to 51.1 percent
of inmates released directly to the streets. The study further
demonstrated that pre-release placements in RRCs result in higher rates
of employment, which is also correlated with reduced recidivism.
The BOP's Office of Research and Evaluation recently initiated a
study to understand the effectiveness of residential reentry centers
(halfway houses). The study is focused on evaluating post-release
success, such as remaining crime free, and determining the length of
time needed in a residential reentry center to improve the odds of
successful outcomes. The Office of Research is combining the various
data bases needed to perform the analyses and refining data
definitions.
The BOP expects to complete the new RRC study by the end of next
year.

Mr. Lappin. We can provide it. But certainly, every program
we provide, whether it is GED, vocational training, Federal
Prison Industries, residential drug treatment; we do recidivism
research on that program.
If we see it is not having the intended outcome, we ask why
are we doing this? Why are we investing money in this program
if, in fact, at the end of the day it is not reducing
recidivism? And if it is not, we should do away with those
programs.
In fact, we did during our restructuring period. We found
some programs that were not reducing recidivism. And I know
one. I will give you an example. One that hit hard with some
folks were the boot camps. We had known for ten years we were
not seeing a reduction in recidivism. We were spending millions
of dollars. And when money got tight, we said we should not
continue to do this program above the protests of a lot of
judges out there who believed it had to work, it just has to
work. But for the targeted group, it was not working.
And we had some vocational training programs, as good as
they were, were far too expensive. And we are now targeting
skills that I think more inmates need today, business skills,
computer skills, things that we can provide at a cheaper cost
to more inmates in a shorter period of time.
So we have reorganized that to try to gear our vocational
training to skills that we think inmates will need in the
community, and also that we can get somebody through a class in
six to nine months and get them a certificate. So that when
they do go out to look for a job, they have got something to
show someone rather than programs that took 18 months, two
years, and sometimes people could not complete them before they
were released.
Mr. Bonner. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Bonner.
Well, I have got a couple of follow-up questions with all
that good testimony.
Mr. Lappin. I figured you would.

PRIVATE VS. U.S. BUREAU OF PRISON

Mr. Mollohan. First of all, to help you out a little bit on
this one, I think the private versus U.S. Bureau of Prisons'
average comparing low security level inmates to low security
level inmates, I think that is the appropriate comparison----
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. As you point out in your
testimony. Sixty dollars a day in the private prison, $63.00 a
day in the average U.S. Bureau of Prison?
[The information follows:]

Cost Per Day of BOP Low Security Male Inmate vs. Contract Facility

The daily cost to incarcerate a male low security inmate in a BOP
facility was $62.41 in FY 2008, compared to $59.36 in a private
contract facility. Please note that the BOP facilities offer a greater
level of inmate programming and re-entry programs than private contract
facilities.

Mr. Lappin. Actually, I will have to come back to you with
a number because the $63.00 includes female inmates. And
believe you me, female offenders cost us, at the low security
level, cost us more money to care for than males.
So, what I would like to do is go back and get you a figure
for the record of what it costs us to house a male low security
inmate compared to a low security level male inmate in a
private facility. I actually think it is going to be even
closer because without a doubt, our female offenders, those
institutions cost us more typically because of the additional
healthcare and other needs.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. You do not have female offenders in
private prisons period.
Mr. Lappin. We do not.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Lappin. We do not.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. So we need to compare obviously.
Mr. Lappin. We will do that.
Mr. Mollohan. So that is one variable that is more
expensive in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons side. The other
variables are programmatic as well, is it not?
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. And the private facilities are shorter term,
and have fewer programs. I mean, there are a lot of things not
provided for on the private side that if you teased out would
probably impact that comparison dramatically.
Mr. Lappin. I would agree with you. Okay, they do not
provide as many programs nor do they, in our opinion, and I
would say this if the private folks were here, I talk with them
about this often----
Mr. Mollohan. Well, of course you would.
Mr. Lappin. They are partners with us.
Mr. Mollohan. Of course you would.
Mr. Lappin. Absolutely.
Mr. Mollohan. Because it is correct.
Mr. Lappin. It is correct in that----
Mr. Mollohan. We are not trying to offend anybody.
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. I think one of the, and I am going
to tell you, people ask me this all the time, well, why are
they struggling a little bit. I think their biggest struggle is
their turnover rate. Their turnover rate is between 30 and 40
percent.
Mr. Mollohan. In private prisons?
Mr. Lappin. In private prisons.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. I do not want to get into this.
Mr. Lappin. That is fine.
Mr. Mollohan. I just want to stick with my----
Mr. Lappin. But you are right. If you assess the programs
and the quality of programs and the number of programs----
Mr. Mollohan. Yeah.
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. Those are the softer issues that
you would have to judge that we think----
Mr. Mollohan. Well, it is a good question. Will you provide
an----
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Analysis for the record?
Mr. Lappin. Absolutely.
[The information follows:]

Comparison of the Programs Provided in BOP Facilities vs. Those
Provided in Private Prisons

All except one of the private prison contract facilities house
sentenced criminal aliens. Therefore, these facilities do not provide
Residential Drug Abuse Treatment (with the exception of one facility
which houses D.C. Inmates). 59 BOP facilities provide Residential Drug
Treatment Programming.
In addition, BOP facilities require inmates without a high school
diploma or General Educational Development (GED) credential to enroll
in a literacy program. Therefore, BOP facilities offer a greater level
of Education programming than private facilities where criminal aliens
are exempt from the same requirements. The contractor may provide
voluntary education programs like English-as-a-Second Language.
Finally, the population at contract facilities (sentenced criminal
aliens) are not released into U.S. communities. Therefore, release
preparation programs and social education programs are not required by
most of the contracts.

BOOTCAMPS

Mr. Mollohan. You made an interesting comment about boot
camps. I am a little taken back by the fact that boot camps did
not work, do not work as well. And I am just wondering why they
do not work because I think that, properly done, they would
provide the structure. I am wondering, were there programmatics
beyond the drill that went along with boot camp, like training,
education, and psychological services?
Mr. Lappin. I think in part. One, we had great programs. No
question over the quality of programs that were provided, but
we were targeting the most successful inmates in the Bureau of
Prisons in those boot camps.
So the inmates going in there typically were pretty
successful because they were minimum security inmates.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. And the law, the way it is currently laid out,
the regulations do not allow us to put violent offenders in
those programs.
So if you want to target a riskier group for boot camps, we
would have to go back and look at what laws apply to that and
make some adjustments so that we could target a riskier group.
And given that, we may see more impact in reducing recidivism
on that group of riskier offenders.
Mr. Mollohan. Let me ask, Director Lappin, how did you
measure effectiveness?
Mr. Lappin. Our recidivism research is pretty standard
across the board.
Mr. Mollohan. No. You said that boot camps did not work.
Mr. Lappin. They did not reduce recidivism.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. That was the key issue. We did not see
reduction of recidivism of those inmates who participated in
that program compared to a like group of inmates who did not
participate in that program.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. All right.
Mr. Lappin. But we can provide you a little analysis of
what we found.
[The information follows:]

Provide Analysis That Showed Boot Camps Did Not Reduce Recidivism When
Compared to a Like Group of Inmates Who Did Not Participate

The attached summary of the Lewisburg Intensive Confinement Center
(ICC) Evaluation dated November 15, 1996, indicates there was no
significant difference in the recidivism rate between inmates who
completed the ICC program as compared to similar inmates who did not
participate in the program. Graduates of the ICC at Lewisburg who were
transferred from a general prison population into the program were
rearrested at a 13.0 percent rate during the first 2 years in the
community. Graduates of the ICC who entered the program directly from
the court were rearrested at a 13.9 percent rate. Rates for these two
groups were not statistically different from the 13.8 percent rate for
a group of similar inmates who did not participate in the ICC program.

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Mr. Mollohan. In response to Mr. Bonner's question about
how things have changed since you came into the Bureau, when
did you come into the Bureau if I could ask?
Mr. Lappin. In 1985.
Mr. Mollohan. You are just a young guy here yet.
Mr. Lappin. Thank you, sir.

GANG MEMBERS IN PRISON

Mr. Mollohan. There are more gang members. They are more
violent. They are more aggressive. Is that in absolute numbers?
Of course. I mean, there is----
Mr. Lappin. We can give you the numbers.
Mr. Mollohan. Let me ask the question. In absolute numbers
or is it in percentages?
Mr. Lappin. Percentages.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. We have a larger percentage of gang members and
security threat group members than we did in the past.
Mr. Mollohan. So when you came in, how many member--how
many----
Mr. Lappin. I would have to go back and look.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. What was the population?
Mr. Lappin. Oh, the population of the Bureau of Prisons?
Mr. Mollohan. Yeah. See, it always works when they get to
the end of my question.
Mr. Lappin. About 35,000, I think.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. And what is it now?
Mr. Lappin. Two hundred and two thousand.
Mr. Mollohan. So my question is, obviously there are more
gang members. There are more violent people there.
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. And you are suggesting there are more violent
people there. Is that on a percentage basis? In other words, if
out of 35,000, ten percent were violent, then out of the
202,000, is it still ten percent violent? There are a whole lot
more people, but have the percentages changed?
Mr. Lappin. The percentages have changed.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. And we can probably provide you a comparison of
1985 to today. I think--well, I will wait and get it for the
record-- I think it is like 27,000 gang members and security
threat groups. But we will provide it to you in writing, so I
make sure I got the numbers exactly. We will give the
percentages as they compare to 1985.
[The information follows:]

Provide the Number and Percentage of Violent Offenders in the
Population Now Compared to 1985 and the Number and Percentage in Gangs
and Security Threat Groups Now Compared to 1985

In July 1986 (the earliest date for which data are available),
there were 15,635 violent offenders in BOP's custody. This was 32.4
percent of the total population of 48,272 inmates. In March 2009, there
were 104,642 violent offenders in BOP's custody, or 53.2 percent of the
total population of 196,547 inmates for which data is available. This
represents approximately six-fold increase in the number of violent
offenders and a 64-percent increase in the proportion of violent
offenders in the BOP over this time period.
Regarding security threat groups (which includes gangs) in February
1994 (the earliest date for which data are available), there were 3,323
inmates identified as affiliated with a security threat group. This was
4.2 percent of the BOP population. In February 2009, there were 26,966
inmates affiliated with a security threat group, which is 14.0 percent
of the population.

THE SECOND CHANCE ACT

Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Back to a budgeting question. Have you
budgeted for ``The Second Chance Act''?
Mr. Lappin. It is in the 2010 request.
Mr. Mollohan. Did you budget for it in 2009?
Mr. Lappin. We began implementation, but I am not--was
there money requested in the budget?
Mr. Kain. It came out of our base.
Mr. Lappin. It came out of the base.
Mr. Mollohan. I am sorry?
Mr. Lappin. It came out of the base.
Mr. Mollohan. Came out of the base, so----
Mr. Lappin. What we have done so far, we----
Mr. Mollohan. Go ahead. No, you go ahead.
Mr. Lappin. What we have done so far came out of our base.
There was not specific funding set aside in there for ``The
Second Chance Act.'' So we kind of absorbed it.
Mr. Mollohan. Yeah. Yeah. Darek tells me it was enacted
last April, so you really did not have a chance.
But this year, are you budgeting? I mean, we do not have
the budget detail and whatnot, but are you budgeting for
``Second Chance''?
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Are you selectively budgeting program by
program? Are you just asking for a number? Are you waiting for
us to fund some of the provisions in ``The Second Chance Act''?
Say you are supposed to do something subject to an
appropriation. Are you going to be requesting an appropriation
for all of those programs or are you just going to be asking
for a lump sum for implementation of the Act?
Mr. Lappin. Most of the time when there is a law passed, we
ask for funding to provide staff or materials for that. So
``Second Chance,'' although we have started it, we have asked
for funding.
Drug treatment, we have asked for several years for an
increase in that. We are fortunate that in 2009, we are going
to get that increase. And because of that, we are going to add
more resources.
So, if we see general increases in costs of programs, we
try to build that in. Most of it comes through an addition of
staffing. But on specific programs, we ask for a line item in
the budget applicable to a law. Others----
Mr. Mollohan. So what does that mean? Is that saying for
the ``Second Chance Act,'' you are going to ask for a lump
sum----
Mr. Lappin. Correct. Correct.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. For compliance with ``The Second
Chance Act''?
Mr. Lappin. Correct. And the same with drug treatment. We
did the same with ``The Adam Walsh Act.'' We did----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. I am just asking about ``The Second
Chance Act.''
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. We are asking for a line amount, I believe.
Mr. Mollohan. For complete compliance?
Mr. Lappin. For the Inmate Skills Development Program,
which is ``Second Chance.''
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. But there are other programs in that
Act.
Mr. Lappin. There are, but I think it is a lump sum there
that we have asked for.

OMNIBUS FUNDING

Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, we will see. The appropriation,
your appropriation in the Omnibus for S&E is $5.595 billion.
What is your staffing level today?
Mr. Lappin. Our staffing level is about 88 percent of the
authorized positions we have. We are spending at a rate of 91
percent of the positions because when you add the overtime in
there, given that lower staffing level, we are probably
spending at a rate of 90, 91 percent of the positions we have
allocated.

HIRING AT THE BUREAU OF PRISONS

Mr. Mollohan. How will that funding level impact the number
of positions in the Bureau of Prisons?
Mr. Lappin. 2009?
Mr. Mollohan. 2009.
Mr. Lappin. Very little.
Mr. Mollohan. So based on the 2009 funding, we cannot
expect very much hiring, if any?
Mr. Lappin. Not much. And, again, we are so far into this
fiscal year, by the time we----
Mr. Mollohan. I would think that would give you an
opportunity, maybe, because you are so far in.
Mr. Lappin. Well, by the time we--if we go out and starting
hiring now, it takes us three, four months to get somebody on
board.
Mr. Mollohan. I see.
Mr. Lappin. Actually in the institution working. Because
the hiring process, plus the training process, we are four or
five months down the road. But even with that, you will not see
a huge increase. And if you see an increase, what you are going
to see is a decline in overtime, because what we are going to
target are officers at locations where we continue to use lots
of overtime.
And we will offset some of that with the expectation they
are going to lower overtime at those locations where we add
correctional staff. So overall, you are still going to see 90,
91 percent for salaries.
Mr. Mollohan. During last year's hearing, we had a
discussion about the Bureau of Prisons inmate-to-staff ratio
and what the target ratio should be. I want to revisit that
issue and ask you the question in a different way.
You indicated last year that the Bureau of Prisons' inmate-
to-staff ratio was 4.9 to one compared with 3.57 to one in
1997. When I asked what the appropriate ratio should be, you
seemed to hesitate to offer a definitive answer.
I would assume that the appropriate inmate-to-staffing
ratio would vary according to the size and design of the
facility, the security level or mix of the levels of the
facility, population of the facility, and I am sure your other
factors that you alluded to or mentioned earlier in your
testimony about risk assessment or----
Mr. Lappin. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. Is that the right term.
Mr. Lappin. Yes. Classification risk assessment.
Mr. Mollohan. Classification. Given that, it would seem one
could develop a facility-based staff allocation model that
would identify a particular number of staff required for the
safe operation of a particular facility.
Is that assumption correct that it would be good to do or
do you do that on a facility-by-facility basis?
Mr. Lappin. We do not do that on a facility-by-facility
basis, but it would be the appropriate way to do that because
you are correct. Staffing, ratio of inmates to staff, varies by
the types of people in there, which you mentioned, risk
factors, as well as the design of the prison.
So, at our more newly designed prisons, we can watch more
inmates with fewer staff, given the design and the technology
that is built into those with cameras and electronic locks and
better perimeter protection.
So you are right. It is very difficult across the board to
do that.
Mr. Mollohan. It is very difficult to generalize across the
board?
Mr. Lappin. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Lappin. It is very hard to do that. But we allocate
positions by facility.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Lappin. So we try to look at that. I cannot say that we
have sat down and said this is the perfect ratio for every
prison.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.

AGING FACILITIES

Mr. Lappin. And I was hesitant last year on picking the
ratio because I do not know exactly what it should be, given
the fact we have such a mix of institutions that are as old as
114 years and institutions that are brand new.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Lappin. And varying characteristics on background. I am
not shy about this. I think that 4.9 to one is far too high.
Mr. Mollohan. What was it when you came into the Bureau of
Prisons if you remember?
Mr. Lappin. Well, ten years ago, it was 3.5 to one. My
guess is we were probably close to that back in 1985. But
realize that in the 1990s, and you may recall in the early
1990s, when the growth was really rapid, the Administration and
the Congress realized that we could not build prisons fast
enough then. We had not learned how to build prisons fast
enough. We are much better at it today.
As a result, they gave us about 4,500 positions to spread
throughout the prisons that were in operation at the time with
the understanding that eventually those would have to help fund
new institutions as they came on line. And that is what
happened, in the 2000s, after the reorganization.
But when people ask me, again, staffing is the highest
priority. I would like to see us move towards hiring 3,000
additional staff----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. Over the course of two or three
years.
Mr. Mollohan. All right.
Mr. Lappin. Then we step back and reevaluate.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. You are getting ahead of me a little
bit.
Mr. Lappin. I am sorry.
Mr. Mollohan. That is all right. But backing up.
Mr. Lappin. Sure.

STAFF RATIO

Mr. Mollohan. If you were to, and this is from our
perspective, I think, to do a staff ratio on a prison-by-prison
basis, it would seem to me to make your case more in
relationship to the challenge that you have and I think perhaps
make a better argument for those who are hesitant to provide
the Bureau of Prisons with resources to begin with and even
these obviously necessary staffing resources.
Would there be a problem with doing that?
Mr. Lappin. I do not have a problem giving that a try. And,
in fact, you would find that we do not have to do every
facility because we built many facilities that are almost
exactly alike today, have like types of inmates, similar
design.
Now, granted, you have got a number of them out there that
are very unique. Some of them were never intended to be
prisons. Some of them were colleges. Some of them were
monasteries that we have taken----
Mr. Mollohan. No.
Mr. Lappin. But you are right.
Mr. Mollohan. I understand that. I am just saying would
that be a chore to do?
Mr. Lappin. We could certainly look at how we go about
doing that and report back to you what, if any, challenges we
would see as problematic in doing that assessment.
[The information follows:]

Report on the Feasibility of Doing an Inmate to Staff Ratio Assignment
by Prison or by Classification or Other Category so That a Proper Ratio
Could Be Determined

The BOP does calculate the inmate-to-staff ratio for a facility or
a group of facilities (such as all institutions of a particular
security level). The inmate-to-staff ratio varies by institution
security level--institutions at higher security levels have lower
inmate-to-staff ratios.
Institution staffing is very much related to the BOP's emphasis on
inmate programs and the agency's ``correctional worker first''
philosophy. Regardless of the specific discipline in which a staff
member works, all BOP employees are ``correctional workers first,''
with responsibility for the security of the institution. All staff are
expected to be vigilant and attentive to inmate accountability and
security issues, to supervise the inmates working in their area or
participating in their program, to respond to emergencies, and to
maintain a proficiency in custodial and security matters, as well as in
their particular job specialty. As a result, the BOP does not require
the level of custody staff in program areas that exist in some
correctional systems where non-custody staff are not responsible for
security duties. In these other systems, classrooms, work areas, and
recreation areas have a correctional officer assigned in addition to
the teacher, work supervisor, or recreation specialist. Using the
``correctional worker first'' concept has allowed the BOP to operate
with fewer correctional services staff as compared to other large
correctional systems. This reduced custody staffing allows the BOP to
maintain a substantial number of other staff who provide inmate
programs, giving offenders the opportunity to gain the skills and
training necessary for a successful reentry into the community.

Mr. Mollohan. Are you ready? Mr. Fattah.

OVERCROWDING IN PRISON

Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was looking at your testimony relative to violent assault
incidents within the prisons and your best analysis of the
overcrowding and relationship thereto.
So you are saying that you have this crowding problem, but
that it clearly is correlated probably one percent over the
population. There is a significant rise in incidents.
Frank Wolf, Congressman Wolf and I and a number of other
members over time have been concerned about incidents inside
the prison, particularly prison rape and other things.
And I notice the efforts that you use to combat some of the
violent assault challenges do not include technology on the
list. I am assuming you do use technology and it is just not on
the list, you know, in the rush to get the testimony.
But I want you to talk a little bit about the use of
technology in present institutions and any ways we might as a
Committee look at this going forward.
Mr. Lappin. Clearly in our newer facilities, technology is
built in as we build the facilities. So, you have got a wealth
of cameras. We do not overrun it with cameras because you have
to do your best to watch those cameras and record them. So, we
identify what cameras can assist the most, as one example, as
well as electronic doors, as well as enhanced perimeter
security.
So obviously in your newer facilities, as part of that
contract to build that facility, we are building in those
technologies that we believe are worth the investment. Not
everything you see on the market is worth the investment.
So, we actually have a group of people whose job is to go
out there and assess what is on the market and tell us what is
worth the investment and what is not worth the investment, not
only in the way of physical things like cameras, but also in
things that we use to detect what an inmate has on them, using
metal detectors, x-ray machines, scanning machines. So, we are
looking at all those types of technology.
And certainly our newer facilities are better equipped than
older facilities. It is on a case-by-case basis, because some
of the technology like cameras are limited, given the design of
the housing units, that you would have to have so many cameras
and so many people to watch those that it would probably be
unreasonable. Those are driven more by, you have got to have
more staff, because of the older facilities, designs facilities
that are not conducive to some of the new technologies that we
see at our newer locations.
But without a doubt, wherever we can take advantage of
technology, whether internally or on the perimeter, we are
making an effort to better utilize our staff.
And, for example, we are currently putting in stun lethal
fences in lieu of having as many staff on the perimeters
because this is an enhancement that we are confident will
maintain a safe community. It has been used for ten, fifteen
years in the states.
We kind of resisted for a long time, but I would much
prefer to have more officers inside the prison watching inmates
than on the perimeter if, in fact, there is something I can do
to the perimeter to reduce that need, and do it safely and do
it securely.
So, there are a number of things that we are doing and will
continue to do as new things come on the market.
Mr. Fattah. Well, I just assumed it was left off the
testimony. I am glad you have added to it.
I assume you also looked at technology. Some of the
technology that has been used to keep track of people on
probation and parole outside of an incarcerated setting could
also be used inside the setting to keep track of where inmates
happen to be at any given time.
Mr. Lappin. We have looked at that. It is not cheap. It is
somewhat expensive. So we have been limited somewhat by our
funding on certain issues, but we have piloted some of those
technologies at some locations.
Another area that you are probably reading a lot about is
the introduction of cell phones into institutions, which is a
huge, huge security challenge for us.
There is technology out there to help detect cell phones.
It is very expensive. The cell phone has got to be on. There is
other equipment people say can block its use, but that is
really illegal to block the cell phone transmission.
So there is a lot of controversy in that area not just for
the Federal System but for the states as well. But we work
closely with the states and others to try to identify what
works and what we can do to enhance security.

EDUCATING, TRAINING AND DRUG REHABILITATION

Mr. Fattah. Well, I served on the Homeland Security
Committee and there are number of things that we were looking
at and involved with in terms of technology that I think might
have some application. And perhaps, you know, there is some
processes in which various people could talk with each other
about where there might be some applications that could be
useful.
And I am also very interested in what we are doing about,
and I know there is no big applause to be heard from the
public, but in terms of education and training and drug
rehabilitation among inmates because I think that is where the
biggest bang for the buck could really be in terms of cutting
recidivism rates and so on.
So if you would comment.
Mr. Lappin. Well, we could not agree with you more. We
believe inmates, we know that inmates who participate in those
programs are less likely to come back to prison.
For example, last year, we treated 17,523 inmates for drug
and alcohol abuse in a residential type program. Unfortunately,
we let about 1,700 leave prison who had volunteered for
treatment, but for whom we did not provide that treatment.
But on any given day, we have, oh, let us see here,
education, I think like 52,000 inmates on any given day in GED
or a vocational training program. Every general population,
long-term facility, has an education program that includes GED,
adult basic education, and in some places English as a second
language.
At those locations with a large population of non-U.S.
citizens, typically from Mexico, we actually offer the primary
and secondary, which is the equivalent of the GED in Mexico.
Also, we offer drug treatment at 56 locations. We have
factories at about 100 facilities where we can provide a
productive work environment for inmates.
I wish we could do more of that. But because of some of the
issues I referenced in my oral testimony relative to FPI, we
are actually seeing a decline in the number of inmates working
in Prison Industries. But without a doubt has it always been
part of our mission, not only providing a safe, secure
environment, but also providing opportunities to improve inmate
skills in anticipation that they are going to be more
successful in the community. It has always been the mission of
the Bureau of Prisons and an area that we try to continue to
address with each and every offender who is willing to do that.
Mr. Fattah. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Bonner.

WEAPONS IN PRISON

Mr. Bonner. Mr. Chairman, I have got a couple questions
that since our Ranking Member is not here I would like to get
in on the record.
But before I do, let me admit I am the newest member of the
Subcommittee, so this is going to sound very naive. But we all
have town meetings in our districts and we go back and
sometimes we will be asked a question from one of the taxpayers
of this great country. It is a fair question and it is rare
that I have a chance to ask it of someone who actually probably
has a more informed answer than I have ever given.
You have got problems with cell phones in prisons. You have
got problems with weapons in prisons. You have got problems
with drugs in prisons. I believe what, 50 percent or more of
the inmates are drug offenders at the time they come in.
I guess the question is, is that they get to a prison. How
can weapons and cell phones and drugs make their way through
the filtration system so that that creates added burden on you
and your employees?
Mr. Lappin. It is a good question. Most of the weapons, let
us define weapons, most of them are homemade weapons. And,
unfortunately, inmates are pretty skillful, some of them, at
figuring out what they can make a weapon out of.
Mr. Bonner. Make them at shop or take them----
Mr. Lappin. Or even, you know, down in an area where we are
not closely monitoring or you have got equipment in there where
they can grind. Believe it or not, inmates have figured out
ways to cut steel out of their bed frame with dental floss or
with a little piece of a razor. It just takes them a long time.
And unless staff are very attentive, they are able to do that.
And so what we have had to do is go in and reinforce. You
know, what in the past has been adequate in the way of a steel
bed pan is no longer adequate. And we have had to go in and
reinforce that with heavier steel, especially in our higher
security institutions.
So typically the weapons that are found are blunt, a lock
in a sock. Okay? You hear those things referred to as weapons.
You know, we have not had, fortunately guns, and knives of the
type you buy in a store typically in our institutions. Mostly
homemade, locks in socks, a broom handle, a sharpened
instrument are typically the types of weapons. So most of those
obviously come from within.
Regarding drugs, there are a variety of ways to get drugs
into prisons. We continue to encourage inmates to visit with
their families and we want contact visits. And that lends you
to being more susceptible to the introduction of drugs into an
institution. It is a negative consequence.
What we have done to limit that is to discipline inmates
who get caught bringing drugs in, or using drugs, by not
allowing them to have contact visits for a period of time. So
that has had an impact.
We have limited the amount of packages; really no packages
can come in anymore. You cannot send a package to an inmate
because packages and books are another way that easily allows
someone to hide drugs in something that we cannot find. On the
back of a stamp, may be LSD, you know. And we have volumes of
mail coming into our institutions that would lend itself to
that.
Cell phones, believe you me, are a problem everywhere. I
was talking with the Director of Corrections in South Carolina,
and the folks on the outside actually had one of those potato
guns. They were shooting cell phones over the fence from out in
the forest. Now, that is a bit unusual.
So, again, sometimes they come in through visiting rooms.
They come in through packages. But I would be foolish if I did
not address that sometimes we have staff who misbehave. We have
a small percentage of staff unfortunately. Overall, I have got
a great workforce, 36,000 honest, hard-working, dedicated
people who would never consider doing anything that would
embarrass themselves, their families, or the agency.
But without denying, I have got a small group of folks who
break the law and they unfortunately bring in cell phones and
they bring in drugs sometimes. And today they bring in
cigarettes, since we eliminated smoking in the Federal Prison
System two years or so ago and sell them to inmates. And we
have a pretty aggressive program to address that.
A year ago in January, we instituted a search of all staff,
everyone coming into the prison. At one time, we did not search
our staff. Now we search our staff. And my guess is we have
deterred some. We are catching a few. Some are pretty smart
characters, and they are still beating us.
So, it goes without saying that a small, a very small
percentage of our staff bring some of these things in and sell
them to inmates and that is how that occurs.

HIRING ADDITIONAL STAFF

Mr. Fattah. The Ranking Member is here. But in order to
give him a chance to get up to speed, let me--the Chairman
focused a lot on manpower and staff-to-inmate ratio. And I
think you indicated that your number one priority was hiring
additional staff.
But it is our understanding that another area of concern is
the chronic shortfall in the budget for the modernization and
the repair of facilities.
The Federal Facilities Council recommends an M&R budget of
about two percent of the replacement cost. Are you anywhere
near that?
Mr. Lappin. No, sir, we are not. Again, prior to the more
recent challenges this country has faced, we were probably
funded at about two percent of replacement cost. And at that
time, it was probably in the 100, 125 million dollar range.
I think today, over the last two or three years, we have
probably gotten on average about 70 million for the M&R budget.
We need closer to 250, 275 to really be two percent. Is that
about right? I am sorry. Two percent is about 400 million.
So, that is to repair 115 federal prisons, 37 of which are
50 years of age or older and a large portion of those 37 are 75
years of age or older, the oldest being Leavenworth at 110, 112
years. So obviously the older they are, the more expensive they
are.
And so, this is again, an area where we are struggling a
little bit and certainly are looking at ways that we can
improve on M&R for the repair and the maintenance of our
existing facilities.
Mr. Fattah. What is the relationship between inadequate
funds for facilities and your ability to supervise inmates?
Mr. Lappin. You know, I think we would see more of a
relationship over time because right now what we are doing is,
with what money we have, we have identified the highest
priorities. And the highest priorities have to do with safety
and security. And those are the first priorities.
And so it is not split up equally because you have some--it
used to be we would split it up equally across the six regions
of the Bureau, but some regions have more older facilities,
that have greater needs than others. So, now there is one
system where we have a prioritization of the very highest
priorities, safety and security being the highest priority. And
we certainly try to address those needs first.
I would have to go back and do a little more assessment to
tell you how we are doing on the highest priorities of that
list. I know that we have like 200 and--we have got 100 major
projects that total about 296 million. Which of those would
fall into the safety and security category, my guess is many of
them would, but that varies depending on the type of issues.
But we can certainly give you a more detailed assessment of
where we stand on that issue in writing.
[The information follows:]

Describe How the BOP Compiles the Highest Security and Safety Items on
the M&R Waiting List and Determines Which Get Funded

Each fiscal year, BOP institutions perform detailed annual
inspections of all areas of their physical plant and provide a list of
projects to their regional office for all items in need of repair/
modernization. The six regional offices individually consolidate major
M&R project (typically those over $300,000) request lists from their
institutions and forward the priority lists to the Central Office.
After the budget is enacted and the M&R fiscal year funding level
is determined, the unfunded priority list is reviewed by Central Office
and the regional offices to identify the highest priority projects in
most dire need of repair and ready for contract action. Security and
safety projects are identified first for funding, with infrastructure
needs following in priority. The BOP then allocates funds, based on the
priority list, for as many projects as practical.

Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Wolf.

PRISON INDUSTRIES

Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry I was not
here earlier for the whole hearing.
And we just announced the signing of a full funded
agreement for a rail to Dulles which is a project I have been
working on for 20 years. And we just had to be there. But I did
want to be here and I have a lot of questions for you.
One, I want to thank you for the job you do and I want to
thank your people.
I want to ask you and maybe you covered it. I was opposed
to what the Congress did on Prison Industries. If you covered
that, I will not, but just tell me how much of an impact and
what did you think of the idea that I had whereby we would
begin to have prisoners work on, because you cannot put a man
away for 15 years and give him no work, to work on products
that are no longer made in the United States.
We were trying to develop it so that you did not compete
with American jobs. Tell me a little bit about Prison
Industries, what the impact it has had on recidivism, et
cetera, et cetera, the impact it has on your employees and just
tell me a little bit about it.
Mr. Lappin. It is good to see you again, Congressman.
Thanks for being here.
As you well know, inmates who work in Prison Industries
over the years we have found are less likely to come back to
prison and are more likely to get a job.
Mr. Wolf. And is it fair to say Congress has just made it
hard because--I know you might want to say that, but the fact
that the Congress has weakened Prison Industries, when in
essence in my mind would tell me that means that it has been
harder to have----
Mr. Lappin. I say, as I said in my opening statement, some
things have been passed. There are two things occurring right
now that are impacting Prison Industries. So let me try to
clarify.
We have seen without a doubt we are having to reduce the
number of inmates in Prison Industries because Prison
Industries must make a profit. There are no appropriated funds.
It is a business. Although it is a program, it is run as a
business and we must, as you well know, must make a profit to
continue to operate that in the manner that we do.
Currently we are employing about 17 percent of the eligible
inmates in Prison Industries.
Mr. Wolf. What was it ten years ago?
Mr. Lappin. Well, I know that 1988 or so, we employed 50
percent of the eligible inmates.
Mr. Wolf. Fifty?
Mr. Lappin. Fifty percent.
Mr. Wolf. So we are down to 17?
Mr. Lappin. We are about 17 percent. We are employing about
21,000 inmates in Prison Industries each day.
Two issues going on right now, well, one. As you mentioned,
some legislation has been passed that has impacted our
competing with products of the privates in selling to the
government. And, again, there were some changes that impacted
its Mandatory Source, a number of those initiatives.
We really did not feel directly the impact of that as soon
as it was passed because of the surge in the war. So what
happened was those things were passed. We anticipated an
impact. But because of the war surge, last year, Prison
Industries grossed about 820 million. Four hundred million of
that was with Department of Defense.
And so it compensated for what negative occurred because of
the passage of some of those regulations. Now what is
happening, the war effort is beginning to decline. We are
seeing fewer, or we are going back to a more traditional level
from the military. Now we are seeing the impact of some of
these initiatives. We are going to----
Mr. Wolf. Do you think that will have an impact on the
recidivism rate?
Mr. Lappin. Well, I believe that it will because we are
going to have fewer inmates gaining the work skills they
normally would acquire.
Mr. Wolf. Well, would you favor then if we could offer this
as an amendment? Would you favor us setting up a Prison
Industries Program that only manufactures products that are no
longer made in the United States? Perhaps have the Trade rep or
Commerce Department certify. I mean, we make no televisions
here in the United States.
Mr. Lappin. We like your idea. In fact, we are doing some
of that now where authorities allow us to do that. And I just
want you to know we have--I am going out on a limb a little
bit, but here is the bottom line. We do not want to affect
people's jobs in this country.
Mr. Wolf. No. I understand. I do not either.
Mr. Lappin. So, we are not opposed to eliminating FPI
Mandatory Source over a period of years if, in fact, we can
gain the authorities for doing some of the things that you
suggest to compensate for what we might lose in Mandatory
Source. Because at the end of the day, we want factories and
prisons that run safer because those inmates are productively
occupied and, two, we know that those inmates who work for as
little as six, eight months in prison are more likely to get a
job and less likely to come back to prison. So that is a huge
benefit to this country.
Mr. Wolf. Well, we are in favor. I will try to offer
something that maybe we would have it certified by the
Department of Commerce and the Trade Office that this product
was no longer made in the United States. If we would be making,
oversimplification, television sets, you cannot get a
television made in the U.S.
That way, we would almost--we had called it Operation
Condor. Remember the Condor bird was being extinct and we
brought the Condor back. We could bring some of these jobs
back.
I do not think you can put a man in prison for years and
not give him work. I just do not think you can.
Mr. Lappin. We would love to work with you on that issue.

PRISON RAPE BILL

Mr. Wolf. Okay. I will try to offer something on that.
And I do not want to take too much time of the Committee,
but I was the author with Senator Kennedy on the Prison Rape
bill. Where are we on the prison rape issue and where are we on
that now?
Mr. Lappin. Well, the Commission has not finished, specific
to ``The Prison Rape Elimination Act.'' The Commission has not
yet finished its work and provided its recommendations to the
Attorney General. However, last week, I met with Judge Walton
on this very issue along with a number of Directors from the
states.
So, I know that they are getting close to providing to the
Attorney General their recommendation in the way of standards
applicable to prison rape in our institutions.
But I want to reassure you, many, many years ago, the
Bureau of Prisons, as well as many states, were addressing this
issue. We changed policy.
Mr. Wolf. But I still see articles in the paper about it,
though. You still see more at state and local prisons, but it
is still----
Mr. Lappin. I think, though, that I will defer to our folks
in BJA who have actually done the survey.
Mr. Wolf. Maybe for the record, you could list, give us how
many----
Mr. Lappin. Sure.
Mr. Wolf [continuing]. Incidents have taken place this
year, last year, and the year before, and maybe any information
you have on both state and local.
Mr. Lappin. We can do that. And you are going to find a
very low incidence.

Please Provide the Number of PREA Case Incident This Year, Last Year,
and the Year Before. Also, Information You Have on State and Locals

Attached are four pages from recent reports prepared by the Bureau
of Justice Statistics (BJS) that provide data on cases of sexual
assault in Federal and State facilities for 2005 and 2006. The BJS
report containing data for 2007 is due to be published later this year.
For the BOP in 2007, there were a total of 28 reported inmate-on-
inmate sexual acts: 19 were non-consensual (all 19 were
unsubstantiated) and 9 were abusive sexual contacts (all 9 were
unsubstantiated). In 2007, there were 182 allegations of staff-on-
inmate sexual misconduct: 118 were unsubstantiated, 8 were
substantiated, 2 were unfounded, and 54 continue under investigation.
In 2007, there were 99 allegations of staff-on-inmate sexual
harassment: 78 were unsubstantiated, 6 were substantiated, and 15
continue under investigation.

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Mr. Wolf. Federal are you talking about or----
Mr. Lappin. Federal.
Mr. Wolf. Do you have any numbers on state and local?
Mr. Kane. BJS does.
Mr. Lappin. BJS does. We could probably gather----
Mr. Wolf. If you could get that. Maybe just get it to me so
I can look at it and also----
Mr. Lappin. Sure.
Mr. Wolf [continuing]. To the Chairman.
Mr. Lappin. And I think you will be pleased with what they
are finding. They are actually going out and surveying
institutions as part of the PREA Commission, as you probably
recall. They were getting the results from their interviews not
only of staff but of inmates as part of that survey which gives
some additional insight to the frequency. Again, I think you
are going to find lower incidence.
Mr. Wolf. And when do you think that is going to come out?
Mr. Lappin. Well, actually, we have already got one year.
Mr. Wolf. Their final report----
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. Coming out.
Mr. Wolf. What?
Mr. Lappin. The one year statistic has already been
published.
Mr. Wolf. When will they do their final report?
Mr. Lappin. Well, actually, this is an ongoing evaluation.
Every single year----
Mr. Wolf. Every single year?
Mr. Lappin. Every single year, they will do this analysis.
Mr. Wolf. When are the recommendations?
Mr. Lappin. I do not know if they make recommendations.
Mr. Wolf. I said when will the recommendations.
Mr. Lappin. I am sorry. The PREA Commission's
recommendations will be provided to the Attorney General by
June.
Mr. Wolf. By June?
Mr. Lappin. And then the Attorney General has one year to
make a decision on what would go forward in the way of
standards.

PRISONER RELEASE

Mr. Wolf. Okay. I spoke to a young prisoner. He got out. I
am trying to sum up the facts so you cannot find out who it is.
He was released from a halfway house at about seven-thirty or
eight o'clock on a Saturday night. Wow. To release somebody
from a halfway house on a Saturday night at seven o'clock or
eight o'clock, that is really, I mean----
Mr. Lappin. That is probably quite unusual.
Mr. Wolf. Yeah.
Mr. Lappin. If the guy was in a halfway house----
Mr. Wolf. He was in a halfway house.
Mr. Lappin. Again, on occasion, we get orders to release
somebody and we really do not have a choice. But typically by
the time an inmate is in a halfway house, that release is well
planned.
Mr. Wolf. But you should never ever do it on a Saturday.
Should you not do it on a Tuesday morning or a Monday morning
or a----
Mr. Lappin. Well, again, if we get an order from a Judge,
which is unusual but it happens, we get an order from a Judge
reducing that sentence, immediately it is our job to release
the inmate.
Mr. Wolf. Wow. I mean, I think to release somebody Saturday
night----
Mr. Lappin. We do not like to do that. We try to work
around that.
Mr. Wolf. Could you just look into that to see? Maybe you
should have a----
Mr. Lappin. Do you have his name or----
Mr. Wolf. Well, I do not know that I want to give you his
name. Maybe I could give it to you privately.
Mr. Lappin. Not today on the record, but we will talk----
Mr. Wolf. Okay. Good.
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. Because I will find out
specifically what happened.

ISLAM IN PRISON

Mr. Wolf. Third thing, and I do not know how my time is,
Mr. Chairman, and this person also told me that in the prison
he was in, there was pretty aggressive recruitment with regard
to the Nation of Islam and others. And I want to ask you a
question.
There was a report in the Philadelphia Magazine, which I am
going to give you, and then there was also a study. Let me read
two things and you comment.
This is an article from the Philadelphia Magazine, The
Radicals Among Us, and it said, and then as a matter of money,
specifically Saudi money, according to the Philadelphia police,
the complexities of Middle Eastern religious politics are many
and vast, but it is clear to authorities that Saudi extremist
groups, namely Wahabis, are aiding groups in prisons.
Is it true or false?
Mr. Lappin. We are not seeing that in our institutions.
Mr. Wolf. Would it be taking place in state and local
prisons?
Mr. Lappin. I would have to defer to them. Without a doubt,
it is going to be more of a challenge----
Mr. Wolf. But they are not together. Well, but you ought to
look at this though. And also, let me discover, and I hope you
will not duck this here, it says more recently, terrorism
analysts at two schools, the University of Virginia, which is
an accredited university, a pretty good one, and George
Washington again, issued a broad report on prison
radicalization in America.
Their conclusions, UVA and George Washington, their
conclusion in essence is that prison inmates in America are
converting to Islam of one version or another faster than the
prison system can keep up and the lack of oversight from
literature entering the prisons makes prisoners a tempting
target for militant clerics.
So, I mean, it troubles me you do not know because you are
at UVA and George Washington, so who would tell me for the
state and local prisons?
Mr. Lappin. Well, we can go to the Association of State
Correctional Administrators, but I would have to look at the
report.
Mr. Wolf. We will give you a copy right after the hearing.
Mr. Lappin. That will be fine. But let me just tell you we
have 11,244 Muslim inmates in the Bureau of Prisons, 5.9
percent. That has not changed in five years. But that does not
mean that could not occur.
Mr. Wolf. But I did see at one time, and if you would tell
us what, I think you have made some changes, we did see some
books that were paid for by the Saudi government. Do you
remember that?
Mr. Lappin. Yes, sir. Yes.
Mr. Wolf. And for the Saudis that funded radical Wahabiism,
that funded the madrassas up on the Afghan border that led to
9/11, that is not very good. And so we are not talking about--
people should convert to wherever they want to convert, but to
have the Saudi government who really I do not think is a very--
helped create the problem that we are facing.
So are all those books now out? There is no more support
from Saudis coming into the federal prisons?
Mr. Lappin. We have done an inventory of all of our books
and chapel libraries, the entire Bureau of Prisons, and we have
removed those books that----
Mr. Wolf. Were there a lot of them?
Mr. Lappin. I will get you the numbers of what we removed
and we will give you the names of what we removed.

Provide the Number and Names of Books Removed From the BOP Chapel
Libraries

The BOP makes available to inmates a wide variety of religious
materials, representing a broad spectrum of religions, through its
chapel libraries. The agency is aware of the need to ensure such
materials do not ``seek to incite, promote, or otherwise suggest the
commission of violence or criminal activity'' as provided in the Second
Chance Act.
A proposed rule to implement the provision in the Second Chance Act
that addresses chapel libraries was published in the Federal Register
on January 16, 2009. The BOP will consider all comments submitted on
the proposed rule. Currently, the rule is in proposed form and is not
yet effective or applicable. As a result, the BOP has not removed any
resources from its chapel libraries other than the item mentioned
below, which was removed before the Second Chance Act was enacted.
Several years ago, the BOP began to closely examine the holdings in
its chapel libraries. The review identified some materials of concern.
In this connection, the BOP removed from chapel libraries all copies of
the Noble Quran published by Dar-Us-Salam Publications (1995). Other
chapel library materials that have been identified as potentially
problematic are currently under review. The agency will make a final
determination on these materials after consideration of all comments
received on the proposed rule and using the standard adopted at the
time the BOP promulgates a final rule.

Mr. Wolf. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. There were not a lot given the size of those
libraries. But here is what I will do for you, because I think
since the last time we talked, we have put in place many, many,
many more controls to not only monitor the inmates we have, but
control over what comes into prisons. So I will send it in
writing for the record those things we have done. I have no
problem coming and giving you a personal briefing on these
issues, some of which I may not want to put in writing because
of the sensitivity----
Mr. Wolf. Sure. Okay.
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. But I assure you that I think we
have addressed it. Is it impossible for it to happen between an
inmate and another inmate in a cell? No. But we certainly, I
think, have put in place many controls and put many resources
towards preventing this from happening.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. The last question I would have, and I beg
the Chairman's time, what can we do, what can this Committee do
to deal with the issue of recidivism? One, I think we can
create jobs. What else can we do?
I think it is an embarrassment that the United States has
the largest per capita prison system now in the world. The
whole issue, and I will not get into it here, we are going to
ask the Attorney General, the crack cocaine issue, the
sentencing.
What can we really do? With your expertise, you probably
have forgotten more than most people will ever know. What can
we honestly do to reduce the recidivism and deal with this
issue so that we are no longer a nation with such a large
prison population? And what is the recidivism rate now? What
percent?
Mr. Lappin. Forty percent for us.
Mr. Wolf. Forty percent. And what is it for other
countries?
Mr. Lappin. Well, the states on average are about 65
percent.
Mr. Wolf. Has that number gotten better or worse over the
years?
Mr. Lappin. Our number has actually come down from 44
percent in the last ten years. But as I was sharing with the
other group, I cannot say that we are there today because we
without a doubt are not providing as much accessability to the
programs. And let me just address that.
One, staffing is an issue because we have got to have a
safe and secure environment first. We cannot provide programs
if prisons are not safe and secure. Once you have accomplished
that, then the issue is, how do we leverage more people into
these programs as willing participants, not us trying to force
them in there because you all, from your experience, you know
that if you try to force somebody to learn, it is an uphill
battle.
I will go back, to let us look at the drug treatment
initiative where inmates who are nonviolent can get some time
off of their sentence if they successfully complete this
program. I still argue that we should consider a program of
that type for other nonviolent offenders in our custody who are
not drug and alcohol addicted.
Mr. Wolf. Why don't we do that?
Mr. Lappin. You are asking what we can do? I think that is
an option we should consider.
Mr. Wolf. Have a pilot program?
Mr. Lappin. We certainly could look at that. But I think
anything that we can do to leverage more folks into getting a
GED, to getting a vocational certificate, to working, having
the opportunity to work, to address the nine skill areas that I
mentioned earlier, I think we are going to see more success
upon those folks' release from prison.
Mr. Wolf. Well, Mr. Chairman, could we try a pilot? Could
we see if we could put the responsibility on the Bureau of
Prisons to pick a group, a pilot group, and give them the
authority and see if we could do that?
How many people in America, federal, state, and local, are
in prisons?
Mr. Lappin. Two point three million.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, we can and that is what these hearings
are all about really to get to that, to what we can do in the
appropriation bill in all these different areas. And that is
precisely what we are actually looking at the end of----
Mr. Lappin. Since he opened the door, can I say one other
thing?
Mr. Mollohan. Sure. Please.

THE COMPREHENSIVE CRIME CONTROL ACT

Mr. Lappin. In 1998, the country passed ``The Comprehensive
Crime Control Act.'' And I do not think everyone had the
foresight at the time to realize the impact of eliminating good
time and then vesting it, because on the other hand, what we
have now is less leverage with inmates who are misbehaving.
So, when an inmate misbehaves today, unfortunately, we are
seeing them placed in isolation more than in the past. So our
Segregation Units are filed to capacity if not beyond. That is
not a good thing.
Where, in fact, in the past, when we had the latitude to
take more good time, it was better leverage to take good time
away from that inmate than to put him in segregation.
But because of the change, it is making it more difficult.
So we would like to come back and discuss ways to reevaluate
that aspect, as well as, I mean, the possibility of good time
for folks who get into programs.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, the authorizers are looking at this very
thing right now.
Mr. Wolf. Well, let me just say--thank you, Mr. Chairman--
the authorizers, though, with all due respect have looked at
this stuff for years and we have watched the prison system go
up. We have tried to offer different things with regard to
prison systems and the authorizers of some of the authorizing
committees have taken away jobs from prisoners. And so maybe--
--
Mr. Mollohan. The justice bill, ``The Second Chance Act,''
is really a pretty progressive piece of legislation. But we
will certainly look at all that and that is what this series of
hearings will take a look at.
Mr. Wolf. This Congress for the last 15 years has not
allowed one additional prisoner to have work.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes. I know. Thank you, Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Serrano.
Mr. Serrano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I apologize to you and Mr. Wolf and my colleagues for my
tardiness. I had, as you know, three hearings at the same time
or whatever, but I did not want to miss being with you for a
while.
Thank you, Mr. Director, for your testimony today.
Mr. Lappin. Good to see you again.

PEW RESEARCH STUDY

Mr. Serrano. A recent Pew Research Center report found that
one-third of all federal prisoners are now Latino and that 48
percent of Latino prisoners are in federal prison because of an
immigration violation.
I am concerned that this is not a wise use of our resources
and I am particularly concerned that our federal law
enforcement seems to be overly focused on Latinos in that
particular area.
Does this change in prison population have an effect on how
you have to run the system and do you believe the imprisonment
for immigration violations is overcrowding the federal system?
Mr. Lappin. Well, it is really not for me to say, you know,
what----
Mr. Serrano. Incidentally, just one clarification. The
report does show, of course, I had this question myself and I
just found it in the Pew Report, that it is mostly for
overstaying, in other words for being undocumented or some
people call them illegal aliens and you end up in federal
prison for that.
Mr. Lappin. It is not for me to say what prosecutorial
direction the Department pursues. We have little control over
who comes to prison and how long they stay. But without a
doubt, these two variables, how many inmates and how long they
stay, both drive population. And without a doubt, in the last
25 years, we have seen very substantial growth.
Part of that has been an increase in non-U.S. citizens,
probably the majority of whom are Hispanic. Today we have got
64,352 Hispanic inmates in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Some
of them could be U.S. citizens. I think we have got, yes,
52,000 are non-U.S. citizens.
So, any of these initiatives, whether it is the war on
drugs, the war on weapons, or the war on immigration
violations, will drive our population given the fact that those
are federal statutes.
But the consequences, whether it is driven by drugs or
weapons or immigration, are pretty much standard. It is more
inmates, so we need to provide more programs, need more staff,
so on and so forth.
One challenge certainly is the communication, our ability
to communicate effectively with some folks who do not speak
English very well. Without a doubt, that is one area that
continues to be a challenge for us, especially in rural areas,
is bringing on staff who can talk directly to those inmates,
rather than through an interpreter. So, without a doubt, those
are challenges.
Another challenge that I mentioned earlier was the increase
in the gang members, especially from Hispanic groups, Paisa,
Surenos, you know, whatever group. We are seeing----

MARIEL CUBANS

Mr. Serrano. Say Surenos, not Serranos.
Mr. Lappin. Surenos. Thank you, sir. Absolutely.
Mr. Serrano. I quickly wanted to clarify that.
Mr. Lappin. That is correct. And I could name some others,
but you understand, they continue to present some challenges
for us given their violent nature as well as their willingness
to confront our staff and our inmates.
So, there are challenges. But, again, most of these folks
in our custody have committed a federal crime, probably in
addition to an immigration violation. So some of these are
strictly immigration violators who have been convicted of that
and only that, but many of them are a combination of a couple
of crimes.
The number of those that are held beyond their sentence
continues to be reduced. So at, one time, we held a lot of
detainees, when we had the Mariel Cubans and so on and so
forth. But today that number is getting smaller.
We have 571 or so non-U.S. citizens who are now purely
detainees because they have finished their federal sentence,
but ICE has opted to leave them in our custody. So we continue
to work with them on those issues.
Mr. Serrano. That is interesting you mention the Mariel.
There are still some being held, right? I mean, this is what,
30, 20 years.
Mr. Lappin. I know. The number is so small, they do not
even put it on my little cheat sheet. But my guess is it is
very small, if any, correct, Tom?
Mr. Kane. Yes, it is.
Mr. Lappin. Yes. We can find the number for you. But you
are right. It is a long, long time ago, about 20 years.
[The information follows:]

Provide the Number of Mariel Cubans Still in BOP Custody

The number of Mariel Cubans still in BOP custody is 12. Eleven are
detained by order of ICE. One is held at USP Marion and has been
certified as a sexually dangerous person.

Mr. Serrano. Some of those folks are what, 10, 15 years
past the sentence they were supposed to serve and they are
still detained?
Mr. Lappin. But I can tell you that a lot of those, towards
the end, were very ill, had mental illnesses, or had other
physical ailments, and some had a very violent background.
Mr. Serrano. Right.
Mr. Lappin. So probably towards the end they fell into one
of those three categories, serious mental illness, you know,
physical illnesses, and those others that it was very difficult
for us to get released.
Mr. Serrano. Very briefly on the challenges you meet on the
language issue, you said especially in rural areas. First of
all, do you have the resources to hire these folks? It is not
about the idea of whether the population is what it is or not
to have folks who speak more than one language. Do you have the
resources or is it a recruitment problem, finding the folks?
Mr. Lappin. Well, it is a problem. I cannot say it is not,
because I go to our institutions. Even though we can run safe
and secure institutions, without having a staff that looks like
the inmate population, it takes a lot of work because we have
to train our staff about the differences amongst these
different cultures and races as well as make adjustments for
their ability to effectively communicate with them. So
sometimes, in some locations, we have to use other inmates as
translators. Again, not the best of environments.
We are fortunate, though, that we have institutions in
locations where we have a lot of Hispanics applying for jobs.
Our staff at the more rural areas sometimes will go to those
locations to try to encourage those folks that really want to
come to work for the Bureau of Prisons to consider coming to
the more rural locations, in areas where they did not
previously consider living.
We have had some success with that. But recruitment
continues to be a challenge. We have talked earlier about our
challenges in the way of staffing in general. This just kind of
complicates that a little bit, because we really cannot set
aside additional money for those recruitment efforts given the
fact we have been somewhat constrained on our ability to hire
up in some of those areas.
Mr. Serrano. One last comment, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps the
Committee can be helpful in helping the Bureau meet with some
of the folks that are concerned with recruitment.
For instance, this morning, the Congressional Hispanic
Caucus held a meeting with, oh, my God, 75 nationally known
Hispanic community organizations. The number one issue
obviously for them was some sort of comprehensive immigration
reform which in many ways would affect you and your population.
Two, which affects this Committee, is better census count
for the whole country so that Hispanics get counted properly
and, therefore, add federal dollars to those areas where they
live and the states should like that.
And, third, but the one that most people mention, third was
the small number of Latinos working in the federal workforce.
And so we certainly can have at the minimum, Mr. Chairman,
the Hispanic Caucus put you in touch with those organizations
that push for the workforce to grow because this is especially
an area where we have to do it.
Mr. Lappin. Well, I would look forward to that. We have a
good relationship with LULAC. We go to their training yearly.
They certainly have been of great assistance to us.
Mr. LeBlanc here behind me is over our Human Resource
Department and would enjoy meeting with anyone who can help us
bring on more staff who are bilingual and can assist us in that
capacity.
Mr. Serrano. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Serrano.
Mr. Director, I want to go through some questions here and
I will be as brief in my questions as I would invite you to be
with your answers.
Mr. Lappin. Okay.

INCREASE IN STAFFING

Mr. Mollohan. I just want to get some things on the record
and we do not have a whole lot of time.
We talked about staffing and what was needed or not needed
to increase it. The Omnibus bill included an increase of 4.7
percent for salaries and expenses. And you have indicated that
you probably will not be able to increase hiring in 2009.
Why doesn't that 4.7 percent increase in the Omnibus
translate into additional staffing?
Mr. Lappin. Again, you have got a pay raise. Part of that
increase covers the pay raise, and adjusts for the inflation in
other areas. Let us just take, for example, when a pay raise is
not fully covered by the raise. Let us say it is a 3.9 percent
raise and we get 2.9 percent funded. That means we have got to
make up one percent. That is $40 million that has to come out
of our base resources--
Mr. Mollohan. And what is your----
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. To do that.
Mr. Mollohan. What is your goal for increasing staffing
next year? I think in earlier testimony, you alluded to--you
wanted to hire 3,000 additional employees in 2009 or with the
2010 budget?
Mr. Lappin. I think over the next two or three years, and,
again, it varies on how long it would take us to do that, I
would advocate that we add 3,000 employees to the base.
That means in addition to new activations. That does not
count those staff. New activations, that means new employees
coming on to activate those new facilities. The 3,000 would
bring our ratio of staff to inmates down to about one to 4.5.
Mr. Mollohan. I am sorry. Say that again. It does not
include what? It does include employment for activation?
Mr. Lappin. That is correct.
Mr. Mollohan. You are talking about----
Mr. Lappin. In addition.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. In addition to that----
Mr. Lappin. That is correct.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. You would like to increase by--
--
Mr. Lappin. Three thousand.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. 3,000? And you want to do that
in what time frame?
Mr. Lappin. Two or three years.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, that is a long time----
Mr. Lappin. It is.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Given at least some of the
concerns we are hearing.
The 2010 request, will it allow you to increase staffing
levels?
Mr. Lappin. We do not know for sure yet because we only
have the overall number. We do not know specifically how that
is split up. So, I think it is a little early for me to----
Mr. Mollohan. I guess the question is, you hope so?
Mr. Lappin. We hope so, yes, sir.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. So you cannot speak to whether the 2010
budget will allow you to ensure that all mission critical posts
are filled for the same reason?
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. I am not answering your question. Is that
correct?
Mr. Lappin. Until we get a better sense of what exactly is
included in our----
Mr. Mollohan. You do not know whether----
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. Six billion, we do not know what
all that includes.
Mr. Mollohan. All right. Unless I can get back to these
activation questions a little later, I will submit them for the
record.
Prison violence, that is of great concern to everybody.
Directed at both prisoners and staff, it continues to be a
serious problem at the Bureau of Prisons that is directly
related to staffing levels and overcrowding, and the BOP has
done an evaluation to make that clear.
What statistics can you provide on the incidence of
prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and prisoner-on-staff assaults
over the last several fiscal years and to date for fiscal year
2009?
Mr. Lappin. I do not have them with me, but we can provide
you----
Mr. Mollohan. Would you provide those for the record,
please?
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. The rate of assaults on staff and
inmates.
[The information follows:]

Provide Statistics That Show the Incidence of Prisoner-on-Prisoner and
Prisoner-on-Staff Assaults Over the Last Several Fiscal Years to Date.
Are There Increases? If So, in What Areas?

The BOP has been able to prevent notable increases in the rate of
serious assaults through many resource-intensive interventions, such as
paying overtime to increase the number of custody staff available to
perform security duties, locking down an institution after a serious
incident and performing intensive interviews to identify perpetrators
and causal factors, and performing comprehensive searches to eliminate
weapons and other dangerous contraband.
In order to assess the relative safety of BOP institutions today as
compared to earlier points in time (when there were fewer inmates), it
is most useful to evaluate the adjudicated rate of assaults per 5,000
inmates (which controls for the increase in the population). The
attached graphs depict the rate of serious assaults by inmates on other
inmates and on staff over approximately the last 4 years. The data
shows a relatively even ebb and flow of inmate assaults and no
indication of an increase in the rates.

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Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. And any indication of increases and what areas.

CORRECTIONAL OFFICER DEATH

Mr. Mollohan. If you submit that for the record, I would
appreciate it.
Last June, as you know, a correctional officer was murdered
by two prisoners at the U.S. Penitentiary at Atwater in
California. The officer who was murdered, Jose Rivera, was
working alone at the time as he was stabbed by two inmates.
After such an incident, was an evaluation conducted to
determine whether staffing policies needed to be revised?
Mr. Lappin. We did. And we did add some posts at
penitentiaries.
Mr. Mollohan. You did what?
Mr. Lappin. We did do an assessment.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Lappin. Not only because of that, but because of some
other incidents that were occurring, especially in our high
security institutions.
Mr. Mollohan. Did you have a specific revision of policies
as a result of that?
Mr. Lappin. We added some posts at all the penitentiaries.
We can provide you what we added. Was it enough? I personally
do not think it is enough. I mean, but realize if you just add
an employee to every housing unit in the Bureau of Prisons,
that is a huge increase when you consider how many housing
units there are. So----
[The information follows:]

Number of Additional Posts Added at BOP High Security Institutions Over
the Past Year

High security institutions were authorized two additional staff (or
use of existing resources where appropriate) for evening watch (daily)
and day watch shifts on weekends and federal holidays. The staff
working these posts will function as rovers to provide assistance to
housing unit staff. Therefore, two additional evening positions were
incorporated into the roster as well as two positions on the weekends
and holidays.
Additionally, an extra Special Housing Unit Lieutenant was
authorized at high security facilities, and one Special Investigative
Supervisor (SIS) technician at all secure facilities, if appropriate.

Mr. Mollohan. How many housing units are there?
Mr. Lappin. I would have to add them up for you.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, just an----
Mr. Lappin. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars
just to put another officer in every housing unit and----
Mr. Mollohan. Is that necessary in order to----
Mr. Lappin. Not at all security levels.
Mr. Mollohan. Would that be necessary to be responsive to
the conclusions of your evaluation after this stabbing?
Mr. Lappin. You know, I would love to have another officer,
especially in the housing units. However, let us be realistic
here. Most of those housing units have 150 to 200 inmates. For
staffing, there are two people in there. If some inmates wants
to do something and they can plan the time, the place, and the
method, all it takes is two diversions, or one diversion, and
now you have one or two staff focused on something over here
and something else is occurring in that same housing unit
elsewhere.
So let us be realistic here. I mean, inmates outnumber us
significantly.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Your testimony is you would like to
have additional staffing?
Mr. Lappin. Sure.
Mr. Mollohan. And hopefully we are getting that in your
request and----
Mr. Lappin. But I think we could address some of that with
that 3,000 increase. That is what I would recommend, sir, is if
we would take that course of action, then if we look at the
indicators. Let us then look at assault rates; let us look at
serious incidents; let us look at lockdowns; let us look at the
number of homicides; let us look at the number of how long our
waiting lists are----
Mr. Mollohan. Well, let us look at it----
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. All types of issues.
Mr. Mollohan. Let us look at it more generally. What
policies have you instituted as a result of these incidents of
violence to minimize the chances of such assaults?
Mr. Lappin. At our high security institutions, we have
increased the number of posts in all the penitentiaries. We
have asked wardens consistently across the board to manage
those inmates in small groups. Do not put all of them in the
recreation yard at once. Do not put them all in food service at
the same time, or large numbers of them. So we are doing a
better job of controlling how many inmates are in a given area
at a time.
We have asked them to put in place more restrictive
controlled movement. These high security institutions all
operate on controlled movement. That is, when you say they can
move, certain inmates can move to certain locations while
others stay in place. That way, there are not as many inmates
out in a common area at one time. So, we have asked them to
make adjustments of that nature.
I think one of the major issues is the one I mentioned
earlier about the creation of these special management units
(SMU). We are going to remove more violent offenders from other
institutions and then manage them in an even more controlled,
structured environment.
Once that happens, I think we are really going to be able
to see the effect, of both what we have done at those
institutions in the way of management, as well as the removal
of more aggressive, violent inmates from those general
populations to SMU facilities in the hopes that we will see a
decline or leveling off of assaults in those facilities.

STAFFING ISSUES

Mr. Mollohan. Well, give us a general statement. Are these
incidents of violence increasing as you have testified against
staff? Is there an increase of violence against staff?
Mr. Lappin. When you get our rates, I think you are going
to find that you are not going to see a huge increase against
staff. The increase we are seeing is inmate on inmate. But what
we are seeing are more serious types of attacks too. I mean, we
have seen an increase in the number of homicides.
Mr. Mollohan. So what is the primary cause? Give us some
sort of an idea of why this is happening and what do you think
should be done to curtail it.
Mr. Lappin. I think a big part has to do with the inmates,
the types of offenders and their willingness not to comply,
which is unusual in comparison to years past. Typically in
years past----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. But you have to be responsive to that.
Mr. Lappin. Absolutely.
Mr. Mollohan. So what is not allowing you to be responsive
to that?
Mr. Lappin. Well, I am not sure.
Mr. Mollohan. Staffing levels, not enough staff.
Mr. Lappin. Certainly. More staff to address----
Mr. Mollohan. Doing away with Prison Industries.
Mr. Lappin. More staff to address those issues more quickly
would be helpful, to respond faster to those incidents, to
identify those inmates before they begin acting in that manner.
All of those things are related to the number of staff you have
assessing and managing those types of situations.
Mr. Mollohan. What about the programmatics? For example,
Mr. Wolf's questioning about Prison Industries or education or
training opportunities. How do all the programmatics of the
institution affect this violence?
Mr. Lappin. Well, crowding in general affects all of those
issues because the more inmates you have in a facility above
what it was intended to house complicates your ability to
provide work, education, or vocational training.
As simply as I can put it, this formula is not a formula
for success. More inmates and inmates with a more violent,
aggressive history, and less to do, and fewer staff does not
equal success. So, all of those variables. You know, we have
got more inmates who are more challenging, and fewer staff.

PRISONS COMING ON LINE

Mr. Mollohan. How are we addressing that in the Bureau of
Prisons? You have a number of prisons coming on line here,
three or four between now and----
Mr. Lappin. We are opening one right now, Pollock.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Between now and 2010 or 2013, in
that period. Don't you have three facilities coming on line?
Mr. Lappin. Let us see. It's four. Pollock we are opening
now, also Mendota, California, McDowell County, West Virginia,
and Berlin, New Hampshire. So----
Mr. Mollohan. How do you think those prisons will impact
your overcrowding issue?
Mr. Lappin. We can provide you what I think are, depending
on how many inmates we have, our growth----
Mr. Mollohan. Provide us that analysis for the record.
Mr. Lappin. Yes. We anticipate adding about 4,500 inmates a
year each of the next three years.
Mr. Mollohan. And what we would like to know for the record
is, what shape does that put you in after those prisons are
completed and then what is the housing need subsequent.
Mr. Lappin. We will provide that to you. But I can tell you
now, if we are adding 4,500 inmates a year and we are only
adding 6,000 beds, my guess is you are going to see a crowding
increase of----
[The information follows:]

Crowding FY 2009--FY 2013

Projected crowding is as follows:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FY 2009 FY 2010 FY 2011 FY 2012 FY 2013
Males Males............. Males............. Males............. Males
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
High 54% High 58% Males 51% Males 55% High 58%
Medium 55% Medium 51% Medium 53% Medium 54% Medium 53%
Secure Secure Secure Secure Secure
Females 44% Females 47% Females 50% Females 10% Females 13%
BOP System BOP System BOP System BOP System BOP System
wide 37% wide 38% wide 38% wide 38% wide 39%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The BPO continues to need additional capacity at the rate equivalent to two medium security and two high
security facilities annually or approximately 4,300 beds in order to reduce crowding to a more manageable
level by the end of FY 2018.

Mr. Mollohan. Even with the addition of these prisons?
Mr. Lappin. I believe it will remain the same or go up a
little bit----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. Because, we are adding over 12,000
inmates and we are only adding under 6,000 beds. So, we are
going to squeeze another 6,000 inmates into the existing beds.
So, we will provide our projection to you in writing.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. The three new prisons that are coming along,
the average cost per cell?
Mr. Lappin. Average cost per cell? I think I have that
here. If not, I think it is about $150,000.
Mr. Fattah. And the average cost per year per inmate across
systemwide?
Mr. Lappin. Average cost per year is $25,000 to $26,000 a
year for cost of incarceration on average.
Mr. Fattah. The increase in the number of female women
prisoners----
Mr. Lappin. We currently have----
Mr. Fattah [continuing]. Over the last couple fiscal years?
Mr. Lappin. I do not have the prior fiscal years. We have
seen an increase. Today we have 6.6 percent of our inmates, or
13,393 that are female. And we have seen an increase in the
percentage of females over the last three or four years. We
will get that and provide it to you.
Mr. Fattah. I mean, is it a significant increase? Is it----
Mr. Kane. It is the same as now.
Mr. Lappin. Which is what, Tom?
Mr. Kane. The rate of increase for women is about the same
as now.
Mr. Lappin. About the same rate. I do not know how many
that is a year.
Mr. Kane. About three percent.
Mr. Lappin. An increase of about three percent, but we will
put it in writing so you will get an accurate figure.
[The information follows:]

Provide Statistics on the Increase in Female Inmates Over the Last
Three or Four Years

FY 2006 increase of 196 inmates.
FY 2007 increase of 558 inmates.
FY 2008 decrease of 97 inmates.
FY 2009 decrease of 286 through February 28, 2009.

Mr. Fattah. And you have 200 plus thousand inmates?
Mr. Lappin. Two hundred and two thousand.
Mr. Fattah. And not to be overcrowded, you would have to
have 160,000 or so, right, to deal with the Chairman's last
question?

CAPACITY RATE

Mr. Lappin. Let me help you with that one, because this is
the confusing part and I do not want to confuse folks.
There is a rated capacity and that is kind of ``how many
can you actually hold and do it realistically.'' Our target,
our goal is to be 15 percent to 17 percent over our--I am
sorry--15 percent over our rated capacity.
Mr. Fattah. Your rated capacity is?
Mr. Lappin. Our rated capacity is probably about 130,000
inmates.
Mr. Fattah. Hundred and thirty thousand.
Mr. Lappin. But we believe we can safely run these prisons,
successfully run these prisons at about 15 percent over that
rated capacity. I am going to tell you what that means.
That means that every cell in the Bureau of Prisons is
double bunked with the exception of about maybe a thousand
cells, at the high security level, which would be single
bunked. And given the nature of those inmates, we believe it is
wise to have cells at that level to use for single bunking
inmates.
So, we are currently at about 35 percent over rated
capacity.
Mr. Fattah. Okay. So you would have to be adding new
facilities at a significant rate to get to where you want to
get to?
Mr. Lappin. Or the other option is to reevaluate--``Do all
those folks need to be in here?''
Mr. Fattah. Decide differently about who needs to be in
jail.
Mr. Lappin. And for how long? That is another question to
consider.
Mr. Fattah. My last question. What percentage of these
inmates across systemwide are violent versus nonviolent
offenders?
Mr. Lappin. It varies depending on how you define violent.
Mr. Fattah. How the system defines it.
Mr. Lappin. Yes. I will get the number for you. We will get
it to you so we make sure we have the right number. I will get
it for the record.
[The information follows:]

What Percentage of Inmates System-Wide Are Violent Versus Non-Violent?

In March 2009, there were 104,642 violent offenders in BOP custody,
or 53.2 percent of the total population of 196,547 inmates for which
data is available.

Mr. Fattah. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Lappin. You are welcome.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Wolf.

FAITH-BASED PROGRAMS

Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Can you tell me a little bit about the faith-based program?
I spoke to a person that was in Petersburg and they asked about
the faith-based program. They never heard that there was one.
And I understand that is a place where there used to be one or
is one. Can you tell us how successful they are and what the
status of them?
Mr. Lappin. Yes, I can.
Mr. Wolf. And how many people participate.
Mr. Lappin. Let me find my notes here.
We currently have five of what we call Life Connections
programs, which is a residential-based program. They live
together in a housing unit. It is staffed with a variety of
staff of varying backgrounds, in addition to contractors who
provide not only faith-based programming but other skills
building initiatives.
Mr. Wolf. And how many people participate?
Mr. Lappin. We have had 994 people graduate.
Mr. Wolf. And what is the recidivism rate of people that
are out? Are you finding a difference?
Mr. Lappin. It is a little too early to tell. It is kind of
like----
Mr. Wolf. What does the earliest things tell you though?
Mr. Lappin. It takes a little time to----
Mr. Wolf. Well, if it takes the earliest different, but
what are you finding out? What are you----
Mr. Lappin. Well, this we know for sure----
Mr. Wolf. What does your gut tell you?
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. They are better behaved in prison.
So when they are in this program in prison, we see less
disruption, less violence from those folks. It will be a few
years before we get real recidivism results on this group.
We have had 72 returned to incarceration of the 509 who
have been released. Four hundred and seventy-one are still in
our custody. We have had 72 return so far. But that is not yet
a reflection on recidivism since it is too early to tell
because we have not had the program long enough. But let me
tell you we are encouraged by it.
We have a number of residential programs that are skills
based, that are cognitive behavior based. This one is faith
based. We tend to find that inmates who participate in these
programs, because along with faith-based initiatives, they are
getting GEDs, they are getting vocational certificates, they
are working on other skills that they lack, we see them being
more successful.
So, our assumption is, even though we do not have the
research to support it, is we are going to see success here.
But it will be a couple of years more before we can say this is
the actual recidivism rate like we can for other programs. It
is just a little too early for us to be able to do that.
Mr. Wolf. Is there one at Petersburg?
Mr. Lappin. There is one at Petersburg.
Mr. Wolf. This fellow could not even find it at Petersburg.
Mr. Lappin. I do not know who you asked.
Mr. Wolf. Well, you know, I do not know how it is down
there.
Mr. Lappin. There are two facilities at Petersburg.
Mr. Wolf. Yeah.
Mr. Lappin. So some employees may work at the facility
where this program does not exist, may not----
Mr. Wolf. What is the backlog waiting to come in throughout
the system?
Mr. Lappin. I think we have got about 150 inmates awaiting
placement.
Mr. Wolf. And does each prisoner that comes in the prison
system know that there is a faith-based program?
Mr. Lappin. During the A&O Program, during admissions and
orientation, they are informed of all the programs we have, one
of which is Life Connections.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. Well, just to make a comment, you know, I
think it is great the Chairman is having these hearings. Maybe
we ought to have a couple prisoners to testify also. I think it
would be helpful to have a prisoner that is in the faith-based
program and some other prisoners to kind of tell us.
I find that the longer we go on, nothing really changes. We
put a man away. The prisons are becoming training grounds for
learning more crime, even the federal prisons. We do not give a
man work. We do not meet their faith concerns.
I met with a group of prisoners as I left a hearing
yesterday that last week you had. They were a group that came
in to see me from Chicago to tell me that is the only thing
that made a difference in their life and then we expect these
guys to come out and go straight. I just do not think it is
possible.
And I am going to offer this to see if we can--work is
dignity. Without work, you just cannot make it. The labor
unions will probably oppose this. Other groups will probably
oppose this, but I think it is cruel and inhumane to put a man
away for 15 years and not give him something to get up in the
morning and go to and work whereby they can, one, put some
money aside, whereby you could pay a minimum wage, whereby they
can have some money when they leave; two, some form of
restitution that they can pay back; and, three, send their
family something. That is dignity.
And so, you know, I think if we do not change these things,
the next Bureau of Prisons Director will be testifying here in
ten years, it will be a different set of players, and the
conditions will be the same. And the only thing will be your
numbers will have increased. So thank you.
Mr. Lappin. Just so you know, there are jobs beyond Prison
Industries. And most inmates do have a job. But, again,
impacted by the number of inmates in each facility. So, the
more inmates you have above what it can normally house, the
more difficult it is for us to find those productive work
assignments.
Mr. Wolf. But I have been in where they tell me their jobs
are ridiculous. They say they are picking up butts or they are
just walking or they are doing nothing.
Mr. Lappin. We are keeping them busy.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you.
Mr. Serrano.

IMMIGRATION ISSUES

Mr. Serrano. Mr. Chairman, let me just add something to Mr.
Wolf's comments.
Mr. Wolf has a reputation, as you well know, for being
very, very strong on the issue of human rights throughout the
world. And he is known as a conservative in the House but one
with a real belief in respecting people.
And his comments just now are just right on the mark and
they bring an additional thought, which we brought up before.
Because we have so many people that are being detained or
incarcerated for immigration violations, we have now a
situation, in addition to the immigration issue we have at hand
that we have not resolved, where, in fact, we are putting
people in prison who on the outside were ``illegally working in
a restaurant,'' but now are in prison learning nothing. Nothing
compared to what they were doing when they were working in the
restaurant without proper documentation. And so, since we do
not seem to resolve this immigration problem we are going to
run now into yet another generation of people who were
incarcerated and learned bad things while they were in prison,
who when they were out here allegedly breaking the law for
being in the country illegally were not creating a problem for
society. But when they come out of there you do not know what
kind of problem they will create for society.
All that to say that at the top of our agenda has to be
that we have got to determine what to do with this immigration
issue. And then immediately after that talk to some countries
on both borders to see how we can help people stay home. You
know, deal with the ones that are here, and then people stay
home.
Now talking about people in homes, and this is not, I just
thought of this. My next question is this whole issue that I
have been dealing with for years as to how the census within
the prison population is taken in terms of where they live and
where they are now. And this has been a big issue for a while.
In fact, some years ago through the good graces of the Chairman
we asked for, we put language in the bill asking the Census
Bureau to tell us why they could not count folks with their
home address when they were incarcerated. And they said it was
too expensive to do that. Of all the issues I deal with I find
this one to be a difficult one to me to understand why that
cannot be done. Why, when a person comes to you, you do not
know that they came from Waukegan, Illinois, or from the Bronx,
New York. And, you know I always pick on Waukegan, Illinois. I
do not know why. Jack Benny was born there, I guess that is the
reason. But I am from the Bronx, New York.
So, you know, we do not seem to know that. We do not know
it at the state level, although we are dealing here with
federal prison, we do not know it at the federal prison. And
what happens is, here is the issue. When the allocating of
monies go to communities, as you know, some prison communities,
for just having the building there, are getting extra dollars.
However, eventually that incarcerated person will go back to a
community that did not get any dollars because he was missing
from that point. Yet in all other parts of society you have
different situations. You have people in the military, those
that do pay certain taxes that are not exempt, paying taxes
back home to their state. You have members of Congress spending
five days a week here, sometimes, still paying state tax back
home. Yet the prison population is handled totally different.
Mr. Lappin. I do not know the answer to that. I can tell
you, we know where most inmates live. So if anybody is telling
you we do not know where they live, that is not the case. I
mean, for most inmates we know where they live. It is
documented on their presentencing report (PSR). Now, that may
not be--they may not say that is where they are going to
return. That gets a little more complicated.
Mr. Serrano. Right.
Mr. Lappin. Because they may have been arrested in one
location. And it may say that their home is this. But they may
tell you, ``But when I leave prison, here is where I want to
go.'' That gets a little complicated. But without a doubt, if
somebody says, ``What is your last known residence?'' We know
that on most inmates. It is documented right in their PSR. We
have a PSR on probably 100 percent of the people that we have
in federal prison. So the next step is, well, how does that
comport with where you intend to go? Because sometimes that can
change. But for most inmates we can identify where they are
from. And for many of those inmates, they are going to return
to the same community they came from. So, I am not sure how to
solve the other issue.
Mr. Serrano. Well, the Census Bureau claimed that they
would have such a difficult time finding out where these people
are from. I am not asking you to knock the Census Bureau.
Mr. Lappin. I will not. I would not do that.
Mr. Serrano. We do not allow people to knock agencies in
the same Committee.
Mr. Lappin. No. They do a great job.
Mr. Serrano. But I guess, if you know where they are from--
--
Mr. Lappin. We would be more than happy to work with them
and see what we could do to assist them if that is what needs
to be done.
Mr. Serrano. Well, that is a great statement. Because that
is a big issue, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Serrano. Mr. Director,
implementation of The Second Chance Act. I take it from your
testimony up to this point that you are really just starting to
get into it?
Mr. Lappin. We are really starting to get into the part
that costs money. Because the lead up to this was a lot of
assessment, creation of the assessment forms, and a system, an
electronic system that would allow us to gather that
information and then share that information.
Mr. Mollohan. Mm-hmm.
Mr. Lappin. So there has been a lot of work that has led up
to this. But now, the implementation part, where we bring the
inmates in and we actually do the work, we are just getting
starting on that.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you feel prepared for that, if you get the
funding?
Mr. Lappin. Yes, I do.
Mr. Mollohan. What about staffing levels? What are your
needs with regard to staffing levels, from A to Z, and to fully
implement The Second Chance Act.
Mr. Lappin. We will have to add some staff at some
locations. And my guess is, I do not know exactly what the----
Mr. Mollohan. I would think you would have to add a lot of
staff at a lot of locations.
Mr. Lappin. And I am sure a portion of this 3,000 would
address some of those issues.
Mr. Mollohan. Will you for the record give us an assessment
of that?
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Total implementation.
Mr. Lappin. Okay.
Mr. Mollohan. Your budget justification for 2009 indicated
that the Bureau of Prisons was changing its reentry model to
better prepare inmates for release back into their communities,
independent of The Second Chance Act, arguably. Last year
Congress passed a Second Chance Act that imposed a number of
new requirements on the Bureau of Prisons related to prisoner
reentry activities. How do the Second Chance Act requirements
fit into what you are already doing for prisoner reentry,
including your vocational training, your education, your drug
treatment programs, and anything else?
Mr. Lappin. In many ways it is going to marry up quite
nicely. Again, a lot of credit to the folks who wrote it and
worked with our staff who were doing that.
Mr. Mollohan. Right. Let us get to how are you----
Mr. Lappin. But there are some program areas where we do
not have a lot of experience. I mean, we have not had a lot
of--let us take wellness initiatives. I know this sounds, some
people will be critical of this, but leisure time activities.
Now, the reason that is in the assessment is, a structured way
of doing that, is because probation staff said, ``Here is our
dilemma. Oftentimes we get them out there. We can find them a
place to live and they can get a job.'' Let us assume that.
Their failure, more often than not, is because they do not know
how to manage their leisure time. They have never been taught
what you do constructively with leisure time.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. Whether it is go to church? So, there are some
of these areas where we are going to have to add programs. We
will build that into our estimate.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, let me tell you. This Subcommittee is
going to be very interested in working with you with regard to
implementation of The Second Chance Act. I think that that is a
very good starting point for reentry and hopefully dealing in a
positive, progressive way with these recidivism issues. And so
we want to work with you. We hope that your 2010 budget request
addresses the resource needs for full implementation of The
Second Chance Act. And we are really looking forward, with
anticipation, to that budget request.
Mr. Lappin. I look forward to that. Let me mention one
other area that is a challenge for us, and I am not sure we can
solve this. But it is an issue. We have too many communities
around this country that say, ``No, I do not want the offender
back.'' To the point they will not let us put community
corrections centers, halfway houses, in those communities. So,
I can give you any number of locations where the inmate is
going to X location but we have to put him in a halfway house
120, 150, 200 miles away. And this is a struggle for us.
In fact, the contractors sometimes have to take them to
court to force the zoning to allow that. We have a problem
right here in Northern Virginia.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, I am sure you are going to have a lot
of challenges.
Mr. Lappin. So, that is an area that is critical to reentry
that I just want to make you all aware of in case there is
something that we can think of to help encourage communities to
take responsibility for inmates who are coming back.
Mr. Mollohan. We are going to have some witnesses that are
actually engaged in that activity later on in the week.
Mr. Lappin. Good.

SECOND CHANCE ACT

Mr. Mollohan. So we will look forward to addressing that
issue with them. But obviously you are just going to have to
work that as best you can. I mean, I am very familiar with that
challenge.
Indeed, will The Second Chance Act significantly change the
way the Bureau of Prisons does prisoner reentry?
Mr. Lappin. Not significantly. Because, again, they adopted
in this law many of the things we were doing before. There are
going to be some adjustments, there are going to be some
changes, and there will be some enhancements.
Mr. Mollohan. A lot of your recommendations were included
in The Second Chance Act?
Mr. Lappin. They were.
Mr. Mollohan. So your biggest challenge is going to be the
resources?
Mr. Lappin. That is correct.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, our biggest challenge is going to
be funding it to get you those resources. And what is really
helpful for us will be if that request includes Second Chance
Act implementation funding. So we are going to, in the first
instance, rely on you to advocate really aggressively for that
to be included in the budget request, and then you can rely on
us to do our best to try and fund it. And we will try to do our
best to the extent it is not included in the budget request.
Mr. Lappin. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. What level of resources would it take to
enable you to fully implement the Bureau of Prisons sections of
the Second Chance Law?
Mr. Lappin. Again, I will have to go back and do a
calculation to be specific.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Will you----
Mr. Lappin. I will get that to you.
[The information follows:]

Resources Needed To Implement BOP's Section of the Second Chance Act

Approximately $80 million is needed to implement the BOP's
responsibilities under the Second Chance Act (of this amount $14
million is included in FY 2010 budget request to fund the inmate skills
development initiative). The total required funding of $80 million is
for residential reentry centers and other inmate programs like inmate
skills development, sex offender management, and the life connections
program.

Mr. Mollohan. Will you give us that for the record? And
then when we see you next time we will talk a little bit about
how you struggled with the OMB in order to get your request and
recommendations approved? We hope you are successful with that.
I have a question about the relationship between staffing
requirements, which we are impressed is a struggle for you, and
the realistic chances of successful implementation of the
Second Chance Act. What is that relationship? And between your
staffing needs and shortfalls, and a realistic chance of
successfully implementing the Second Chance Act's requirements?
Mr. Lappin. We are going to have a challenge at the current
staffing levels. Because currently we are not providing every
inmate the programming and treatment that they need. I am
talking about just the willing inmates. I mean, that is
reflected in our inability to get everybody through drug
treatment.
Mr. Mollohan. And you have testified that you want 3,000
additional staff in the next year.
Mr. Lappin. In a perfect world that is what I would like to
have. I have a lot of wishes out there.
Mr. Mollohan. Are you including staff that would be needed
to successfully implement Second Chance in that 3,000?
Mr. Lappin. I believe so. There would be some of those
staff that would work, again----
Mr. Mollohan. No, no. I am saying, are those 3,000, do they
include the Second Chance Act implementation personnel?
Mr. Lappin. I do not know.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. I will check.
Mr. Mollohan. Would you submit that for the record, please?
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
[The information follows:]

Do the 3,000 Positions Targeted To Fill Over the Next Two to Three
Years Include Staffing for the ``Second Chance Act''

The additional 3,000 positions that we have targeted to fill are
primarily to address continued inmate crowding and to ensure continued
safety and security at all BOP facilities (primarily the hiring of
additional correctional services staff to maintain adequate inmate to
staff ratios), with some increases in services and programming staff
(food service, facilities, psychology, education, etc.).
Additional positions will be included in the 2010 BOP Budget
Request to expand the BOP Inmate Skills Development Program as it
relates to the Second Chance Act.

Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Director. Community confinement.
The Second Chance Act clarified that the Bureau of Prisons
could place a prisoner in community confinement, including a
residential reentry center, an RRC. It has also directed the
Bureau of Prisons to issue regulations to ensure that
preparation for their release is of sufficient duration to
provide the greatest likelihood of successful reintegration
into the community. And you have published interim rules or
proposed rules with regard to fulfilling that requirement?
Mr. Lappin. I think they are proposed rules. We will have
to, I will find out. I know rules have been published. I
believe, we are--they are still in the interim. So, we will
give you an assessment of where we are on the publishing of
those rules applicable to that aspect of The Second Chance Act.
But I know----
[The information follows:]

What Is the Status of the Rules Publishing Concerning the ``Second
Chance Act?'' Are They Proposed, Published, Interim or in Effect?

The BOP published an Interim Rule entitled ``Pre-Release Community
Confinement'' in the Federal Register on October 21, 2008. A large
number of comments were received during the public comment period,
which ended on December 22, 2008. The Interim Rule was made effective
and was applicable as of the date of publication, October 21, 2008.
The BOP published a Proposed Rule entitled ``Religious Beliefs and
Practices: Chapel Library Material'' in the Federal Register on January
16, 2009. A number of public comments were received during the comment
period, which ended on March 17, 2009. The BOP will consider those
comments received during the comment period before developing a Final
Rule document. Currently, the rule is in proposed form only and is not
yet effective or applicable.

Mr. Mollohan. Are they, even though they are interim, if
that is the right characterization, does that mean that they
are in effect?
Mr. Lappin. Well, we are considering inmates for more than
six months. So in a word, yes. We are considering inmates for
up to twelve months even though the rules are not finalized.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. We are currently doing that.
Mr. Mollohan. Are they defining how you are using the
residential reentry centers right now? If you do not know the
answer to that then you can submit it for the record.
Mr. Lappin. Yes, I would have to check to see exactly what
is in there. But it is not going to be a lot different than how
we have applied it in the past. It just gives us the authority
to go up to twelve months. So beyond that, how one qualifies,
what criteria we look at, pretty much stays the same. It is
just that we can put people in an RRC for more than six months.
[The information follows:]

Are the Rules for ``Second Chance'' Defining How You Are Using RRC's?

Yes. 28 C.F.R. 570.20 defines community confinement (i.e.,
residence in a halfway house, participation in employment or employment
seeking activities, etc.). 28 C.F.R. 570.21 provides that inmates may
be designated to pre-release community confinement ``during the final
months of the inmate's term of imprisonment, not to exceed twelve
months.'' 28 C.F.R. 570.22 provides that in considering inmates for
such placement, staff shall consider 1) the resources of the facility
being considered (i.e., a Residential Reentry Center); 2) the nature
and circumstances of the inmate's offense; 3) the history and
characteristics of the prisoner; 4) any statements or recommendation by
the sentencing court; and 5) any pertinent policies issued by the U.S.
Sentencing Commission. The regulation provides that all such decisions
are to be made on an individualized basis; i.e., there are no
categorical limitations. Finally, the regulation provides that all such
decisions are to be made to provide the greatest likelihood of
successful reintegration into the community.

Mr. Mollohan. Okay. I have a series of questions here that
relate to that, and I think probably the better thing to do
would be to submit them for the record. Let me try one.
Mr. Lappin. Okay.
Mr. Mollohan. In terms of reducing recidivism, what is the
ideal amount of time a reentered offender should spend in an
RRC?
Mr. Lappin. It will vary by offender, by how long they have
been in prison, what their background is, what type of
resources they have. So, it is hard to say what specific number
is right for every inmate. We have an average. We can provide
that. But it is really done on a case by case basis, applicable
to each offender with their unique background, their
characteristics, their resources. Obviously, an inmate who has
only served six, eight months in prison is not going to have
the resource needs of somebody that has been in prison ten,
fifteen years. And so all those things are taken into
consideration. So, I cannot say there is a specific number. It
is going to vary by offender.
[The information follows:]

Ideal Amount of Time on Average a Re-Entered Offender Should Spend in
an Residential Re-entry Center (RRC)

In terms of reducing recidivism, we are unaware of any research
that attempts to define an ``ideal'' amount of time an inmate should
spend in an RRC. We do know that in-prison programs such as education,
vocational training, and cognitive behavior treatment programs reduce
recidivism. Therefore, we believe the amount of time an inmate spends
in an RRC should be based on an individualized assessment that
considers many factors, including the inmate's level of risk, reentry
needs, in-prison conduct and programming, and BOP's resources.

DRUG ADDICTION

Mr. Mollohan. How does drug addiction factor into your
preparation for release? And the conditions of the release
during a period of probation or oversight?
Mr. Lappin. Overcoming the challenges of addiction is a
huge, huge challenge for folks, in general, let alone
offenders. That is why we have built into our contracts an
expectation that all of our halfway houses have transition
services for drug and alcohol addicted individuals. So, as part
of the plan, if they have gone through the residential drug
treatment program, the residential program, there is going to
be a transition plan for those folks. Now, some inmates have
issues with drug and alcohol but may not fall into the addicted
category. There are still services available for those folks in
those halfway houses if they desire to have them.
So, the plan is for transition to occur from prison into
the community, and then hand it off to probation. That is the
beauty, I think, of what we have put together in the Inmate
Skills Development Program, in that the probation officer will
have all of that information now, unlike previously, which is
going to be a huge advantage to them. But the issue is
addressing those day to day needs, you know. Inmates, they are
going to slip. People slip when they are trying to recover. And
we----
Mr. Mollohan. Indeed they will. Let me ask you, in
incarceration, what is your program for addiction?
Mr. Lappin. It is a cognitive behavior based program.
Mr. Mollohan. A twelve-step program?
Mr. Lappin. It is similar to that, that deals a lot with
relapse prevention, making good decisions. So, it is a lot of
prosocial value issues that are addressed, both in decision
making, taking responsibility----
Mr. Mollohan. For how long a duration is that program?
Mr. Lappin. Nine months.
Mr. Mollohan. Can any inmate who wants to get into that
program readily do so?
Mr. Lappin. You must meet certain criteria. We just do not
put anybody in because they say, ``Well, I am addicted.'' There
has got to be some basis for that.
Mr. Mollohan. Mm-hmm.
Mr. Lappin. Unfortunately, we have had waiting lists that
exceed our capacity. So, we have had in the last two years
inmates who have volunteered, who we agree are having addiction
issues, who have not been able to get through. That had not
been the case until the past two years.
Mr. Mollohan. What is your waiting list to get into that
program?
Mr. Lappin. The waiting list I think is probably around
7,000.
Mr. Mollohan. How long does an inmate have to, if an inmate
wants to sign up for such a program, how long does that inmate
have to wait in order to get into the program on a typical----
Mr. Lappin. It varies. Typically, we try to put them in the
program in the later portion of their sentence. I mean if we
had the, I would love to do it earlier because they continue to
have those problems during that incarceration. But what it has
come down to, because of the waiting list, you get moved up on
the waiting list above other people because you are getting
close to release, given the limited resources. So, it is
happening towards the end of that offender's sentence. So,
there is enough time allowed for them to get through the nine-
month program and then X number of months in a halfway house--
--
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Lappin [continuing]. X number of weeks or days on
community confinement, and then release.
Mr. Mollohan. What incentives are in place in order to
induce an inmate to participate in that program?
Mr. Lappin. Well, nonviolent offenders can get up to twelve
months off their sentence. Violent offenders----
Mr. Mollohan. That is quite an inducement.
Mr. Lappin. It is. It is. But realize, of the 17,500 that
we had in treatment last year, 40 percent were violent
offenders and they still volunteered for the program. I think
that is what is significant about this; 92 percent of the folks
who we believe should receive drug treatment are volunteering
for treatment.
Mr. Mollohan. So assuming a prisoner does not have access
to the substance of choice while they are in prison, you are
dealing with addicted people who are, still have cravings.
Mr. Lappin. We are. And there are, besides the residential
program there is a nonresidential program. There is also
counseling available. So beyond this----
Mr. Mollohan. I am talking about the incarcerated.
Mr. Lappin. Incarcerated.
Mr. Mollohan. So what is a nonresidential program for the
incarcerated?
Mr. Lappin. There is the residential program where you are
housed together in a housing unit. It is, it is kind of a
therapeutic community.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mr. Lappin. Well then we have other folks who do not meet
the qualifications, or say, ``You know what? I have had some
issues with alcohol.'' There is a nonresidential program that
our drug treatment staff provide to that group of inmates.
There is----
Mr. Mollohan. I am sorry. I just do not understand
``nonresidential.''
Mr. Lappin. That means they are not together in a special
housing unit for the treatment. They live in the other housing
and they just go somewhere to get those services.
Mr. Mollohan. Oh.
Mr. Lappin. That is, in the institution. They will go down
to the psychology section, or to a different area. They do not
live in a therapeutic community.
Mr. Mollohan. Oh. So----
Mr. Lappin. They are just living in housing units with
everybody else.
Mr. Mollohan. So people who are in this program, or in a
recovery program, a formal program, they live in a recovering
community?
Mr. Lappin. They live in a therapeutic community.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, let me ask you this. We are going
to have some testimony during this week about the use of
medication----
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. To treat----
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. The craving aspect of addicted
prisoners. Do you have a comment on that? Is that a policy that
exists in the Bureau of Prisons? Is it a treatment that is
being looked at for an incarcerated, prereleased inmate?
Mr. Lappin. We are not using it right now but we are
exploring those options. We think there could be some use for
that for us. And we want to look at the research, we want to
look at what is available. And so, it is something that we
would consider.
Mr. Mollohan. Who is looking at that?
Mr. Lappin. Our medical staff and our drug treatment staff.
So I have a medical staff, and public health service doctors
and other medical staff, and our drug treatment folks are
looking at that together.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you have a research division in the Bureau
of Prisons?
Mr. Lappin. A great one.
Mr. Mollohan. Of course it is. And are your research folks
looking at this specific issue?
Mr. Lappin. They looked, I do not know if you all have
looked at the use of medication on this.
Mr. Kane. No. I mean, the way we would work it is if we
maybe would decide to pilot that. For example, if our medical
and our drug treatment staff were to decide and recommended a
pilot Program and the pilot began.
Mr. Mollohan. Could you identify your name for the record?
And excuse me for interrupting. I should have let you finish
before I asked that.
Mr. Kane. Then the research team would look at the extent
to which that particular treatment affects the outcome for
those individuals.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, I would like to follow up with
you after this hearing. Would you please identify the----
Mr. Lappin. His name is Tom Kane. He is Assistant Director
of Information Policy and Public Affairs.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Kane. You say that this is
being looked at, though, at the Bureau of Prisons.
Mr. Lappin. It is being looked at, yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you know what product you are looking at?
Mr. Lappin. I do not know for sure but I can find out.

Drugs To Control Cravings

BOP inmates are detoxed upon entering a mainline institution per
the BOP Detoxification Guidelines. Only pregnant women are maintained
on pharmacological drugs such as methadone.
The drugs which have been previously reviewed during the National
BOP Formulary Meeting for inmates for drug abuse treatment include
Naltrexone and Buprenorphine. Also, Acamprosate (brand name Campral) is
another drug that the BOP is exploring for possible addition to the
formulary.

Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, we will follow up with regard to
that. Do you know if any of the halfway house or the after
release programs are using medication in the after release
programs----
Mr. Lappin. I am not sure.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. For the craving aspect of the
addiction?
Mr. Lappin. And my guess is we probably are not at this
point, given the fact that they are authorized under our
contracts. But I will check to see if in fact they are.
Hopefully, we have done a good enough job preparing them for
release that that craving by this time has come down. But,
again, we will check for the record.
Mr. Mollohan. You are a real optimist.
Mr. Lappin. I am an optimist.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, that is too optimistic. Do you know if
The Second Chance Act authorizes the use of medication in that
way?
Mr. Lappin. I do not know.
Mr. Mollohan. I do.
Mr. Lappin. We would have to look.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Lappin. It does?
Mr. Mollohan. Yes. Do you want to look at that?
Mr. Lappin. Okay, I will certainly look at that.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Wolf.

EMPLOYMENT SERVICES IN BUREAU OF PRISONS

Mr. Wolf. Thank you. Just two questions. Is there an
employment service in the Bureau of Prisons for prisoners that
are leaving, whereby if you are getting out there is an
aggressive operation to help them find jobs? Not just, yeah,
but a real one.
Mr. Lappin. We actually have as part of the, built in as
part of the Second Chance Act, and we have worked on this for
years, a job placement initiative. And what is difficult for
us, Congressman, as you can imagine, these inmates live
oftentimes a long distance from where they are incarcerated.
That is what makes it difficult in the federal system. Unlike
in many states, especially the size of many states, they could
be very close to home. Whereas our inmates are oftentimes much
further from home which makes it much more difficult.
But we have job placement responsibilities and staff assist
inmates in job searching. They will gather information off the
internet, without the inmate having access to the internet, so
the inmate can begin to see what jobs are being advertised.
They go through resume writing, they go through application
processing. We do mock job fairs where we will bring in
business officials from the local community and the inmate will
write a resume as if they were going to go to work for them,
and then they do an interview. So, every facility does mock job
fairs.
Mr. Wolf. Once they get out, what is their opportunity?
Have you ever contracted with private employment services?
Mr. Lappin. Well, the halfway houses, have that as part of
their job.
Mr. Wolf. Their job.
Mr. Lappin. Is to assist that person in finding work. So,
we hire that contractor, we make it part of that contract. Now
again, as I go back to my other statement, because we have many
locations where we cannot get the inmate close enough. So, it
does not work as well when you cannot get the inmate in close
enough proximity that they can actually go interview and pursue
a job. That is why we would like to have halfway houses in more
locations.
Mr. Wolf. My last question. I had an inmate tell me that
everything that is available on the street is available in the
prison. Is that accurate?
Mr. Lappin. In the way of what?
Mr. Wolf. Everything.
Mr. Lappin. Well, drugs?
Mr. Wolf. Yes.
Mr. Lappin. Are there drugs available in the institutions?
Unfortunately, yes. I mean, obviously with our testing program
we find a variety of drug use. But, let me give you an example.
We tested, we did 109,000 random tests last year, where there
were 498 positives. That is a .45 percent rate. We did 16,000
additional suspect tests that is we suspected somebody had used
drugs. There were 603 hits on that 16,000 for a rate of 3.67.
Mr. Wolf. Okay.
Mr. Lappin. So of the 188,000 tests in all categories we
had about 1,100 positives. And our system is much better today
because of the technology. You can now do a urinalysis check.
You do not have to wait to send the test off. You actually can
do a urinalysis test where it will give us an indication if a
person has used something they should not have used. Then you
do the laboratory test to confirm that. So, it is much more
immediate. It works much better for us. All those types of
things help us reduce the chances of that happening.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no other
questions.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Serrano.
Mr. Serrano. I have no further questions.

DRUG TREATMENT IN PRISON

Mr. Mollohan. Just a couple of follow up questions, Mr.
Director. Going back to the number and percentage of prisoners
that you are able to serve in your drug treatment program, your
prerelease drug treatment program, what percentage of eligible
inmates were you able to treat in 2008?
Mr. Lappin. I have to find my numbers again. Just a second.
I am going to, I will confirm for the record. But real quickly,
we treated 17,523 in 2008. I believe we released about 1,700
who should have received treatment. So, we got a very high
percentage of those who we thought needed treatment and
requested treatment.
[The information follows:]

Drug Treatment in FY 2008

In FY 2008, 93% of inmates who were eligible and who volunteered
for treatment completed the Residential Drug Abuse Program before their
release from custody.

Mr. Mollohan. You released 1,700 who wanted treatment but
did not get it?
Mr. Lappin. Who wanted it and did not get it. So that must
have been close to, what, 19,000 total. We treated 17,523.
Mr. Mollohan. So that means those 1,700 did not get early
release? Did not get a year off of their sentence?
Mr. Lappin. I will have to go back and look. Because it may
be that, it moves them up higher in the list if they are
eligible for time off. So, it may have been those were violent
offenders, I do not know, who would not qualify. But I cannot
say that for sure. Because sometimes, Congressman, judges do
not sentence people to long enough periods of time to allow for
treatment.
[The information follows:]

Inmates Released Before Completion of the Residential Drug Abuse
Treatment Program (RDAP)

To earn an early release, a ``non-violent' inmate must complete
each component of the RDAP. As a result, those who were unable to
complete the treatment were unable to earn a sentence reduction.

Mr. Mollohan. No, I understand that, unless they get in
right away.
Mr. Lappin. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. They have to be sentenced for a year or so. I
guess they go through, a year and a half----
Mr. Lappin. Yes, they get at least two years on a sentence,
to get that.
Mr. Mollohan. What do you anticipate will be the percentage
in 2009, assuming the enactment of the omnibus appropriation
bill? Why do you not submit that for the record?
Mr. Lappin. Okay.

Drug Treatment in FY 2009

In FY 2009, the BOP anticipates that 100 percent of inmates who are
eligible and who volunteer for the Residential Drug Abuse Treatment
Program will receive treatment prior to their release.

VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

Mr. Mollohan. Because I sense you probably will not be able
to answer that. Vocational training and educational programs,
and other services related to reentry. We have a program in
West Virginia that is an educational program. It is actually a
pilot program. It is taught at a college. It is being
monitored. It is going to be judged and I am going to look and
see if it meets the rigorous criteria that is necessary. But
they have some really good people designing and following it.
So I am kind of optimistic about that. But just anecdotally,
they have had, I believe, to a couple of prisoners who had
requested a transfer so they would be closer to home who said,
``No, please let me stay here to finish my education.'' And
that is college education. Or, it is either two years,
certification, two years or four-year college education.
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. They have one prisoner there who will never
get out of prison----
Mr. Lappin. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. And is taking that program. And
he said, ``I know I will never be able to use this on the
outside. But it is simply a self-esteem issue. I want to learn.
I want to get a college education.'' Work training is obviously
a self-esteem issue, of being able to get out and have a job.
If your attitude is at all lined up and going in the right
direction you obviously want to be able to train and get a job.
But there are an awful lot of smart people. And I am wondering,
have there been any studies about the relationship between
education, and it would probably have to be education coming
in, and success after release, and the impact on recidivism? In
other words, is there some correlation between educational
levels coming in and success in staying out of prison once they
are released?
Mr. Lappin. I do not know. We could get our great research
department to look to see. And our statistics are relative to
education in general. So, if you go to the 114 Federal prisons
you are going to find at some locations we provide all those
programs that we are legally allowed to provide. Whereas at
other locations, we have partnerships with community colleges
so we can provide those programs, two-year, not many four-year
opportunities, and not violate the whole Pell Grant thing so,
because they are getting credit for students. It does not
matter if those students are in their classroom at the college
or in our classroom in the institution.

Is There Some Correlation Between the Educational Level of Those Coming
Into the Prison System and Success in Staying Out of Prison Once
Released?

The higher the educational attainment of offenders entering the
BOP, the lower their recidivism rate upon release from prison. This has
been shown for both a 1987 Federal prison release cohort ( see Table 4
on page 21 of the report titled ``Prison Education Program
Participation and Recidivism'') and for a 1992 cohort of sentenced
inmates (see Exhibit 10 on page 29 in the United State Sentencing
Commission report titled ``Measuring Recidivism: The Criminal History
Computation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines''). Links to the
reports are below: http://www.bop.gov/news/research_projects/
published_reports/recidivism/orepredprg.pdf http://www.ussc.gov/
publicat/Recidivism_General.pdf

So, it varies from location to location. But I think our
statistics are more generally based on education across the
board. But I am not sure if there are specific studies, I do
not think we have done any, that would reflect the example you
have laid out. But we will certainly look to see if there are
any.
Mr. Kane. I am just going to, I think the Director already
knows this, but we actually have a recidivism----
Mr. Lappin. Yes. What we see is for inmates getting a
vocational certificate is a 33 percent reduction in recidivism.
So that means, with the average about 40 percent, it is 33
percent less than that. So, you are down in the 20 percent
range.
Mr. Mollohan. Out of that subgroup?
Mr. Lappin. Out of that group. Out of that subgroup.
Mr. Mollohan. For people who have a GED?
Mr. Lappin. A vocational training certificate.
Mr. Mollohan. I am sorry, a vocational----
Mr. Lappin. For GED it is 16 percent. We are seeing a
reduction of about 16 percent. So, inmates that get a
vocational certificate and a GED, you know, it's even more
positive.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, training and education seems, based on
that testimony, to be a powerful driver in this.
Mr. Lappin. It is. We unfortunately do not leverage it
enough. We get a lot of inmates in the GED program. In fact, I
had here, we had 5,878 inmates get GEDs last year. We are not
getting as many inmates in vocational training programs as we
would like.
Mr. Mollohan. Is that a function of desire on the inmates'
part or of the resources of the Bureau of Prisons?
Mr. Lappin. I think more resources in this case, because
without a doubt we sometimes let inmates go who do not get
through the GED process. I think on the other side, their
resistance to going into a vocational training program, is in
part because they do not get paid for it. So what happens is,
they get into an institution, they get some job, they are
making a little bit of money. And if they go to vocational
training that is time they are losing from getting paid. So, we
are looking at ways we could do that to encourage more folks in
there.
But to give you an idea, we had about, let us see here,
where is vocational training? Oh, about 7 percent of the inmate
population in the last three years were involved in vocational
training. I would like to see that number go up significantly.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, if you would for the record, in
the context of The Second Chance Act, analyze what are the
educational opportunities that it authorizes. And then beyond
that, if you have any statistics or analysis of different
levels of education and how it impacts recidivism. There are
lots of things going on here. I mean, it is not just education
for the sake of education. I am not sure anybody is ever
educated just for the sake of education. It always has an
impact. And so if there is any insight that you can give the
Committee with regard to that?
We heard testimony on education--having nothing to do with
the Bureau of Prisons except as education positively impacts
that from happening, last week in which two witnesses in
different ways made the point that you have to address the
education issue from beginning to end. And you have to do
everything at once. Because if you do not deal with craving
somewhere along the line it is not going to work. And so I
would like to see, and maybe have follow up discussions in my
office, about what is the everything all at once. And then
perhaps we can design prototype programs, perhaps in the
context of The Second Chance Act, which provides for different
kinds of prototype programs. But I would like to look very
carefully at what those possibilities are and do it with the
insight to be gained by the good people you have in the Bureau
of Prisons generally, and of course, your excellent research
department.
Mr. Lappin. Well, I look forward to that discussion. And it
comes down to little things like, the fact----
[The information follows:]

In the Context of the Second Chance Act, Analyze the Educational
Opportunities It Authorizes

Language Pertaining to Educational Opportunities:
Section 231(a)(1)A: assess each prisoner's skill level (including
academic, vocational, health, cognitive, interpersonal, daily living,
and related reentry skills) at the beginning of the term of
imprisonment of that prisoner to identify any areas in need of
improvement prior to reentry.
Section 231(a)(1)B: generate a skill development plan for each
prisoner to monitor skills enhancement and reentry readiness throughout
incarceration.
Section 231(a)(1)C: determining program assignments for prisoners
based on the areas of need identified through the assessment.
Section 231(d)(1)(E): establish reentry planning procedures that
include providing Federal prisoners with information in the following
areas: health and nutrition, employment, literacy and education,
personal finance and consumer skills, community resources, personal
growth and development, and release requirements and procedures.
Section 231(h)(3)(B) The Federal Remote Satellite Tracking and
Reentry Training Program may be established to promote the effective
reentry into the community of high risk individuals. The authorized
program includes: Substance abuse treatment, and aftercare related to
such treatment, mental and medical health treatment and aftercare
related to such treatment, vocational and educational training, life
skills instruction, conflict resolution skills training, batterer
intervention programs, and other programs to promote effective reentry
into the community as appropriate.

Provide any Statistic or Analysis You Have Concerning Different Levels
of Education and How it Impacts Recidivism

This information and the analyses are included in the reports
titled ``Prison Education Program Participation and Recidivism'' and
``Measuring Recidivism: The Criminal History Computation of the Federal
Sentencing Guidelines.'' Links to the reports are below: http://
www.bop.gov/news/research_projects/published_reports/recidivism/
orepredprg.pdf http://www.ussc.gov/publicat/Recidivism_General.pdf

Mr. Mollohan. We are going to do it.
Mr. Lappin. Yes, well, good, one example, because you hit
it right on the head in part, is these folks have struggled
educationally for decades. And so, now you have got a forty,
fifty-year-old man that you want to put in GED class.
Mr. Mollohan. Yeah.
Mr. Lappin. And because of the wisdom of some of our
educators they realize that, one, they have to overcome that
embarrassment. So some of them have actually set up computer
classrooms so some of those folks can work at their own pace,
not be confronted by what they do not know in front of a group
of other folks that may know more than they do. And so those
types of strategies, to leverage more of those folks into those
classrooms, I think will only help.
But some of that is resource driven, because we may not
have those types of scenarios at every location. But without a
doubt our educators have identified some of those hurdles that
might be there. We are not unique, we have kids in high schools
that have the same struggle. But you have got to meet those
needs or they are going to continue to struggle in an
educational environment.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. And we have some specific funding for
specific programs in the 2009 omnibus, if the Senate ever----
Mr. Lappin. No comment.
Mr. Mollohan. No, I am the one that says no comment. I am
the one----
Mr. Serrano. I am really sorry about that for holding that
up.
Mr. Mollohan. I know. Mr. Serrano.
Mr. Serrano. No, I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman.
But I am sorry for holding that bill up in the Senate.
Mr. Mollohan. All right. Actually, he is holding it up in
the Senate. You have to deal with Mr. Serrano's genuine and
legitimate concerns about our foreign policy with regard to
Cuba for many years to successfully navigate these pieces of
legislation.
Well, Director Lappin, thank you very much. You covered a
lot of material here and with a lot of insight, and obviously
expertise. We appreciate the job that you do, the good job you
do and the time of all these professionals that you brought
here today. We look forward to working with you in getting the
resources that you need to do all the things that you have to
do to be successful. Thank you for your testimony today.
Mr. Lappin. Thank you for having us.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you.
Mr. Lappin. It is a pleasure working with you.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, sir. It is a pleasure working with you.

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009.

MAJOR CHALLENGES FACING FEDERAL PRISONS,
PART II

WITNESSES

PHIL GLOVER, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, AFGE COUNCIL OF PRISON
LOCALS
BRYAN LOWRY, PRESIDENT, AFGE COUNCIL OF PRISON LOCALS

Opening Statement by Chairman Mollohan

Mr. Mollohan. The hearing will come to order. I would like
to welcome our witnesses for our second hearing today. Bryan
Lowry, the President of AFGE's Council of Prison Locals, and
Phil Glover, the National Legislative Director for the Council
of Prison Locals. Gentlemen, welcome. We appreciate your taking
time to be here, we look forward to your testimony, and we
appreciate the good work you do for your membership. Thank you
for being here. Mr. Lowry will be offering his testimony this
afternoon, and both gentlemen will respond to questions from
the Subcommittee.
Because AFGE members are the correctional offices on the
front lines and supervising offenders in our federal prisons,
it is critical that we hear from them about the challenges they
face every day. Those challenges are centered on the
overcrowding and understaffing issues we discussed during this
morning's hearing, but are also related to the overall prisoner
reentry focus of this week's hearings.
Managing our prison population is a matter of adequate
resources, but it also depends on how we prepare offenders to
reenter their home communities so that they do not return to
prison in the future. Correctional officers play an important
role in ensuring that those reentry efforts are successful. In
a moment, I will ask Mr. Glover to briefly summarize his
written testimony. But first I would like to recognize Mr. Wolf
for any introductory comments that he would like to make. Mr.
Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Welcome.
Mr. Mollohan. All right. Mr. Lowry.

Mr. Lowry Opening Statement

Mr. Lowry. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mollohan. You are going to make----
Mr. Lowry. I will make the opening.
Mr. Mollohan. You are going to make the opening?
Mr. Lowry. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mollohan. I am sorry, I misspoke.
Mr. Lowry. That is okay.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Lowry, your written statement will be
made a part of the record and you can proceed as you wish.
Thank you.
Mr. Lowry. Mr. Mollohan, Chairman Mollohan, Ranking Member
Wolf, and members of the Subcommittee. My name is Bryan Lowry,
president of the American Federation of Government Employees
Council of Prison Locals and with me is our National
Legislative Coordinator, Phil Glover. On behalf of all of the
Federal Bureau of Prisons bargaining unit staff who work in our
nation's federal prisons, we want to thank the Committee for
asking us to testify today on the challenges facing the Federal
Bureau of Prisons. We also want to thank the Committee members
for their effort to increase funding to the Bureau of Prisons
that would make a difference to the health and safety of our
staff who work in the nation's federal prisons.
Last year our Council through the Legislative Coordinator
Phil Glover testified on the difficult funding problems the
Bureau of Prisons was facing. He discussed the alarming assault
and disturbance trends occurring in the federal prison system.
Not long after his testimony on June 20, 2008, I received one
of the most horrendous phone calls I have ever received. We had
an officer down. Not just injured this time, but murdered. A
young, new officer who had only worked for the Federal Bureau
of Prisons for ten months. His name was Jose Rivera. He was an
Iraq War veteran and was only twenty-two years of age. Because
of staffing issues mainly associated with budgetary cuts in the
last few years and changes to Bureau policy associated with
funding problems, he was working in a high security housing
unit alone. He was murdered by two inmates and had no equipment
to stop them. It is tragic and we in our Council think about
his death everyday, and the officers who face the same dangers
in our federal prison system daily. We are hoping to come to
Congress and change the circumstances we face daily working in
the federal prison system, to go back to a time when our
staffing ratios were sufficiently higher to accomplish our
mission.
As you know, we are short almost 15 percent in the amount
of staff working in our nation's prisons. Budgets always seem
to be tight while other law enforcement agencies, such as the
FBI, Border Patrol, ICE, and others have grown. Funding for the
Bureau of Prisons has stayed relatively flat in the amount of
staff to handle the increasing number of inmates. While it may
be difficult, it must be done. We need full funding. We need to
go back to reasonable staffing levels. We need two officers in
high security housing units and at least one officer in every
housing unit, on every shift, in every medium and low security
prison. These are just examples of our mission needs. We need
the equipment necessary to handle aggressive inmates in life
and death situations which are becoming more and more common.
Because the Bureau of Prisons will not change its policies
or change what they call the culture, we need your help to do
it. The administration of the Bureau of Prisons has in the last
several years coined the cliche ``isolated incident'' to
include violent acts by inmates in almost every situation which
now occurs. When the same institution has assault after
assault, and lock down after lock down, something is not
working and changes have to be made. Our prison system used to
function very well. Many of you have been on this Committee for
some time. You hardly heard from us and/or the Council of
Prison Locals we represent. However, our people are crying out
for change to our dysfunctional and understaffed agency which
has placed staff and the inmates they are charged with
protecting in a very vulnerable position. On behalf of all the
employees of the Bureau of Prisons we are asking for the
necessary funding increase that will provide more staff and the
reasonable policy requirements to manage today's increasing,
more aggressive inmate population. In our testimony as well as
the written summary overview which we have supplied contains a
great deal of information on our appropriations, on our
crowding levels, and our safety. We are hopeful you will move
energetically to add staff and much needed safety equipment
while also providing much needed oversight to the BOP's
spending.
In our written testimony we discuss private prisons and
their costs. We talk about the two 2007 GAO Report that shows
BOP does not even monitor the private companies in the right
areas to compare public and private costs. We believe funds can
be found in this area which can be transferred back to BOP
operational funding.
We think you should look at the revolving door of BOP
management to the private sector when you look at costs. We are
becoming similar to the Department of Defense revolving door.
When you look at the laws you are passing, The Second
Chance Act, The Prison Rape Elimination Act, and The Adam Walsh
Act, these are very important issues. However, the programs do
not receive any additional funding mechanisms regarding
implementations which forces the agency to absorb these costs
when staffing and training requirements are necessary for
compliance. When they are not funding, or do not comply in
essence, who suffers? The people that expect the Acts to work.
Again, we thank you for having us here today and hope we
can answer your questions on operations in the Bureau of
Prisons and its major challenges. Thank you.
[The written statement of Mr. Bryan Lowry and Mr. Phil
Glover follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Lowry. Mr. Glover.

MR. GLOVER STATEMENT

Mr. Glover. Mr. Chairman, I do not have a written statement
for the record. However, I would like to say that we have
appreciated the fact that the Committee has fought to put $545
million into salaries and expenses in the last fiscal year.
$203 million more into the B and F funding. We still think the
M and R funding needs to come up more than $110 million because
we have thirty-seven facilities that are over fifty years of
age. And places are falling apart.
When you have research facilities and other places being
funded for building and facility funding we really believe that
prisons should get a priority. We have to house these inmates.
We have to house them securely and humanely. And when the
ceilings are coming down and the pipes are not working,
plumbing is not working, it causes stress inside the entire
system. So we are hoping that eventually we can get to a
correct M and R number as well.
A couple of things that Mr. Lowry touched on. We have about
eighteen penitentiaries in the system. They have between six to
eight housing units each. For us to have a two to ten officer,
2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at night while the evening watch is
going on at the high security prisons would take about eighty-
four evening watch positions. That is about $7.8 million if you
look at an average of $93,000 per staff member, which I think
is the number we have gotten. We have asked in talking points
papers, and of course we were on the Hill just a few weeks ago
and we were asking for 3,000 staff to staff it up for this
fiscal year. That would be a total of about $279 million
additional dollars. We think that is not a lot, a huge amount
of money compared to what is being spent in the federal budget
in order to bring us in line. That does not bring us in line
with the 1990s but it would at least be a down payment.
The Adam Walsh Act, I talked to a case manager the other
day who said that due to the victim witness requirements she
had one inmate move and she was required to do 200 warning
letters out to different groups who associate with that inmate.
I think when the act was written I do not think anybody
anticipated some of those types of numbers. And so, if you do
not add case managers to the field, and you do not add
counselors to the field to handle those types of notifications,
then they are just swamped with more and more work. And we have
a concern with that.
The Second Chance Act has a big role for teachers,
vocational trainers, mechanical services personnel, those
personnel that train inmates. However, those people are being
used as correctional officers throughout the system. And not on
just a, you know, a one day every three months basis. We are
talking, I have correctional rosters here that show the use of
non-correctional officers on a daily basis. And so they are not
doing their jobs. They do not have time to do their jobs.
The Prison Rape Elimination Act that was passed. Very
supportive of that Act. However, when you have three units
handled by one officer to walk around three separate pods,
there is no way they can keep an eye on what is going on in all
of those inmate areas. And we have a real concern about that,
and about the role that the correctional officers have to play
in the reduction of that Act.
The Gang Prevention Intervention and Suppression Act, which
is on the agenda for the Judiciary Committee, does not mention
federal prisons one time, except how many inmates are going to
be arrested. They do not talk about what is going to happen at
the end of the food chain, when all of these people get
apprehended for RICO-type gang related crime. They are not
talking about how many inmates that means coming into the
federal system, once you federalize gang activity.
So those are things that we think the Committee, we hope
the Committee will focus on. And that is, that would be my
opening, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, it is a good one.
Mr. Glover. Thank you.

STAFFING AND OVERCROWDING

Mr. Mollohan. I think we hear you loud and clear about
staffing. In addition to that, I want to give you a chance to
elaborate on the biggest concerns you see facing the federal
prison system, staffing and otherwise.
Mr. Lowry. I think one of the biggest things that we see
these days is overcrowding. It was touched on earlier when
Director Lappin had spoke about creating these new units called
special management units. There have been four institutions
identified, one to have a full special management unit, it is
going to be encompassing the whole institution. And then you
have three other locations that will have, like, housing units
with these type of units.
But the trend that we are seeing is in many locations
throughout the country to have a cost savings of money the
Bureau of Prisons has started creating what they call a
transitional unit inside of regular housing units, taking
disruptive, combative, aggressive inmates who normally would go
into the jail inside the prison, which is called a special
housing unit. And now since it is overrated capacity they have
inmates living in day room areas inside of the special housing
unit. They have them now in the medical area, in isolation
cells. They have them in receiving and discharge areas, another
location in the prison. Inmates all over the place because
there is no place to house them. And these inmates are going
straight into these units and they are only staffing them with
one officer as opposed to five on day watch which would be
normal, three or four on evening watch, and one or two on
morning watch. And it is putting the staff and inmates in grave
danger. There have been incidents, more than one, probably
close to five, that have occurred recently in these
transitional units. Bad management policies. Irresponsible
decision making placing our staff in harm's way because we have
too many inmates now to control this population that are
aggressive. The Director testified earlier about how the
population he believes has become more combative, more
aggressive, more gang oriented. It has. Our staff see it on a
daily basis. That is one of my biggest concerns, there, is the
overcrowding.
And number two, not having the equipment necessary to
defend ourselves. As correctional officers, no matter what
security level you work in, the only thing you really have to
protect yourself is a body alarm or radio that has a red button
on top. And should you get assaulted or attacked by inmates you
can push that and it is going to send a signal to main control
for staff response. You can be alone as long as thirty seconds
to five minutes by yourself with inmates twice your size who
lift weights, do other things, are a lot bigger and stronger,
that could attack you. And you have nobody there to help you
for a few minutes. Or a set of handcuffs. If you are lucky
enough to get them, one, two or three inmates that attack you,
you got one set of handcuffs to handcuff one of them.
We think it is time for the Bureau to move in a proactive
area like some of the states do and provide our staff some
nonlethal means of equipment, whether it be pepper spray
canisters, which is nonlethal, which only will stun the inmate
in the beginning and give you the ability to respond or get
away until help arrives. Or something like a Taser, which is
used in some state and county and local systems. Or a baton
that is used in one of our institutions, the ADX. So something
that gives staff the means, because the inmate population has
got aggressive. We are working more alone than we ever did
before. We are just asking for that to be considered since our
Director does not want to implement this. Phil?

TRANSITIONAL UNITS

Mr. Mollohan. Let me ask you, before you pass it on.
Transitional unit, that is a category of necessity because
there is not a special housing unit available? Is that what you
are referencing there?
Mr. Lowry. There is. And most of them will hold, depending
on location, about 120 to possibly 225 inmates, depending on
where it is. They are overcrowded. There is no more bed space
in these places.
Mr. Mollohan. What is a transitional unit?
Mr. Lowry. That is a coined term the Agency created
recently. When I tried to call them down to get information on
this one of the Assistant Directors actually called it a
modified transitional. And I wanted to know, is this a special
management unit? Is it a special housing unit? We never got an
answer other than it is a modified regular housing unit. And
what it is is the same inmates, if I was to attack Mr. Glover
and I was an inmate, or attacked another inmate, I would go to
the special housing unit. Now when it is overcrowded they will
take that inmate and throw him in a transitional unit,
aggressive, assaultive, combative, and there is only one
officer as opposed to at most times during rec and others you
have five, six officers.
Mr. Mollohan. Transition suggests that it is a transition
to someplace. Where would one go after being in a transitional
unit?
Mr. Lowry. In our opinion, it was only created to try to
reduce the overcrowding and to come up with a solution to keep
aggressive inmates off of the general compound.
Mr. Mollohan. Segregated, okay.
Mr. Lowry. But they are not staffing it appropriately.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Glover. Some of the other challenges, obviously, Mr.
Chairman, with Federal Prison Industries under extreme attack
from some folks we have seen the numbers go down from almost
23,000 inmates down to about, I think we are down to between
19,000, somewhere in there working in our Federal Prison
Industries programs. This has become an issue.
Obviously with the economy, people do not want to hear
about inmates working, inmates holding jobs and being
productive. However, to us it is more of a life and death
issue. If you do not have these inmates occupied and working in
a productive setting what happens is they get very agitated.
They have a lot more time on their hands, idle, to cause
difficulties within the system. At our facility where I work,
Federal Prison Industries at Loretto, Pennsylvania, for
instance, we laid off about, we are in the process of laying
off about 200 inmates right now. We had about 500 working.
These were doing nonmandatory source military work on cables.
As the draw down to the military has occurred we of course have
gotten less orders and the contracting rules from the
Department of Defense are now starting to kick in. And so what
is happening is, we are having to lay those inmates into normal
housing units because there is not enough work in the Prison
Industries Program.
Now, what that did is we had a number of inmates get into
fistfights in the housing units because one decided he should
not have been laid off and the other one should have been laid
off. And so now we are starting to see a competition for those
jobs in a much more, to us, in a much more unfavorable way.
Prior to that, of course, we had waiting lists for inmates who
had applied to work in the Industries Program. And that list
has just now exploded. And so we really hope that the Congress
can find a way to give us some form of repatriation, of work,
that is clearly defined. That allows, that gives us the ability
to bring back work that is no longer made here in the United
States. I believe there was a bill quite some time ago that the
Ranking Member wrote and filed on this same issue. And in there
there would be a certification from Commerce Department or from
the DOL to assure that we were not taking jobs from here in the
United States. And so as a safety matter for us, the Prison
Industries Program is very important.
The other concern I guess that we have that is happening is
the, obviously, the assault rates. We feel they are up. I
cannot remember a time, I do not know how the statistics are
being looked at or how they are being presented. All I know is
this. When I was in his seat as the Council of Prison Locals
President I did not get a call everyday about somebody getting
punched in the face, or getting drug out of the institution, or
getting stabbed. I did not. And that was in 2005. So I cannot
imagine. I do not work at a high security facility, but we are
already, we have more fights in the last two months than we
have had, I do not know, probably in two years. And obviously
your home, in your district, Hazelton has just been a mess.
Every time they open the thing back up there is an assault.
They have to lock it down again. And something has got to be
done to control the population in those facilities that do not
want to function under the rules.
We are not talking about the majority of inmates here. And
I do not think the union is saying that we want to go back to
some sort of Attica-type system. That is not what we are
talking about here. But there has to be some protections for
staff that are built in. There has to be the appropriate
funding.
Obviously, through the last eight years we have taken,
although the numbers have increased, every year the numbers
increase, the Bureau of Prisons, OMB tell us you still do not
have any money to hire. Now, we added just this fiscal year
$545 million to S and E. From fiscal year 2008's enacted amount
to 2009, what hopefully will pass in the Senate today or
tomorrow. And we have not been able to add, basically, to the
staffing needs at the facilities.
In the early 1990's, the late 1980's, we had disturbances
at Talladega and Oakdale. Right after those disturbances there
was a commission, or there was a group of people that got
together and looked at what was going on. And they decided that
we needed to hire 6,000 correctional staff. And we did. And it
was between the end of 1988 and the beginning of 1990, because
I was hired during that time. And that is something that we
think has to be done. We know that, you know, budgets are
tight. We hear it all the time. And I do not want to offend
anybody, but when we see something like a building at the
National Science Foundation gets $400 million to be retooled,
our officers call us and say, ``Hey, why can we not come up
with $400 million to staff prisons?'' I mean, that is a
legitimate, we think a legitimate question.
And so that is why we have been up here more and more. I
mean, obviously you guys have heard from us more than probably
ever. And we are very hopeful with the way the Committee is
moving. The budget for the Obama budget started out at $6
billion. We believe that probably was before the appropriators
here put forward the $6.1 billion in the House and Senate bills
for the final 2009 package. And so we are hopeful that they
will recognize that and make some adjustments.

EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN PRISONS

Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome to the
Committee. On page ten you make the case for basically the bill
that we had. And it later was in the discussion draft. Can you
really both expect the prisons to get any safer? Or can you
expect there to be legitimate rehabilitation without work?
Mr. Glover. Absolutely not. If we do not have productive,
number one education programs, and number two, the Prison
Industries Program, or some form of it, we cannot possibly
ensure that inmates learn how to work. The biggest thing with
an inmate working inside the prison system, as I am sure you
are aware, is that many of them come to us without holding
jobs. And so what they learn in the Industries Program is to
come to work everyday, work for a supervisor, take directions,
look at plans, how to build something, how to put something
together. And that is where we gain a lot. And those inmates
generally do not cause you any issues inside the facility. We
have actually had riots go on and the Prison Industry inmates
will actually cordon themselves off because they do not want to
lose their positions in the Industries Program. We have had
that happen. And so, no, you have to have some sort of viable
program that will work.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I hope AFGE, which I have been always very
supportive over the years, I would hope you would come up here
and help us. There are no lobbyists for prisoners. There just
are not. But I think with the economy being what it is, I think
we may see an increase in crime with the whole aspect of
dignity to the individual from almost a biblical point of view,
work, and to be involved in something. I am going to ask my
staff to contact the Department of Commerce and the Library of
Congress to put together a list of industries that we used to
be very dominant in, where we are no longer. So that when I
offer this amendment we are able to show, whether it be, and I
do not want to just give men work where they are breaking
concrete, or something like that. We want to give it to where
there is dignity, so when they get out, if it is wiring a
television set they can then learn to wire something else. Or
if it is doing something that can be transferred in. But I
think that can really, really make a big difference.
So what we are going to do is, we will be in touch with
both of you, if we can. Tom Culligan will be working on it for
me. We will try to draft the amendment and then we will have
some industries. So if you have any ideas of different areas.
The only other question I would have to ask you is, what do
most other prisons do in foreign countries? Are there any
examples of where country X or Y has a very aggressive work
program, and their recidivism rate is down? Or is there any
model that you know around the world that is working very, very
well with regard to work?

OVERSEAS PRISONS

Mr. Glover. I do not have any information on what they do
overseas.
Mr. Lowry. I have talked to some of the guys in Canada who
work for their prisons there. And they believe they do have an
industry. So I do not have enough information to provide, but I
believe they do have one there.
Mr. Wolf. And you, lastly, you think by doing this, and you
have said, but for the record, it would make your employees,
the prison employees, the guards and the administrative staff
safer by having people to work?
Mr. Glover. I think the more the inmates are not idle will
make us always safer.
Mr. Wolf. And if you were, if we were really, let us say we
created a television manufacturing industry, that money could,
and you were selling whatever you were making, which you would
have to have a market, the prison system could certainly use
that money that came from that.
Mr. Glover. The way it functions currently it would have
to, I guess there would have to be some changes made. Because
currently, it is a nonappropriated fund effort in Prison
Industries. And so generally they do some welfare type, I guess
they are allowed to spend some of that money back into the
system. But they cannot use it to fund the S and E side of the
system. So that would have to be looked at, how you are
explaining.
Mr. Wolf. What is it used for?
Mr. Glover. Well, I mean, the inmate recreation programs. I
think the Unicorp, Prison Industries can donate so much to
those. They can have special programming. I think they can use
some of the money for that kind of thing. But generally, they
cannot get into the S and E side and, like, reimburse the
Bureau's S and E side. Although I am not an expert on that part
of it. But I have been around the system quite a while.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. Well, thank you both. If you could be in
touch with my office and we can see how we can push this. Thank
you very much.
Mr. Glover. Absolutely.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Wolf. Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. Ruppersberger Questions

Mr. Ruppersberger. Well, first, you made a comment you do
not want to offend anybody. I think you have a right to be as
mad as hell that we cannot provide security for our prison
guards. And that has to be a priority. It is unfortunate that
when you are talking prisons you are probably at the bottom of
the list because nobody really wants to deal with it, whether
it is federal, state, or local.
I noticed that in the budget from a security point of view
that you had intelligence officers and the ability to gain
intelligence, and that was cut from the budget. What impact
have you seen with that cutting? And what do you think the
intelligence group, how it helped you in security in your
prison or generally prisons everywhere?
Mr. Glover. Well, as we were gearing up to monitor more
phone calls of inmates and to check more letters, do things of
that nature, they set up intelligence officers as a merit
promoted position. That was, you applied for it as a
correctional officer. You stayed in it permanently. You got
trained. There were a whole range of things that you did. We
had two at our facility at one time. We also had two other
staff that worked in what we call an SIS Shop, a Special
Investigative Supervisor Shop, that does investigations on
inmates and staff and other things.
The intelligence officers generally did only inmate
products, basically looking at gangs, looking at terrorist
groups, those kind of things that we had within the system.
They were taken off of our, what they called a mission critical
roster plan that the Agency did in 2005. They had to save about
2,300 positions at that time. And so they moved forward to
eliminate those off of the correctional roster. What happens is
the last, the other two SIS people in that shop, ended up with
those duties. They did not add anything. We have a phone
monitor position that is supposed to monitor inmate phone
calls, either live or prerecorded, and that position gets
pulled----
Mr. Ruppersberger. Well, let me say this. I do not know of
any law enforcement agencies or military that does not do well
unless you have intelligence. There is not a lot of money, so
if you do not have the money sometimes you have to do things
smarter or maybe use technology. You know, intelligence is not
just about gathering intelligence. It is analyzing
intelligence. And I think that maybe we should focus on trying
to get more intelligence, and good intelligence. Which would
include, could include, technology, monitoring, developing
sources within the system.
And one of the ideas I have, and I know that Chairman
Mollohan is working very closely with me, and it all started
with Congressman Wolf who had a serious gang problem in
Virginia. And then he left the Committee, and he kind of showed
me where to go. And the Chairman and I were able to put
together a task force from Philadelphia to North Carolina,
including West Virginia, Virginia, all these different states,
to add real time technology, to really know who is where, and
who is in the leadership.
And, you know, we might be able to find a way to fund, get
you more money through that gang task force. Because one of the
major issues, I mean we have to deal with gangs outside. But we
have a serious problems, as you know, with gangs within the
prison. And they are communicating with outside gangs. So Mr.
Chairman, I think maybe we can work with our staff here to see
what we can do to take that task force that you and I kept
putting in, and really Congressman Wolf helped start, and see
what we can do, and take it to another level with the prisons.
So we might want to do that.
Any, do you have any, do you feel your management would be
open to that type of plan or system, as far as getting better
intelligence? Even though intelligence officers are cut, they
might not have been doing what they need to do to begin with.
Because you need sophistication in that area.
Mr. Glover. I would think they would be supportive of
something like that. I am sure the Chairman can get with the
Director on it.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Okay.
Mr. Glover. I cannot, obviously cannot speak for him,
Congressman.
Mr. Ruppersberger. But, I mean, you observe, right? You
represent the guards.
Mr. Glover. Absolutely.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Bonner?

Mr. Bonner Question

Mr. Bonner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I meant to ask this
question of the Director earlier, but I would like to take
advantage of your collective years of experience. By my math
you have got about thirty-eight years in the service. One, I
think, worked for state prison system at one time. Prior to
that you both were in military service, serving your country in
the Army and the Air Force. So you all have a lot of experience
that we can draw from. And so the question I did not get to ask
Director Lappin, but I will pose to you is, given the fact that
he and you both have mentioned the intense problem with
overcrowding, and I guess my question is, on behalf of the
employees that you represent, some 34,000 men and women, do you
think there should be some room for reconsideration of the
maximum sentence guidelines that have been imposed? For
instance on crack cocaine offenses, with regard to mandatory
federal sentence guidelines?
Let me give you an example. We had in my district a first
time offender who was sentenced in the early 1990's to life in
prison without parole because he illegally conspired to sell
crack cocaine with a codefendant. In the sixteen years that he
has been incarcerated there have been no incident reports. He
has completed several programs, from drug rehab, to financial
responsibility. He has taken college correspondence courses.
And by all accounts, including the warden at his prison, he has
been a model citizens. He is classified as medium security and
has had exemplary behavior. And yet, under the current laws as
they are written, there is no opportunity to move him out of
the system, relieving the overcrowding problem.
I do not know if this is an isolated case or if this is
widespread. But do either of you have a personal opinion about
whether this would help with regard to the overcrowding issue?
Mr. Lowry. I think proactively, I think things need to be
looked into for the prison system. Number one, you either are
going to have to come up with something creative like The
Second Chance Act, getting it implemented in all phases instead
of mandatory sentencing. If you are not going to have parole
then you have to look at maybe was this guy when he was locked
up, was it an assaultive crime? Was it a sexual crime? If it
was not, a nonviolent criminal that is locked up in prison for
a drug related crime, then something has to be looked at or you
are going to have to continue funding the construction of new
prisons.
I think somewhere, we are kind of at that head right now as
to where the bow is breaking one way or another. Either we are
going to continue, you know, bringing in somewhere between
4,500 and 7,000 inmates, additional inmates, into our system a
year, and we are going to have to build prisons, or we are
going to use all these tools that have been created like Second
Chance Act, you know, you have drug rehabilitation to inmates
with the DAP Program, and other things. I think Congress has to
come up with something creative where, you know, we lower the
sentencing. Or we are going to have to continue building
prisons. That is my take on it. Phil?

DRUG PROBLEM IN PRISONS

Mr. Glover. The crack and powder problem has been an issue
since 1995 when massive, we had riots in I think about 50
percent of facilities when they did not equalize crack and
powder. And so we had a big problem there. You have a guy
serving with powder cocaine for five years, where you have the
same amount of crack twenty years. It is a disparity and it
ought to be cleaned up. I mean, that is my own personal
opinion.
We had parole up until I think 1987. They started to phase
it out from 1987 to 1990. And frankly, parole at least gave the
corrections system, it is a complicated process. It is
difficult. It requires a lot of man hours. But it at least gave
inmates the ability to get better and come to the staff. And if
the staff thought they were they could recommend them for
parole. And the only ones we do that with now I think are the
D.C. sentenced offenders. Because they are under that system
but we are housing them. So we do have, I think, some aspects
of parole left.
Yes. We think there should be, first time drug offenders,
nonviolent, we think should be something that you could look at
to transfer them, like the states are starting to have to do
because they cannot afford this. So they are moving them into
treatment, into the drug courts, those kind of things. And
hopefully keeping some of the crowding down in the system. But,
yeah. We think that that kind of stuff should be, all that
should be looked at.
Mr. Bonner. Shifting subjects. Given that the Director
indicated earlier, and I think you would, trust you would
confirm with our knowledge, that there is a growing rate of
non-U.S. citizen inmates in our prison systems. How, what
special challenges does that statistic present to the members
of your union?
Mr. Lowry. As a whole I think one of, probably the major
challenge is, is that a lot of these inmates that come in, not
being U.S. citizens for the most part, not speaking English. Of
course, they do have educational programs and sooner or later
most of them pick it up. But not speaking it right away, we
have had to try to over the years have a cultural type change
to get our staff acclimated. There has been a big move because
the population, Hispanic population in our prison system has
grown at such a huge rate probably over the last ten years. At
one time, most of the Hispanic inmates mainly were in prisons
in California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana. And now we see that
trending up more to the Midwest and the northern prisons. As
the population grows where you really did not see that many
Hispanic inmates before now you have them. And in these higher
security level prisons, where you have taken pretty large
numbers and moved them in, the inmates that have been there who
feel like, you know, they are going to run the contraband,
drug, gambling rings inside the prison, it has caused some
disturbance situations.
One place that has experienced that is in the Chairman's
district, Hazelton. And there are other penitentiaries that are
facing that same thing with combining the inmate gangs
together. Because as the Director testified earlier, some of
these Hispanic gangs are now some of our most violent gangs in
the prison system. And he named some of them off, being the
Surenos, they are some of the most violent.
Mr. Glover. Language has been the most difficult part,
although we do some immersion training for staff to try to get
them trained up a little bit to speak some Spanish. That is the
major one. We do have some Chinese gangs that we received from
New York. And that is a very difficult language for staff to
pick up and to understand. So monitoring them is difficult. The
same with telephone monitoring, letters, it is a very difficult
thing. And what we have to do is basically record that and send
it out to other translation, like the FBI or somebody, to
translate those letters and those things to make sure that the
prison system is safe. So that is probably the hardest thing,
is the language barrier.
Mr. Bonner. I guess the last question I would have is, I
posed the question to the Director earlier because many times
we have an opportunity to go home and do town meetings with our
constituents and they ask us question that sometimes are better
than the ones we come up with. I asked the Director a question
about how do the prisons actually have so many problems with
gangs and with drugs, and weapons, and things of that kind?
Because many people, in the minds of many American taxpayers
they would think if there was one place where you could keep
drugs or weapons out of possession it would be in a prison. To
this point, do you, do you believe that we are being as
innovative as we could be with our rehab programs? So that when
a prisoner, for instance, that has come in with a drug
conviction, that, are we going to the lengths that we need to
go to to make sure that when they go out, back into society,
that we have given them every opportunity to leave the bad
behavior of the past behind them. So that they can become a
model of what not to do as opposed to going back to an old bad
habit?
Mr. Lowry. I think the law is there in some of these cases,
as far as, like, DAP Programs, other programs to get inmates
involved. I think the policies are there behind that to do
that. But I do not think, and it can go with a lot of areas,
that the funding has been there to fund these things. You take
staff who are currently in place who are performing other
functions, and then you create these new functions, procedures,
processes, that are going to put more inmates on a caseload, or
that there are additional procedures and work that staff have
to be performed. And although our staff are professionals, and
follow policy, and do the best they can with the numbers they
have, it is, if you continue to add things and you do not
continue to staff them, in other words what would encompass a
full time job or additional full time positions, and you keep
putting things on your current staff. Then sooner or later
things are not done the way they should be to give enough
emphasis or time on that program. And that has happened in the
Bureau of Prisons because we have not increased in, probably,
in staff. We decreased the number of positions that we had
probably about five years ago. There was about 2,300 paid
positions that were eliminated. And at that point, other than
maybe additional, not very many additional staff have been put
in place.
The Bureau of Prisons constantly uses cost savings
initiatives, such as holding positions open for six months, not
filling this, not filling that. There is a priority to bring
correctional officers on, but it is usually between 85 and 92
percent depending on the location, depending on what type of
security level it is. But there are so many positions that are
vacant, or that are not filled, outside of the correctional
services department. Correctional officers make up a third of
the staffing at any given institution and the rest are
correctional workers, we consider them as. They are law
enforcement but they are like your DAP coordinators for drugs,
your case managers, and these people continuously get things
put upon them. And there is no additional positions for that.
They are not getting hired behind. So, I mean, they are
performing all the work. And I think the things are there. The
law is there. The procedures are there. We just need the budget
so that we can have the staff to put there to make it more
effective.
Mr. Bonner. Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Bonner. Mr. Kennedy.

SELF-HELP GROUPS IN PRISONS

Mr. Kennedy. Thank you. To follow up on that question, how
frequently do many of these federal prisons allow self-help
groups to come in on the drug and alcohol self-help groups? As
you just acknowledged, basically you do not have enough funding
to have these case coordinators have these programs funded and
the like. How accessible do you make the prisons to outside AA
groups, NA groups and the like, to come in and, you know,
fellowship with prisoners who have drug and alcohol problems,
or things of that sort?
Mr. Glover. Through our chaplain services, Congressman, we
have a number of volunteer groups that come in and work.
Generally, it is on weekends. But we have a chaplain group that
comes in, all of the, probably six or eight people that they
get from the local community churches. And they come in and
work with some of the inmates. It is certainly probably not
enough. I am not sure that we have an AA chapter that comes up
and works with any of the inmates. We have a paid drug
treatment that runs programming for that. It is a difficult
mix. Because anybody that we bring in has to go through a
background check. And so, if they are going to come in and work
with inmates, if they have had past experiences with, if they
have had issues in their past, then they may not even be able
to be screened to come in and work with inmates.
Mr. Kennedy. Right.
Mr. Glover. And so that is a, that is a concern. Whether
they reoffend, whether connections that they might make. So we
have to be very careful, obviously, on who comes in to work
with them. But I know our chaplain service works a lot to bring
outside groups in. And our recreation departments try to bring
people in to work with inmates. And provide some quality
programming, too. I am not sure if that answers----
Mr. Kennedy. Okay, that is good. Maybe if you could get us
a sampling of various prisons or some of the work that they are
doing. As you mentioned, I think it is anemic. But it would be
really good to be trying to send a charge out to management to
do more. And I think there is an interest on the community's
part to do more if they are given the right direction. I know
that there are a lot of activist groups that want to be
participating if they are given those chances to sign up and
the like.
Let me ask you, with respect to the turnover between public
correction officers and the private sector, the staff turnover
per your 16 percent for public corrections facilities versus
the private sector, which is 53 percent. So in less than two
years the entire security force in a private prison turns over.
What concerns do you have regarding the turnover and experience
rate of staff of private vendors?

PRIVATE SECTOR PRISONS

Mr. Glover. Just real quickly, we would like you to do away
with private sector prisons, frankly, Congressman. We have been
arguing about this for, since 1996, when Taft was put in as a
private prison that was built by the United States government,
and handed over to a private contractor to run because they
said they could run it cheaper and better.
It is clear from most studies that there is no real cost
savings. There is less oversight. And now we have run into a
real interesting situation, where we have Reeves County, Texas,
that went up into a riot, 2,400 inmates. And we sent bargaining
unit, Bureau of Prisons law enforcement staff down there, about
fifty of them, to help the private prison. They want to run it
on their own, they want to run it better and cheaper, then they
can find their staff from their private prison somewhere else
to come down and help. We would like it to be defunded, to
allow us, bargaining unit employees, to be sent to help private
contractors, who are basically trying to take our jobs. It does
not make a lot of sense to us.
A 2007 GAO Report, I believe it was, says that we do not
even keep the statistics anymore to make a comparable cost
analysis of a low security prison run by the Bureau and a low
security prison run by the private sector. Now that is what the
GAO says. I saw the rebuttal to it. And that is fine. But we do
not believe, number one, for the oversight purposes,
programming, all of those types of things, that this Committee
should even fund them.
Mr. Kennedy. Well, it is certainly clear that it is, the
turnover in staff has got to be a real issue here with respect
to safety.
Mr. Glover. We have a line of people. We have a private
prison in Clearfield, Pennsylvania. We have had a line of
people from Clearfield, Pennsylvania applying at Loretto,
Pennsylvania and Allenwood, Pennsylvania trying to get out of
that private prison. Now, I do not know why. I mean, I do not
work there. But obviously, there is some reason that those
staff want to get out. Now, I will say this----
Mr. Kennedy. Do we have some of the profit margins that
some of those for profit prisons are garnering?
Mr. Glover. Well, I know what they are paying some of their
executive staff, if that will help.
Mr. Kennedy. Okay. If you could submit that for the
Committee that would be helpful.
Mr. Glover. Absolutely.
Mr. Kennedy. And give us some examples if you have some of
them.
Mr. Glover. Well, here is a former BOP warden who now made,
according to the Forbes.com, total compensation $771,000 was
reported for him. A former Director of the Bureau who now works
for private sector contracts, $854,000.
Mr. Kennedy. As a manager of one of our prisons?
Mr. Glover. Well, these are over GO Group and Corrections
Corporation of America, which are contracting----
Mr. Kennedy. Contracting for the prisons?
Mr. Glover. Correct. Here is another former Deputy, or
Assistant Director in the Bureau, whose reported total
compensation was $1,400,000 working for Corrections Corp. Of
America.
Mr. Kennedy. Let me just ask you, is there not also some
disparity in sentencing? Was there not a great deal of lobbying
by Corrections Corporation of America for stiffer drug
penalties and the like in order to raise the amount of
sentencing. It is good business for them, obviously.
Mr. Glover. We have a report from last year that they spend
approximately in a two-year period $2.5 million on lobbying
activities. We certainly do not know what they, what their
message is. Except if you go to their websites. But that
definitely is, they have spent a lot of money on lobbying.
Mr. Kennedy. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would just say, I think
it is worth this Committee's time to look at what they are
spending that lobbying money on. And particularly, whether this
whole issue of them advocating for, you know, harsher
sentencing on drug laws is one of the those things that they
have been spending money on in the years past.
There is a terrible situation in Pennsylvania recently
where a couple of judges, juvenile court judges, have been
sentenced for kick backs in a private contract, for a private
contract prison in Pennsylvania to a private prison for
sentencing kids to a prison in exchange for bribes. This is an
unfortunate situation that is happening because of the profit
nature in prisons, and that I think is not part of the
correctional nature that we should be engaging in in terms of
our government playing profit with the prison. And it also
makes no sense in terms of security, which should be our
paramount issue here. So I thank both of you for being here.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Gentlemen, there will
be some questions for the record, I am sure, that members will
want to submit. But I wanted to give you an opportunity to sum
up. If there is anything that you would like to say that you
did not cover in your opening statements, or was not covered in
questioning, I want to give you an opportunity to get that on
the record now. And, of course your written statement is made a
part of the record. And if you want to submit anything
subsequent to the hearing we welcome you to do that as well.
We have requested, or if we did not we are going to,
request some of the comparisons between private prisons and
those operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. We had a bit
of a discussion about that, as you know, this morning. And to
the extent we do not feel like we have enough information on
the record we will ask the Bureau of Prisons to submit that.
So if you have anything else to add before we close this
panel, I invite you to come forward now.

Mr. Lowry Summary

Mr. Lowry. Okay, I will make this real brief. I appreciate
the opportunity to be here today to be able to speak to this
Committee. It is really an honor for me. In just a closing
brief here, all I would say is our agency has spiraled out of
control. Our staff that work in these prisons everyday are
being put in grave danger, here, because of the understaffing.
I will sum it up by saying that we are no longer a
proactive agency. We are reactive to what goes on. You have to
have bodies out there supervising these inmates. If we cannot
prevent the manufacture of weapons we cannot control or contain
them from being made inside of our prisons and used against
each other. Last year, there were eighteen inmate homicides
inside of our federal prisons, the highest in any year that I
know of. There were only twelve in 2007, seven in 2006, six in
2005, and three in 2004 and 2003. That number alone shows the
severity of the increase of violence inside the prisons. And
there has been many staff also that have weapons used against
them.
Of course, I mentioned that one of our officers lost his
life who was brutally attacked by two inmates. It could have
been prevented by many things that occurred, too many to say
today. But many things could have prevented that loss of life
as well.
But I would like to say something has to be done. To look
at our agency, how our administrators are conducting their
business. The policies that they are putting out are not sound
anymore, because we do not have the staff to operate or to keep
these prisons as safe as we should. Not only for our staff, but
we are charged with ensuring the safety and humane the
treatment of inmates as well. That is our jobs. And we have to
have the staff out there to supervise to keep these inmates
from making this contraband and then using it against one
another.
And we are only going to do that. Cameras do not do that.
Cameras are oversight at the end of the day. If you ask
honestly of our Director or anybody that worked in our prison
system, the majority of the cameras are only viewed if there is
an incident that occurs. But nobody is sitting there watching.
It plays twenty-four hours all over the place, but for the most
part there is nobody watching that camera. It is the staff
members and the inmates. If something occurs, it is nice to
have it, and go back and review and see why it happened or how
it happened. But we have to have the staffing to keep our
prisons safe. Staff and inmate alike.
Mr. Mollohan. Before we go to Mr. Glover, an issue has come
to my attention here recently, and I meant to ask you about it.
It was manning towers versus relying upon cameras perhaps, but
also electrified----

STUN FENCES

Mr. Glover. Stun fences?
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Electrified fences, stun fences,
which I understand stuns a person in the first instance, but
then if they go at it again it electrocutes.
Mr. Glover. Correct.
Mr. Mollohan. Would you talk about that issue a little bit?
Mr. Glover. We have spent $200 million on towers. I can
speak for Canaan, Pennsylvania in particular, but I know
Hazelton is the same way. We spent about $200 million to build
a tower. Now we are not manning the towers because we do not
have the staff to man them, and we need to find places to put
those staff. They are working in units and other places.
So they came up with this idea of a stun fence. Now,
apparently some states had played around with this idea. I have
been told from staff at Hazelton, for instance, and from Canaan
that the stun fence goes down in adverse weather, or can go
down in adverse weather.
Now, I am sure that the Lieutenant who is on duty probably
sends a staff member and puts him in a vehicle with a firearm,
and then makes him drive around in circles if that stun fence
goes down. Because you have to have some sort of last resort.
But the towers were not just for inmate escapes. The towers
are to observe the recreation yards, to observe back into the
yard as much as possible. And if something happens that is
where a staff member would run, to the base of the tower, to be
protected. If a staff member is out on the yard with 800
inmates and they start to riot, you would run to the underside
of the tower so that the tower officer can put a firearm or a
nonlethal weapon. The first thing they try is nonlethal from
the tower. If that does not work they may have to change to
lethal at some point if they cannot get a handle on the
disturbance.
But we are opposed to these stun fences. We think the
Congress should review them. We believe the towers are the way
to go with staff working in them, not empty ones. But again, I
know that some of these decisions are made because of the
funding levels. And so when you are, you know, trying to
determine build this housing unit or fill this tower, well let
us find a way not to fill the tower if we can.
Mr. Mollohan. Did you have any other comments, then? I
think Mr. Wolf has a question.
Mr. Glover. My only other comment, Mr. Chairman, was that
we appreciated the A-76 language that was put in last year and
that is put in this year. We believe that we should be
inherently governmental. The Justice Department in 2002 changed
us from inherently governmental to I think governmental
function, but not to be contracted. We would like that
determination to be reversed.
There are a number of things, obviously we just got into
the private prison issue a very small amount. But I do not
understand how it takes $700 million for a ten-year contract to
California City for low security, criminal alien inmates that
do not require programming. $700 million was what that contract
was. And it makes no sense to us. We do not, I do not know of a
prison in the system that runs at that rate per year. I do not
know of one. I mean, the Supermax may, maybe some of the pens.
Mr. Mollohan. We will look at it. We will look at it.
Mr. Glover. That would be my only thing. Bryan covered
everything else on the health and safety issues.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Mr. Wolf.

Mr. Wolf Questions

Mr. Wolf. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Just quickly two questions. And without going into detail
on the first, are there a lot of things that go on in prisons
that the Congress and the public just don't really know about?
Mr. Lowry. On a daily basis. There are many things that
occur on a daily basis. And I hate to frame it this way, but we
have as a union tried to get some of these things out to our
Congressmen, to our Senators, to the media on a daily basis
things that just occur.
That is like these stun-lethal fence that was brought up a
second ago. This project has been in place for several years
now. And in the meantime of bringing this project up, they
unmanned the towers at a penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana
at a high-security prison and just put extra perimeter zone
patrol.
Like Phil testified a second ago, these are safe harbors
for not only staff but inmates. If a riot or disturbance occurs
on the yard, the first reactionary thing is a dispersion round
to try to get inmates to separate and lay down. If they don't,
three times last year our staff member had to take the lives of
inmates from there to prevent further serious bodily injury or
loss of life.
And so those kind of things are occurring. I mean, there is
many things that happen that we try to get all this out. It is
just there is a lot of things that occur.
Mr. Wolf. And I never knew what a stun fence was until the
Chairman mentioned it. I had never heard of it. Would it make
sense to put together a high-level panel task force to take a
year to do an in-depth study of the prison system in the
country and report back to the Congress?
Mr. Lowry. We absolutely believe so. As a matter of fact,
Phil, I think has asked or tried to request hearings. And I
don't know who you requested them through. But we have
requested hearings on some of these issues through Congress.
And I think he has mainly done that through his Pennsylvania
delegation.
Mr. Glover. We would certainly welcome any kind of study on
the system.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you very much.

JUVENILE JUSTICE

Mr. Kennedy. Excuse me, Phil, since you are from
Pennsylvania, do you know that story about the juvenile
justice? Could you just fill us in briefly on that?
Mr. Glover. There were two judges that were apparently--I
think they pled guilty to 60-month sentences each I believe and
were disbarred. They had been taking juvenile offenders and
instead of giving them probation or giving them some sort of
treatment if they were--if they had anger issues, things like
that, and this was in all the papers--I mean, this was in a lot
of papers in Pennsylvania, they were sentencing them to the
harshest penalty and sending them to a private juvenile
contractor for incarceration. And they were getting money back
from the contractor.
Now it said in the papers and in some of the other stories
that came out that they haven't identified--I guess they
haven't identified who in the contractor companies that they
are going to go after. But apparently there is going to be some
further investigations on that.
And now I can get the articles and send them in for the
record if you would like.
Mr. Kennedy. I would appreciate that. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Thank you, gentlemen, very much for
your appearance here today, for your hard work on behalf of
your membership and the Bureau of Prisons, and for protecting
society generally. It has been excellent testimony. We would
appreciate maybe following up in certain areas, but thank you.
Mr. Glover. Thank you for having us.
Mr. Lowry. Thank you.
---------- --
--------

Tuesday, March 10, 2009.

OFFENDER DRUG ABUSE TREATMENT APPROACHES

WITNESS

FAYE TAXMAN, PH.D., PROFESSOR, ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE DEPARTMENT,
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

Opening Remarks

Mr. Mollohan. The hearing will come to order. For our last
hearing of the day, we welcome Dr. Faye Taxman, Professor in
the Administration of Justice Department at George Mason
University.
Dr. Taxman, welcome to the hearing today. We appreciate
your really working your schedule to accommodate us. We
particularly wanted to get your testimony in. It is a bit
unlike any other testimony. And I think it was really important
in a way only you could offer the kind of insights that I think
we are looking for. And we so much appreciate your making
yourself available. And I know you did it at some considerable
effort.
Dr. Taxman has expertise in the broad range of prisoner
reentry issues we will be discussing between today and
Thursday. But we have asked her to focus here this afternoon on
what is perhaps the most critical challenge facing many
offenders who reenter our communities, substance abuse.
Forty percent of inmates entering federal prisons have a
drug use disorder and require residential drug abuse treatment,
because they have a residual craving for the drug.
Over the last several decades, our society's approach to
dealing with criminal offenders has been in flux. Beginning in
the 1970s, the criminal justice system at the federal and state
levels began to focus more on punishment than rehabilitation,
due in large part to a rising crime rate and research showing
that rehabilitation programs were having little effect on
recidivism, accurate or not.
In the late 1980s, states began imposing mandatory minimum
sentences and three-strike laws that increased the period of
time an offender is likely to serve. The population of state
and federal prisons has increased significantly.
Between 1995 and 2005, the number of people in prison in
the United States grew by approximately three percent per year,
compared to an overall population growth of one percent. Add to
that the fact that the cost of incarcerating an adult is
approaching $29,000 per year, which is greater than the cost of
almost any treatment program or any other prison alternative.
As a result, many states and the federal government have been
implementing new prisoner rehabilitation initiatives as a tool
for reducing recidivism.
Last year's enactment of the Second Chance Act was
testament to that change in thinking. We have begun to
understand that offenders are much more successful in
reentering their communities from prison if they have
comprehensive, coordinated support and services, and that
society is better off in terms of reduced crime and costs when
that happens.
What prevents many offenders from successfully reentering
their communities is drug addiction. Addiction is a powerful
need. And addicts are unlikely to be able to make the right
choices unless we help them deal with that addiction through
drug treatment programs, counseling, and other supports.
Dr. Taxman, in a moment I will ask you to briefly summarize
your written testimony. But first I want to turn to our Ranking
Member, Mr. Wolf, for his comments.

Mr. Wolf Opening Remarks

Mr. Wolf. Welcome. It is good to have you here from George
Mason University.
Ms. Taxman. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Dr. Taxman. As I indicated, your
written statement will be made a part of the record. And
proceed as you will. Thank you.

Fay Taxman Opening Remarks

Ms. Taxman. Well, thank you very much for accommodating my
schedule. I really appreciate that. And I was flattered,
Chairman Mollohan, that you asked for me to testify. It is a
pleasure really to be here today and to share with you the
issue about drug treatment services. I actually did my
dissertation on this topic many years ago. So I really
appreciate this opportunity. I appreciate the interest in sort
of thinking about how we really address this severe problem in
our society.
How we address the severe problem of illicit drugs in our
society, but also how we change the culture of the criminal
justice system to respond to drug users. And I am using that
term very broadly to include corrections, prosecutors,
defenders, defense attorneys, prisons to really be able to
offer effective drug treatment services. And I think that is
one of the challenges.
So I want to really thank you all for all of your effort
with the Second Chance Act. That is an extremely important
piece of legislation for us to begin to rethink how to better
provide services within the criminal justice system. Since we
have had this 30-year history of being a punishment-oriented
system, it is not easy to change the face of the criminal
justice system overnight. It is not easy to offer effective
services. Although it is heartwarming to listen to the
gentlemen who were here before me, that they are very
supportive of expanding drug treatment services for offenders.
I know from my own work that delivering drug treatment
services behind the walls, in community corrections settings,
in jails is not an easy endeavor. And there are lots of changes
in the culture within those criminal justice organizations that
will need to occur for us to be effective at reducing recycling
and recidivism rates.
We are at an important crossroads now. And an act like the
Second Chance Act and other related legislation can really help
us do this. We have a body of knowledge about effective
treatment services.
And I want to stress that, because in the 1970s when Robert
Martinson, who was the father of the ``nothing works'' mantra,
much to his demise actually. But he basically was looking at a
very narrow set of work during this period of time.
We actually have 30 years of experimental research that has
been done in cross disciplines in psychology, sociology,
criminology, biology that points us all in the same direction,
which we know some of the treatments that work. Our bigger
challenge is putting these treatments and services in place.
And we really need to begin to think of ourselves not as
separate systems--prisons, probation, parole--but really an
offender management system, so that we can try and mitigate the
risk of offender populations.
We tried actually to do this in the early 1990s, when we
experimented with the concept of intermediate sanctions. It was
a very brief period of time. And to be honest, it didn't work
very well. And there are important lessons in that era that we
should really be thoughtful about in trying to build capacity
now, to think about how to more safely manage offenders in the
community.
I put together testimony which, I am not going to read. But
there are five points that I would like to make. First of all,
substance abuse treatment works. We know that it is effective,
if it is delivered appropriately.
We also know that it is cost effective. For every dollar
that you spend in substance abuse treatment, you can reduce
seven dollars in other costs within the criminal justice
system. And if you included victims issues it would actually be
more than seven dollars.
We also know that the most effective treatment are those
that target behavioral therapies augmented by new medications.
And this is going to be a challenge for the Criminal Justice
field. There are a series of medications now available that can
really help people recover and get into recovery mode in a
quicker fashion.
This is important, because when you have a 30-year-old
person, which the average offender is around 32 years old, and
they have been using drugs for 15 or 20 years, to think that we
are going to change someone's life in a six-month program is
really not wise. But there are medications that can help
accelerate recovery. There are behavioral tools. And there are
support services like Mr. Kennedy talked about, such as self-
help groups that are really important to bring together into
this field.
Our biggest challenge is that we have such low capacity
right now to provide treatment services. We recently completed
a survey funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and our
estimate is that on any given day across the federal system,
state and local systems, less than ten percent of the offender
population can participate in substance abuse treatment
services.
I am a quantitative analyst. We examine system impacts. You
can't have an impact on a system when you have one out of ten
people in care. You can't change the culture of that
organization. You can't get the staff to respond differently,
because they are dealing with other efforts such as controlling
behavior or monitoring offenders.
We know that drug treatment works. We also know that our
problem is not about substance abuse just alone. That there are
other criminogenic needs that offenders have. And we have not
invested in the proper therapies to be able to deliver these
other services. And in fact to be perfectly honest, no ``one''
owns that problem area to believe those services.
The issue I am referring to is criminogenic value systems.
No one provides those services. We often think that substance
abuse agencies are responsible for those services. And so we
really need to begin to think about how we offer a broader
array of correctional treatments for this population. Using
that average 32-year-old person who has been using, they have
gotten into a subculture and a lifestyle that is really
difficult to untangle unless we not only deal with their
substance use but also the criminal subcultural values that
they have learned and subscribe to.
That being said, what are some of the things we could do?
Well, I believe one of the biggest steps forward that we can do
is actually be much more interested in developing a community
correction system that prevents incarceration. And you all have
noted the sentencing challenges before us. But part of the
reasons that, I believe and others in my discipline believe
that we have left ourselves to basically relying on
incarceration, is that we don't have a community punishment
system. And most people think probation is basically a slap on
the wrists. And so, therefore, you box in prosecutors and
judges, because they really don't have a lot of options.
And yet we can learn from our colleagues overseas. Have a
much broader array of punishments. For example, in Germany if
you are arrested on drunk driving, a first-time offender is
fined with a $5,000.00 fine. In the United States, we fine
people about $250.00-$300.00. In Germany a chronic drunk
driver, three-time offender, gets fined $25,000.00. And they
can take away some of their property like their cars. In the
United States, a third-time offender may go to jail, may not.
And they still get fined about $300.00 or so.
We haven't been as creative in terms of thinking about how
we encourage people to address their substance use disorders.
The second point is is that we have already noted that we
need a culture shift in order to accommodate treating the
offender population towards the goals of reducing the risk of
recidivism. The current model that the Office of Justice
Programs tends to use to be able to provide assistance to
state, local, and federal agencies, from my perspective, is
broken. And it does not really develop what we have learned in
the healthcare industry about organizational change.
There is models of technology transfer centers that I would
highly encourage you as, a Subcommittee to really explore to
help the U.S. Department of Justice, change their methodology
about how they provide technical assistance and grow the skill
sets of the correctional officers, the probation officers, the
drug treatment counselors, prosecutors, and defenders that work
with this population.
And in my testimony I have given you an example of the
addiction technology transfer centers that is funded under the
SAMHSA, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, where they
for almost 15 years have put in place across this country just
mechanisms to be able to help move--train professionals,
augment what is available within state systems, to really give
them the skills to work with the offender--addicted population
differently. And I think it is a model that really should be
considered to advance practices.
And finally, I would be remiss as a researcher not to note
that the National Institute of Justice, lacks appropriate
funding to advance our knowledge. And, the biggest funder is
actually the National Institute on Drug Abuse. But NIDA's
interests are a little bit narrower than what is needed given
the organizational issue and providing comprehensive treatment
services for the offender population. So in my testimony I
cover these five points.
I also, if you don't mind, is you had asked the gentlemen
before me about work in prisons in other countries. And I
actually happen to be on some international panels. In other
countries, there are very different prison systems. First of
all, people are there for shorter periods of time,
significantly smaller number of people in facilities.
In England, the average prisoner is there for about nine
months. So, you know, you have totally different issues. The
prisons are smaller. We have prisons that are 1,200 people or
small cities like, and there were several prisons that were
probably 10,000 people. That is like a small town.
In Europe, they also--they have work and they have far more
treatment options for offender populations. And those treatment
options take up most of the day of the people that are
incarcerated.
European prisons have a very different climate. The size
creates unsafeness. And it also causes tremendous stress for
the correctional officers.
In Europe the focus is really on preparing people to come
out. And they actually certify programs that are offered in the
prison systems. In the U.S. we don't have a certification
process here. They actually have a very well designed--it is
actually a model that Canada uses too, most of the European
countries--to really make sure that whatever programming occurs
in prisons, from education to therapies, are designed on
behavior change models. The certification proves that the
programs are well-designed.
So with that--you know, I am sorry to digress a little. I
thought you were interested in looking at other countries.
[Faye Taxman written statement follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Very interesting. Please don't apologize.
That was really insightful. And there are a lot of differences
there that you noted in a very short statement. One of them is
the size of the institution. And it may be the quality of the
issues they are dealing with as well.
I can't tell you how exciting one part of your--all of your
testimony is----
Ms. Taxman. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Exciting. But there is one part
here that I want to follow up on. I have for a long time
appreciated the problems associated with dealing with drugs and
crime in the criminal system. And I wanted to make this
statement and see what you think about it and how you relate to
it.
Today if somebody's precursor problem is addiction, and if
in order to satisfy that craving that they wake up with, and go
to bed with, and figure out how they are going to feed it 24
hours of the day, it results in criminal activity. And you can
only deal with that craving with some sort of incarceration.
You can only deal with it after they get in the criminal
system. I mean, if you are really dealing with the craving. And
then finally, maybe, if you are lucky, you may get into some
sort of a sympathetic and progressive program that will allow
the addicted person to be separated from the drug. And over a
certain period of time, either naturally the body will get away
from the craving or there will be intensive therapy programs,
counseling, or 12-step, or chemical, or whatever the program is
to get the person well.
But my point is this, in order to get the person in a
situation where you can fix them and deal with the craving
issue, you really have to get into the criminal justice system.
So when I first started practicing law, we had civil commitment
hearings for people with mental issues.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. How the person got before the judge, I don't
know. Probably a number of different ways. But there was a
determination whether that person was certifiable and should be
committed. And I have often thought that if we could have a
civil remedy for getting the person who is addicted into the
situation where you could deal with the addiction, deal with
the cravings, that that would be a far better remedy than
having to rely upon the criminal system in order to get them in
an incarcerated situation. At that point, you have to deal with
a whole lot of different issues. First of all, they are a
criminal. And it is an imperfect system, because, in the United
States, you do not have the kind of treatment programs that
allow you to really get to the--to get to the underlying
issues. We are going to try to work toward that in the Second
Chance Act. It is a good start.
But you referred to a community punishment system, although
I don't know what you mean by that. But some of the statements
you made leading up to that led me to believe that perhaps this
civil incarceration option might be what you were referring to.
Ms. Taxman. Well I wasn't really referring to a civil
commitment sort of process. We actually had a experiment with
civil commitments in the late 1950s, middle 1960s. Some states
still have them on the books.
But what happened there is that, we basically found that
people's due process rights were not protected. And there was a
tremendous infringement of their rights. And it caused a number
of abuses that actually caused states and the federal
government to move away from civil commitments. The federal
government actually enacted--I think it was towards the end of
the 1950s the Civil Commitment Act that was never really put in
place.
Mr. Mollohan. For drug addiction?
Ms. Taxman. Yes, right. And I can send you--I actually
wrote an article about this a couple of years ago. There are
lessons to be learned. And it was also during that same period
of time to be honest, that there was an anti-methadone movement
that the Drug Enforcement Administration that precluded the
development. It was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The
emphesis in that era stopped us from pursuing different
policies, because the methodology for treating people was
basically a cold turkey methodology. And, in fact, you know,
for some people that works, but for other people it does not
work.
But times are a little bit different in terms of what we
know. We don't have enough medical doctors who know about
addiction disorders. Although there has been some--you know,
with some of the brief interventions that have actually
occurred and trying to bring it into primary care, we have made
some movements over the years.
What I was referring to though in a community corrections
system is really much more of a system. And I gave you a
picture of such a system on page eight of my testimony.
Mr. Mollohan. That is why we have you here. We wanted the
academic things.
Ms. Taxman. Where you would have a system that if someone
gets arrested and they could assess the person for whether they
have a substance use disorder at arrest. You assess could do
this at a police station. You know, the police officer could
actually make a decision not even to arrest but to divert to
good quality treatment. And put in place the proper types of
controls so that if a person doesn't go to treatment or, if
they do not take their medications, then the systems can make
other decisions.
There was an experiment actually in Ohio about five years
ago called Ohio Reclaim in which they did a diversion program
where they agreed to expunge the record of the defendant if
they completed treatment and stayed drug free for a year past.
Mr. Mollohan. But is that not pie in the sky? I mean, to
think that a police officer could divert someone whom the
police officer identified as an addicted person to some----
Ms. Taxman. No.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Voluntary program.
Ms. Taxman. I know there is a big debate about diversion
programs. But how we have done diversion programs in this
country have been very poorly done. And so if we had a much
more integrated system where the person understood what the
rules were and you actually had mechanisms to help people into
treatment programs that was on demand.
Mr. Mollohan. But what would the rules be?
Ms. Taxman. The rules would be----
Mr. Mollohan. It wouldn't be criminal rules in your----
Ms. Taxman. You motivate people. You know, part of the
issue about dealing with addiction is helping people to
motivate themselves to care about themselves. And there is
methodologies available in the treatment in clinical called
motivational enhancement therapies. Some of these techniques
can be used by police officers, probation officers. They don't
have to be confined to just a clinical setting.
What we find with the mentally ill, a lot of police
officers are actually doing a lot of treatment if you want to
talk about it.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, I look forward to following up with
you.
Ms. Taxman. Okay.

REHABILITATION IN PRISON

Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One, is work important to this to this effort in prison and
when somebody is going through rehabilitation?
Ms. Taxman. Work is always important for two reasons. One
is it fills a person's sense of self efficacy and gives a
person skills so that they can be productive on the outside.
And two, idle time is, largely why people continue to use and
if they don't really have things to keep themselves occupied.
Mr. Wolf. What about faith-based programs?
Ms. Taxman. You know, the literature is out----
Mr. Wolf. The Colson's group, Prison Fellowship for
instance.
Ms. Taxman. The Prison Fellowship does is give people
options. I wouldn't say that we don't know enough about the
recidivism rates of those programs. There hasn't been
sufficient studies.
Mr. Wolf. I have read that the recidivism rate--they
operate a couple of prisons, one down in Texas. They have one
of the lowest recidivism record. I think we will get that for
the record and submit it at this time.
Ms. Taxman.
Mr. Wolf. And then we will also--John, are you there--try
to get you a copy, so we can let you see it. But they have a
very good record with regard to recidivism.
Ms. Taxman. The thing you have to watch is really whether
that person had a severe addiction disorder or whether or not
they are treating lower risk offenders with less serious
disorders. This is our problem sometimes with comparing
studies. A lot of the programs in prison, like the prison-based
fellowship programs are very good at connecting people. And
that is an important part of the recovery process. To me it is
not the location of where people get the treatment. It is
actually what occurs, and whether the person themselves makes a
commitment.
So, you know, I think where we are at now we need a broad
array depending on how serious the person's addiction disorder
is.
Mr. Wolf. What countries by name do the best?
Ms. Taxman. For dealing with substance abusers? Italy,
France, Israel. They all provide medication and pharmacies for
people. They provide longer-term treatment. In Israel for
example----
Mr. Wolf. How long do they treat?
Ms. Taxman. They are about 12 to 18 months.
Mr. Wolf. And what is our length of time here in the United
States?
Ms. Taxman. Our average time is about 60 days.
Mr. Wolf. Sixty days.
Ms. Taxman. It is a big difference. They also use skilled
clinicians. Their social workers generally have masters in
social work. Whereas we often use bachelor level or people who
do not have degrees.
This is a big issue in our country in terms of qualified
staff to really deliver these services. And, both in the
community and prisons, we often don't pay enough salaries to
really attract people with masters levels.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Kennedy. Thank you. Could you just go back to that
federal civil commitment for drugs? Could you explain that?
Ms. Taxman. Sure. As I understand, the federal and civil
commitment was usually initiated either by the Criminal Justice
Agency or by a loved one of the individual. And they would
approach the court and ask for a civil commitment, just like
you if you would for mental health when we used to have that.
There used to be a court process involved. There was a lot of
concern over that time about whether or not people had
appropriate representation. There was also concern about the
length of time that people were committed. And it----
Mr. Kennedy. But do you think there is a way that we can
amend that so that those concerns get remedied?
Ms. Taxman. I think through our medical treatment system--
--
Mr. Kennedy. So we now bring----
Ms. Taxman [continuing]. We could do that.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. Medical treatment providers doing
assessments.
Ms. Taxman. Right.
Mr. Kennedy. So it is not the personal, like family members
getting into a feud over mom----
Ms. Taxman. Right. I am not dismissive of that as an
option. I think, you know, where we are today, I think looking
for civil remedies or non-criminal justice remedies is probably
the smartest thing we can do.
I think our challenge is not to be attentive to those
fallacies that occurred before and that caused people not to
use that mechanism.
Mr. Kennedy. Well, obviously, it is just a very costly
process to go through the courts. So we need to find out a
mechanism where we have family courts in this country be able
to have a process--where the bar isn't set so high that to trip
it----
Ms. Taxman. Right.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. You have to have a crisis
situation already have occurred----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. For it to trip it. And then it is
near impossible to stay on top of it.
And you have had problems now with Alzheimer's and dementia
and a whole host of other issues now. This is a endemic problem
for a much broader section of the populace it seems to me. We
are going to have to address, not only on this specific issue
but across the country.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. So your input on this will be very helpful to
the Committee.
Ms. Taxman. Well, you know, from my perspective, anything
where we can get the medical community involved in the care of
these individuals can begin to bring change to the system.
Right now we don't have a system where medical doctors or
nurses can, participate in the care. Bringing in the community
health centers where they are starting to work with offender
populations on the reentry phase. But there is no reason why
you couldn't have people who have substance use disorders who
are known in those communities, go to those centers for
assessment. Given therapies, we are trying to get people to
start in the recovery process that way.
I mean those aren't mechanisms that exist now. And that is,
I think, what you are suggesting.
Mr. Kennedy. And then in terms of the medications, getting
them turned on right away, right after a prisoner leaves the
prison, is crucial if they are Medicare eligible, because if
they don't, obviously they are going to self medicate right
when they leave.
Can you describe the importance of working our bureaucracy
so that when a prisoner is about to be let go----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. We coordinate to make sure that
we don't have the lapse in their coverage on medications per
se, if Campral or whatever, Naltrexone, the medications that
can be helpful to them in assuaging their addiction. That stuff
or maybe some medication for a psychological disorder, that
that medication gets to them so that they are less likely to go
out and try to self-medicate to feed their brain chemistry and
balance that will then cause them to reenter the system. Could
you just talk about that issue?
Ms. Taxman. First of all, there is actually several studies
that have come out within the last two years that have shown
the benefits of really starting some of those medications
before people leave prison. The person is preparing to leave
prison and therefore they start the medications. The medication
serves as a blocker.
Mr. Kennedy. Right.
Ms. Taxman. So there is good rationale for really doing
more studies about starting medication beforehand. The issue
you raised had to do with----
Mr. Kennedy. You got us that obviously. I am presupposing--
--
Ms. Taxman. Right.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. That we should be doing that.
Ms. Taxman. Well, that is----
Mr. Kennedy. But the idea is that there is going to be--we
have got so many battles on our hands. And that is going to be
a big one, too.
Ms. Taxman. Right.
Mr. Kennedy. But I think that everybody would agree with
the fact that if we want to stop recidivism, it sure doesn't
pay to have someone coming out of prison who has got a chemical
imbalance and a huge addiction, not to get medications that are
going to help address that.
Ms. Taxman. Right.
Mr. Kennedy. And think that we are going to stop
recidivism.
Ms. Taxman. Yeah.
Mr. Kennedy. So could you talk about that?
Ms. Taxman. A lot of states now have tried to, if their
state allows, for Medicaid assistance, to sign people up ahead
of time before release. I think there is only half the states
that actually provide that kind of care in terms of Medicaid
assistance for substance use disorders.
Other states like Maryland has a different process in
place. They have an indigent care that includes a pharmacy
system that offenders can access. I think you have to actually
in that system be in the community.
The best method is both Medicaid, people getting their
driver's license and identification is to do that in that
prerelease window. This should be 60-90 days before someone
leaves prison. And also to give people 60-90 days of medication
on their way out so that that lapse of time when they are
getting readjusted. This provides tools to be successful.
Mr. Kennedy. If you could provide us the studies that show
that that is----
Ms. Taxman. Okay.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. Really efficacious. And why that
policy you think is advantageous for us to be, supporting
financially----
Ms. Taxman. Okay.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. Through the budget and
encouraging through the Department of Justice. That would be
very useful.
Ms. Taxman. Okay. I would be happy to.
Mr. Kennedy. What policies we need to be encouraging states
and ONDCP and greater coordination as you talked about in terms
of the continuity in the cultural system.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. That seems to be a big part of it. Thank you.
Ms. Taxman. Okay, great.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Honda.

Mr. Honda Questions

Mr. Honda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate having
this hearing on drug treatment for offenders in the prison
system. I think that is subject matter that probably needs more
public attention than it has received in the past, not only for
its social value but also for the economic efficiency that we
might be able to obtain.
I am a big supporter of drug courts. And believe that model
has worked for some populations. It works with strong
accountability, and rigorous treatment, and improved treatment
outcomes for dependents.
I was just wondering--how would you triage the population
that would most benefit from it, and is there a difference in
the terminology of addiction and habituation? And what are the
differences? Is that something that we should be aware of? And
then I think you said when in your testimony that the treatment
for these folks should be multi-dimensional----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Honda [continuing]. Which probably makes a lot of
sense. Where in that many dimensions does language and
understanding of ethnicity and background play in that whole
approach?
The question was multi-dimensional.
Ms. Taxman. I think multi-dimensional is fine. I think part
of your question is definitions of key terms. In the clinical
view, substance use ranges from recreation use to dependent
use. And, you know, there is a large group that are just
abusers.
I think one of our challenges with drug courts, which, you
know, to be honest, drug courts are probably the best example,
besides the residential substance abuse treatment that behind
the walls that continues in the communities of effective care.
And part of it is because for the most part, they are longer
term. Most drug courts on average are about 12 months. You
gauge people in this change process in enough time that they
can actually begin to regroup and stabilize themselves in the
community.
The one thing about drug courts, and I know the National
Association of Drug Court Professionals is working on this, is
try to get drug courts to basically work with the more serious
substance use dependent person. As in most new innovations,
people up front want to take a lower risk clientele, so that
you don't have, you know, the ``Willie Horton'' problems of the
late 1980s.
The challenge is to use drug courts so that we are focusing
our attention on dependent people for who are most public
safety risk.
The second part of your question has to do with what kind
of therapies or interventions should we work with, and do they
work as well with different ethnic groups. And, you know, we
know a little bit about cultural competency for different
treatment programs. Obviously, not every person is the same. We
can only hope that our treatment providers really can screen
people in terms of those factors.
We know, for example, that Hispanics respond differently.
That family issues are very important within that culture. And,
therefore, we need to pay attention to that and some of the
treatment programs. You know, with African-Americans,
particularly young men, that there are different programs and
services that would work better with them.
Our treatment system needs to improve to be able to be that
flexible. And part of that is sort of having more expansive
services out there.
Mr. Honda. It seems to me that we try to devise
intervention programs based upon the current infrastructure
that we have. And that could be a structural problem. If you
were able to reformat how we address drug addiction and
offenders and I guess maybe even mental health issues, do you
separate them? How are they the same? And how would you really
structure the intervention programs institutionally? And what
would that look like?
Ms. Taxman. Well, if the question is about the best method
to deliver services, that I would take a behavioral health
approach. Instead of having separate organizations for
substance abuse and mental health, they could be delivered
concurrently. Historically that was created because substance
abuse treatment programs were not getting enough attention
within mental health agencies. That was a few decades ago.
There is a movement in a lot of states to offer behavioral
health services that addresses the substance abuse and mental
health care. And that means having staff that can deal with
people who have both substance use and mental health issues.
What we know about the substance abusers is that a good 50
to 70 percent have some sort of co-occuring mental health
disorder, and mental health patients tend to self-medicate. It
makes sense in a kind of, you know, to have a delivery system
where a person can handle the multi-dimensional aspects of
addiction disorders and mental health issues.
To do this requires us to begin to really think about how
we fund substance abuse mental health, or behavioral health,
organizations provide for people who have addiction disorders.
And that is our major challenge. Right now they tend to be more
community health organizations. Addiction treatment
organizations are smaller in scope, although that is changing
within the last ten years. More companies that are buying small
treatment organizations and there are more private non-profit
organizations.
My own view is we need more behavioral health organizations
that include the array of physicians and nurses that can help
people manage their medications and deal with their medical
condition, which we know are important to the recovery process.
Mr. Honda. So the assignment of offenders usually go to
prison first. And then you try to figure out whether they need
any help if they have a history. And I was just wondering
whether--if you had an ability to change the institutional
choices that we have out there and give judges a bit more
flexibility of where they can send some folks, what would that
look like? You know, would it be outpatient. Would it depend
upon their offense?
Ms. Taxman. Well, actually most people spend several times
on probation before they ever go to prison. We lose
opportunities due to the ineffective probation system that we
have in this country.
I think the question you are asking, Congressman, is
whether if we had a probation system where judges and probation
officials had the resources to put people into appropriate
treatment and correctional programs, then we could avoid
sending people to prison. And that would be the optimum
situation. That gets to the civil commitment concept where we
have community capacity, half the orders right now on probation
actually include some sort of drug treatment order. It is just
people cannot get treatment in the community, because there are
insufficient resources. And the available treatment is for just
a short period of time. People cannot recover in 90 days.
Our challenge is to offer treatment service that can make a
difference. We need to maximize the amount that can be done
within the community to prevent incarceration. Discipline
people believe that we could prevent incarceration for about
half the people that we currently send to prison.
Mr. Honda. Cheaper.
Ms. Taxman. And a lot cheaper. The Pew Report basically
compared the different costs of probation, parole and prisons.
Right now, the average state, like the state of Virginia,
spends about $1,500.00 a year to supervise people on probation.
If you added a comprehensive drug treatment component that we
will say $5,000.00-$7,000.00 a year. This is about half the
coat of incarceration or the $25,000.00 a year we spend for
prison. Community sanctions cost less and this is the potential
of what we need to build. Community corrections can build the
infracstructure to allow people to be committed and attached to
their communities. You don't disrupt the community, their
families as much as incarceration--incarceration practices have
to many negative consequences.
We need a national initiative to improve community
corrections. We have gone this route with prisons because we do
not have enough good community correction systems in this
country.

Mr. Mollohan Questions

Mr. Mollohan. Let me follow up with regard to using
medication. Right now I understand that Naltrexone is approved
for----
Ms. Taxman. Alcohol.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Alcohol.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. And that it is approved in the form of an
injection that can last 30 days----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. And that it is very effective in taking away
craving or satisfaction for alcoholic drinking. Is that
correct?
Ms. Taxman. Yeah.
Mr. Mollohan. Are you familiar with that?
Ms. Taxman. Yes. So Naltrexone, the Vivitol version of
Naltrexone, is a once-a-month injection. It costs about $700.00
a month according to the company Alkermes. The studies that
have been done on alcohol abuse have shown that it reduces the
number of heavy drinking days significantly. It increases the
period of time that people are sober. But we lack long-term
studies on the impact of these medications. If you don't get
short-term results, you can't get long-term results. We need
more studies to understand the medications impact over the long
term.
Mr. Mollohan. What is your reaction to its short term,
observation of it?
Ms. Taxman. These medications have promise. We are all
human beings. It is very difficult to change behavior. So if
you give some sort of medication that basically can stabilize
someone, reduce some cravings, reduce biochemical reactions, it
changes the person--this has the potential to be able to
stabilize a person.
Mr. Mollohan. So this is more than promising?
Ms. Taxman. Yes. We need more scientific studies.
Mr. Mollohan. More than promising?
Ms. Taxman. I believe it is more than promising. There is a
clinical trial right now going on with Naltrexone for opiate
addicts that Chuck O'Brien of the University of Pennsylvania is
spearheading. It is funded by the National Institute on Drug
Abuse.
Mr. Mollohan. Naltrexone?
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. The Vivitrol version of Naltrexone?
Ms. Taxman. No. It is another. It is the Depot Naltrexone.
It is also an injection.
Mr. Mollohan. There is a study going on in Russia isn't
there with----
Ms. Taxman. I believe so.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Naltrexone used for narcotics?
Ms. Taxman. Yes, right. But we have one. The National
Institute on Drug Abuse is funding Chuck O'Brien and about five
other research centers across the United States to test out
Naltrexone within probation studies.
Mr. Mollohan. For what substance?
Ms. Taxman. Opiate.
Mr. Mollohan. For cocaine.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. What about heroin?
Ms. Taxman. Yes, for heroin we also have methadone. And
methadone is an effective medication. There is buprenorphoine.
Mr. Mollohan. But Naltrexone is used off label, is it not,
to treat heroin?
Ms. Taxman. Yes, it is off label.
Mr. Mollohan. Successfully?
Ms. Taxman. We have studies underway. But it is not FDA
approved.
Mr. Mollohan. Yeah. But are there actually studies using
Naltrexone off label for heroin addiction?
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. These Naltrexone studies that you are talking
about, were they for cocaine?
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. What were those studies?
Ms. Taxman. There is one trial underway. As I said, it is
underway in--you know, that is being led by the University of
Pennsylvania.
Mr. Mollohan. And that is the Chuck O'Brien study?
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Is that using the injectable form?
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. So it has to be Vivitrol; is that right? Or
is there another brand?
Ms. Taxman. No, I do not believe he is making that version.
Mr. Mollohan. So there are other injectable----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Forms made by other
manufacturers.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
There is great promise in these medications. I think our
challenge is is getting the criminal justice system to use them
and to provide the proper medical care that is needed when
offenders are on medication.
Mr. Mollohan. You know that the Second Chance Act
authorizes this?
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Let me ask you this. If we wanted to fund a
trial using these medications, and you may not be able to
answer this right now. But if you would be kind enough to
consider submitting to us for the record two things.
Number one, a comprehensive program, from treatment during
incarceration to post-incarceration for drug addicts, of best
practices to have the best results in reducing recidivism. What
would that look like using medication and not using medication?
Ms. Taxman. Yes. Are you interested in jail or just prison.
Mr. Mollohan. We fund the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
Ms. Taxman. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. So that really is where we have a funding
opportunity.
Ms. Taxman. Ok.
Mr. Mollohan. Although there certainly are grant programs
that we have--and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons could do something
in partnership. Let us just see what you come up with. And we
will be interactive about it if that is okay.
Ms. Taxman. That is fine. But would you be interested in
some ideas for the U.S. Administrative Office of the Courts
which deals with probationers. You also fund this agency.
Mr. Mollohan. You have got a blank sheet there.
Ms. Taxman. Great.
Mr. Mollohan. You are the expert.
Ms. Taxman. Thank you. We have done so little with the
probation population and this where our problems begin. There
is over five million people on probation. If we can prevent
that group from going to prison, you can reduce the intakes to
prison by about 20 to 25 percent just dealing with failures on
community supervision.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, that is a very insightful observation.
I would make the other observation that if you could do it in a
civil proceeding, you would----
Ms. Taxman. Then you avoid all these costs.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Totally avoid the----
Ms. Taxman. That is correct.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Stigma to begin with and the
costs associated with----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Processing in the criminal
system.
Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy Questions

Mr. Kennedy. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank
you for your passion for this, and your dedication, and just
the past questions, and coming up with this hearing, and this
review of these issues. I really appreciate it.
You know, obviously, they say the greatest determiner about
whether you are going into prison is if you have been to
prison.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. And, of course, there is 70 percent recidivism
in the state prisons. But the rate I guess of those going into
prison from the foster care system is 42 percent.
Ms. Taxman. I think higher than that actually.
Mr. Kennedy. Even higher I know. I think it is even higher
than that.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. But that is pretty amazing.
Ms. Taxman. It is pretty sad, right?
Mr. Kennedy. It is very sad.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. Considering these are our kids
that are in our custody as a country. And half of them graduate
not to college or from college. Actually less than two percent
actually ever graduate from college.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. They graduate to prison. So it seems to me if
we are focusing on reducing prison rates, and----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. You have got to be thinking about
early intervention with foster care. Somehow there has got to
be something that we aren't paying attention to. So I don't
know what your ideas are on that. But I know that it is going
into a different realm.
Ms. Taxman. We have more that could be done to improve the
juvenile justice systems.
Mr. Kennedy. It is called children and families----
Ms. Taxman. I have a few studies in the juvenile justice
system. I actually have a clinical trial right now. I am trying
to----
Mr. Kennedy. I am sure a lot of those foster care kids are
children of inmates.
Ms. Taxman. Right.
Mr. Kennedy. So the question is what are we doing in
regards to family approaches for families of inmates to make
sure that that cycle doesn't repeat itself is what I am saying?
And one more point. I was just at my juvenile corrections
about a three weeks ago. And I asked the kids there how many of
them have parents in prison currently and three quarters of
them raised their hands.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. Many imitate the surroundings that they grow
up with. So if we are really going to break it, this has got to
be a central concern of ours.
Ms. Taxman. I agree this is a tremendous challenge. Part of
it is is we probably need to be moving away from the way we do
silo treatment of people to really begin to think about more
family case management models. You know, Carol Shapiro who
works with--who founded this group called the Family Justice
Institute has a nice family case management model that she
has--is demonstrating places. And so, you know, unfortunately
we fund agencies in a very narrow way. And probation department
is funded to deal with an individual. But if they know their
kid is in foster--a child is in foster care, if they know they
have addiction in the family, you know, they are limited in
what they can do.
You know, I think we should move towards some of these
other models called Neighborhood Justice Models where you are
really dealing with people. I mean, you can map in many
jurisdictions where we have concentrated problems. And we know,
you know, now where some of those communities are and who those
families are. And, you know, I think our creative energies
should be in fix--you know, in dealing with families and not
just dealing with an individual. And, you know, encouraging
people to move across sort of their organizational boundary
lines.
That is why I really believe that we need to look at new
technology transfer models for the criminal justice, social
welfare, you know, addiction treatment fields, because the way
right now we do the technology transfer from the federal These
are complex and multi-disciplinary problems.
Mr. Kennedy. If you could tell us what that should look
like----
Ms. Taxman. Be happy to do so.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. In the multi-disciplinary family,
holistic approach, to dealing with not only just the individual
but in the context of the family.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. And the context of a multi-institutional
approach.
Ms. Taxman. Alright.
Mr. Kennedy. So, the social welfare agency is talking to
the criminal justice agency is talking to the education system
is talking to the parole system.
Ms. Taxman. That makes sense.
Mr. Kennedy. So it would be helpful if you could----
Ms. Taxman. Yes. This is where Chairman Mollohan's idea
about trying to look at civil processes well advised. We need
to reduce the use of the criminal justice system.
But the issue is really trying to address the problems of
people instead of making problems worse in many ways.
Mr. Kennedy. Thank you.
Ms. Taxman. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Honda.

Mr. Honda Questions

Mr. Honda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In response to other
questions that was asked about other countries' efforts in
dealing with offenders, drug offenders, you mentioned that
Italy, France, Israel place a stronger focus on rehabilitation
and treatment.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Honda. I was wondering if there are any promising case
studies in those countries that are applicable to us, given
some culture differences? But whether there is anything there
that has some applications to us? And what are some of those
things that the other countries do that are different from us
that create the success that they have, or I am assuming that
they are successful? I was just wondering whether you had any--
--
Ms. Taxman. Congressman, other countries have a different
healthcare systems than we have. Addicts/uers with addiction
disorders can get healthcare through, you know, their, you
through then national health insurance to a large extent. That
also means----
Mr. Honda. Prior to entering the criminal justice system.
Ms. Taxman. Yes, regardless of what her are in the criminal
justice system.
Mr. Honda. I see.
Ms. Taxman. One of our challenges is when people come out
of prison if they aren't employed, they usually don't have
access to healthcare. And the community health clinics are not
always receptive. So that is one issue.
The second issue is is that their standards of care of
effective treatment is much broader than ours. They have fewer
alcohol and drug education programs, and more congnitive
behavioral therapies and therapeutic communities in other
countries. They have day reporting programs where people go for
six-eight hours a day. In these programs, they address
employment issues. Offenders get therapy.
The orientation is more of a health services. Much of the
services are provided through their healthcare and social
welfare agencies.
You know, I can pull together some examples from England,
you know, or some of these other countries for you if you would
like.
Mr. Honda. If there is a discussion on, you know, the
difference in costs, that would be helpful.
Ms. Taxman. Okay. I will gather cost issues.
Mr. Honda. And currently is there anything, any models that
we have in this country that appear to be the same, or that
come close to, or that are successful in addressing this?
Ms. Taxman. This is not to say that we don't have good
creative policies. It is just we are hamstrung in terms of how
much we actually provide care for. For example in Arizona they
have enacted some new legislation over the last couple of years
to both expand treatment services as well as to improve the
quality of the probation services.
In Arizona, they cap the number of probationers to an
officer to around 65 or 70, while the national average is about
200. In terms of addiction treatment, we have Delancey Street
in San Francisco which has an excellent track record.
Mr. Honda. So it sounds like Delancey does treat
communities and they also offer ways to become more
economically----
Ms. Taxman. They have a restaurant business. They have
several businesses.
Mr. Honda. So what I hear you saying is that there has to
be a very good national policy and an infrastructure set up so
that it takes care of those who are abusers but not necessarily
criminalized yet.
Ms. Taxman. Yes, that is.
Mr. Honda. Those that are criminalized but not heavy into
that area, that there are some avenues to address it through
that national healthcare system. I think I also heard you say
that the folks who are on probation, that is probably that
population, if we can avoid them becoming incarcerated on long
term or heavy sentences that that might also be helpful. And I
guess in the other countries the probation system, is that
similar to ours or is that a population that is lower because
they are being treated and being triaged until they are helped
along?
Ms. Taxman. In other countries, most probation officers are
social workers. So were a model of probation that we abandoned
in the 1970s. That is one big difference, because the
orientation that those social workers have is very different.
They have different skills to work with offenders in a model to
enhance behavior change.
The other big difference is that other countries they have
a larger community network for treatment programs. People can
access care in the community.
That is part of our issues in the U.S. in that we do not
have enough treatment programs in the community for offender
populations for offenders can get access to treatment programs.
The question you raised about is the legalization question,
this a question that we discuss in class. Our challenge is
really an issue about how to send a message that there are
unhealthy behaviors that are not useful in society. I certainly
wouldn't want to encourage anyone to use because the
consequences are far greater.
A decriminalization model might be useful with regulation
to provide addicts with need behavioral therapy and, if
necessary, medications. That is part of our challenge.
Mr. Honda. I will look forward to that information.
Ms. Taxman. Okay.

Mr. Mollohan Questions

Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Honda.
I want to give you an opportunity--one of the things I
would like for your testimony to get on the record is to lay a
foundation for this Committee to think about and justify
funding some sort of a program, I have asked you to come----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.

MEDICAL TREATMENT

Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Forward with suggestions. Should
we be thinking about or know about any other medical treatment,
either medications or protocols, that would be useful in this
area?
Ms. Taxman. Well, if you were just limiting yourself to
substance abusers or are you talking about--for a large part
most of, a good half of the offender population has not done
well in school. And their higher incidence of ADHD among that
population. What we know about medications is that some of the
ADHD medications can help people function better through
improved executive function. That way, people can pay attention
on the job longer and learn and do better in treatment
programs. The model should include these issues.
Mr. Mollohan. Have you worked with any of the attention
deficit hyperactive medications in regard to criminology in
general?
Ms. Taxman. I have a daughter who had some learning
disabilities. And it turned out she had ADHD. And when we put
her on some very low dosage of medication, her school
performance, improved, As a mother, we learn that the
medications are useful to improve her performance.
So, you know, I don't want you----
Mr. Mollohan. I was really thinking----
Ms. Taxman [continuing]. To take away that medications are
the cure all, because they are not.
Mr. Mollohan. No.
Ms. Taxman. They are part of a system of helping people to
stabilize to learn to manage their lives. This is important.
Mr. Mollohan. Naltrexone is a very powerful assistance,
because it deals with that craving and the blocking of
satisfaction issues.
Ms. Taxman. I agree it is one tool.
Mr. Mollohan. But I do take that away from here, I can tell
you that. And I don't think it is the end all----
Ms. Taxman. Medications are not a silver bullet.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, it is not a silver bullet. But you have
to control the craving. To me it is the starting point.
Ms. Taxman. I agree.
Mr. Mollohan. Because if you don't control the craving----
Ms. Taxman. Yes but control comes both from both intense
and extrinsic motivation.
Mr. Mollohan. I mean, people are animals. And that they
crave. It is a chemical thing. So if you can't control that,
you can't get to the other things.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. So it may not be the silver bullet. But it is
the thing that must be controlled for you to get to the other
things that are complementary in the treatment process.
Ms. Taxman. Well, I think that is what is encouraging about
the scientific evidence is that we have learned that some
people can control their cravings and moderate their own
behaviors. And another group of people can't. And these
medications are useful far those that need it as you said,
Chairman. The studies show that behavioral therapies help
people learn to manage their disorders in daily life. And that
is part of the behavior change process. It is also learning how
to respond differently to triggers or to situations that used
to result in people using drugs.
Mr. Mollohan. Let me ask you. A person once was describing
to me the incidence of addiction, and was suggesting that there
had been tests run where, for example, a hundred rats would be
put in a run. And at one end would be food and water and at the
other end heroin.
Ms. Taxman. O.K.
Mr. Mollohan. Over time, a fairly defined range percentage
of the rats would consistently become addicted and would begin
consuming the heroin to an extent that they would neglect the
food and water. The brain is telling them that their well-being
was associated with the heroin and not the food and water, and
they would end up, I guess, not dying from the heroin so much
as dying from the deterioration of the body. And that
percentage was around 20 percent. Have you ever heard that?
Ms. Taxman. Yes. But I do not know the percent. The issue
is the receptivity of the pleasure zone.
Mr. Mollohan. It was told to me as an explanation for why
some people become addicted and some people don't become
addicted. And the point was extrapolating those numbers to the
human population from rats. And I don't understand all that.
But I'll let you all do that one. But this person did that,
suggesting approximately 20 percent of the population is
genetically, chemically predisposed or has a greater
susceptibility to being addicted if exposed to an addictive
substance. If the other 80 percent of the rats had a little bit
of the heroin, you know, they liked the food and water, thank
you, just fine and wouldn't go. But this genetically
predisposed group would do that, so that there is in our
population.
The point to all that, as I understood it, was that there
is in our population a percentage that is highly susceptible to
addiction if ever exposed to an addictive substance. If they
never take a drink of beer----
Ms. Taxman. I am not sure.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Great, never smoke a cigarette,
great----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. You won't become addicted even if you have
this predisposition. But if you do, and you have this
predisposition, there is a very high chance of your becoming
addicted. Does that resonate with you?
Ms. Taxman. Some of the scientific data examines the
genetic predisposition, and environmental stimuli. I am not as
familiar with the rates. We do know that people with certain
types of genetic bactines have higher rates of abuse.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Ms. Taxman. That is the question. We have environmental
stimuli that can, you know, increase use.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Ms. Taxman. But, you know, these are the things that we are
trying to really understand in our scientific discovery.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes. It makes sense to me. You were
responding, perhaps to Mr. Kennedy, about treating the whole
family.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. There are in the Second Chance Act authorized
family substance abuse treatment alternatives to incarceration
grants. They weren't funded in 2009. But the authorization does
exist. I just thought I would let you know that.
Ms. Taxman. Okay, thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, we have asked you to come forward with
approaches----
Ms. Taxman. I am happy to do so.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. And we look forward to working
with you on that. I am going to ask Mr. Kennedy if he has any
more questions. But I am sure that there are members of the
Committee who might have follow-up questions that they would
submit to you in writing again.
Ms. Taxman. I would be more than happy to.
Mr. Mollohan. You are not working for an agency.
Ms. Taxman. I work for George Mason University. I am a
researcher, you know.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Ms. Taxman. We are more than happy to always provide you
with any information we can on, you know, the types of programs
and services, you know, whatever the Committee needs.
And I will be happy to put together. I have a list of about
six or seven questions you have requested.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, we may have some follow-up questions.
Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy Questions

Mr. Kennedy. Do you think that there is adequate judicial
continuing education to educate our sentencing judges as to
this as a disease so that they are not making moral judgements
on the individuals that they are seeing as opposed to based
upon fact and law as far as that is concerned? And so what I am
saying is, we have a tough enough time in this country having
doctors and medical professionals treat addiction and substance
abuse and alcoholism as a disease. I just can't imagine that we
have probably gone far enough to get attorneys, prosecutors,
and judges probably up to speed enough as we need them to be to
know that the people they are dealing with are often victims--
--
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. Of a public health epidemic as
much as anything else. And that they need to have some
sensitivity to that. Should we try to employ that into
continuing education requirements or classes or what would your
recommendations be? Could you submit some things for us?

EDUCATING JUDGES

Ms. Taxman. Sure. You know, I don't think we've educated
the cadre of criminal justice professionals, judges,
prosecutors, public defenders, defense attorneys, probation
officers, you know, correctional officers, prisons on these
issues enough.
And, in fact, if you look at the way that sentencing is
done in our country, judges have very little information for
most felony offenses, hardly any for misdemeanor offenses. And,
you know, one of the system improvements that the judiciaries
is really looking at, is trying to do risk and needs assessment
prior to sentencing, which could help with all of these issues
if we got those organizations to do that.
And, you know, there is now new technology even where, you
know, there is--you know, there is technology that people can
do, self assessments. And they actually include some
motivational interviewing. They have had good efficacy in terms
of, you know, these self assessments as compared to an
individual-driven assessment. So there is technology
improvements that could be done to sort of deal with the
bottleneck of the criminal justice system to really enhance our
information.
So, you know, I would be happy to submit. But, you know, I
think it is a broader issue.
Mr. Kennedy. Would you submit that----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. Specifically, because obviously
giving our judges more tools to properly have that evidence
base, so to speak, by which----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. Upon which to base their
decisions on sentencing would be very useful. Thank you.
Ms. Taxman. And for your information, the U.S.
Administrative Office of the Courts is actually developing a
risk needs tool that should be useful in the federal system.
They had hoped to employ at the pretrial stage, too. So, I know
you are interested in improving the federal system. That could
be very useful in the future. They are piloting this summer.
This could be a national model to begin to really rethink how
we do sentencing, and provide sentences.

Mr. Mollohan Questions

Mr. Mollohan. Just a follow-up question on the injectable
approach.
Ms. Taxman. Right.

ANTI-ADDICITON MEDICATION

Mr. Mollohan. There are a variety of anti-addiction
medications available.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. You referenced a number of them. Each of
which may be more or less helpful to an individual depending on
the nature of their addiction. Is the use of extended release
injections something that is likely to be adapted to most or
all of these medications?
Ms. Taxman. In terms of the delivery system?
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Ms. Taxman. I don't know the answer to that. But I can find
out the answer to that to be honest. I know that there are
different mechanisms for a whole range of extended release sort
of medications overall, the value is in improving compliance.
The less frequently a person has to take a medication, the
greater the compliance.
That compliance is an important factor. But I can find out
for you.
Mr. Mollohan. And you said it, and I probably haven't
emphasized as much as I want to or asked you to emphasize as
much as I think it would benefit the record, the compliance
aspect. How does the extended release injection impact
compliance?
Ms. Taxman. In the studies that have been done on
injections like Naltrexone, for example, there is far greater
compliance than other forms of medication. Once-a-month
injection as compared to a daily dosage.
Mr. Mollohan. But Naltrexone could be taken in a daily
dose, right?
Ms. Taxman. Yes, there are versions.
Mr. Mollohan. But----
Ms. Taxman. There are two comparative studies that I am
aware of. I don't remember the percentage. There was a
statistically significant difference between those who had the
injection versus those who are on daily dosage.
Mr. Mollohan. So the point is, if I can summarize it, and
tell me if you agree with this. Whether you are talking about
Naltrexone or some other----
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Medication, the point is that if
it is taken once a day, you have a greater compliance problem
than if you have a dosage that would last for 30 days.
Ms. Taxman. Correct.
Mr. Mollohan. Say an injectionable----
Ms. Taxman. Injection.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Version of it.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. And so it improves compliance?
Ms. Taxman. We are actually doing a survey right now in the
field to look at how criminal justice and addiction treatment
agencies are thinking about using different medications; we
have completed 20 interviews thus far.
The systems are very sensitive to this compliance issue,
because that is the hardest part of human behavior is to get
people to comply. Just from a common sense notion, something
that is once a month is obviously easier. But, people need
behavioral therapies to really help them learn to make those
lifelong changes.

ALCOHOL AND DRUG PROGRAMS IN PRISONS

Mr. Kennedy. Could I ask you about that whole AA and the
prisons?
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. My experience at the home that it is not easy
to get into the--but I just wanted to say that there are a lot
of people that make really good efforts and do a very good
job----
Ms. Taxman. Right.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. Of getting into the ACI. And we
do better than most I think. We have got a very progressive
corrections crowd up there.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. They are very helpful. But I just know they
are probably not the norm. And even while they do their job and
do it well, that even that is not made as easy as I think it
probably should be in terms of getting the self health groups
in there.
What did you make of the answers from the previous panel in
terms of that they have to be screened and so forth? And it is
therefore too difficult to maybe provide them with secure rooms
and all that stuff.
Ms. Taxman. This is the culture of corrections that I was
referencing at the beginning of my testimony. If we really want
an effective correctional system, we are going to have to open
the doors to allow communities to work with the population when
they are in prison to ease their, transition and reintegration
back into the community.
My experience is is that most prisons don't offer enough
self-help groups. And we have a difficult time in our studies
to have research interviewers enter the prisons even though one
of my interviewers has been clean for over 20 years. It is a
constant battle. There is movement in the field to try to open
the door to offer more services.
I think the federal system from what I understand is more
rigid than some state systems. One of the changes for prisons
is to really do much more outreach.
Mr. Kennedy. Your proposals as to what we can do to
encourage the Federal Bureau of Prisons to open up to more
self-help groups and just do it, because--we are not doing
ourselves any good by not allowing groups that are willing to
go in there and help make a difference.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. And these self-help groups are the ones that
are out there in the communities that we have got to get people
tied up to if they are going to go back out there. And so far
the only thing out there that has been demonstrated to be of
any effectiveness whatsoever. And I think that there is a
spirituality to it and to fellowship notions that I think is
going to be critical to the recovery process for anybody who is
in prison.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. And I don't think there is any excuse for us
not to try to provide every opportunity for them to have a----
Ms. Taxman. I agree.
Mr. Kennedy [continuing]. Place at the table in these
prisons under, you know, obviously guided and supervised
monitoring. But I think it could be done.
Ms. Taxman. Yes.
Mr. Kennedy. It has to be made possible to be done. So if
you could help us reemphasize the importance of this, that
would be very helpful.
Ms. Taxman. I will add that to my list, which I am more
than happy to.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, Dr. Taxman, thank you again for
appearing here today.
Ms. Taxman. Okay.
Mr. Mollohan. We appreciate the efforts you went to and the
excellence of your testimony.
Ms. Taxman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Mollohan. It certainly will help us as we move forward.
Thanks so much.
Ms. Taxman. Thank you for the opportunity.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009.

ASSESSMENT OF THE SERIOUS AND VIOLENT OFFENDER REENTRY INITIATIVE

WITNESSES

CHRISTY VISHER, PH.D., PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE AND THE URBAN
INSTITUTE
PAMELA LATTIMORE, PH.D., PRINCIPAL SCIENTIST, RTI INTERNATIONAL

Opening Statement by Chairman Mollohan

Mr. Mollohan. The hearing will come order. Good morning.
We are continuing with this week's focus on prisoner
reentry. And for our first hearing today, we welcome Dr. Pamela
Lattimore, a Principal Scientist in RTI International's Crime
Justice Policy and Behavior Program, and Dr. Christy Visher,
who is a Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the
University of Delaware and a Principal Research Associate with
the Urban Institute.
Dr. Lattimore, I understand, will be summarizing written
testimony on behalf of you both, although both witnesses will
be responding to questions from the Subcommittee.
We have asked you to join us here this morning because you
are conducting what is perhaps the most ambitious assessment to
date of offender reentry from state prisons.
The Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative was a
$100 million grant program involving Departments of Justice,
Education, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and Health and
Human Services.
Sixty-nine grantees representing every state plus the
District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands received three
year funding in 2003 to implement comprehensive reentry
programs combining a full range of reentry supports and
services.
You have been working on the assessment of this program
under a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of
Justice, and I understand that you are getting very close to
completing your work. Although you may not have final peer
reviewed results and analysis to present to us today, I urge
you to give us as much detail as possible on what you are
finding.
We understand that your responses related to the assessment
are preliminary, and I ask that you provide us with updated
information later in the year when the assessment is complete.
In a moment, I will ask you to proceed with your oral
testimony, and your written statements will be made a part of
the record.
And, Dr. Visher, if you want to make an opening statement,
you may do so also, but first I would like to call on our
Ranking Member, Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Welcome to the Committee. I have no opening
statement.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. The witnesses will proceed.

Ms. Lattimore Opening Statement

Ms. Lattimore. Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee,
we are pleased to appear before you today to provide you with
information regarding the evaluation of the Serious and Violent
Offender Reentry Initiative, a National Institute of Justice
funded study that is being conducted by researchers at RTI
International and the Urban Institute.
I am Dr. Pamela Lattimore, a Principal Scientist at RTI
International. Seated next to me is Dr. Christy Visher,
Principal Research Associate at the Urban Institute and
Professor at the University of Delaware. We are co-principal
investigators of the evaluation.
Dr. Visher and I have been studying criminal behavior and
the effectiveness of correctional programs for more than 20
years. These issues have taken on increasing importance over
that time as the number of people under criminal justice system
supervision doubled from 1988 to more than 7.3 million in 2007.
And the number of people in state and federal prisons grew from
about 600,000 in 1988 to nearly 1.6 million in 2007.
These increases have had a growing price tag. In 2006, the
government spent $69 billion on corrections and total criminal
justice and law enforcement costs grew to $215 billion.
For nearly six years, we have been evaluating the Serious
and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative, SVORI. SVORI was, as
you noted, a more than $100 million federal investment that
provided correctional and juvenile justice agencies with
grants. These grants were used to implement prisoner reentry
programs that began in prison and continued following release.
The SVORI programs had four objectives for released
prisoners, improve employment, housing and family and community
involvement, improve help by addressing substance use and
physical and mental health problems, reduce criminality, and
promote systems change through collaboration and management
strategies.
Although the grantees shared these objectives, each grant
crafted a unique program and approach that reflected their
local needs and resources.
The impact of this unprecedented investment is the focus of
the SVORI multi-site evaluation, the most extensive evaluation
ever funded by the National Institute of Justice.
For the evaluation, we conducted three surveys of the SVORI
Program Directors. We also conducted interviews with SVORI
Program participants and comparison subjects from 12 adult
programs and four juvenile programs in 14 states. In total, we
interviewed nearly 2,500 men, women, and boys between July 2004
and April 2007.
During this past year, we have also received administrative
recidivism data that we will use to determine official
reincarceration and rearrest rates.
The evaluation is not yet complete, but we are able to
share with you some of the important conclusions of our work so
far.
The successful integration of individuals exiting prison is
a complex issue that requires a comprehensive approach.
When we looked at our respondents, only about 60 percent of
the adults had completed twelfth grade or had a GED. Less than
two-thirds of the men and only about half of the women had
worked in the six months prior to their incarceration.
Almost all, and we are talking 90 to 95 percent, of the
men, women, and boys, admitted having used illegal drugs. This
number is kind of frightening. Nearly 80 percent of the women
but also 55 percent of the men and 50 percent of the boys had
been in treatment for mental health or substance abuse problems
prior to their incarceration.
The SVORI Program participants also had serious criminal
histories. Eighty percent of the adults had been in prison
before. The men reported an average of thirteen prior arrests,
the women about eleven, and the boys about seven.
Secondly, we found that SVORI funding was significant in
the development and continuation of reentry programming in
these states. Most Program Directors said their agencies were
continuing programs or activities begun with SVORI grant funds
and were also implementing other reentry components. Many
suggested that the SVORI funds were instrumental in starting or
improving their states efforts to develop reentry programming.
Third, SVORI funds increased collaboration among state and
local agencies and organizations. Nearly all of the Directors
of the 16 impact programs reported improved relationships
between their agency and the community supervision agency as a
direct result of the SVORI grant.
Further, most reported increased collaborations with
community and faith-based organizations--again as a direct
result of the SVORI grant. Importantly, most reported these new
and improved collaborations had continued.
Fourth, SVORI funds resulted in an increase in services for
program participants. Overall, participation in SVORI programs
greatly increased the likelihood of receiving services such as
reentry planning, assistance obtaining documents, mentoring,
substance abuse and mental health treatment, and education and
employment services.
While most SVORI participants reported receiving at least
one of six different types of employment, education, or skill
services, only 37 percent, however, of the men and 52 percent
of the women reported receiving employment specific services.
So they received other skill-based services, but things like
resume preparation and so forth was less likely.
But on the other hand, twice as many of the people who were
in SVORI programs as the comparison subjects reported receiving
these types of services. So SVORI greatly increased the
likelihood of participating in services, receiving services,
but the levels were often far less than 100 percent for the
SVORI Program participants.
Fifth, we found that more services were delivered prior to
release than after release. For example, on average, about half
of the men in SVORI programs received substance abuse treatment
while they were in prison, a percentage that dropped to less
than 20 percent in the months following release.
So what was the impact of SVORI on outcomes? As we noted,
our results to date are preliminary, but our preliminary
findings do show that in most cases, SVORI participants had
better outcomes than the comparison subjects.
These positive findings span the outcome areas that we
looked at in the three post-release interview periods.
Sometimes they were small, but most of the time, the
differences were positive.
Finally, we would like to point out that this type of
comprehensive detailed evaluation is highly uncommon for
justice research. Unfortunately, a shortage of funding for
criminal justice research prevents policymakers from having
ready access to independent, objective information to assist
them in making important decisions in this vital and
increasingly expensive policy area.
The National Institute of Justice is the primary source of
funding in this country for criminal behavior and justice
research. NIJ has existed for more than 40 years, but its
budget remains remarkably underfunded.
NIJ's base budget I will note in the fiscal 2009 Omnibus
appropriations bill is $48 million. And these funds signify an
incredibly small commitment to understanding a major policy
area that concerns all of our citizens and, as we noted at the
beginning of our remarks, consumes $215 billion of taxpayer
money annually.
Although we understand there are many priorities competing
for federal dollars, comprehensive evaluations can lead to
better policy and programs, resulting in better use of taxpayer
dollars and improved outcomes. We think the return on
investment will also make us safer.
Thank you for your time, and we would be happy to answer
your questions.
[Written testimony of Pamela K. Lattimore, Ph.D., Principal
Scientist, Crime, Violence and Justice Research Program, RTI
International, Christy A. Visher, Ph.D. Principal Research
Associate, the Urban Institute Professor, University of
Delaware follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Dr. Lattimore.
Dr. Visher, would you like to make a statement?
Ms. Visher. No.

TREATMENT CENTERS PARTICIPATION

Mr. Mollohan. How did you create a consistency among those
treatment centers participating in order to get some
standardized results coming in, or did you?
Ms. Lattimore. Well, that is an interesting question. I
mean, our responsibility was to evaluate the programs that were
developed and implemented by others.
We actually were not even given our initial planning grant
until after the program grants had been awarded. So by the
time, you know, Urban Institute and RTI were selected to do the
evaluation, all the program development work was long underway.
And so we had nothing to do with the programs themselves
other than to go in after the fact and document what they had
done and then try to make a determination of the impact of what
they had chosen to do.
Mr. Mollohan. Tell us a little bit more then about the
programs that participated in your study.
Ms. Lattimore. Actually, I think the SVORI funding, the
legislation that created SVORI, is very interesting and
somewhat unique compared to other justice programs--because it
is really allowing local agencies to make a determination of
which populations they felt were most important and critical to
provide services to and how they would draw not only upon the
grant funds but also the other available resources in their
communities and from other agencies to structure a program that
would be responsive, they thought, to the needs of those
populations.
Now, from an evaluator standpoint, that complicates things
dramatically because you have got everyone doing something
different.
And with SVORI in particular, the idea, and I think again a
good one and the literature supports, is that you would try to
identify what the needs of individual people within the
program--what their needs were--and then you would tailor, you
know, among the array of services you have available. You would
actually then tailor for the individual.
So you have these programs that all had different component
parts and then within each program, different individuals could
be receiving different kinds of services.
So the idea behind that was to allow needs to be identified
and those needs to be met with services that were appropriate
to those needs within the available resources and
considerations of the local agencies.
Mr. Mollohan. So give us a couple of typical examples of
organizations that participated in the program. Are they
nonprofits? Were they state supported institutions? Were they
state owned and operated institutions? What were the range of
organizations that participated in the study?
Ms. Visher. Well, the RFA requested that the Department of
Corrections or the funding agency coordinate with community
agencies. That was a condition of the award.
Mr. Mollohan. A community agency is a government entity.
Ms. Visher. Not necessarily, no.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Ms. Visher. A community agency could be a nonprofit
organization. It could be a social service organization. It
could have been a faith-based agency.
But they had to develop collaborations with community
agencies. And this was unusual, but it worked very well and it
actually forged collaborations that had not existed in the
past.
And this was something that was also being proposed by
``The Second Chance Act'' as well, which we think is a major
step forward, so that Departments of Corrections have to work
with agencies that are outside the fence to develop plans for
people to come back into the community. And that worked fairly
well.
Mr. Mollohan. So a wide range of agencies, organizations,
nonprofits----
Ms. Visher. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Participated in the study?
Ms. Lattimore. Right, along with other state agencies.
Mr. Mollohan. To get comparative information out of such a
diverse group of organizations, I would imagine, would be
difficult. Maybe not. How did you do it?
Ms. Visher. Well, we had several strategies. One was that
we did a survey, three surveys actually, of all the Program
Directors, of all 89 Program Directors all across the United
States.
This money went to all 50 states and some of the states
developed multiple programs. We talked with all the Program
Directors at least three times to get information about how
they were running the program, who they were collaborating
with, and exactly the kinds of services that were being
delivered.
And then the other part of the evaluation was, of course,
to pick a set of sites. We picked 14 states that were
implementing 16 programs to identify individuals, participants
in the program as well as a set of comparison individuals.
We did 2,500 interviews in prison with these individuals
and then we followed them for 15 months after they were
released and got very detailed information about exactly what
kinds of services they received in prison, what their needs
were, and then after they were released, what kinds of services
they were receiving, what their needs were, how they were doing
in the job market, what their mental health status was, what
their substance abuse level was.
We used oral swab drug tests. In addition to self-reported,
we used an oral swab test to get some valid information about
their actual drug use. And we did this through a 15-month
period after their release.
Mr. Mollohan. So what you have at the end of this is a
fairly comprehensive review and information about what programs
are out there and some outcome information about them. So what
you are able to do here is compare programs that are out there
and perhaps out of that fashion best practices? Is that the----
Ms. Lattimore. It is actually interesting. I mean, our
mandate for our grant, our evaluation grant, our mandate was to
determine whether SVORI works. That leaves two questions.
One is what is SVORI and that is when we had to go out and
determine that, you know, everybody was doing something
different and how do we make a determination of what services
and programs really, you know, constituted these different
SVORI programs.
And then the other is, what do we mean by what works when
you have programs that are supposed to affect employment
outcomes, housing outcomes, substance abuse outcomes, mental
health and other health status outcomes, and as well as
criminal behavior outcomes.
And so you end up with this array of different outcomes to
which you are trying to address the what works question. And to
affect those different areas, of course, people were providing
services. We identified, really, 28 pre-release and 30 post-
release types of services that were being provided or made
available to individuals and made an assessment about whether
people were actually getting those services.
I mean, I have described it as a fruit basket, you know.
And so you are trying to find out which fruit--you know, each
program developed their own different fruit basket and then now
it was our job to identify what was in the fruit basket and
then figure out whether or not that fruit was actually helping
people or not.
And, so, it has been a wonderful opportunity, I think, to
gather a lot more data than, generally, people are able to do
in this kind of evaluation about different kinds of approaches
and to make a determination.
So our initial question has been, did SVORI work? Which is
just to, basically, say, okay, we are not going to pay any
attention to what is in the fruit basket. We are just going to
see if fruit baskets work.
And then the next step and really what needs to be done
next is to pay a lot more attention to the different kinds of
things that are in there, the different kinds of services and
programs that were being made specifically available in these
different programs and find out how those meet the needs of
different recipients and how effective they are.
So the first question was basically if you give a state
agency some broad guidelines, some money, tell them to improve
services for an offender population that was going to carry
through, you know, working with your community partners, carry
through post release, will, so question number one, will you
increase the level of services that are being provided to
people?
And I think the definitive answer to that is yes.
The second question then is if you do that, increase
services to, of whatever nature, increase services to
individuals that are, you know, in these circumstances, will
you see better outcomes?
And the answer to that is if you increase services a
little, what--services increased a lot, but it is going from 20
percent of people getting something to 40 percent of people
getting something. And so if you do that, then, yes, you start
to see positive outcomes. So----
Mr. Mollohan. Well, we will get into that.
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome. Every time, this is not for the record, but every
time I think of the University of Delaware, I think of the
tolls on Route 95 that the State of Delaware is levying on us.
Ms. Visher. Well, actually, there is a commuter program. I
was involved in it. There is a commuter program, so actually my
toll going into Delaware is only 80 cents each way.
Mr. Wolf. Can you tell me how? I have family up there. I go
up there. Actually, my kids gave me a map of how I can avoid
the tolls. I have never taken it. But, anyway, that is not for
the record.
Mr. Mollohan. You probably use about three gallons extra.

PRISON PROGRAMS

Mr. Wolf. No, it is not. Actually, I can give you the copy.
I will give you the exit. You get right off.
But I was involved in prison programs before I got elected
to Congress. I was involved in a program called Man To Man
where we would go down to Lorette Reformatory which was a pit.
And I got very discouraged. I had three different prisoners
that I agreed to counsel. I visited. The commitment was on a
monthly basis and we would help them find jobs.
And after the third one, the first two were rearrested
again and the third one, it just seemed like--I spoke to a
young prisoner who got out about a month and a half ago and it
did not seem like a lot had changed. He was in federal prison.
He was in a federal prison, one of the better run federal
prisons that I understand is the case.
And I would just say to the Chairman maybe there is a day
that we ought to go up and have a day public hearing in a
prison or privately just to listen to the prisoners off the
record without the wardens, without anybody there to really
find out what works and does not work and their perspective.
And I wanted to ask you, one, what do you think about the--
we are going to go through this battle again on the whole issue
of work in prisons. I am going to offer an amendment to require
or allow an increase in work, a demonstration project whereby
they will make products that are no longer made in the United
States.
How important do you think of somebody getting out of
prison is the fact that they have had work, real work, I do not
mean picking up butts on a policing of the grounds, but real
work is with regard to once they are released quickly? I do not
have a lot of time, so if I can get some sense. How important
do you both think that is?
Ms. Visher. Well, the research does not suggest that work
in prison necessarily improves employment on the outside. I
think it depends on, as you said, the type of work. And that
has not been very well documented in the research.
Mr. Wolf. But I am talking about real work. I am not
talking about working in the laundry. I am talking about----
Ms. Visher. If they are developing skills that they can use
and that they have, then that to me is very similar to job
training. And those kinds of programs can be very helpful in
getting jobs on the outside.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. Do you agree?
Ms. Lattimore. Right. I agree with that. I agree with that.
Mr. Wolf. Secondly, the programs that I have been involved
in, and I have worked a little bit with prison fellowship, they
will be a prison fellowship person today. I have great
admiration for Chuck Colson. I think he understands from both
sides of the process.
How important is it for a faith-based situation, because I
know many of the local groups, ACLU, always rant and rave
against faith-based groups? Barry Lynn makes it a career
opposing that. How important do you believe it is for--I
believe it is very important.
And from the prisoners that I have spoken to and I spoke to
a whole group last week, they believe it made the difference in
their time. Some were from Chicago. Some were from the State of
Virginia.
How important do you think, whatever the faith may be, the
faith aspect in the prisons?
Ms. Lattimore. And, Christy, you may be aware of something
that I am not aware of. There is no literature that I am aware
of.
There have been no, you know, solid studies that have been
done that demonstrate a relationship of, you know,
participation in faith-based programs in and of itself because
what you have to worry about are the people that select to go.
It is a selection effect, so that the people that choose to
participate in the faith-based programs while they are in
prison are the people that would have been most likely not to
have gotten in trouble later anyway.
And so without controlled experiments, it is sort of
difficult to make a determination. And to my knowledge, there
have not been any.
Do you know of anything?
Ms. Visher. Well, the Urban Institute actually has looked
at faith-based prisons in Florida. My colleague there, Nancy
Vigne, took a close look at faith-based prisons which are a
little bit different than providing faith services in prisons.
And these are prisons focused pretty much on--sort of organized
around faith principles.
And she has not done a long-term evaluation about outcomes,
but apparently difficult behavior, disruptive behavior is
controlled in those settings much more so than in other
prisons. The inmates do find a sense of, I would say, peace
while they are in prison when they are participating in those
programs.
But what happens is that there is not any continuity with
that kind of program on the outside.
Mr. Wolf. Right. Once they leave, no. I----
Ms. Lattimore. Once they leave, right.
Ms. Visher. Once they leave, then it is gone because they
are not making connections. These faith-based organizations are
not making connections with community churches in these
neighborhoods where individuals are going back to so that they
can continue that kind of spiritual assistance or whatever kind
of assistance they may have been receiving.

FAITH-BASED PROGRAMS

Mr. Wolf. Well, that is a very good point. I think the
initial purpose of the faith based was that the churches, the
synagogues, the mosques would then come around the person once
they left the prison so there was a continuity.
If I could get her name----
Ms. Visher. Sure.
Mr. Wolf [continuing]. We can chat with her.
Ms. Visher. They have found that there is a dramatic drop-
off in individuals' connections with faith-based institutions
once they leave prison.
Mr. Wolf. Yeah. Well, I could see that, particularly if the
churches or synagogues do not come alongside.
Thirdly, is there, and the Chairman used this word, is
there a best practices? Is there a list of things that we know,
boy, that works?
I mean, we have done that in Topeka. We have done it in
Santa Fe. We have done it in Timbuktu. This is it. If we are
going to build a new prison, if we are going to have a prison,
these are the seven things that we know. Is there a best
practices?
Ms. Lattimore. Go ahead, Christy.

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE

Ms. Visher. The National Academy of Science has released a
report last year that talked about the role of supervision and
reentry into the community. And what that report concluded was
that we are becoming clearer on this question about what
actually works.
Cognitive behavioral therapy programs, which used to be
unusual in prisons, are becoming much more common. And these
are kinds of programs that try to change criminal thinking.
And if you talk to prisoners and people on the outside and
the people that have gone through the change and actually did
quite well, what they tell me is ``the dude has got to change
his attitude.'' And that is a really important component.
Mr. Wolf. Well, then shouldn't we, though, have a best
practices list? Should not there be a study that just says we
have looked all over federal prisons and state prisons, we have
looked at what they are doing in Scandinavia and Austria and
Australia, and these are the best practices, right, left,
center, middle, what? These things which may go against what we
believe hope to be, but these are the things that honestly
ethically, morally, decently, we know work? I mean, shouldn't
we have that?
Ms. Visher. Partly it depends on what my colleague said
earlier, is that you need to tailor what they receive to their
needs.
Mr. Wolf. Right. But, I do not think things have improved
personally. I mean, you may be on--I do not know. We have not
actually gotten to whether you agree or disagree with me. That
is my last question. But I do not think they have improved. And
I read all the articles on this issue. I have been in a lot of
prisons. I have talked to prisoners who just got out. I do not
think they have improved.
I mentioned the other day to Mr. Lappin, one prisoner I
spoke to got out. They released him at seven o'clock at night
on a Saturday night in a big city. And, you know, big city,
seven o'clock. So I do not think things are getting better.
And, Mr. Chairman, I think sometimes if you want to build
something without going to the basics, you can make a mistake.
It seems someone has to put together, and you used the word,
the best practices of what really does work. That does not mean
it works in every case, but we know here and there and all.
Would you agree that that would make sense to have a--and
we are dealing with human beings. We are all different,
different backgrounds. But would that make sense?
Ms. Visher. Absolutely. And I think science is moving in
that direction.
Mr. Wolf. William Wilberforce started prison reform in
Great Britain. I mean, we are working toward it. When do we
reach the end? I mean, lives are being destroyed. They are
coming out. And so to say that we are working toward it, do we
hit it in 2025?
I mean, we have spent so much money and we are dealing with
live individuals who are, you know, made in the image of God.
They have got dignity and everything else. So, I mean, I think
we have got to do something fast, but I think we need to know
what really does work.
Let me ask you this question. What are the most successful,
what is the most successful prison system in the United States,
state system, and what is the most successful one around the
world?
Ms. Lattimore. I have no idea. Just to respond briefly to
what you were talking just before is I think that we have to
keep in mind what I completed our oral or in our written
summary with is that to know what works and to develop, given
that we have, you know, I do not even know what, thousands of
prisons and jails, thousands of prisons and jails in this
country, and, you know, 1.6 million people in our prisons and
people being treated different ways, the amount of money that
has been spent to try to determine and ascertain, to be able to
produce what you are asking for, which is what works and to be
able to say what works for whom, when you are spending maybe a
million dollars a year on research, maybe, you know, that is
not a lot of money to examine all of these questions.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I mean, we are spending so much. I mean, it
seems to me----

FUNDS GOING TO PRISON

Ms. Lattimore. We are spending money on the prisons, mean,
running the prisons and the jails and so forth, but money is
not being spent on the research that would answer the questions
of what works.
Mr. Wolf. Well, but I think, you know, with all due
deference, I mean, the Congress have been in session since
1789. I mean, you know, maybe we should, but not to say, you
know, prisons are not a new system. Maybe we should do some
more on that.
But, you know, I think we need a best practices list and
someone has to say what are the most successful programs and
what are the most successful in federal prisons, in state
prisons, and in local prisons and around the world.
Now, maybe we can ask an independent group who are not of
the right, not of the left, but will just deal with that.
The other two issues I had, the staff just pointed out a
lot of the money on this is coming out of Labor HHS and not out
of here.
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Mr. Wolf. So what is the role of meshing them together
and----
Ms. Visher. Well, the SVORI initiative was a multi-funded
initiative and a lot of the money did come out of Department of
Labor which meant that the programs, many of them, most of them
had an employment focus. Because the states were getting money
from Department of Labor, they were told that they needed to
focus on employment services.
And so we find actually in our analysis that there are
positive outcomes for the SVORI participants in terms of
employment. They are currently supporting themselves with a job
at higher levels than our comparison subjects who did not go
through the program. They are getting jobs with benefits,
health benefits and vacation benefits at higher rates than
those who did not go through the program.
So these special programs that were focused on employment
seem to be paying off. Similar dollars were not necessarily
coming from SAMHSA, so substance abuse, for example, was a
lower priority than some of these programs. So we can only
ascertain that if you put more money into substance abuse
treatment services, then perhaps you would have seen greater
impacts on substance use. But we did see, quite strong actually
impacts on employment outcomes.

PRISON RAPE BILL

Mr. Wolf. Last two questions. I was the author of the
Prison Rape bill. What do you think the situation is, if you
have any knowledge, of prison rape in particularly state and
local prisons? I mean, it was a very, very big problem, but it
was a problem nobody wanted to talk about. Do you have any
indications of whether it is up or down or moving, whatever is
happening?
Ms. Lattimore. RTI International is actually doing the data
collection for PREA and in conjunction with a cooperative
agreement from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Mr. Wolf. What are you finding?
Ms. Lattimore. It is someone else's project. I am just
aware of it, so I am not actually working on that project. But
I do know that they published the results from the first year
results and they are in the process of collecting the second
year's data.
And you obviously cannot make a determination if things are
going up or going down with like one--you know, right now they
have only had one data point. And they found, you know, modest
levels of abuse, but I think they found high variability in
terms of institutions. The rates were much higher in some
institutions than others and the type of interactions, staff,
prisoner or prisoner on prisoner, that kind of thing varied
somewhat from institution to institution. I would be happy to
send you the report.
Mr. Wolf. We can get the report.
Ms. Lattimore. Okay.

RECIDIVISM

Mr. Wolf. The last question I have is, with regard to
recidivism, is it compared to, let us say, 1940, is it going
up, is it going down, or is it level?
Ms. Visher. It is probably level. We do not have the
results from the recidivism analysis for this project. We have
been trying to compile all the official records from all the
different states that we are studying and we are not there yet.
But overall, aside from the impact from the SVORI Program,
we have seen in this country that the recidivism rate has
remained surprisingly stable for well over 20 years. But these
kinds of programs that SVORI initiated with the positive
outcomes we are seeing on other dimensions, on substance use,
on mental health and employment, we think that greater
implementation is needed.
And part of the problem with SVORI is that I call it
partial implementation. They did not get all the services they
could have for a variety of reasons. And the services were
delivered more often in the prison than outside the prison. And
we know that that period after release is a very critical
period and if you do not get services after release, then
whatever you have done in prison may not even be very helpful.
So if we can solve these kinds of problems, which states
are moving in that direction, they have all told us that SVORI
money has allowed them to continue developing efforts in these
areas and that their programs are getting stronger, and we hope
that ``The Second Chance Act'' will build on these factors that
SVORI helped them put in place, that we will then begin to see
the recidivism rate go down.
I am sure as you know ``The Second Chance Act'' has as a
goal a reduction of recidivism of 50 percent in five years.
That is very, very ambitious, but some states----
Mr. Wolf. Do you think they will reach that goal? Just yes
or no.
Ms. Visher. I think it is incredibly ambitious.
Mr. Wolf. Okay.
Ms. Lattimore. I agree with that, yeah.
Ms. Visher. I think it depends on how they target the
program and how they focus it. Perhaps some states that are
already doing a lot. For example, we found that Iowa is quite
progressive.
Ms. Lattimore. Has been quite progressive for decades.
Ms. Visher. For a long time. They may be able to reach----
Ms. Lattimore. And they had what we are talking about,
implementation. Actually, the people in SVORI programs come--it
came closer to there being sort of a hundred percent provision
of services for the participants in Iowa than we saw in any of
our states.
And I think you are going to hear from someone from
Michigan tomorrow. In Michigan, you were talking about
innovative, I mean, they have taken a very innovative and
creative approach to tackling prisoner reentry from a
statewide, long-term, you know, approach. And so I think you
will find that what they have to say, Dennis has to say
tomorrow quite interesting.
And Washington State is also another state that has passed
legislation that has established basically performance
standards and a performance measurement system for a new effort
and focus on prisoner reentry, reducing recidivism in
Washington. And I think there are going to be some very
interesting things to come in the years to come from Washington
State.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you.
If you could just submit for the record, I would like to
see a list of the 50 states of how well you think they are
geared and doing on this issue. If you do that, I would
appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Bonner.
Mr. Bonner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ladies, thank you all for coming.
I am the newest member of the Subcommittee and I am
learning a lot about how little I really know about our
judicial system, correctional system.
Congressman Wolf and the Chairman have forgotten more about
this issue than I probably will ever know. They certainly bring
a lot of experience to this.
But I would like to ask two questions and forgive me. You
may have covered it in your opening remarks. I have not found
it yet in going through it because I was a few minutes late.
How were the participants chosen to participate in SVORI?

HOW PARTICIPANTS ARE CHOSEN

Ms. Lattimore. To participate in the programs, it varied
from state to state, but in virtually all the states, they
selected a targeted population and that varied dramatically.
We talked a little bit about sort of the fact that the
programs were all very different. So, for example, the program
in Texas was actually focused on people who were in
administrative segregation in maximum security prisons to try
to, you know, to get individuals in that circumstance ready for
release.
Very different from Connecticut. They were focused on a co-
occurring population, people who had both mental illness and
substance abuse problems, and trying to focus on those
individuals.
In Virginia, the Virginia program was an employment focused
program that was run out of sort of using the Fairfax County
Jail as a halfway house. And, again, a very interesting kind of
program.
And then other programs like South Carolina's was
basically, you know, anybody who was interested in
participating, you know, and was going to be in prison for long
enough could come and participate in these programs. And they
had limits on the numbers, so it varied. But each state set
their own criteria for, you know, identifying who was the
targeted population.
Mr. Bonner. And there were 14 states?
Ms. Lattimore. In our impact study. There were actually a
total of 89 programs. We selected 14 of the 89 to study the
outcomes.
Mr. Bonner. From a parochial standpoint, was Alabama one of
them by chance?
Ms. Lattimore. No.
Ms. Visher. We had to select programs that we felt would
have sufficient numbers of people that we would be able to
include in our overall study. Some of these programs were
fairly small.
For example, they said they would only be able to capture
100 or 150 people in the program because perhaps they were
targeting it to a specific prison or perhaps they were
targeting it to a specific jurisdiction in their state. So the
programs were limited in that respect.
So we tried to pick programs where we would have enough
people in them that we could develop a large enough sample to
do the kinds of analysis we needed to do. I do not remember the
issues surrounding Alabama.
Ms. Lattimore. We actually have some information though.
They were not included in the impact study, but we actually
have information on all of the programs in terms of their
characteristics and who they were serving and what they
intended to do. And so we do have information here on what
Alabama was doing, but it was not included as one of our
outcomes.
Mr. Bonner. I would like to see that from just personal
interest.
Congressman Wolf asked one of the questions I was going to
ask and that is, what states have model programs or what
countries are doing a better job than we are. You indicated
that Michigan and Washington State are two that come to mind.
As a child growing up with a father who was a judge,
juvenile judge, among other hats, I will never forget. We had
an incident happen. And I grew up in a small town of 1,200
people. We had an incident happen in the late 1960s during a
very tense time in the south where the cemetery was vandalized.
And several of the graves were destroyed. And a young man was
wrongly accused of committing that crime.
The people in the town wanted to find a rope and a tree. I
mean, there was anger because that someone would be so
insensitive to go into the cemetery and to vandalize those
graves.
My father met with the young man. He believed that he was
wrongly accused and wanted to make certain--the Sheriff's
Department had a sheriff and two deputies, so it was very
small, almost like Mayberry. But he believed that the wrong man
had been jailed.
Long story short, they ended up finding the three young men
who did do the crime. The anger then turned to them. And they
were from very prominent families in the community.
My father believed that it was very important for things to
be put in perspective. And even though he died when I was a
young man, I was 13, I will never forget the anguish that he
went through to make sure that those boys did not end up having
their lives destroyed because they made a really bad decision.
And so instead of taking them out of school and putting
them on a path to prison, he made them go--the cemetery had a
wrought iron fence around it and he made them go in the dead of
summer in south Alabama and scrape the paint off of the fence
and repaint it.
And one of the young men now is a doctor. And I have seen
him in recent years and he said had your father not shown some
compassion with me when I made a terrible mistake as a 16-year-
old, I would have never been able to go to med school.
So there has got to be a better way, and I think
Congressman Wolf raised a good question. If there are other
countries, Germany, Japan, or other countries or other states
where we can all look to as models because the statistics are
just frightening that two-thirds of all the prisoners who are
released are going to go back and commit another crime.
Your own testimony that 95 percent of the men and women and
nearly 90 percent of the boys admitted to having used illegal
drugs, 80 percent of the women and 50 percent of the boys, 55
percent of the men had been treated for either a mental health
or substance abuse problem prior to incarceration, it seems to
me that we have just got to find a better way.
And, again, going back to childhood, I used to watch
candidates running for District Attorney or Attorney General.
They always advertised that they were the toughest on crime.
They slammed the jail door shut and they were going to put them
behind jail for the rest of their lives.
And, yet, just two years ago, this Congress and the
American people were focused on illegal immigrants crossing the
borders. It is not something we talked about during the
presidential campaign. And, yet, we have an opportunity for
people who are qualified and who will be out of prison one day
to train them so that they can go out and participate in the
American Dream. And we are somehow missing the point.
So my question. I apologize for rambling. Congressman
Kennedy yesterday asked of the panel what type of effort was
being done to bring outside groups, Alcoholics Anonymous or
Narcotics Anonymous or other groups into the prisons. And the
panel at that time said that they were not aware that there was
a great effort to bring people from outside in.
In any of your research, do you have any data that shows
the impact, positive or negative, of bringing outside groups in
to help who have experience in a community and encouraging them
to come into the community of prisoners to try to help make a
difference so when they do leave, even if they came in with a
drug addiction or a drug exposure, they have a better chance of
not repeating that mistake?

OUTSIDE GROUPS IMPACT

Ms. Lattimore. Actually, it is interesting that you ask
that. It is one of the program characteristics that we focused
on collecting data on when we were doing our survey of all 89
programs, not just our impact sites. This sort of reaching out
versus reaching in component, we have looked at, periodically
as something that we thought was important.
We have had so much to focus on, we really have not focused
on that. And I would be happy to get you some information
related to sort of how many of the programs were actually doing
that. It clearly is something that we would be interested in
looking at what the impact of that was because I think we were
asking about it for exactly the reason that you are raising,
that we think that it probably is important.
Mr. Bonner. I would love to get it if that is possible.
I have got a City Councilman in closing, Mr. Chairman, a
City Councilman, older gentleman in one of the communities in
my district. And we have a state prison in my district. And he
has asked me for years to come up on a Sunday and go be part of
a mission program that the men of his church go visit with the
prisoners. And I am more determined than ever now that I am
going to do that because I think I will have my eyes opened.
So thank you very much.
Ms. Lattimore. Right just to add, AA and NA is actually, to
my knowledge, very, very common and has a very big presence in
most prison systems.
Mr. Bonner. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Bonner.
SVORI, you targeted serious and violent offenders in your
study, correct?

SERIOUS AND VIOLENT OFFENDERS

Ms. Visher. The states define serious and violent
offenders. But as we noted in our opening remarks, by all
accounts from the statistics we received, these were serious
and violent offenders. They had been in the system for a long
time and they had previous convictions, lots of arrests.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you think focusing resources on this
segment of the offender population is a good investment of
resources?
Ms. Lattimore. Yes. There is some emerging evidence that
suggests that you actually stand the biggest chance of making
the biggest difference with the people who have the biggest
problems, right?
And that also was another way in which SVORI was different
from many of the other federal initiatives on prisoners because
it did target this riskier, you know, serious and violent
population as opposed to the first-time, nonviolent drug
offender, for example, that has been the target of a lot
monies.
And there is some emerging evidence to suggest that
focusing on the people that have the highest needs and being
able to provide real services to them may be where you may get
the biggest bang for your buck.

WHAT WORKS

Mr. Mollohan. Were you just reviewing and surveying or are
you going to be making judgments about what are the best
reentry programs and the most successful strategies of
preventing recidivism?
Ms. Visher. Well, the next step in our analysis is to
determine what works for whom and for how long. And that is
obviously a critical question. And we know because the states
do things so differently and states had different levels of
service provision that we expect to see state differences.
So we want to understand those states that were providing
more services that maybe had the better outcomes, what were
they doing. And that is the next step in our analysis and we
actually are hoping that they do just as well, will help us
extend our analysis a little bit because that was not our
primary question that was asked of us to answer with our
initial award. But we clearly feel that is a critical question
and we have the data to be able to answer that question.
Mr. Mollohan. Will you get to answering that question when
you publish your results or are we looking at another award to
get to that?
Ms. Lattimore. This will be the next phase of research. And
really Christy was following on my remarks earlier that the
question that we had for us then was just this black box
question, you know, does SVORI work.
And I think we are well on our way to getting that answered
and that is what this initial set of volumes for our final
report for this initial award is going to cover. But we will
have to find additional monies to dig deeper into the data that
we have.

NEXT PHASE OF RESEARCH

Mr. Mollohan. Okay and the next phase, define that for the
Committee. What do you think, precisely, the next phase is and
what conclusions can be achieved in the next phase?
Ms. Lattimore. What we envision, what we would like to be
able to do is to begin to dissect the data in a way--well, we
have the data, but be able to start analyzing the data with
respect to looking at the different kinds of services that were
provided by specific programs as well as what individuals got,
look at that.
We think that it would be important to add at least another
year of administrative data. This would be Departments of
Correction reincarceration data as well as another year of
arrest data so that we could look at least three years
following release from prison to see what the long-term impacts
are.
Then also it would be extraordinarily invaluable to be able
to go out and interview at 36 months following release, say, or
46 months following release the same cohort of individuals.
There have been so few opportunities in criminal justice
research to follow a panel for multiple years. And we think we
have got a key opportunity here to add to our knowledge by
being able to do that.
Mr. Mollohan. You have got a----
Ms. Lattimore. We have got a----
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Database.
Ms. Lattimore. We have got a database that has got
basically 30 days prior to release, three months following
release, nine months following release, and fifteen months
following release. So we would like to add a fourth follow-up
data point to that to be able to look long term.
Mr. Mollohan. Another grant?
Ms. Lattimore. Yes, to be able to look long term to say,
okay, now because there is so--well, and actually if you look
at ``The Second Chance Act'' solicitation that just came out,
it says that programs should be able to say what happens 12
months following release. But clearly what everyone is really
interested in the long term is what is the long-term impact of
these programs.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. How many individuals would you be
following?
Ms. Lattimore. We had of the 12 adults sites, the
distribution looks like it seems any distribution you would
ever see. If we take just six, the top six of those in terms of
size, it allows us to pick up 75 percent of the people who were
in our original sample. So we would really only need to go into
six or seven states in order to get----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Ms. Lattimore [continuing]. 75 percent. So that would be
twelve to fourteen hundred people.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. But you would be narrowing the programs
you are looking at.
Ms. Lattimore. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. At programs that vary----
Ms. Lattimore. That is right.
Mr. Mollohan. The elements.
Ms. Lattimore. That is right.
Mr. Mollohan. What is delivered and how it is delivered is
different in those programs.
Ms. Lattimore. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. So you would be----
Ms. Lattimore. Losing something.
Mr. Mollohan. You would be losing.
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Ms. Visher. But there is variation in those six or seven
programs.
Mr. Mollohan. Sufficient variation?
Ms. Visher. Yes, there is a wide variety.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you think that those six or seven or
however many programs you would be following are representative
of the best practices that you would be looking at if you
looked, for example, at the whole population?
Ms. Lattimore. Yes. I think in the ideal, obviously it
would be good to be able to go back to all, you know, the 16
programs, we have got two sub-populations that are large. We
have got our boys and our women.
You noticed I did not mention girls and the reason for that
is we could not find enough girls when we started to be able to
include them.
But we have got 350 boys, 350 women that I think provides
us a huge opportunity to find out what the long-term needs are.
So to be able to look at all of these 16 programs again would
be really great, but----
Mr. Mollohan. This follow-up study that you are talking
about, is it multi-agency? Would you envision multiple federal
government agencies supporting it and is it another $100
million study?
Ms. Lattimore. Well----
Ms. Visher. No, no, no. Our study was not 100 million. A
hundred million was given to the states.
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Ms. Visher. Our study was 12 million.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. All right.
Ms. Lattimore. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, we are getting down to a number.
Ms. Lattimore. Yes, I know, our study was 12 million.
Mr. Mollohan. Not that that is a small amount of money.
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. So.
Ms. Visher. We were trying to propose something that would
be on the order of perhaps a million dollars and that would
probably not include the follow-up of the boys and the women
because going out and finding these individuals again, we are
doing face-to-face interview, that is a very expensive
proposition.
The reason why we were able to collect so much data that we
had was because this was a very generously funded project from
the National Institute of Justice. As I understand it, the
National Institute of Justice received funds from other
agencies to help them support that project. I do not know if
that is possible now.
Mr. Mollohan. Which project?
Ms. Lattimore. The evaluation.
Ms. Visher. The evaluation.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. And that is the $12 million effort?
Ms. Visher. I do not know if that is possible now. The
connections between the Department of Labor and Department of
Justice may be different than they were when our project was
funded five years ago.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. And so you are talking about a million
dollars. You are talking about a multi-year follow-up, it
sounded like, and different reporting periods, I suppose, as
you went along. But I think you mentioned even three, four,
five, or six years.
Ms. Lattimore. The data that we have to take us through, in
terms of interviews, through 15 months post release. And the
administrative data that we have collected takes us through 24
months or so, two to three years following release. And so the
goal of this new study would be to be able to extend that
horizon out further and that is what we were thinking----

BUDGET

Mr. Mollohan. On an annual basis, how much do you think
that would cost to follow-up?
Ms. Lattimore. I mean, we----
Mr. Mollohan. Just a range.
Ms. Lattimore. I think that if we wanted to follow,
continue to follow the sample that we have, the individuals
that we have, depending on--for one to two million dollars.
Mr. Mollohan. One to two million over a five year period?
Ms. Lattimore. Right, I mean, one to two million a year
over a five year period, I mean, we could continue to follow
them for a long time. I mean, like I say, the six sites, 75
percent, we could, you know, work with that.

FOLLOW UP INTERVIEWS

Mr. Mollohan. I understand. And tell the Committee how
important you think it would be to do that and what would be
achieved, just briefly. How important do you think that would
be to do the follow-up and what would be achieved?
Ms. Lattimore. To be able to do the follow-up interviews,
we really need an understanding of what happens to these
individuals as they go through. There are some very interesting
sort of things that we do not understand at all. And the three,
nine, and fifteen month data that look just strange, it is like
they are doing better at three months and fifteen months than
they are doing at nine months. And, of course, we can only
observe that because we had three, nine, and fifteen months.
So now what are we going to learn if we were able to talk
to somebody after they have been out for 36 months or when they
are back in after, you know, having been out for a while and
why things went wrong and so forth. So I think just a better
understanding of the processes and pitfalls.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. But my question was, how important do
you think it would be to do that? How valuable would it be to
have insights into the problems that we are all talking about
here today?
Ms. Visher. I think the positive impacts we are seeing
already in 15 months--we need to know whether those positive
impacts are being sustained. We can only know that by getting
more information from them.
Mr. Mollohan. Are these people going to be in programs for
three, four, five, and six years or are you just going to be
following up with people who are outside of a program?
Ms. Visher. We are following up people that have been
through this program. They may have gone back in. We do not
know.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Ms. Visher. We would anticipate from the data we have seen
that the people who have been through the program will continue
to do better.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Ms. Visher. But we do not know that until we talk to them.
Ms. Lattimore. I think that, you know, it will address some
of Congressman Wolf's--help us to be able to better understand
some of Congressman Wolf's concern about, you know, what is
working and what do we need to do to help people and has
anything really changed. I mean, I think it is the kind of
thing or kind of research that begins to allow us to get some
insight into those issues.

REPORTS

Mr. Mollohan. I know you are going to have a report with
preliminary information later on this year, I think you are
going to be----
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Producing a report, but for
those of us who are a little impatient, give us an idea of how
important the following are just generally. And then when I get
finished with this, I want to ask you what other things we
should be thinking about.
Education, how important is education in this?
Ms. Visher. It is the number one need that the inmates
expressed to us. We had asked them about their needs and it was
number one.
Mr. Mollohan. And what kind? Education goes from training
to four years in college to postgraduate degrees.
Ms. Visher. Well, 40 percent did not have a high school
education, so we can start there. But they want other kinds of
training.
Mr. Mollohan. That makes such huge sense.
Ms. Visher. You cannot get a job right now if you do not
have--
Mr. Mollohan. Not only that. And it is that, of course, but
it is a huge self-esteem issue----
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. I would think. Everybody else
has a credential of some kind. And if you go out there and you
do not have a credential, in addition to having a record, you
do not have anything positive. So I can see where that is
really huge.
So that is number one. So if we are looking at that and
looking programmatically at it, we should be thinking education
both----
Ms. Visher. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. In incarcerated circumstances
and post incarceration? Okay.
Ms. Visher. Yes.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT

Mr. Mollohan. Treatment, substance abuse treatment?
Ms. Visher. More of the participants in our programs
receive substance abuse treatment than those that do not
participate which suggests that the money and the services that
were available under the program allowed them to get those
services. So if more assistance is provided to the
institutions, more of those kinds of services, I think it can
only help.
But the critical point is that unless that kind of service
continues in the community, those services in prison are
probably wasted. And that was difficult for people in
corrections and communities to work because these are different
pots of money. These are agencies that do not often work
together.
Mr. Mollohan. And they are different programs? So
coordination. I should write coordination down here.
Ms. Lattimore. Coordination, yeah.
Ms. Visher. Coordination is huge.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. But substance abuse treatment is a real
discriminator here?
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Ms. Visher. Yes.
Ms. Lattimore. And the thing to remember, you know,
Congressman Bonner mentioned the 90, 95 percent. Well, for the
men, you know, I pointed out that 50 percent of the men got
some treatment while they were in prison, but that is much
smaller than 90, the 90 percent of people who were using
illegal drugs, and then that dropped off to 20 percent----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Ms. Lattimore [continuing]. Three months after release. So
it is really stark what the gap is between need and treatment
received.
Mr. Mollohan. As you looked at substance abuse treatment
programs, did any of those programs include medication?
Ms. Visher. We know that you were interested in medication
because our colleague testified before you. And we do not know
of programs in our study that use medication. Very, very
unusual.
I was in a conversation yesterday about this question.
Correctional institutions are very, very reluctant to use these
medications in prison.
Mr. Mollohan. Because they are not used to it. It is new.
It would be new in their regimen, right?
Ms. Visher. And because of staffing issues. You need nurses
to deliver them. They do not have the resources for the nurses.
They are worried about control of the drugs. There is a stack
of issues.
For example, apparently one of the drugs, you need to watch
somebody for 40 minutes to make sure the pill dissolves
underneath their tongue. And so it is not just sort of the
newness, but it comes with other kinds of problems, especially
with staffing to deliver these kinds of drugs and the control
of the drugs themselves.
Mr. Mollohan. So it is sufficiently new that we really do
not have much experience with it and this study will not be
able to speak to that?
Ms. Visher. The study----
Ms. Lattimore. Right.
Ms. Visher [continuing]. May not speak to that.
Mr. Mollohan. All right. Counseling, psychological or
otherwise.
Ms. Lattimore. Christy mentioned cognitive behavioral
therapy as sort of one of the best practices that, evidence-
based practices that are out there. And so, it is not just
counseling, but it is the specific kind of counseling. And it
does appear that some things like cognitive behavioral therapy
does make a difference and does work.
Ms. Visher. And it is not necessarily a one on one, but it
is a manualized approach that uses techniques to help people
realize the kinds of errors they are making in their thinking
and to change their thinking.
And these programs have been very well evaluated and they
do show impacts both in prison and in the community. They are
becoming more frequent in prison, but they are nowhere near
universal. And, again, they probably need a booster session in
the community.
So, again, continuity of care is a critical concept when
you are talking about people coming out into the community. We
talk about continuity of care with substance abuse, but we are
also talking about continuity of care with respect to these
kinds of cognitive programs or even employment programs.
You can do a lot behind the bars in terms of training
someone, but if you do not carry that into the community and
set them up with some kind of program that utilizes that
training, then that money in prison was lost.
Mr. Mollohan. What programs did continuity of care better?
Ms. Visher. Ohio has a very good program in place which
starts a year before people are released where they start
working on a case plan and a release plan for the individual.
They bring community caseworkers into the prison on a monthly
basis to meet and decide what kinds of milestones are being met
towards progress, towards release. And then they have that same
community case manager and that parole officer working with
that individual on the outside.
So they have tried to develop cooperation of the community
and the institution to increase the chances that things will
not be dropped when someone walks out the door.

FEDERAL V. STATE PRISONS

Mr. Mollohan. Is the federal government doing any or all of
these things, and are they doing it well if they are?
Ms. Visher. The Federal Prison System?
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Ms. Lattimore. The Federal Prison System has historically
been much better funded than the state systems. And so the
availability of services and programming to certainly the
inmates has historically, in general, you could say, been much
higher in the federal prisons than you see certainly in some
state prisons, in most state prisons.
Mr. Mollohan. Is the Federal Prison System a part of your
study?
Ms. Lattimore. No. They were not a recipient of a SVORI
grant, so it was restricted to state agencies.
Iowa is another place, I think, that has been pretty----
Ms. Visher. Historically.
Ms. Lattimore [continuing]. Historically very good at sort
of trying to bridge that gap between inside and outside.
Ms. Visher. One of the things the Federal Prison System has
is a system of halfway houses, that people are released to
halfway houses. That is not common in the state system. It
depends on how the state is set up whether they have that kind
of component.
And so they do have a halfway house system in Erie County
which is where we did our study in Pennsylvania, but not all
states have that setup.
Halfway houses are difficult for communities to accept. It
takes some cooperation between the community and the prison
system to make that work.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Ruppersberger.

GANGS IN PRISONS

Mr. Ruppersberger. The first thing, I am glad that we are
doing this.
My background was as a prosecutor and one of the things
that I noticed over and over again was the recidivism and then
the inability now that we have socially and for a lot of other
reasons, and I am looking in your report, about when you leave
prison, what is going to happen with your life. Are you going
to be coming back? Are you going to go back to drug issues?
One of the areas that I have been focusing on with this
Committee a little bit has been gang violence and gangs
generally from Philadelphia to North Carolina.
In your studies or in your research, did you look at the
impact of gangs on the--I mean, I know the psychological
studies you have done. Has that become a component, because it
has been said many times that children in middle school
sometimes go to gangs because the gang becomes their family?
Did you look at that? Was there any involvement in your
research as it related to gangs?
Ms. Lattimore. We asked about gang membership. It is not
clear, I mean, on our interviews with, you know, our subjects,
the prisoners initially and then after they were released. We
asked about gang membership. The levels that were reported, the
self-report of gang membership was low.
Ms. Visher. Even for boys.
Ms. Lattimore. Even for boys. I am not quite sure what to
make of that, i.e. I am not quite sure whether--you know, you
have to think about the circumstances. You know, you are
interviewing these, you know, all of our subjects in a prison
setting and you are saying are you a member of a gang,
currently a member of a gang. And, in fact, in a couple places,
we were not allowed to ask that question because of some of the
state rules and regulations. So we anticipated being able to
look at that, but it is not clear in our data that we have, you
know, that we have at least acknowledged gang members.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Another thing. In your studies, I guess
you have all different types of prisoners. What impact do the
violent and repeat offenders have in the study as it relates to
those that are not or are in prison for nonviolent or repeat
offenders?
Ms. Visher. We have not examined whether or not the
programs work better for certain kind of offenders or not. That
is the kind of information we may be able to discern in a
follow-up study where we can look at what works best for what
kinds of offenders. But as we indicated in our statements, most
of the prison systems consider the people that we were
including in our study to be serious and violent or they would
not have been in prison and they had very serious histories.

MARYLAND PRISON SYSTEM

Mr. Ruppersberger. I am going to be a little parochial
here. You are from Maryland, I think?
Ms. Visher. Yes, I am.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Have you had a chance to evaluate the
Maryland prison system?
Ms. Visher. I did some work in the Baltimore system several
years ago in a program that they were studying.
Mr. Ruppersberger. The penitentiary downtown.
Ms. Visher. The penitentiary downtown, we interviewed
people in the penitentiary downtown which, as you know, people
are released to that facility if they are returning to
Baltimore from all over the state.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Yes.
Ms. Visher. And some colleagues of mine also have analyzed
the reentry program in the State of Maryland as well. I think
that program, the reentry program in Maryland has dramatically
improved over five years. It started out as a community-based
program and then actually the woman that was directing that
program became the Deputy Director of Corrections. So she has
taken her knowledge from the community and taken it----
Mr. Ruppersberger. Why has it improved?
Ms. Visher. It has improved.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Why has it?
Ms. Visher. Why has it improved? Well, I think in part, it
is because of her knowledge of the community and her sort of
charisma in the ability to convince the Secretary to put a lot
of new reentry programs in place.
She has also developed some very important partnerships
with agencies around the state. So, for example, she meets with
the State Department of Labor. She meets with the State
Department of Health and Human Services. These are the kinds of
partnerships in the state that are necessary to develop an
appropriate reentry program.
One of the things that ``The Second Chance Act'' requires
is a reentry task force. And I think that is really important
because if the Governor is not at the table, if the Governor is
not bringing his other people to the table to make sure that
everyone is working towards this problem, then it is not going
to happen. And that is what is happening in Maryland.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I will tell you a little story. It is
just behavioral patterns.
I was conducting a Grand Jury investigation about prison
corruption and there was an individual who had been in prison
for about twelve years and was getting ready to get out. Then
he participated in a prison riot and beat up a guard or
whatever. And he got another five or ten years.
And I asked him the question, when you were getting ready
to get out, why didn't you just step away. And he said, well, I
want to make this place better for my kids. It was assumed that
his kids were going to go there.
Just one other question. Have you had a chance to study the
West Virginia Prison System?
Ms. Visher. No. I am sorry. Actually, West Virginia
imprisons a lower percentage of its population than almost any
other state in the country.
Ms. Lattimore. Yeah.
Mr. Ruppersberger. They are good guys, I guess, right?
Ms. Visher. Maybe.
Mr. Mollohan. Are you----
Mr. Ruppersberger. I am finished. That is fine.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Ruppersberger, a fine member
of the Committee.
The Department of Justice recently released a comprehensive
funding announcement for ``The Second Chance Act'' Prisoner
Reentry Initiative that requires grantees to have a goal of
reducing recidivism by 50 percent within a five year period.
Based upon your assessment of SVORI, is that realistic?
Ms. Visher. Well, I will let my colleague answer as well. I
think I know what she is going to say.
I think it is highly ambitious and it is all going to
depend on the starting point. These are numbers and you can do
a lot of things with numbers.
If you start with a group that is motivated to improve,
then you may see a 50 percent reduction. But if you start with
a general population like the population that we studied, I
would be tremendously surprised if we could----

FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES

Mr. Mollohan. That is really important and interesting. And
following up Mr. Wolf's interest in the faith-based
initiatives, that is a very self-selecting group.
Ms. Visher. That is right.
Mr. Mollohan. If it were self-selecting, you might be able
to achieve that.
Ms. Visher. Right. Very, very important.
Mr. Mollohan. Well----
Ms. Visher. There are no guidelines to the states about how
they sort of choose that benchmark. In fact, it is reiterated
in the solicitation this is just a goal. It is actually not a
requirement.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, thinking about that, and if you were a
state or the federal government planning this and putting
together the construct of such a program, do you think that we
should be in the business of targeting like that? Should we be
trying to isolate groups and then treating them because they
have similar characteristics? How do you treat diverse
populations? How do you deal with this issue?
Ms. Lattimore. Actually it is quite interesting. About half
of, if you talk about the general population, about half of
them do not come back. So, you know, 50 percent do not come
back already. So only about half do come back.
So the goal, as I understand it, under ``The Second Chance
Act'' is to define some way for some group to be defined
somehow to cut whatever their rate is, you know, by 50 percent.
And I think that it is really ambitious.
If you look at the reductions in recidivism of programs
that have been proven to be effective, you usually see that to
be--you know, reductions of 10 to 15, maybe 20 percent, which
is not trivial when you think that each percentage reduction
point is fewer crimes, fewer arrests, fewer, you know, damage
to victims, prosecution costs, you know, the huge costs that
are associated with each incident.
A 10 to 20 percent reduction is not trivial. And in order
for a program to be useful, you really cannot--it has to be
able to be applied to a broad range of people. And so if the
only way that a state feels that it can meet this 50 percent
target is by picking the people that it thinks are least likely
to come back anyway----
Ms. Visher. It is a waste of money.
Ms. Lattimore [continuing]. It is a waste of money. And so
while goals are important, you know, it needs to be tempered
with, you know, what you are going to get if you achieve those
goals.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, relative to the way that SVORI was
implemented by the Department, what changes would you recommend
for how ``The Second Chance Act'' funds should be targeted?
Ms. Visher. Well, we actually met with the Bureau of
Justice Assistance. We were asked to come and meet with them
while they were putting together a solicitation and we gave
them some ideas. And some of those are incorporated into the
solicitation. Actually, I think it is a very well-written
solicitation. I think it is going to be ambitious for the
state. As you know, there is a 25 percent cash match. I
personally am a little bit worried about that given this
climate----
Mr. Mollohan. About the match part?
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Ms. Visher [continuing]. Because the current state budgets,
as you I am sure know, are in disarray. Trying to find that
kind of match is going to be difficult. Some have even
mentioned perhaps suspending that match for a year. I do not
know if that is something the Committee would want to talk
about.
But there is some concern about that. But we talked to the
Bureau of Justice assistance about the problems that we face. I
think this continuity of services that I have talked about is
very important.
Mr. Mollohan. When you are saying these things, remember
the context of my question is, what recommendations would you
make--however good it is----
Ms. Visher. Right.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Can it be improved?

ENROLLMENT PROBLEMS

Ms. Visher. Make sure the applications include like a plan
for the continuity of the services from prison to the
community. We had some issues with enrollment. The programs
were not fully as enrolled as we had expected. And so they need
to carefully look at their systems. It is very complicated
actually enrolling people in these programs----
Ms. Lattimore. Yeah.
Ms. Visher [continuing]. Because, for example, if you want
to return people to a specific city, say Columbus, well,
prisons in Ohio, there are 32 prisons in Ohio, and people are
scattered all over. It is not like the prisons near Columbus
are getting prisoners that are going back there.
So you have to then sort of pull the people together in a
prison to direct services to them and that requires some
collaboration and planning that some of these states just have
not done.
So when we went out to try to find the people for the
evaluation, we found that the programs were really small
because they had not done the planning ahead of time to make
sure that the people were going to be in the prison when they
were going to deliver services and the area where they were
going to be returning. So it requires some planning.
Mr. Mollohan. Does this solicitation anticipate that
challenge?
Ms. Visher. The enrollment challenge a little bit. I am not
sure. But, again, these kinds of things could be written into a
review of the proposal. Unlike SVORI, this is competitive.
SVORI, as you know, went to every state. And so this is an
improvement in that it is competitive.
And let us hope that the reviewers at the Justice
Department take that seriously, take that mandate seriously,
and choose reviewers who will pick the best applications that
respond to some of the issues that SVORI had trouble with and
are able to fund the ones that have the best chance of
succeeding, including things like the reentry task force that I
mentioned and the collaboration with the community.
The other problem that the SVORI Program had that we have
mentioned, which is more difficult to document in an
application is the full implementation of the services.
Remember we described the fact that there might have been
services from zero to a hundred. They might have only gotten a
third or 40 percent of that.
So the full implementation of services and a plan to make
sure that they are going to be able to deliver those services
is also really important.

GRANT PROGRAM PROBLEMS

Ms. Lattimore. And to build on that, I think the thing to
remember is that, there are a lot of things happening at once
and that it just takes time for that Department of Corrections
to implement something.
But one of the problems sometimes with some of these grant
programs is they are so short term that by the time, you know,
you pull your task forces together and you pull your coalitions
together and you start to figure out what is supposed to be in
the programs, well, half of your grant period is gone. And then
it is like, okay, now we stop and now, oh, here comes another
grant.
Now, like with PRI, oh, we are supposed to focus on
nonviolent offenders and do something else for them. But that
is where, you know, we can build on our program. But it is a
whole different population and sort of a whole different
approach.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Wolf.

GANG RECRUITMENT

Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A couple issues, and I know Mr. Ruppersberger raised it and
I appreciate him doing that.
On the gang issue, have you seen--and you were not looking
at that so much on gang recruitment. I have been told that when
you go to certain prisons, you join this gang, that gang, or
that gang. You are not unaffiliated. If you are, you are in
trouble. Have you seen much on that or is that not something
you have been--that would have a bearing on where you go when
you get out though. So what are your comments about that gang
recruitment?
Ms. Lattimore. We are not.
Mr. Wolf. Should you be looking at it? Since it happens to
be one of the most significant issues facing the nation, gang
violence, and it is growing, since I get from your eyes it is
not the thing that you were following and I understand that,
but maybe you should be looking at that to see if there is any
indication of gang membership and where they go when they get
out.
Ms. Lattimore. That was not the focus of this study. And,
you know, I know that there is a lot of concern not only with
gangs but, you know, some concern about prison radicalization.
I mean, there is a whole variety of other issues that need
further study that really were not the----
Mr. Wolf. The radicalization is different, what they come
out and do, but the gang issue, if you are part of a gang and
you come out, you may then--if you are having a hard time, and
the comment I wanted to make is I guess you are going to have a
harder time now with the economy being what it is. I mean, if
you are a prisoner and you got out and you are on probation and
you are interviewing at IBM, your chances really are zero.
And so with the declining economy, it may make all these
things that you are reporting actually much worse until the
economy gets better. And so, therefore, if you come out and you
do not get the job at IBM or working at Harris Teeter or
working wherever, you then migrate to the neighborhood. I mean,
if you come out a certain place, you go back into the
neighborhood, you go back into the gang. You go back into that.
I mean, there are MS13 gangs in prison and MS13 gangs outside
of prison.
So if you could look at that, I would appreciate it.
The other thing is if you could kind of tell us what you
have as you go follow-up on both the faith issue because, you
know, man does not live by bread alone. It is not only our--it
is what you feel, and also the work issue.
And if you had to answer a question what is the purpose of
prison, it is punishment or is it rehabilitation, and if you
could give me just a one word answer, and what percentage you
believe it should be, prison rehabilitation, punishment? Do you
think it is 80 percent one, 50 percent? What do you think? You
are experts now, so I am looking at you.
Ms. Visher. That is a value question actually. And actually
I was thinking about this question the other night. I think
that it is probably about 50/50. Obviously they are not in
prison because they have been good citizens. So part of the----
Mr. Wolf. What do you think? You think it is 50/50 now or
what do you think it should be?
Ms. Visher. I think it should be at least 50/50. I do not
think it is 50/50 now.
Ms. Lattimore. Oh, I would say now, if you are asking
about----
Ms. Visher. Now?
Ms. Lattimore [continuing]. In terms of resources, I would
say it is 90 percent punishment----
Mr. Wolf. Yeah.
Ms. Lattimore [continuing]. And 10 percent rehabilitation.
Ms. Visher. I think it should probably be closer to 50/50.

PROGRAMS AFTER PRISON

Mr. Wolf. Well, I agree. And that leads to my last
question, is that maybe--I think what Mr. Bonner said was
accurate. Maybe the answer is to sort of defund or remove the
funding for some of the incarceration things and set up a
mechanism whereby there can be some matching grants to groups
who connect with these people after they leave so that AA or
whatever the program may be whereby they are willing to
participate but also to be able to fund them. It is a volunteer
effort, but to be able to fund them on some little things.
Would it not make sense to sort of take away--and, you
know, we are not going to be adding a lot of new stuff. The
nation is in debt and we are sinking insofar as what we owe.
Would it make sense to take some of the money that we have
under the incarceration punishment category and shift it into
rehabilitation but also shift it into rehabilitation after they
leave?
Ms. Visher. This is exactly what a report that came out
last week recommended. The Pew Center released a report that
said one in thirty-one adults in this country is under some
kind of criminal justice----
Mr. Wolf. Yeah. I saw the report.
Ms. Visher. Yes and it says that 90 percent of our dollars
go to prison and only 10 percent of our dollars go to community
when most of the individuals under community justice
supervision are in the community. So there does need, I
believe, there does need to be a dollar shift. This, however,
is a difficult thing to do.
I am familiar, for example, in Illinois when they tried to
close a prison in Illinois and the Governor was unable to do so
because those prisons in those rural communities become the
life blood of that community. And it is very difficult to close
prisons in those communities.
However, New York State has been successful. From what I
understand, New York State's prison population is declining and
their crime rate is declining. They are making these choices to
close prisons and put more money into community supervision.
And maybe that is one of the reasons why their crime rate is
declining.
Mr. Wolf. Well, maybe what we could do, Mr. Chairman, if my
amendment is successful to be carried and we can convince the
Congress, we could take the money that goes into Prison
Industries and thus reclaiming industries that are no longer in
the United States, so we are not competing with industries.
I mean, I do not want to compete with a furniture
manufacturer if he or she is making--but we talked about what
we call Operation Condor, that we are bringing businesses back
that are no longer in the United States, for instance, perhaps
television sets, et cetera, et cetera. My chair is sinking as I
am speaking.
But then take that money on a pilot, on a pilot, and flood
it into after prison services with regard to drug and alcohol
and employment and maybe actually set up in a prison or in an
area, maybe do one federal and one state whereby you would
actually have, Mr. Chairman, an employment office, agency,
maybe the Kelly Company or some outside private sector group
and take that money so that we would be able to see that with
that money--because I do not think there is going to be a lot
more funding.
And the states or California is in the tank and other
states are having a hard time, and I think the first area they
are going to cut with all due respect is going to be prisons
because prisoners do not vote and there is no--and see if we
could demonstrate that we could show that we are moving some of
the money out that is being spent while they are in prison but
particularly taking this money that we are making on Prison
Industries and allocating it for services for after they leave.
And then you would have a double advantage because the
money that they would make--perhaps we should pay them minimum
wage in this program. They could take one-third that they could
send to their families, one-third for restitution, one-third
that they would have as a sum when they get out rather than 12
cents an hour or whatever and then that would help them sort of
to continue the process. It would be interesting to see. And
then you could sort of follow that because I think----
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.

WORK IN PRISON

Mr. Wolf. My sense is the answer, and you know more about
it than I do, that if you did that, gave a man or woman dignity
while they were in, gave them work on something that they could
transfer, not working in the laundry doing, you know, table
cloths, and then they were learning a skill and then you have
helped them find a job really intensively like as an employment
agency will work with you, not just help you do a resume, but
they will make some calls, they will set up the interviews, and
they are doing it on a contractual basis, and then you were
monitoring, I think you would see--and then if you were funding
some of the outside groups like Prison Fellowship or AA or
whatever the group is, I think you might see a fairly
dramatic----
Ms. Visher. There is actually a study going on that is
looking, and some of this is called transitional job work, and
MDRC, Manpower Development Research Corporation, and the Urban
Institute are doing an evaluation with funding from the Joyce
Foundation----
Mr. Wolf. Okay.
Ms. Visher. To study a transitional job program in five
communities. And the initial results were done in New York
which found that these transitional jobs, giving people jobs
immediately after prison with some supportive services to find
jobs and to get the training and perhaps education they need
reduced their rearrests----
Mr. Wolf. It has got to.
Ms. Visher [continuing]. Within the first year.
Mr. Wolf. I think you just solved the answer of prison
rehab-- I think that is the answer. You cannot have a person
come out and not have a job. They are going to go back to the
neighborhood. They are going to go back to their friends. They
are going to go back to their--and they are going to go back to
the gang. And then the end result is that some Friday night,
you know, you are back in the process again anyway.
Well, if we can see how we do that and if as you are
looking, if you can look at the faith issue and the work issue.
And I appreciate your testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SECOND CHANCE ACT

Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Wolf.
Well, you have given us some ideas of how ``The Second
Chance Act'' funds should be targeted under this solicitation.
Were there any points that you wanted to make beyond that?
That is important. That is out there. It is being solicited.
Anything more than what you talked about?
Ms. Lattimore. I would just like to actually follow up.
This was something we were talking about earlier today and it
is an idea that, you sort of bounce around and you are always
confronted with the question of, well, why should we spend my
hard-earned taxpayer dollars on someone who has done something
bad.
And obviously the answer to that question is that, is the
public safety in the long run, the rehabilitation issue. You
get somebody back, turn them into a productive member of
society and we are all better off. And for many people, that is
not a satisfying answer.
And it seems to me that there should be an opportunity
somewhere for programs that would allow, that would provide
training and education to prisoners and with the understanding
that they would pay back. So it is like a scholarship.
Mr. Mollohan. You are talking about inside the----
Ms. Lattimore. Inside, yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Correctional facility?
Ms. Lattimore. Yes. A scholarship, and obviously, I mean,
we all know that Pell grants are no longer available to
inmates, but to set up a program that would allow prisoners to
take classes from a community college or to take classes from a
university.
And would all of them pay the money back? Of course not.
But at least you could begin to develop some sort of a process
where you would have the sustainable effort where someone is
not getting something for nothing.

EDUCATION IN PRISON

Mr. Mollohan. Let me give you a little anecdotal story on
that. In West Virginia at one of our prisons, we have a pilot
project going on where a local four year college is providing
educational training at the local prison, everything from
certificates to a four year college degree. And I said this to
somebody in a previous hearing. The program has been going on,
I guess, for two years now.
One or more prisoners, I think actually there are two
prisoners who had earlier requested a transfer to a prison
closer to their home once they got into this program. And that
opportunity came available to be transferred. They passed it
up. They said, no, I really want to get this college degree or
as much of it as I can get.
Then another story. One of the prisoners was a lifer and
was in a four year undergraduate degree program. And the
question came up, well, you know, you are never going to get
out of here, why do you want a four year college degree. He
said, you know, I am never going to get out of here and I am
never going to be able to use this four year degree outside,
but I know I am smart. I know I can learn this stuff, and at
least I will have learned it, which goes back to the self-
esteem issue.
I mean, those are just great stories, and they get to the
importance of education in all this, for the self-esteem, and
then, of course, also for preparing you to do something
outside. But I think the self-esteem issue is huge in people
who are in recovery, either from drugs or from just criminal
conduct without drugs.
Well, with Mr. Wolf, you covered a bit about the fact that
in your study, more services were provided within the
correctional facilities and the importance of providing them in
the communities after leaving prison, and your feeling that
more grants ought to be made available to agencies that provide
services on the outside.
I want to ask you, what agencies are we talking about? Are
we talking about every agency? Are you talking about government
sponsored educational programs or rehab programs or counseling
programs? Is this notion of providing additional grants to
agencies outside of prison applicable to all service providers?
Ms. Lattimore. I think what drives all of this to my mind
are what the needs are of the inmate and many of the things we
already talked about, education. One of the second highest
needs they had was changing their thinking on criminal, their
criminal behavior thinking which was a cognitive behavior
thing.
But there are some simple things that require you to think
sort of outside the box. And one of the next sort of way up
there on the top of the list were driver's licenses. And there
are some agencies around the corrections, jails or prisons,
that had started trying to address that issue. It is actually
something you would think that a state would be able to fix.
I mean, clearly when someone gets out of prison--everybody
needs identification and that should not be a costly thing, but
maybe the transportation or providing a little bit of funds for
people to do that. So here it is all of a sudden we are
thinking, oh, well, the DMV might be somebody that you want to
try to pull into this coalition and transportation at the jail.
And one of the Maryland jails, I think had started to--I
saw a presentation on it. They started a program that gave bus
tickets to people so that they could and library cards so that
people could go down to the library and use the computers so
that they could look for jobs.
Mr. Mollohan. You are talking about real transition.
Ms. Lattimore. Yes, and so you really, I think, have to
think broadly when you think about which agencies. Some of them
are public and some of them are private and out of the not-for-
profit sector.
Ms. Visher. Like Goodwill Industries, for example.
Ms. Lattimore. Yeah.

LIFE AFTER PRISON

Ms. Visher [continuing]. That provides job training in many
communities, but they also can provide--one of the other top
needs are for their clothing. Many of these people are living
with relatives, but the relatives are short on funds too. And
relatives do not have money to help with food and clothing--
food banks and places where they can go to get clothing.
And housing, housing is incredibly important. Thirty days
before they were to be released, 50 percent of our population
said they were not sure where they were going to live. And
there are a number of programs popping up to provide
transitional housing services. Many of these come with other
services embedded so that there will be counseling services on
site or other kinds of services. But these transitional housing
services--and there is a whole company of programs that are
working in this area to provide more of these kinds of
facilities in communities so that people that do not have a
place to go or cannot go home have a transitional place where
they can go to get their feet on the ground, get a job to be
able to get the money necessary to move out.
Ms. Lattimore. And some of SAMHSA's programs, I mean, you
come full circle, because SAMHSA is looking at substance abuse
and mental health. And so they are dealing with their substance
abuse and mental health populations.
Also a big concern with homelessness with those
populations, so they have got a program at SAMHSA that is
trying to provide homeless services.
But many of the people that are in their programs are
people who have criminal records. They are either currently on
probation or parole or they are in and out of jail all the
time.
And so they are actually, you know, coming at it from
another perspective, but in the end, you have got these
overlapping population pools, many of whom have all of these
problems. And so, you know, everybody is sort of looking at it
from a different angle, but it is the same group of people in
the middle.
Ms. Visher. I think ``The Second Chance Act,'' there is a
solicitation that is coming out directly for local nonprofit
and other kinds of organizations. They are going to be flooded
with applications. And the review process for those
applications is going to be really important because you are
going to be needing to be checking credentials and things like
that, checking that they have a track record, have they done
this before.
Anyone could put together an application and say, oh, yes,
I am an organization, I can provide services. But those grants,
I think, can be really, really important to supplement the
services that have been provided in the institution.
Community corrections, though, is also as the Pew Report
suggested incredibly underfunded. And those kinds of community
support officers can help individuals make the transition by
putting them in touch with other organizations.
Ms. Visher. It is amazing how people come out of prison and
do not know where to go. They do not know what to do.
Mr. Mollohan. They have no guidance.
Ms. Lattimore. Yeah.
Ms. Visher. They have no guidance.
Ms. Lattimore. Right.
Ms. Visher. They have their parole officer, but many people
in this country are released without any kind of supervision.
And so those people are even at a greater loss for knowing
where to go to get some services.
Many states are developing information to help people when
they get out to say this is where you go for housing, this is
where you can go for mental health assistance or medication or
things like that. But, again, it is just constantly changing.
Ms. Lattimore. And the problem with that is if you give
somebody information as they are leaving prison, all they are
thinking about is they are leaving prison. And a month later
when they--or two weeks later--when they all of a sudden
realize, oh, I need help with these things, they have lost the
list. They do not know who to go to. They, they are just out
there on their own.

TACKLING RECIDIVISM

Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Let me just ask a wrap-up question here. Other than
providing more funding for ``The Second Chance Act'' and other
federal programs related to reentry, what advice do you have
for this Subcommittee on how to change the federal approach to
tackling the recidivism problem? This is your chance.
Ms. Lattimore. The federal government, I think, plays a
critical role not just in providing guidance and funding for
these programs but is basically, with the exception of a few
foundations, the only source of funding for research. The only
source.
And so if we are to learn, we want evidence-based practice
and we want to know what works best for whom, but NIDA, the
National Institute of Drug Abuse, spends a billion dollars a
year on research. That is more money on research than NIJ has
spent in its 40 plus years of existence. And NIJ's
responsibilities cover courts, corrections, policing,
sentencing, criminal behavior, all of these important
questions. And I suspect that it is not even close to a billion
dollars. I am sure that number could be generated.
But, you know, when you have five or ten million dollars a
year and have to spread it over that, and considering, too,
that the substance abuse and mental health issues have such a
huge impact on behavior and then you add into that--you know,
one of my real concerns, a huge concern now is the impact of
PTSD and traumatic brain injury on our returning veterans and
what the impact of that is in terms of their behavior combined
with real serious concerns about homelessness and substance
abuse and mental health, then we have got this whole huge new
emerging problem out there that we really need to be focused on
and start thinking about doing something about.
Mr. Mollohan. One thing that occurs to me as you make that
statement is the necessity, before you start funding all this,
to coordinate it so that you are funding it in a way that is
efficient and the dollars are----
Ms. Lattimore. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. The Veterans Administration has a very real
role to play in this if----
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. We are going to do that, if they
are going to be there. And obviously they are.
Ms. Lattimore. I mean, to follow on what Christy said,
there are some lessons learned also from the Prisoner Reentry
Initiative which was through Labor, but their initial round of
grants were to community-based organizations. And they had
basically some stumbling out of the blocks, I think, in terms
of how do you--okay, so you are based in the community. You are
a community-based organization. You are going to serve a
criminal justice population that has no requirement to come to
you. And so I think they had some real issues, some serious
issues with trying to find--getting people enrolled in their
programs early on.
Ms. Visher. If you know the program, you know to come.
Ms. Lattimore. That is right.
Ms. Visher. And that is where the Department of Corrections
connection or the probation/parole connection to the community
agencies is so important.
Ms. Lattimore. Right. I think it took them a couple of
years to sort of make that happen and, you know----
Mr. Mollohan. Well, name for the Committee the groups that
you think should be sitting down around the table talking about
this coordination issue.
Ms. Visher. Well, all the major cabinet agencies, but this
was done actually at one point during SVORI. Pam and I actually
presented several times to a Coordinating Committee that the
Office of Justice Programs put together, but it dissolved and I
do not know why, but the Department of Labor, Department of
Health and Human Services, including SAMHSA. Veterans was
there. CDC was there.
Ms. Lattimore. HUD.
Ms. Visher. Education was there. HUD was there. People from
all these cabinet agencies were there.
Mr. Mollohan. Did it work for the SVORI purpose?
Ms. Lattimore. I think that it worked in the sense that.
Mr. Mollohan. There was a silence there.
Ms. Lattimore. Yeah. It was not continued. And I think it
worked in the sense that if you look across, housing, substance
abuse, mental health, physical health, employment outcomes, you
do see that these programs by and large tried to have an impact
on all of them. And they provided services.
So sort of the initial push out the gate that you will look
at all of these things and try to address all of these areas
happened, but then, the task force--what happened after SVORI,
the next piece of legislation that passed was the Prisoner
Reentry Initiative which was given pretty much wholly to the
Department of Labor. So then that was that, right?
Ms. Visher. And they had stopped talking.
Ms. Lattimore. Then the next piece of legislation that came
on prisoner issues was ``The Marriage and Family Support Act''
which gave money to ASPE at SAMHSA to work on marriage and
family issues for prisoners.
Ms. Visher. And they did not coordinate with Justice----
Ms. Lattimore. And they did not coordinate with Justice----
Ms. Visher [continuing]. Or the Department of Labor.
Ms. Lattimore. The Department of Labor or anybody else. And
so now ``Second Chance Act.'' So SVORI was maybe 1998, 1999,
2000, something like that. I mean, it was right around there
that it first sort of came through. So in 10 years basically or
20--yeah, 10--from 2000--in 10 years, we have seen SVORI, PRI--
--
Ms. Visher. Marriage strengthening.
Ms. Lattimore [continuing]. Marriage strengthening, MFS,
Marriage Family Strengthening Program, and now we have got
``Second Chance Act.'' So there have been four different
initiatives from the federal level that have come out of these
different committees and then different agencies that without--
--
Ms. Visher. With slightly different parameters.
Ms. Lattimore [continuing]. Focus and, with the exception
of SVORI, and overall requirement of engagement of other
agencies.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, what should happen here? Tell us
how this should happen. What should we be doing right now to
bring all this together? We are an Appropriations Committee.
How can we help effect that?
Ms. Visher. Well, I think reinstituting an agency-wide
committee on prison reentry initiatives like I described that
the Governors convened would be important and designating
someone in those agencies to focus on reentry issues in each of
these relative agencies.
And then I do not know if it is coordinated by Justice.
Maybe you have a rotating chair because whoever chairs it sort
of has the control and sometimes that is not a good thing. So
maybe it needs to be chaired outside of one of the agencies. I
am not sure. But regular coordination about the funding and how
their funding streams are focusing on this population to see
whether or not they are being coordinated or not and how they
could be coordinated.
Mr. Mollohan. And coordinated as they push their requests
for this activity up through OMB and----
Ms. Visher. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Back down to the----
Ms. Lattimore. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Agencies and to Congress.
Ms. Visher. Much like, the Office of National Drug Control
Policy does with respect to drug funding.
That is the purpose of that agency--is to sort of
coordinate drug funding across various federal agencies. But
there are now reentry czars in Governors' offices. But there is
not that kind of person in charge of these kinds of efforts in
the federal agencies and that could very well be an important
step forward.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Great. Well, thank you all very much
for your testimony here today. We appreciate it. We appreciate
your effort in just getting here and then we very much
appreciate your expertise.
Ms. Lattimore. Thank you.
Ms. Visher. We will be getting back to you.
Ms. Lattimore. Yes. Thank you so much.
Mr. Mollohan. And we will be getting back to you. Thank
you.
----------

Wednesday, March 11, 2009.

INNOVATIVE PRISONER REENTRY PROGRAMS, PART I

WITNESSES

GEORGE T. McDONALD, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, THE DOE FUND, INC.
PAT NOLAN, VICE PRESIDENT, PRISON FELLOWSHIP
DENNIS SCHRANTZ, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, PLANNING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
ADMINISTRATION, MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Opening Statement by Chairman Mollohan

Mr. Mollohan. Well, gentlemen, thank you all for appearing
today. We appreciate your traveling from near and far for us
today to share your knowledge on this topic. This afternoon we
will have two panels featuring individuals who play a
leadership role in innovative programs that facilitate the
reentry of offenders into our communities. We have learned a
lot over the past few days about some of the challenges we face
in this area. But our perspective would not be fully informed
without hearing from witnesses who are putting ideas into
action with good results.
For the first panel we would like to welcome Dennis
Schrantz, the Deputy Director of the Michigan Department of
Corrections, who will be talking about the cutting edge work
that is going on across his state on prisoner reentry.
In addition, we are pleased to have Pat Nolan, Vice
President of Prison Fellowship, to talk about what has made
that program so successful. And to round out the panel we
welcome George McDonald, the founder and President of The Doe
Fund in New York City, to talk about that organization's well
respected Ready, Willing, and Able Program.
Gentlemen, I welcome you here today. We will just go from
left to right. Pat Nolan, George McDonald, and Dennis Schrantz.
And your written statements will be made a part of the record.
And you can proceed with your oral presentations. Mr. Nolan.

Pat Nolan Opening Statement

Mr. Nolan. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and honorable
members. We thank you so much for giving us time to talk about
what is actually working in the field. A little about my
background, I was a member of the legislature in California for
fifteen years. I was Republican Leader of the Assembly in
California and was reliably very tough on crime. Then I was
convicted of racketeering for campaign contributions I accepted
and spent two years in federal prison. So I had a chance to see
the impact of the policies that I had advocated.
Through God's grace I was hired by Prison Fellowship to
come and work with government leaders to apply what we are
learning to the real world. And it knits together my experience
as a legislator, my background as a lawyer, and also my time in
prison.
I will start with a vignette that I think will exemplify
for you the difficulty people face on coming out. My first day
at the halfway house in Sacramento a bunch of my friends from
the capital took me to lunch at the Ninth Street Deli, just a
few blocks from the capital. And there were eleven of us and
the waiter came and they all ordered. And I was looking at the
menu. And you know, a deli menu has 110 items on it. And I just
kept staring at it. And they waited, and the waiter started to
get impatient, and they waited. And I was humiliated. I saw all
these choices. I could not make up my mind what to order. For
two years I had not had any choice of what to eat and I was
overwhelmed by just the simple task of ordering a meal.
When I told that story the first time I was in Oklahoma and
a guy that, a much decorated Vietnam veteran that did seventeen
years for armed robbery told me he had a similar situation. He
went to Penney's to buy underwear. And when he had gone into
prison there were boxers and briefs. And when he came out there
were different waistbands, different cuts of the leg, colors,
patterns. And he could not decide what to order. And when you
come out of prison you are allegedly given more clothes. It
was, you know, two pairs of underwear worn by eighty-three
different people over five years. It is like cheesecloth. So he
needed this. And he was so embarrassed that he could not pick
what skivvies to get that tears welled up in his eyes. And he
ran out of the store in embarrassment. This is a guy, a much
decorated veteran of Vietnam. Bashed his head on the glass of
the door coming out, and got back to the halfway house without
the underwear that he had gone to get and was accused of having
gotten in a fight because of the gash in his forehead.
I say this because I, and this friend in Oklahoma, all came
from good families, had good educations, had had positions of
responsibility. In his case a brave, courageous man. And a
simple task like buying underwear or ordering from a menu is
impossible.
Think about the people that come from not that same
background. People with poor education, without job skills,
without life skills, from broken homes. And that night when
they get out of prison, they are usually put on a bus at
midnight, they end up in the middle of a strange city in the
middle of the early morning hours, 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.
They have been given sometimes $20, sometimes $30. Some states
like Alabama give them a check for $10, as if they could cash
it anywhere. No ID. And they have got to decide at that moment,
where do they live? Do they sleep in the park? Do they go live
under a bridge? They certainly cannot get a hotel or a motel.
They have no money. The next morning, where are they going to
look for a job? What do they eat? Where do they spend their
time? And sadly, confronted with all of those choices they
often make bad ones. Reentry fails so often within the first
six months, often within the first month.
So we at Prison Fellowship decided we needed to do
something about it. We could not just care about taking the
gospel to people in prison. We had to care about what happened
when they got out. And we started a program in cooperation with
the State of Texas, in which we prepare them the last year that
they were in. Not only in religious program, but life skills.
Getting them a GED, helping them get their drivers license
ahead of time so they had ID when they got out. But most
important, and this was what the study done by the University
of Pennsylvania found, mentors. That loving person from the
local community that cared about them.
At risk people need relationships, healthy relationships,
as much as they need programs. In fact, the programs will be
much more successful if they have that relationship with a
person that is responsible from the community. The government
cannot afford to love them, but people in the community can.
And that is what they need. As Dr. King said, ``to change
someone you must first love them and they must know that you
love them.'' And that is what the people from the community can
bring. And it is at no cost to the government that they do
this. But they need access.
So the study at the University of Pennsylvania found that
graduates of our program that stayed with their mentors had a
recidivism rate of 8 percent. They are reincarcerated 8
percent, and that is an astonishingly low figure verified
through TDCJ figures as well as the University of Pennsylvania
study. Now, we cannot guarantee those results and everything.
But it does show that you can intervene and make a difference
in their lives.
We are now taking that to communities around the country
and establishing what we call Communities of Care, where we are
a convener but we pull together the housing, job placement,
mental health, medical people to help these inmates when they
return. Right here in Loudoun County where I live now our
church has organized eleven other churches to form the Loudoun
After Care Program, which matches the returning offenders with
loving mentors and plugs them into the resources that are there
but that they are sophisticated enough to even know how to
access. And I think that is one of the most important things of
mentoring. It is not just the love, but it is helping the
inmates think through what is available for them and becoming
their advocate. Helping them work through the bureaucracy of
it.
I would just mention a couple of other programs and it is
not just ours that are important. La Bodega de la Familia in
New York looks at those returning from prison, those in prison
and returning, as the family needs healing, not just the
offender. So they provide drug treatment, anger counseling, to
try to deal with the issues that are causing that family to be
dysfunctional. So that when they return they have a healed
family, which is the fabric of our society. The crime in that
neighborhood by the New York PD statistics has dropped
dramatically from being a high intensity crime area to a normal
crime because of the impact that they have had.
In St. Louis the chief probation officer changed the jobs
of probation officers there. He said to them, ``It is no longer
to force inmates to get a job, or offenders to get a job. Your
job now is to help them get a job.'' And the focus was on
getting them jobs, not just telling them they should. They
worked with churches and local nonprofits, a group called Dress
for Success, and they help give them clothes that is
appropriate to an interview. They train them on how to write
their resume. How to be honest about their conviction. Not hide
it, but instead say how they have changed. They have gotten the
auto dealers to offer to give them cars, loan them cars. If
they keep a job for a year they get to keep the car. What a
great incentive. At no cost to the government. The unemployment
rate of those under supervision from the St. Louis Probation
Department, the Eastern District in Missouri, is one-half of
the unemployment rate of the general public in St. Louis. I do
not know anywhere else where offenders have a lower
unemployment rate than the general public but they have
succeeded there.
There are a couple of things that you are going to be
voting on in the next few years trying to implement The Second
Chance Act that are so important. One is the resource center.
There are so many groups out there trying to do this work. But
there is no central depository of what works, and how it works.
And the resource center will be so great to give them templates
to work from. La Bodega de la Familia deliberately wrote
materials as they went along so others could replicate it, but
most programs do not have that. This resource center will be
critical to it. And the fear is that if it does not have its
own line item it will get dispersed into other parts of the
bureaucracy. It is really important that there be a place where
any nonprofit or ministry can go and find out what is working
so they can apply it.
The last thing is, and I hope there is some chance during Q
and A. I do not want to eat up the time of my fellow panelists.
But the Bureau of Prisons has taken a very strange response to
The Second Chance Act. They are placing people for only six
months in the halfway house. And Mr. Lappin, whom I have great
respect for, said yesterday that it is cheaper to keep people
in a low security, or minimum security prison, than it is in a
halfway house.
I do not think that properly states the case. Because when
an inmate is sent to a halfway house it number one frees up a
bed at no capital cost to the community. It is the agency, the
nonprofit, that takes them in in the halfway house. He does not
take that into account. The second thing is, and this is, I can
verify this, a quarter of the income of those inmates in the
halfway house goes to pay for their own upkeep. So they are
helping support themselves. And when they are sent to home
confinement, which usually happens after a month or a month and
a half, at no cost to the government they are supervised but
still a quarter of their money comes to pay for their upkeep.
So they essentially run a cheap motel. Those same beds are
rented out over, and over, and over again. They may be
supervising five times the number of beds they have. So when he
compares a bed in a halfway house to a bed in a prison that is
not a fair comparison. The net cost to the government is far
less to a halfway house, and it is far more helpful to the
inmates on getting back on their feet because they are in the
community, with their family, with the support groups they are
going to be building relationships with. Thank you for this
time.
[Written statement of Pat Nolan, Vice President, Prison
Fellowship, follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Nolan. Mr. McDonald.

Opening Statement by Mr. George McDonald

Mr. George McDonald. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of
the Subcommittee for having me here today. Like Pat, I have
been arrested four times but fortunately I have not been
convicted. And it was for feeding homeless folks in Grand
Central Terminal. I used to go there every night at 10:00 and
feed 400 people standing outside. The people who ran the
terminal thought that I was attracting them from all over the
other forty-nine states to come for the bologna sandwich and
the carton of milk. But I did that for those number of nights
to learn who the folks were. And what I came to realize, and
what they told me over and over again, was that they
appreciated the sandwich but what they really wanted was a room
and a job to pay for it.
So, you know, that struck me. Indigent people work? That
sounds like a good solution to homelessness. And so I set out
to put together a program to do exactly that, based on what I
heard from them. Not because I was any expert, believe me, in
anything. But a woman had died of malnutrition, a friend of
mine, and I got some money together. And we started buying food
and giving it out.
So the long and short of it is that we picked up, my wife
and I, Harriet, who was a screenwriter in Beverly Hills at the
time writing about a little girl who lived in Grand Central
Terminal, we formed an organization called The Doe Fund named
after the woman who died. And we set out to get a city
contract. And Ed Koch was the Mayor of New York then and he
thought that I would fail, and I would not be a critic anymore,
and that everything would be fine. But we got a contract with
the Housing Preservation and Development Agency of the City.
And it actually turned out to be the first welfare to work
contract in America. Because HPD did not care about the social
services that we did. They wanted us to go out and repair the
apartments that the City owned, take rubbish removal, paint the
walls, plaster, tape, that kind of stuff. And we did it. And
the first day that we went out, January 1, 1990, we filled up,
or January 2nd, we filled up a dumpster in front of an
apartment building and called up the City and said, ``We need a
new dumpster.'' And the folks in the City said, ``Oh, you are
not scheduled to get one for two days. We have to go to
lunch.'' And we had filled it up in two hours. And that is
emblematic of the kind of folks that when given an opportunity
will work.
And we built this organization from the people from the
floor of Grand Central Terminal who were castaways, for lack of
a better word. We now have 450 employees. We do $50 million in
revenue. We have programs in three states. And we have come to
find out that over 80 percent of the folks in our program have
histories of incarceration of over sixty months each.
So the homelessness was just part of a continuum of coming
out of prison, being homeless, living in the park, going to
drug treatment programs, getting out of the drug treatment
program, not having a job, and doing the whole thing all over
again.
So we have a holistic program, now, both for homeless
people and for people who come out of prison. Now, when
somebody comes out of prison we meet them at the door. And the
program that I am here to talk about today is one that is for
folks on parole. So they come home and they have a place to
live, with their mother, their grandmother, their significant
other. Whoever parole says that they can live with. And then we
put them to work right away and start paying them above the
minimum wage right away in projects that improve the community.
So Congressman Serrano knows that the men in blue in New
York City with Ready, Willing and Able on the back, that clean
up four of the five boroughs. We do not go to Staten Island
because it takes too long to get there. But four of the five
boroughs. We have 55,000 New Yorkers that send us money because
they go out of their house, and they talk to the guy on the
street in the uniform. And they ask him how his life is. We
drug test twice a week, and we have people save, and we have
all of the social services that Pat was so correct about.
But here is the deal. 44 percent of the folks who come home
from prison in New York every year are rearrested at the end of
that year. And there are 19,000 to New York City. Two-thirds go
back at the end of three years. But at the end of our program,
4.8 percent go back. And now these are all verifiable results
run through the state criminal justice agency. They are not
reincarcerated in New York State.
So it is paid transitional work, and the key is those first
months when they come home from prison. If you can get them
engaged in having money in their pocket that they can bring
home to wherever it is that they are living, they will not
become homeless and they will not go back to prison. And we
have the proof. We do not need any more studies. All we have to
do is invest in the proof. And we can shut prisons and end the
mass incarceration of African American men in America. Because
that is who is in our prisons.
Now, it is not my fault, it is not your fault, it is not
our fault. It is just a fact. And it is a fact that is
undeniable. And also, if you give them an opportunity, give
them some money in their pocket from the hard work that they do
improving the community, and give them structure for eight
months to a year, they will not go back. I rest my case.
Let me be the first to wish you a Happy St. Patrick's Day.
Thank you.
[Written statement by George T. McDonald, Founder and
President of the Doe Fund, follows:

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Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Schrantz.

Opening Statement by Dennis S. Schrantz

Mr. Schrantz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much,
Ranking Member Wolf, and members of the Subcommittee. I am very
pleased to be here today to talk with you about how the
Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative has had a statewide impact
on prison crowding and prison releases. And our vision in
Michigan is very simple: every prisoner released to the
community has the tolls necessary to succeed. And in order to
do that we focus on developing for every prisoner who is in the
system a ``transition accountability plan'' that is developed
with the prisoner and the prisoner's family to prepare that
prisoner for release immediately, and the months and the years
to follow.
The work that we are doing is dedicated to system change.
Governor Jennifer M. Granholm, who offers greetings to you
today, and the Director of Corrections Patricia L. Caruso have
provided extensive leadership over the past six years to focus
on true system change that has resulted in unprecedented growth
of reentry throughout the state. We now have eighteen regional
sites across the state. They cover all of Michigan's eighty-
three counties. We will be funded in the state of Michigan for
fiscal year 2010 at about $57 million for reentry. That does
not count the cost of probation parole officers and already
established services. This is $57 million for services for
parolees.
In order for each of these eighteen regions to receive
funding, they must create a comprehensive prisoner reentry plan
for their region. That reentry plan examines the
characteristics the prisoners that are going to be returning to
that community over the course of the next year, understands
they will be assessed for both risk and need, and understands
for the 60 percent of those prisoners returning who are
moderate to high risk, that they have to have intensive
services or the former prisoners will fail in the community and
they will return to prison.
Historically, we have one out of every two prisoners in
Michigan returning back to prison within three years. Based on
the clients that we are working with, that will be reduced to
one out of every three. That is a massive improvement that is
not system wide yet, but as we continue to move toward taking
what is now a statewide effort and taking it up to scale--which
means that every prisoner is assessed for their reentry needs
and every prisoner has a transition plan--we expect to see
those reductions continue. We are not going to rest easy with
data that shows that they are simply not failing and returning
to prison. Instead, we are going to be looking at whether or
not they are being rearrested and reconvicted as a true measure
of changed behavior.
In a real sense the Prisoner Reentry Initiative is a crime
fighting initiative, which explains why in Michigan it is a
very bipartisan supported effort, bicameral and it is one of
the few areas in the political cycle that we have had, not that
the Governor is in her second year of her second term, where we
have had broad agreement by both parties, both chambers, to
implement this broad based reform.
The numbers that we have seen so far show that when you do
this work one offender at a time, when you engage the folks in
the community, when you design ways to move money from the
state level to the local community, requiring a comprehensive
plan that indicates which portion of those funds will be used
for substance abuse, or housing, or transportation, public
safety, etcetera--because every community is different--you see
results. And so far we have seen results: Parolees with new
sentences have dropped to their lowest rate since 2005 with
only ninety-eight out of every thousand coming back with a new
crime. Parolee technical violators, those that are not meeting
the conditions of parole and come back, have fallen to their
lowest rate since we began tracking records in 1992, with
eighty-nine per thousand returning for a technical violation.
So putting those two numbers together, we have the lowest
returns for either new crimes or technical violations that we
have had in recent memory. And others have occured in spite of
the fact that that parole population has increased from 17,000
parolees on the street to 20,000.
There is a great deal of written information that I have
provided you, including the power point presentation that I
used for talking points and a rather detailed written
statement. I want to make five points to you, then I will stop,
as our panel prepares for questions.
Number one is that prisoner reentry can be a successful
crime fighting tool if it is evidence based meaning that we
have to go where the research leads us. If we want to fight
crime we have to do what the research tells us. And frankly,
the research tells us that dollar for dollar, spending money on
prisons is not the best way to reduce crime. We have known for
many years but you get bigger bang for the buck by putting
policemen on the street. We get bigger bang for the buck by
treating substance abuse, and providing addicted individuals
with treatment. You do better by spending money to make certain
that there are supportive families and supportive communities
and supportive neighborhoods, so that when offenders get out of
prison they have the support they need so that they do not
return to prison.
Complete system change is very difficult to imagine because
the state cannot do all of this work alone. Every state
department that has anything to do with this type of work has
to be part of the effort. But at the end of the day it all has
to happen locally. So in the Department of Corrections at the
state level we create the policy structure, we create the
funding, and we provide that to the locals. The locals decide
how to cut the hog, how to define their comprehensive plan and
move forward. And it all has to be based on what truly works.
Number two, that in order for these community programs to
be effective they have to be fully funded. There must be a
tremendous amount of reinvestment, not just in terms of whole
dollars because there are not enough programs to go around for
these returning prisoners--but also in terms of reinvesting
within the programs that we have so that their quality
improves, and that they, too, will go where the research takes
them. A lot of folks can deliver substance abuse programs.
Fewer numbers of nonprofits can deliver evidence based
programs. And so there is a lot of quality control that has to
take place.
For repeat violent offenders, there is no doubt that they
have to go to prison, but they are going to get out of prison
too. And so you need both prisons and reentry. And the
question, I think, for state legislators across the country, is
what is the balance between funding for incarceration and
funding for reinvestment in the community? In Michigan, the
Governor decided when she ran for office, that we are out of
balance. And as a result of this reentry initiative and
focusing on these evidence based practices we are changing the
system toward an evidence based system. We will see a 20
percent reduction in our prison population. And before the
Governor's second term is over we will have closed sixteen
prisons, each one anywhere from 250 beds to 1,200 beds. This
drop in the prison population, which will have saved us upwards
of $800 million before it is over with, is only possible
because of significant reinvestment in those programs that
these men and women have to be involved in if they are to be
successful.
Number three, prisoner reentry, certainly the Michigan
Prisoner Reentry Initiative, is evidence based. What my fellow
panelists are saying is that what they are focusing on, too, is
evidence based. But there is only a certain amount of research
you need before we know what you have to do. And this is an
initiative we need to keep studying. The shift in the Congress,
I think, toward this philosophy of reentry has had some very
dramatic impacts on the state level because it emboldened state
leaders to move in this direction as well. And as former
Michigan legislators are elected to the Congress, we think this
cultural shift will be sustained and expanded.
Number four, that states and community, focus on not just
what happens with people when they get out of the prison, or
jail, or juvenile detention facilities, but also on offenders
who otherwise would be imprisoned. We must reduce admissions to
prisons so that only the ones that are incorrigible and violent
are the ones going in. By attacking the issues both at the
front end and the back end of the system you can rebalance
funding as long as there are reinvestments. Michigan is one of
the many states in the country that has a Community Corrections
Act which has as its goal the reduction of admissions to
prison. The national average of how many felons convicted of
crimes that go to prison out of 100 is 40. In Michigan it is
only 23. We have reinvested $30 million a year for the past ten
years to make sure that we have balance at the front end of the
system so that instead of going to prison offenders are
involved in residential and nonresidential programs. We have
got enough fully trained law enforcement officers, parole
probation officers on the street to be able to manage them.
Number five and lastly, The Second Chance Act is good
public policy. And there are probably about twenty-one states
across the country that have been leading the charge on
improved reentry for many years. And they are doing the kind of
work that you want to see done through The Second Chance Act.
There are hundreds, thousands of programs across the country
doing this work. And so you are tapping into a brain trust, I
think, that is very broad and very deep. And we feel very
confident that with increased funding through The Second Chance
Act that we will be able to do even better.
At $57 million a year, the Michigan Prisoner Reentry
Initiative in Michigan is underfunded. So when you think about
levels of funding for the entire country, please keep that in
mind. When considering the Second Chance Act funding available
to states, the Michigan Department of Corrections and our other
departments, work with local jurisdictions, to receive federal
funding. So funding goes from the federal government directly
to those local jurisdictions where $300,000 or $400,000 or
$500,000 can make a world of difference, as opposed to coming
to the state bureaucracy where our $2 billion corrections
budget, frankly, is sufficient to do our job.
There is a lot more information I could cover but I will
save it for questions. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wolf, thank
you.
[Written statement by Dennis S. Schrantz, Deputy Director,
Planning and Community Development Administration, Michigan
Department of Corrections, follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Schrantz. Mr. Schrantz, the
scope of what Michigan is doing is, as you have described it
here, simply astounding, really. When did you start this
initiative?

MICHIGAN GOVERNOR

Mr. Schrantz. Well, it is important to understand that the
Governor ran as Governor with a plank in her platform to reform
prisoner reentry. And so, when she was first elected to office
in 2003 her first message to her cabinet on issues of justice
and crime was that they were to collaborate on prisoner
reentry. So we started the planning in earnest before the
election, when I worked on her campaign. And then she brought
me into state government to be able to manage this reform.
We planned for two years and in 2005 we began our first
reinvestment by closing a private prison that had exorbitant
cost and terrible performance. We took $19 million in savings
and we put about half of that into our first prisoner reentry
pilot sites. Then the next year we doubled that, the next year
we doubled that. So by the time we got to 2006, we had
established sites across the state. And then in 2008 we asked
each of those eighteen sites to expand their borders so they
now cover all of the state. In order to do that, we connected
with One Stop Shops across the state, which in Michigan are
called Michigan Works Agencies. Out of those eighteen sites,
fourteen of them have as their administrative agency a Michigan
Works Agency. And they are very well suited, obviously, to
focus on the issue of jobs.
So we went to their natural borders and expanded. The other
sites include the Southeast Michigan United Way, Genessee
County government, Catholic Social Services, and then a human
services collaborative in Oakland and Livingston counties. So
we let the locals decide who actually manages the money. So far
we have worked with about 12,000 prisoners and the data that I
expressed to you concerns those 12,000.
Mr. Mollohan. And you started in 2003?
Mr. Schrantz. We started planning in 2003. We started
implementing in 2005. We worked for two years before we
actually started putting prisoners through the MPRI.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, you are doing a lot. You are recreating
your entire criminal justice framework, really, to focus on
rehabilitation, reduce recidivism. You are moving prisoners
more quickly out of prison to parole, providing services to try
to avoid violating parole. Not to sound like the recent
criticism of the President of the United States, but are you
trying to do too much?
Mr. Schrantz. We are certainly trying to do too much, I
will tell you that, but Governor Granholm was very clear when
she took office. She said, ``You are going to get this fixed
during my watch.'' And I remember saying to her, ``Well I hope
you get reelected for two terms because we are not going to get
it done in four years.'' And so, frankly, I would say that our
rapid expansion does certainly have some downsides. But we have
been able to take advantage of this enormous energy and
commitment across the state, and really have tapped into such a
broad passion to do this work that I do not think we should
have done it any other way.
Mr. Mollohan. How have you gotten your community service
providers prepared for this?
Mr. Schrantz. Well, the community service providers are
pretty much prepared as collaboratives in their own right. They
are very well organized in their local communities. They know
each other, they work with each other. And so when funding
streams and government structures are put into place they are
usually ready to respond.
Mr. Mollohan. But you have had to orient them. I mean, you
have had to prepare them. You have had to resource them.
Mr. Schrantz. Sure. One of our first opportunities for
funds included some foundation funding from the JEHT
Foundation, which recently folded. It is in Mr. Serrano's
district. And it is very ironic that Mr. Madoff may be doing
time in prison and so much of the money that he helped raise
actually funded the reentry initiative. I was thinking today of
writing him a letter asking him to think about when he was ever
going to get out. Because of JEHT funding, we were able to
place a community coordinator in each of our first eight sites.
And that community coordinator was a full time staff person who
worked to develop the first comprehensive plan for that area
who brought to the table the human service providers, the
warden from the local prison, the head of the local parole
office, a faith based or a community advocate. They formed a
committee which then created the comprehensive plan. That
comprehensive plan came to the state for funding. When the
state funded it, we did not need the JEHT Foundation money for
that particular district, so we used the JEHT money for the
next eight sites. And we did that repeatedly for three years,
organizing at the community level not with Department of
Corrections staff, functioning as facilitators or experts.
Because we knew that that skill of community development
organizing is a very specific skill. And we used a statewide
nonprofit community organizing agency to hire those people (the
Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency).

INTERCHANGE FREEDOM INITIATIVE

Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Nolan, the recidivism rates of graduates
of your Interchange Freedom Initiative are impressive. A two
year post release rearrest rate of 17.3 percent compared with
35 percent for nonparticipants, and a two year reincarceration
rate of only 8 percent compared with 20.3 percent for
nonparticipants. How long has the IFI been operating, and in
how many communities are you operating today?
Mr. Nolan. It started in 1996. The first one opened in
1997. We were negotiating with TDCJ to set it up. We are now in
seven different states. However, we are treating the IFI,
frankly, as a laboratory of what works so then we can roll it
out at far less expense in communities around the country. Our
target are the seventy-five major communities across the
country which have the greatest number of offenders returning.
And we are working to roll the mentoring program out there
along with the communities of care coordinating the other
assets.
I think as Dennis said, those groups are there. They are
doing the work. And it really just takes somebody helping them
plan. And one of them, I think, essential provisions of The
Second Chance Act is that for the grants they have to come up
with a strategic plan, and a consortium so that we get the
maximum impact from these groups that on their own have been
doing tremendous work. But that map out what the needs of
offenders are. And where there is overlap, or also where there
are gaps. And what we have found is, we have been a great
catalyst in the seven states where we work for a lot of groups
that have been saying, ``Gee, we were hoping somebody would
call us together.'' And so we are surfing, if you will, off all
this other great work. And we are just sort of the catalyst to
bring them together.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, we want to get to asking the
cooperation and working together question here in just a little
bit.
Mr. Nolan. Okay.

READY, WILLING AND ABLE PROGRAMS

Mr. Mollohan. Mr. McDonald, the low rearrest rate for the
Ready, Willing and Able graduates is quite impressive. If you
could get down to a 4.8 percent rearrest rate throughout the
population of reentering offenders, that would make a huge
difference in the crime rates and the strains on correctional
facilities, not to mention the lives of the reentering
offenders. How does your rearrest rate compare with other
reentry programs out there?
Mr. George McDonald. Well, it is hard to know. Because, Mr.
Chairman, it is hard to get any information that you could
determine was accurate. I mean, it is like drug treatment
programs, you know? Everybody has got the most effective drug
treatment program in the world but the people that come into
our facilities have been in twelve or fourteen different drug
treatment programs. We run the most successful drug treatment
program in America and we are not a drug treatment program. We
drug test twice a week. We treat people like they are adults,
and expect them to act that way. And they earn money so they
have money in their pocket. In our Harlem facility they only
have to walk a couple blocks to be able to buy any drugs that
they want and they do not do it.
We measure with the state, working closely with the
Brooklyn district attorney with the funding that we have gotten
through your Subcommittee. You know, we work with the state, we
work with the city, we work with the district attorneys.
Professor Bruce Western at Harvard University, who just
made a recent presentation on this at the Brookings Institution
has studied our program and has studied it in conjunction with
the Brooklyn district attorney's office. And says that paid
transitional work is the answer. I mean, think about it. It is
the difference. Because the guy comes home, he goes and sleeps
on the sofa or sleeps with his girlfriend, or wherever parole
says that he can be, and then he tries to get a job. Okay.
Well, how many days does he go out and knock his head against
the wall? The hardest thing in America to do is for an African
American man with a prison record to get a job. That is simple.
Now, what does he really do? After he goes through this
process and cannot get a job, he gets thrown out of where he is
living because they do not believe that he sincerely wants to
bring anything into the home when he does. But he cannot get a
job, so he falls back on the conduct that got him put in prison
in the first place. And then it makes it that much harder the
next time he comes out.
The alternative is just a minimal investment. Our program
costs $25,000 for a slot. And a slot serves 1.4 people a year.
So you can figure out how much that is. About $13,000 of that
$25,000 goes directly to the person's pocket. That is the pay
that they get, in cash. It is getting money to them at the most
critical time when they need money.
You know, I had a guy write to me who was discharged from
prison in Florida saying he wished our program was there.
Because he gets $100 when he gets out of prison and all that is
good for is to buy a gun.
Mr. Nolan. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes?
Mr. Nolan. Can I say, you pointed out the problem, though,
for all these programs is how do you know they are effective?
And frankly, we are all dependent on the state for figures. In
Texas and the seven states where we are the Department of
Corrections give us those figures. Dennis and what he is doing
in Michigan is perfect, because he is tracking those inmates
and seeing how they are doing, what programs they are in, and
they are measuring who is effective. But nonprofits without the
benefit of the state figures do not have the credibility. So
that is an essential part of this, is having the states do like
Dennis is doing where they are overseeing all of this and they
can then measure the effectiveness.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the fact that
you have this panel probably makes these hearings well worth
it. I think this is the most impressive testimony that I have
heard since I have served in this institution on the issue of
prison reform. And not gloom and doom, and I know Pat, and I
think Prison Fellowship does a marvelous job. Chuck Colson and
Prison Fellowship, and God bless him.
And Mr. McDonald, I know about the Doe Fund and I think you
are exactly right. I know a young prisoner. He got out about
two and a half months ago. He cannot, he is African American.
He cannot get a job. He cannot get a job. Your testimony on
page three, to find employment is the answer. And I might say,
I have got to say this, we had the previous panel earlier,
earlier this morning. They acted like they did not have any of
the answers. I mean, the three of you, with all due respect,
seem to have a lot of answers. And I, from my understanding I
think you are right.
And Mr. Schrantz, I am going to take your material. I am
going to get it to my governor and my people. And Pat, maybe we
can meet sometime with the state and see if we can adopt this.
I think this is the answer. And your figures, Mr. Schrantz, are
more impressive because you are the center of ground zero of
the economy evaporating.
Mr. Schrantz. Yes.

UNEMPLOYMENT SITUATION IN MICHIGAN

Mr. Wolf. Your governor, I have seen her on television,
talking about the job loss that you have. I think your
unemployment rate is 10 percent.
Mr. Schrantz. It is double digits.
Mr. Wolf. Double digit. And so here they are doing what
they are doing in an unemployment situation. So, I mean, we are
going to follow up with the three of you. And maybe Mr.
McDonald can get you to come on down with Pat. And then if you
can give us what you have, and we will get it to Governor Kaine
and see what we can do.
The couple questions, the last witnesses said they had no
information on recidivism. I just looked, you do have
information. Why did they not have it? And I think this is a
better hearing than the Bureau of Prisons Director. Either we
should swear these men in and take the oath, or either they are
telling us the truth or they are not telling it. If you are
telling the truth, we should ask them to stand up and swear
them in. But it is different. It is different. So I would like
to do that.
My time is limited. I want to get downstairs. We have a
Tibetan amendment, too. I want to ask a couple of questions.
Mr. Nolan, Pat, are you aware, I asked about Islamic terrorism,
and are you aware of any situation where Wahhabi have kept
moderate Islamic materials out of prisons?

RELIGIOUS MATERIALS/GROUPS IN PRISON

Mr. Nolan. Yes. Because of our work on behalf of religious
freedom for all prisoners, and not just Christians, Islamic
groups, moderate Islamic groups have contacted us and said as
they have sent literature into prisons it has been rejected by
Wahhabist imams that are hired as chaplains who say it is not
faithful to the Koran. And of course, the Wahhabists have a, it
would be, the analogy I would use is letting David Koresh
choose what versus of the Bible to use. Putting him as the
gatekeeper on that.
Unfortunately, the screening of some of the imams I think
leaves a lot to be desired. And so the imams have these radical
views and they are keeping out literature which tries to
present the other side, the Koran as supporting a peaceful
existence rather than a more warlike one. And the letters are,
you know, pretty thick of these Muslim inmates that are frankly
oppressed as they try to learn more about their faith not from
a Wahhabist perspective.
Mr. Wolf. Is this at federal and state level?
Mr. Nolan. It is federal and state. The states, plural. But
in the federal institutions it has been a real problem.
Mr. Wolf. Would you submit for the record any information
you have with that?
Mr. Nolan. I would be glad to. I might say one terrific
group that I would love to discuss with you privately has asked
us not to publicly identify them because they are afraid for
themselves.
Mr. Wolf. This is a Muslim group?
Mr. Nolan. Muslim group, yes.
Mr. Wolf. Who wants to be in the prison----
Mr. Nolan. Right.
Mr. Wolf [continuing]. But is intimidated from coming in?
Mr. Nolan. Are being excluded from the prisons.
Mr. Wolf. And do you think the Bureau of Prisons knows
about this?
Mr. Nolan. Yes.
Mr. Wolf. Well, if you can give me the information----
Mr. Nolan. Yeah. I would be glad to.

TRADE WORK IN PRISONS

Mr. Wolf [continuing]. I will follow up. I have so many
other questions. In the interest of time, and I know there are
other witnesses. This is a very impressive panel. Two other
questions I would have to ask and I will summarize them
together. I believe it would be important to bring more work
into the prisons. If you all agree, yes or no.
Mr. Schrantz. Yes.
Mr. Wolf. Real work, too. Not the laundry.
Mr. Schrantz. That is challenging, yes.
Mr. Wolf. Challenging.
Mr. Nolan. And training.
Mr. Wolf. And training, exactly. Maybe I will just, the
last thing is, I guess I should ask it. I am thinking of
offering an amendment, and maybe this would be the panel. Do
you think, I had asked before, is there a best practices list
that we could take? And I was thinking of the idea, and the
morning witnesses were, like, ``You know, we have got thousands
of miles to go before we sleep and so we are not there.'' And
you guys tell us we are there if we have the resources.
Mr. Schrantz. If I may offer a suggestion. The National
Institute of Corrections that is housed in the Federal Bureau
of Prisons was instrumental in us working in Michigan on
creating a design that was going to work. The Council of State
Governments has been doing some tremendous work in reentry
throughout the nation as well. They convened a reentry policy
council many years ago that created a virtual encyclopedia of
information on how to do this work. We are following that work.
And there are several publications that we use with our
stakeholders that provide a very substantial roadmap on what
local jurisdictions and state jurisdictions need to be able to
do in order to get the work done.
It requires funding. But before funding even comes into the
forefront it requires a plan. And before there can be a plan
there has got to be a vision. You know, a friend of mine says
all the time that a vision without a plan is a hallucination.
And I think that is really important when you do this work.
Because you must require, as you do in The Second Chance Act,
and as we require at the state level, very significant planning
before the money flows.
And I do not think there is any better time than to do this
work in tough economic times. Because here is what drives us:
we are spending too much money on prisons. And the Governor
recommended in her budget in Michigan, a $188 million cut in
corrections in one year, which will require us to close as many
as five prisons when they empty because of the work we are
doing. She reinvested, recommended reinvestment to the State
Legislative of $68 million of that $188 million in savings.
Without that reinvestment we cannot save the money. It takes
money to save money. And so these tough economic times, I
think, are ideal.
If it were not for this tough economy in Michigan, I will
guarantee you we would not have been able to get this done in
such short order. There is no way.
Mr. Wolf. Well, please----

THE DOE FUND

Mr. George McDonald. Can I just say, the paid transitional
work is not necessarily the responsibility of the government.
Our program started out as a revenue generating program. We got
paid for the work that we did for the City of New York. Not a
grant from the Human Resources Administration, or for social
work, or for any of that stuff. It was for renovating
apartments. And if we did not do that we did not get paid. Then
we took that concept and built it into street cleaning. So we
work for many business improvement districts that pay us. My
profit is to be able to pay the person long enough for them to
get work skills that they need to be place in private sector
jobs.
If you mandate it, if you say that part of what we are
going to do, along with the planning process, along with the
great work that the states are doing, and along with mentoring,
is paid transitional work, and you all figure out how you are
going to do it, that is even a great advance.
Mr. Wolf. Well, you know, it is interesting. The whole
debate over the H-1B, we cannot get enough workers, we cannot
do this, and we, they are telling us that they have workers. I
mean, I think we need a panel to look, and do you think it
would make sense in a panel, I think the three of you would be
very, just sort of look and come back together----
Mr. George McDonald. We will stay here and wait.
Mr. Wolf. No, I mean, I mean to take, for us to fund kind
of a group. Maybe you, the three of you, or Chuck and others,
to be on. People, not a right or a left, but people who really,
one, they care, and two, they know. It is not enough to just
care without knowing. But, and see if we can put together kind
of a report by a certain date whereby here is the way it is.
Would that make sense? Or would you all be interested in being
a part of that?
Mr. Schrantz. Yes, certainly. I think we would be standing
on the shoulders of those before us.
Mr. Wolf. We can call it the William Wilberforce Project.
Mr. Nolan. Mr. Wolf, I would love to participate in that. I
only ask that there, and this Committee and the rest of
Congress has shown the commitment. But Governor Schwarzenegger
asked to be on his strike team on rehabilitation. We pulled
together experts from across the country and within CDCR. Top
notch folks. We all agreed. Everybody knows, in corrections,
knows what needs to be done. It is the political will to do it.
We know. We have known for twenty years what works and we have
more evidence now. But it is really getting your buy in and
your colleagues. And you did that on The Second Chance Act. As
Dennis said, that has spread across the country and given hope
everywhere in every DOC. So your commission would be great. But
then there needs to be the follow through with Congress to say
this is important stuff. This is public safety.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you. And thank you all for your testimony.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Schiff.

DRUG ABUSE AND TREATMENT IN PRISON

Mr. Schiff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I concur with my
colleagues. I think this has been just a tremendous panel. And
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Nolan and I represented the same area out in
Los Angeles. And when I was in the state senate Mr. Nolan came
and testified before our committee there as well and offered
very valuable insights.
You may have in fact been at this hearing that I am going
to refer to. Father Greg Boyle was on one of the panels. And I
remember something that he, he does a lot of work with at risk
youth in Los Angeles. And really started an organization called
Homeboy Industries that make clothing and put at risk kids to
work. And I remember he was asked I think by one of my
colleagues, John Vasconcellos, if he could find a, point to a
common denominator of these kids in these tough neighborhoods,
tough circumstances, who had turned their lives around. What
was the common denominator?
And his answer is interesting in light of your testimony
today. Because he said, ``Well, there are two things.'' One is
they had a mentor. They had somebody who cared whether they
succeeded or failed. And it might have been a teacher, or a
parent, or a grandparent, or a probation officer. But somebody
cared whether that person succeeded or failed. And the second
thing was a job. And this is, obviously, very consistent, Pat,
with your testimony, and Mr. McDonald, with yours. If there is
a third leg of the stool it is probably substance abuse
treatment. I think when we send people with substance abuse
problems out of our prisons into the population without dealing
with that problem then we should be surprised when they do not
recidivate. And it was interesting, Mr. McDonald, in your
testimony that, you know, you found the most successful
antidrug program is the incentive of a paycheck. And you cannot
get the paycheck----
Mr. George McDonald. Well, and the drug testing.
Mr. Schiff. Well, you have got to have the drug testing.
But you cannot get the employment unless you are clean. And so
the incentive is the employment as the magnet.
Mr. George McDonald. Right. That is it. Because they
already have it.
Mr. Schiff. And what I am interested in, because I do not
think, and Mr. Schrantz your testimony about the need for us to
invest in proven programs and not just sort of what sounds
good, and maybe organizations we like, but, you know, what do
we empirically have evidence actually works. I do not think any
of us would disagree with any of those things. And the
challenge is always putting it into practice.
And I have two questions. And, Pat, with your experience as
a legislator, and your experience in Michigan, and on the
ground, I think there are two things that we can do. One is, of
course, we can try to improve the federal prison system, which
we have direct jurisdiction over. The other is we can
incentivize the states to do things that they should be doing.
The challenge, one of the challenges is where is the, you know,
where is the locus of responsibility here? And, you know, in
The Second Chance Act I offered an amendment that was adopted
to require sort of on a prison by prison basis that the Bureau
keep statistics about how their reentry programs were working
and not working.
You might have two prisons in the same state with the same
general prison population who have very different records of
recidivism. I am not sure the prisons by and large keep track
of that. Now, maybe the Department of Corrections as a whole
does, or maybe no one does. We are trying on the federal level
to get the federal Bureau to do it. But what is the right level
to both provide the resources, but also require the
accountability? How do we ensure that we do have these jobs
programs and efforts? It seems very cost effective to me. And a
twofer if you can pay the salary for people to do public work
that needs to be done anyway. And it is far cheaper even if
they were not doing the work to pay them than imprison them.
But, you know, paying them, giving them a job skill, and have
them do something productive is the all around winner.
But where is the right venue? How do you recommend to us as
legislator we improve the federal system, and how do you
recommend that we incentivize the states?

WARDENS

Mr. Nolan. Well, a warden that had been a warden for
twenty-four years in Oklahoma, which is a pretty tough system,
made a recommendation to me that absolutely is a home run. And
that is, he said right now wardens and corrections officers are
graded and promoted on if there are escapes or riots. If nobody
escapes and nobody riots they are a good warden. If one of the
people in their care leaves prison and murders somebody a block
from the prison, they say it is not my job. He said that may
keep institutions safe, but it is not public safety. We need
public safety. So he said we need to give them incentives so it
is not a job, the job dissolution light does not flash in our
mind every time a volunteer comes into prison.
Because under the current system it is a disincentive to
allow volunteers in because it is a potential security problem.
He said if we graded, included in their grade recidivism,
exactly what you said, for their facility, graded against other
facilities of the same type. So, you know max versus, you know,
other max prisons. Held them accountable, all of a sudden it
would change the incentives and those wardens would welcome the
volunteers to come into prison. They would welcome the jobs
programs. They would follow those inmates and try to make sure
that they were succeeding because their promotion would depend
on the success in the community, on the person not returning.
And in Oklahoma we got that adopted. That is part of their
DOC now, that type of incentive. But it is exactly what you
said. Prison by prison keep accounting of it. And that holds
them responsible for what? Public safety, not just
institutional safety.
Mr. Schiff. See, and the prisons though, they may have the
ability within their four walls of making sure, you know, there
is occupational training, and mentoring. But they do not have
the authority in terms of the reentry efforts once they are
outside the four walls. Will they not come back and say to us,
``I can only deal with them when they are on the inside.'' Let
us say, in Michigan. ``The people who are really falling down
on the job are the people who are supposed to take care of them
after they have left the building.'' So this is one of the
challenges we have.
I agree with Pat. And I think, you know, we ought to
incentivize the wardens to look at their recidivism. They are
going to say, ``We can only look at part of the job.'' And
this, if this sounds very familiar it sounds a lot like the
debate over No Child Left Behind.
Mr. Nolan. Uh-huh.
Mr. Schiff. Where the teachers are saying, ``I can only
control what is in the classroom.'' We are saying, ``Well, we
are going to give you more money but, you know, more
accountability. And we want to measure one school compared to
another school in the same similar''----
Mr. Nolan. But see, my response is the wardens being graded
would have the same impediments. They are dealing with the same
communities. Prisoners go back to about seventy-five
neighborhoods, or communities, in this country. The vast
majority of them. So wardens that have their inmates going back
to that community, if the institutions are not there, if the
reentry structure is not there, if they have not had the
coordination like we talked about, that is going to affect
every warden the same. And what the difference, the variable is
what they do inside. Yes, they cannot control the outside. But
again, that is a constant. So I would say that is the answer to
them. Because they will resist it. They do not want to be
graded on public safety.
Mr. Schiff. But how do we provide that kind of
accountability for the wardens, but also, Mr. Schrantz, if you
could address on the reentry side, because I imagine if you
imposed this in Michigan, maybe you already have some form of
this, they are going to say, ``Well, it is the Department of
Corrections that really is falling down. Because they have
jurisdiction over what happens after they are out. Do not pin
it all on me, Mr. Warden.'' So----
Mr. Schrantz. Accountability starts at the top and works
its way downhill. The Governor is holding the Director of
Corrections accountable. The Director of Corrections is holding
every warden accountable and every head of our local parole
office accountable. And in order for that accountability to
actually have any legs it is our responsibility as an agency to
provide these folks with the tools and the resources they need
to be able to do the job.
Mr. Schiff. And who, and maybe there is just no local venue
for this, but let us say that you have a prison in Ann Arbor. I
am sure they would not want one in Ann Arbor.
Mr. Schrantz. We actually do not.
Mr. Schiff. No.
Mr. Schrantz. We have one in Coldwater, though.
Mr. Schiff. Okay, let us pick Coldwater.
Mr. Schrantz. Okay, good.
Mr. Schiff. Okay. The, you know, the warden at Coldwater is
responsible for, you know, the inmates while they are in the
institution. You can give them some responsibility in terms of
recidivism after they leave. But who outside that institution
has primary responsibility to make sure there are programs like
Mr. McDonald's, or programs like Mr. Nolan's? Do you have to go
all the way up to the statewide Director of Corrections?
Mr. Schrantz. It is certainly not a responsibility of the
warden. The other thing to recognize with our prison system
just like all prison systems, is that the people who move in
and out of that prison change all the time. There are buses
that are moving in and out of that prison all the time. So in
order to be able to track recidivism or failure, etcetera, you
really have to have a statewide system. The warden should be
responsible for making certain that the model that we provide
for programming, the model that we provide for prison, to bring
the people in the communities into the prisons to work with the
inmates, is in place with the standards that we provide. And he
or she can be measured in their performance against that. That
in turn, though, has to be able to be communicated back to the
warden in terms of, ``Well, if all the wardens are doing this
together that is why we are reducing the return rate.'' So they
have to have the feedback.
Mr. Schiff. Well, let me just ask you, in Coldwater,
wherever the inmates from Coldwater are released to, are they
released into Coldwater?
Mr. Schrantz. No. Very, seldom are they released to
Coldwater. Prisons are generally not built in the communities
where most of the prisoners come from.
Mr. Schiff. Right. Well, okay. Where is the main population
center that Coldwater inmates would be returned to? The number
one?
Mr. Schrantz. Detroit Wayne County is where 44 percent of
all of our inmates go when they are released.
Mr. Schiff. Okay. Does someone have responsibility in
Detroit and that county?
Mr. Schrantz. Yes.
Mr. Schiff. Who has responsibility there that is equivalent
to the warden's?
Mr. Schrantz. Wayne-Monroe County is one region of 18
regions. Each has four co-chairs that are in charge of that
region and that comprehensive plan. The warden from the local
prison, where we now move the men just before release so they
are actually at least doing two months in the prison nearest
home. The other co-chair is the head of the local parole
office. The third co-chair is the administrative head of the
agency who we give the money to. And then the fourth person is
a community advocate. Those co-chairs are responsible for that
comprehensive plan. The administrative agency is responsible
for the money. And when we want results for that particular
community we go to them.
Mr. Schiff. Well, and you know, that sounds great,
actually. You have the warden as a member of that committee.
Mr. Schrantz. Has to be. Has to be.

PRE-RELEASE FACILITY

Mr. George McDonald. The problem in New York, the principal
state that we are in, is that the prisons are the job program.
They do not want to close prisons because they are all upstate.
They are 400 or 500 miles away from where the folks live and
where prisoners go back to. Now, they come to Queensboro for
two months and that is when we go in to the actual pre-release
facility. We educate them about our program and then pick them
up when they come out the door. But the idea that, they would
laugh at us if we said that we were going to hold anybody
responsible. They want them to come back. Unbelievable, but
read the front page of the----
Mr. Schiff. In those circumstances it would be hard to hold
a warden in upstate New York responsible for what happens in
New York City.

ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS

Mr. George McDonald. Right. Well, you are not going to. But
read the New York Times today about the reform of the
Rockefeller drug laws. If they reform the Rockefeller drug laws
then 2,000 folks would come home from prison. And they do not
want to do it because they do not want to pay the
administrative costs of processing the 2,000 folks.
The solution is this solution. The solution, or the
regional reentry task force, where you get the district
attorneys, and providers, and everybody working together, that
is what we need. The focus of the Congress on this subject is
what we needed. And your continued focus and continued
sophistication of finding out more and more and more about how
to effect change. That is the kind of leadership we need. First
and foremost, is the leadership of the government of the United
States of America to grab hold of this and say, ``This is not
tenable. And it costs us so much money. And it is the last
frontier of public safety.'' It really is. We can live in a
virtually crime free society except for this interpersonal
stuff that we do if we get these folks out of prison and get
them into our economic system. Which is still the greatest
economic system in the world, just a little blip we are going
through.

UPSTATE NEW YORK VS. NEW YORK CITY

Mr. Nolan. If I could just push back on you, that you
cannot hold a warden in upstate New York accountable for what
happens in New York City. There are dozens of prisons in
upstate New York, all of whose, or the vast majority of their
inmates going back to New York City. I would say you can hold
them accountable. Because, if there is a difference in
recidivism rate among those prisons, and most of their inmates
are going back to New York, then something is different that
causes the inmates from one prison to do better than the
others.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Schiff. Mr. Aderholt?
Mr. Aderholt. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you each
for being here today, and for testifying before our
Subcommittee. Each of you bring a very interesting perspective
and just some great ideas to this issue. And it is interesting
to learn about each of your projects and what you do. Of
course, I am familiar with what Prison Fellowship has been
doing. And I know it is a great organization. So Pat, certainly
we have worked on a couple of projects together and so I
certainly realize the impact that Prison Fellowship makes. But
certainly your other groups here, I thank you for what you do
as well.
Yesterday, of course, as it has already been alluded to, we
had the Director of the Bureau of Prisons who came and
testified before the Committee. And one of the questions that I
asked yesterday was about the halfway houses. And I know Pat,
you mentioned that in your opening testimony. You mentioned the
fact of how important that was, and how that we should, find a
workable way to do that. It is my understanding that from The
Second Chance Act that up to twelve months can be spent in a
halfway house. Is that correct?
Mr. Nolan. Yes.

HALFWAY HOUSES

Mr. Aderholt. Yesterday it seemed like, during the
testimony yesterday when they were talking about six months, so
it was kept to be, the term they use now. They did not say that
you could not be there for twelve months in a halfway house,
but it seemed like that was sort of the standard, like, they
are looking at six months. And even as the upper limit. I just
want to know your thoughts on that, and where that is coming
from.
Mr. Nolan. Yes. It is quite frustrating, those of us who
supported The Second Chance Act. Several places in The Second
Chance Act it says twelve months. And especially as an
incentive to inmates to participate in drug treatment and
reentry programs. The BOP has issued a rule that caps it at six
months and the only way to get more than six months is to have
the application signed by the warden, and the regional
director. And to my knowledge there have only been two in all
of the BOP. Now, there may be more and it would be interesting
to ask them that. But I am aware of only two instances in which
they have gotten more than six months since The Second Chance
Act. And those two were only for a few days more, because of
exigent circumstances.
Now, they claim that it is cheaper to keep somebody in a
low or minimum security prison than in the halfway house. But
they also talked about the problem of overcrowding in prisons.
And the stress that puts on the officers, and the violence in
prisons. I serve on the Prison Rape Elimination Commission and
I was also on the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's
Prisons. Overcrowded prisons lead to violence and rapes. While
people are in the custody they are stripped of all ability to
defend themselves and then they are subjected to violence and
rape in our prisons. The way to deal with that is lower
crowding.
In statute currently are several ways to move people to a
halfway house, The Second Chance Act. But also good time
credits. The BOP figures good time credit, like the auto dealer
does on percentage rates of credit. So it really works out
instead of 15 percent credit for good time, only 12.5 percent.
That does not seem like a lot but spread over the couple of
hundred thousand folks in prison, federal prisons, it is a lot.
Those are beds that could be going home.

BOOT CAMPS

Secondly, boot camps, guaranteed time off. And unlike state
boot camps that have been proven pretty ineffective, the
federal boot camps have been proven effective. But they are not
expanding them. The number of federal inmates is tiny. It not
only would give them the discipline that is needed, but it cuts
time off their time in prison. Again, those are beds that could
be used to solve overcrowding. The RDAT Program, which is drug
treatment, allows up to a year off. The problem is, the BOP
bureaucrats are so slow in processing the inmates to get into
these classes that oftentimes they have less than a year left
on their sentence. So yes, they participate in RDAT Program,
but they do not get the full year off. Why not have the
bureaucracy work so they are in a class, so they can take
advantage of the full year, freeing up beds again?
And again, for the reasons I said earlier, it is actually
cheaper to keep folks in a halfway house. They are not counting
capital costs. They are not counting the folks that are sent to
home confinement from a halfway house. They are not counting
the contributions, the payments of inmates, of one-quarter of
their wages that go to this in order to get to the figure. It
is cheaper for the taxpayers. It also, oftentimes preparing to
come home takes more than six months. All the, when they are at
home they are able to bond back with their family, solve any of
the conflict issues with their family. They are able to be
closer to their mentor instead of hundreds or, in the case of
BOP, thousands of miles away. They are able to get their
drivers license. They are able to look for a job, all while
they are there locally. They cannot do that far away in a
prison. So giving them more time is in everybody's interest,
except the BOP resists it and I do not understand. It is
puzzling to me. And as the Appropriations Committee you ought
to hold them accountable for why are they spending more money
keeping folks in than when the law already allows them to let
them go to the halfway house or home.
Mr. George McDonald. And I would also say that, it is based
on evidence. You have to base it on evidence. Not what some
person sitting in an agency decides that this is what it should
be, such as six months. In my experience, and now it is twenty-
five years of this kind of stuff, it is always shortsighted. It
is always looking for the quickest, bang for a buck and let us
move on. But if you treat the person, as I said earlier, in our
day program, eight months is the average. The cost of
incarceration, including police and all of that, is around
$115,000. You know, $40,000 for a state prison, $60,000 for a
jail in the city.
In our homeless program, where folks come home from prison,
do not get a job, wind up out on the street and then in a
homeless shelter, it takes us twelve to fourteen months. But
when they come right out of prison it takes us eight months.
But we ought to be able to have as long as it takes for that
individual person. So if it is twelve months for that, for the
person who comes home from prison, and fifteen years later they
have not been back to prison, well, that would be a good
investment of time. And we have 4,000 people over the past
twenty years that I can introduce you to by social security
number.

PRISONER REENTRY INITIATIVE

Mr. Schrantz. I would add, in great support of that
statement, that what we have learned in Michigan in the
Prisoner Reentry Initiative is that you have to deal with each
individual offender based on that offender's risk and need.
That has to drive the individual plan. And while there are
funding constraints that may require an agency to say, ``Look,
we do not have enough money to keep these guys in treatment for
five years because if you did you would serve the first 100
instead of 600.'' Restrictions make some sense. But in only the
agencies that I run, I at least allow an average. So that ``on
average'' they say serve, about six months. So that, for every
guy you have that only needs a month, you have got a guy that
can do a year. For every guy that does three months you have a
guy that can do nine months.
Use the money wisely as an incentive, and understand that
the reason they need this housing. Many times because of
substance abuse service delivery must be provided within the
house itself lifelong addictions. We have this belief in this
country that a man or woman who comes to prison, after twenty-
four, twenty-six, thirty years of life, fifteen of which they
were drug addicts, they are cured in prison. They are still a
drug addict when they get out. And suddenly after release in
three or four months they are not a drug addict anymore. They
are going to relapse. And they must have access to drug free
living environments, short intervals, back and forth,
throughout their entire parole. And that should be allowed by
the funding agency.
I am no expert on the Bureau of Prisons so I do not want to
jump into that fray. But I think that what is critical is to
understand, as George says, is that you have to do what the
research says. And the research says there is no such thing as
one size fits all. Base it on risk. Base it on need. If I have
a guy in a program that has hurt people fifteen times, I am not
going to throw him out of a house after three months simply
because somebody says his time is up. I need to keep him there.
On the other hand, I do not want to keep a guy in a house for
low level larceny for three or four years. I mean, we have got
to go where the evidence takes us. The evidence says, base it
on research, base it on risk assessment, and then modify your
individual plan accordingly.
State agencies have to be able to be flexible in their
funding. They create the structure and the money, and then they
should get the hell out of the way and let the folks in the
local jurisdictions who live in these places make those kinds
of decisions around public safety issues. That is how we
operate.

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Mr. George McDonald. May I say this real quick? The
Department of Labor.
Mr. Aderholt. My time is up, but go ahead.
Mr. George McDonald. Chairman, I am so sorry.
Mr. Aderholt. But we will defer this. No, go ahead,
Mr. George McDonald. The Department of Labor, and talk
about short sightedness, in their reentry initiative, it was
limited to nonviolent things. You know, and what kind of
insanity is that? That we are just not going to help violent
offenders when they come out.
Mr. Schrantz. We have a waiver. The Department of Labor
does give a waiver now, but you have to apply for it. And we do
not know whether that waiver is going to continue. That is a
huge issue for us. If the federal government is going to
restrict us from working with people with a violent past or sex
offenders, we are not going to want your money. We can already
take care of those nonviolent, low level offenders. The big
challenge is how to reduce violent crime.
Mr. Nolan. To show how absurd the system is, in California
at Pelican Bay, Supermax, in the middle of nowhere. I have been
up there, been through it. They keep people in isolation, some
for as long as five, seven years. When they are finished their
sentence, they serve every minute of their sentence in
solitary. They frog walk them to the gate, have them go out the
gate, stick their hands through and unlock their belly chain,
their handcuffs, their shackles, and let them loose.
Mr. Mollohan. Is that a federal prison?

VIOLENT OFFENDERS

Mr. Nolan. No, that is a state prison. But that is horribly
dangerous to the public, and it is cruel to that offender.
There has been no transition. As Dennis says, the nonviolent
folks are easy. It is hard to get a job and stuff, but it is
easy. The violent folks we need to worry about. They are going
to finish their sentences someday, too. There needs to be some
transition for them, some restoration of decision making in
their life, the reformation of their thinking from criminogenic
behavior. We would say reformation of the heart. All that needs
to take place. But like me not being able to order from the
menu of a deli, think about this guy that has been in solitary
for five or seven years. And had a violent past. We are asking
for trouble doing it that way.
Mr. Aderholt. Is the thinking on that just that the violent
offenders will have been there for so long that you do not
think about when they will get out? Or what is the basis----
Mr. Nolan. I for the life of me cannot fathom it.
Mr. George McDonald. No. The drug related crimes sometimes
are classified as being violent when they really are a drug
related crime.
Mr. Aderholt. But usually those have long sentences that go
along with them, so I----
Mr. George McDonald. Yes, but the point is that they get
out. A person serves their sentence, and if they are not on
civil confinement for a sex offender, other than that they are
going to get out. And they are going to be in society. So what
do we want to do? Do we want to use the Department of Labor's
money to help them get a job? Or do we want to ignore them?
Mr. Schrantz. And if I may add to that. Men and women who
are in prison and misbehaving with serious misconducts, hurting
other prisoners, hitting correctional officers are going to
probably max out their sentence, meaning they are not going to
be eligible for parole in a parole state like Michigan. And so
the thinking historically has been they are so dangerous we do
not dare let them out. We want them to do every minute in
prison. But we cannot continue to support that policy.
In Michigan, based on a Council of State Governments
Justice Reinvestment Initiative Report that I recommend you all
look at because it is some stunning work in terms of how states
can bring all this stuff together under one umbrella of
thinking and planning. They recommended and the legislature
expected to adopt, a law that every prisoner is going to serve
at least nine months on parole. The message from the
legislature is: Department of Corrections, you had better wrap
your head around it because you are spending $35,000 a year on
average per person and for some as high as $65,000 for the
maximum security inmates and you had better use that money to
rehabilitate them and get them ready for release. And they are
going to be supervised on parole. That is a much smarter public
policy.
And the existing policy is kind of short sighted lacks
planning and lacks of accountability. As Mr. Schiff indicates
these are important issues that all have to be rolled in
together. We cannot let these outdated policies continue. They
have to be changed.
Mr. Aderholt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Aderholt. Mr. Ruppersberger?
Mr. Ruppersberger. I am not prepared. I am sorry. We had
other committee meetings, and I am trying to, I have to leave
in five minutes. So I am listening but----
Mr. Mollohan. Well, we appreciate your coming in. Thank
you.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I do think it is a very relevant issue.
I was a former prosecutor, as Mr. Schiff was. And this whole
issue of recidivism, and some of the notes here I believe are
really important. So I will be briefed on that.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you. Listening to this, all of you have
very impressive stories. You have impressive statistics that
you cite. And the outcomes are inspiring, really, to the system
and to those who need to think about how we should be spending
money. It is great to have an answer that the solution is out
there, that all you need to do is pull together some way. So in
regard to pulling together some way, all of you are coming at
this, from different directions. All of you have different
programs. Mr. Schrantz's program sounds like it is more
comprehensive. There is an authority, a governmental authority
that has put into place an architecture. And increasingly that
system is relating to the whole state in a very comprehensive
way. Each of you are looking at a discrete, community. But you
are nevertheless having very important outcomes with regard to
recidivism. How do we take all of this information in, and
think about relating it? And seeing it work together? And let
me ask Mr. Schrantz first.

SECOND CHANCE ACT

Mr. Schrantz. Sure. I think you have established
appropriately in The Second Chance Act that strategic plans are
required. In fact, when folks compete for the Prisoner Reentry
Initiative demonstration projects they have to show that they
are doing this level of collaboration. And so, I think you have
already created the policy framework that is necessary.
Mr. Mollohan. But what framework is that? I would think
that the framework would start with the state, exactly like how
you have done it, and then these providers would fit in
somewhere.
Mr. Schrantz. I believe that is true. I believe that in
order for this to work, as I think we would all agree, you must
have state support. Because the state has an awful lot of the
responsibility, and the money, and the data that is necessary.
You also must have local responsibility and local owners of the
problem or the problem will not be fixed. And you need what we
call in Michigan a ``state-local collaboration'' where the
state has the structure, has the funding, and we hold folks
accountable. But the folks that we are working with in the
local jurisdictions, the folks that are running the types of
programs that these gentlemen are talking about, are the ones
that we have to have at the table.
The state Department of Corrections and state level
authorities, just like I think is true for federal authorities,
need to be able to put that structure in place, the
requirements for the work, and then support those agencies and
those departments that do the work. We have competed very
successfully for the federal reentry demonstration projects. We
are very happy with the way that it works. We frankly do not
want a whole more of federal oversight than what we have. We
think it is already there. If anything, there are barriers that
are in place in the federal government that hurt our chances to
be able to do it. Department of Labor is just that one example,
and we have had a pretty good time of working with them.
Mr. Mollohan. Perhaps for the record you can list some of
those for us. Mr. McDonald, how do you respond to that
question?
Mr. George McDonald. Well, I agree. That is basically it.
Is whatever architecture you can establish at the top through
then holding the jurisdictions responsible for working
together.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you work within that framework?
Mr. George McDonald. Oh, yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Explain it to us.

STATE OF NEW YORK PROGRAM

Mr. George McDonald. Well, we work with the Brooklyn
District Attorney's Office. And we have the ComALERT community
program.
Mr. Mollohan. Now that is not a state program, though.
Mr. George McDonald. No.
Mr. Mollohan. That is not a State of New York program.
Mr. George McDonald. He is a state official.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, I know he is a state official.
Mr. George McDonald. State official.
Mr. Mollohan. But New York does not have what Michigan has.
Mr. George McDonald. I am not going to sit here and try to
kid you, Mr. Chairman. New York State is not interested in
reducing its prison population because they do not have the
political will. The people upstate are different than the
people downstate. And they want the jobs that the prisons
provide and they do not want to close the prisons. So----
Mr. Mollohan. Oh, of course that is another problem. But--
--
Mr. George McDonald. So you could do something about that.
Mr. Mollohan. No, we have our hands full here. But your
pointing it out, that may, I am sorry Mr. Serrano is gone
because he could carry it back.
Mr. George McDonald. Well, he knows. Believe me.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. But you agree that there has to be some
authority, architecture in which you work?
Mr. George McDonald. Yes. But you through any federal money
that you appropriate can enforce that.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes. But that is, that is just in spots. That
is not necessarily----
Mr. George McDonald. Well, spots.

PROTOTYPES

Mr. Mollohan. No, I understand that. But what I am trying
to get at is the question that everybody is trying to get at,
here. Where is the prototype? But let me ask Mr. Nolan if he
would respond to my first question.
Mr. Nolan. Yeah. First of all, let me explain my role
within Prison Fellowship. Prison Fellowship found it is not
just enough to take the gospel to people. We have to care about
what happens to them after, so they set up Justice Fellowship,
which I head up, to work with government officials to reform
the system. And my friend John Von Kannon at the Heritage
Foundation says, ``Prison Fellowship saves souls retail and you
do it wholesale, Nolan.'' So I work with the state officials
like Dennis. And I think it does have to be through the State.
And we are working with Dennis in Michigan. Part of our
role is to build public support form nontraditional supporters
of prison reform to work with conservative Christians as well
as liberal Christians, to work with secular people, to build
the public support to support what Dennis is doing.
I think the key, though, is, and I think you are asking
what the lynchpin is, is to have an official like Dennis, and
his boss Pat Caruso, and Governor Granholm, that are committed
to systemic reform. Then programs like ours can flourish. But
if they are not welcome, if they are viewed as outsiders, if
they are viewed as, you know, hug-a-thug folks, which we are
referred to a lot in corrections, as something that is
irrelevant to changing people inside prison, then we lose. And
so I think you are right. The lynchpin is getting state
corrections department to have this vision and to be open to
the life changing programs then that the locals operate.
Mr. Schrantz. If I may add?
Mr. Mollohan. Please.
Mr. Schrantz. Just one more second. I think you could look
across the country and you could see a dozen, at least a half a
dozen states, that have been at this work of statewide system
change for many years under the guidance of both the National
Institute of Corrections, which has done a very excellent job
at providing a model for prisoner reentry. It is called the,
From Prison to Transition, a community model, TPC model. Also
the National Governance Association has done some great work
and pulled together many states.
Those states, to name a few, Missouri, Kansas, Michigan,
Ohio, a couple of others perhaps, those states together, you
know, could explain an awful lot about how to get this work
done. But I think that the framework has to be that the state
supports it and allows it, does not dictate it. That there is
sufficient funding to be able to make it happen. And that there
is a level of accountability so that it is not going to be just
a fair weather kind of approach that you cannot prove up the
road. If a state is not ready to take hold of this, and I have
done some work in New York State. I have traveled there many
times. I met with their commissioner. They have got a lot of
motivation they just do not seem to have much of a structure to
try to, you know, figure out how to grab hold of it. They do
not have the right leadership.
In Michigan, the reason that the state of Michigan is doing
this work the way we are doing it is because the Governor ran
on it. And when she ran she said, ``You make sure that I told
the truth when I said I could deliver, you deliver.'' So you go
from leadership to administrative capability and then
reinvestment. And if it not there, then we have to rely on
program after program after program to be able to keep it up
until perhaps the state kind of gets their act together and
connects the dots.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, this starts becoming a best practices
consensus----
Mr. Schrantz. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. At some point. And you are
pioneers in that. Okay. Well, that is interesting.
So systemic, top down, flexibility to allow imaginative
programs, programs that work, that are locally tailored, but
broadly applicable, scalable----
Mr. George McDonald. And measurable.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. And measurable to participate
within that system. So structure, flexibility, local guidance
from the top.
Mr. Schrantz. Exactly right.

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CORRECTIONS

Mr. Mollohan. Okay. And you said it during your testimony.
You have all said it. But I would like you to tick it off one,
two, three, four.
We go to the National Institute of Justice for these
models, for the guidance here.
Mr. Schrantz. The National Institute of Corrections.
Mr. Mollohan. I am sorry, the National Institute of
Corrections.
Mr. Schrantz. It is actually in the Bureau of Prisons.
Mr. Nolan. Right, right.
Mr. Mollohan. The National Institute of Corrections, thank
you. Sorry. So we go to the National Institute of Corrections.
Mr. Nolan. It is a good place to start, yes.
Mr. Mollohan. It is a good place to start. Where is the
definitive place to go?
Mr. Nolan. Well, the Council of State Governments, they
have the Reentry Policy Council, which is excellent. The Pew
Center on the States has done, you know, terrific work. They
just came out with a report this week on reentry. So I think
combining those. I don't think there is one repository. That is
why the Resource Center in the Second Chance Act is so
important----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Nolan [continuing]. I think. But right now it would be
NIC.
Mr. Mollohan. What will the Resource Center do that is
different from what the National Institute of Corrections does?
Mr. Nolan. Well, reentry is just a part of the NIC. They
have overall, you know, best practices in corrections.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mr. Nolan. The Council of State Governments works with
health and other issues, not just prisons. So I think one place
concentrating on reentry, pulling together all of the best
practices. That is the idea of the Resource Center that you
already funded.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Nolan. Not with a separate line, but it's funded in
there. I think is a place where----
Mr. Mollohan. I have the line item right here.
Mr. Nolan [continuing]. Groups like us can go there.
Mr. Mollohan. I made a note on----
Mr. Nolan. Okay.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. The line item.
Mr. Nolan. Okay. Great, thanks. I am settled.

REENTRY POLICY COUNCIL REPORT

Mr. Schrantz. I think that the most substantial report in
guidance for reentry is the Reentry Policy Council Report. The
Council of State Governments indicated that they will be able
to provide that to your members and your staff.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Schrantz. That is what we used and it is an
encyclopedia of good information.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Schrantz. It is not a light read. It is like a cookbook
to help when you need to break it down, when you are concerned
about the operations of the work. It is not just about the big
picture stuff and flying at 50,000 feet, but actually getting
into prison operations.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mr. Schrantz. As well as, getting into the parole issues,
working with the communities.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mr. Schrantz. This encyclopedia is something that we have
gone back to reportedly.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay, great. Well, we will reference that.
Now, listening to all of you, again, this sounds really
exciting, really optimistic. It sounds hopeful. Obviously not
easy, but it does sound hopeful.
But how do drugs factor into all this? And I know, Mr.
McDonald, you spoke eloquently about the therapy of work with
regard to all of this but certainly to drugs.
But based on the little bit of experience that I have had
in looking at this, the craving aspect of drugs is a derailer.
I haven't heard you talk about that in terms of the failing.
Your statistics are one-year statistics, right, Mr. McDonald?
Mr. George McDonald. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. What kicks people out before that year?
Mr. George McDonald. We lose the most people in the first
three months of our program.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. So----
Mr. George McDonald. If they make it through the first
three months, they are well on their way.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. It is important to define what success
is.
Mr. George McDonald. Well, success is we, after two years,
72 percent of the folks----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. George McDonald [continuing]. Are still----
Mr. Mollohan. What are the reasons for failure or reasons
for getting to one year? What are the reasons for not getting
to one year?
Mr. George McDonald. You know, you change brain patterns.
It is effort and reward.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mr. George McDonald. The effort and reward----

DRUG ABUSE PREVENTION AFTER PRISON

Mr. Mollohan. But, do most people fall out because they
just go back to drugs? Do most----
Mr. George McDonald. Some don't make the effort. In other
words----
Mr. Mollohan. No, I know.
Mr. George McDonald. Drugs, yes. I am sorry.
Mr. Mollohan. I am asking is it that they go out and commit
another crime? Okay, that gets you out in four years. Is it
because they fall off the wagon?
Mr. George McDonald. It is drugs----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. George McDonald [continuing]. Or alcohol. They fall off
the wagon.
Mr. Mollohan. That is the base, okay. What percentage of
people that start fall off the wagon or don't make the one year
because of drugs? If you have a hundred people that start on
the first day, how many of them don't make the one year because
of drugs? And please identify yourself for the record.
Mr. George McDonald. Harriet Karr McDonald, my wife and
partner.
Mr. Mollohan. Hi, welcome.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. I would say 20 percent of the people
don't make it. And the overwhelming majority of those are
because they use again.
Mr. Mollohan. Because they use drugs again.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. What we do is relapse prevention.
Dealing with the substance abuse aspect of the population--
really close to 100 percent of the people we serve have----
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, I am sure.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. It is practically 100 percent.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. So relapse prevention and the use of
NA and AA, which we literally bring them to our facilities.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. Because the people can get sponsors
in their community----
Mr. Mollohan. Right, right.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald [continuing]. That are like mentors.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. And also it is free.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. And the people can use it.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. So you have an aggressive----
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. An aggressive drug prevention----
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Drug prevention program.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald [continuing]. Program.
Mr. George McDonald. Even though we are not a traditional
licensed program.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. But that is one of the most--I would
say outside of paid work--which is the reward----
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald [continuing]. And also prevents
people from committing crimes.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mrs. Harriet McDonald. The other most important aspect of
what we do is drug prevention.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay, all right. Thank you. In that program--
well, Mr. Nolan, would you please respond to that too?
Mr. Nolan. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. We don't have much time.
Mr. Nolan. I don't have the exact figures. I will get them
for you.
Drugs are by far the important reason. We don't kick
somebody out automatically if there are drugs.
We have found people relapse. And you have got to try to--
--
Mr. Mollohan. But drugs are your big issue.
Mr. Nolan. Absolutely.
Mr. Mollohan. I didn't notice that the Ranking Member of
the full Committee was here.
Mr. Lewis. I just came in to see my----
Mr. Mollohan. I hope you haven't been here very long.
Mr. Lewis. I came over to see my friend, Pat Nolan. And
Judge Manley is here.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, let me call on you.
Mr. Lewis. No. We will go vote. I just wanted you to know
that I care about drug courts. And I kind of like Pat too. That
is all it was.
[Recess.]
Mr. Mollohan. We will come to order. I think Mr. Wolf has a
question or two. And I have just a really brief question or
two. And then we will sum this panel up and thank you for being
here.
In your Doe Fund Program, what happens after the street
cleaning phase of the program? Is there a moving on?
Mr. George McDonald. Well, yes. And I am glad you asked
that question, because I didn't have time before. The first
part is that folks come into our facility, and they stay in our
facility for the first 30 days. And they work cleaning, and we
do the drug testing.
Then when we feel that they have been--you know, they are
ready to go out into the community, because of course we put
them out in the community in our uniforms. And parenthetically
I have to say that people write to us all the time with those
checks that they send. And they say how safe they feel with our
guys in the community. It is just incredible. We put the
American flag on their sleeve and our logo on the backs, so
that they are easily identifiable.
So then they go out into the field for five months and do
the street sweeping. And then they get funneled into various
vocational training tracks. We have all revenue-generating
programs that we have, so they are social ventures. They are
entrepreneurial ventures. We have a company called Pest at
Rest, the Bug Stops Here. You know, recessions come and go, the
cockroaches are always with us.
So we train them. And they get $14.00 an hour jobs with
benefits. But we run our own pest control business to do the
training. We have a program called Resource Recovery where we
go around and we collect this fryer grease, the vegetable oils
from restaurants. We have over a thousand restaurants in New
York City that we collect from now and turn it into bio-diesel
fuel. And on and on.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, that is impressive. I am not even going
to get into the impact on the private sector. I would ask you
about that otherwise.
Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you. You know, I think it is a private
sector operation too. I was thinking the same thing that the
Chairman was. But then I concluded we don't want crime. We
can't just put people out and say, you know, you are out of the
halfway house. Here is a hundred bucks, go out. And then not
expect them to come back.
One, I want to thank the three of you. Two, I know how to
reach Pat. Pat lives in my district. And I have great respect
for Pat and his group. If you could send me what you have, Mr.
Schrantz, so that I can get to the State of Virginia. And, Mr.
McDonald, if you can get me what you just told the Chairman on
the different programs, and I am going to send that to my--to
my state and see.
I would like to suggest something here. You are with the
Council of Governments, one of you are with them. I would like
to suggest that the Council of Governments, working with the
Pew Foundation, put on a national conference sometime maybe
late this year or next year. And bring in correction people
from around the country. And let me just, you know, commend the
Governor of Michigan. Maybe she could be a speaker.
I think if all you said is true, and I know he didn't swear
you in, but if it is all true, then it is almost too good to
be--I mean, it has got to be performed. And so what I would
like to ask the Council of Governments and the Pew Foundation--
I don't know if there is anybody here from the Pew Foundation
or not.
I bet the ``New York Times'' has a reporter covering this
good news story. Would the ``New York Times'' reporter raise
your hand? Remember last week they covered the fact that Barack
Obama's hair is turning grey? And now here is something really.
And they miss this one. They must be somewhere else.
But if we could ask the combination--the combination of the
three if you know this. Do you think it would be a good idea to
put together a conference bringing in the top correction people
around the country? And, you know, we funded several years ago,
in the good old days when the Republicans controlled the
Congress, we funded a conference on sexual trafficking. And we
brought in all the police departments and everything so that we
knew what--and I think maybe we can ask the Pew Foundation, if
the Chairman wanted to join me, we could--or I could just do it
myself, is to ask Pew and do you think the Council of
Governments would be interested in doing this? Both well
thought of, neither right nor left. I sort of just kind of
thought to maybe ask the group of you to come in and maybe put
a two-day conference on in Washington or some other place.
Mr. Schrantz. Sir, if I may, you might want to focus on
kind of a think tank rather than a conference. I think what you
may need are some of the best and the brightest people from all
over the country. And we could fill the room with folks like
us. There are a lot of people who know this work. There are 14
states that have on staff my counterparts.
Mr. Wolf. Who do you think should sponsor it? Council of
Governments?
Mr. Schrantz. I think the Council of State Governments is
ideal.
Mr. Wolf. And do you think Pew might help fund it?
Mr. Schrantz. I think Pew might help fund it.
Mr. Wolf. That is what I was thinking of so much that Pew
helps fund it, because they did some pretty good work that Pat
mentioned. And the Council of State Governments with the
credibility you all have. Do it either here, or do it in
Michigan, or do it wherever you are really going to really do
it. Bring some of the best minds, so that you in essence have
the best practices.
And actually, you know, for three old guys, you were fairly
exciting insofar as laying out what the opportunities are
insofar as really making a difference. And I think that is kind
of what we really want. I think since the time I have been
here, it is the most significant, positive testimony rather
than, you know, we need more money for this or this is a
problem. You sort of laid it in a positive way.
So if I can officially ask, you know, the Council. And if
you could ask the Pew Foundation, we will be glad to--I know a
couple of people at the Pew Foundation we could ask and see.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you having these
hearings. And I want to thank the three witnesses.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Wolf. Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis. Mr. Chairman, it is not appropriate for me to
take any time at all. But it is refreshing to me to walk into a
room where at least it is filled with people who are positive
bleeding hearts who aren't just asking for money. They want to
make a difference. Bleeding heart is okay. Old is another
question. Pat and I are contemporaries, so we are not going to
lie. Some of us just get better.
Anyway, Mr. Chairman, thank you for letting me just be
here.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
Well, we want to thank our three distinguished witnesses.
You did a great job. You certainly helped the Subcommittee. A
lot of information on a topic that we are just incredibly
interested in. So thank you all very much.
Mr. George McDonald. Thank you for your interest.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009.

INNOVATIVE PRISONER REENTRY PROGRAMS, PART II

WITNESSES

JENNIE S. AMISON, DIRECTOR, GEMEINSCHAFT HOME
JUDGE STEPHEN MANLEY, SANTA CLARA COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT

Opening Statement by Chairman Mollohan

Mr. Mollohan. Welcome to our Innovative Prisoner Re-entry
Program hearing. We have two witnesses, which I would like to
invite to come to the table. Welcome to you both. For our last
hearing panel of the day we will pick up right where we left
off by hearing from two more individuals with significant
practical experience in the reentry field.
I would like to welcome Judge Stephen Manley with the Santa
Clara County Superior Court and Ms. Jennie Amison, the Director
of Gemeinschaft Home, a residential reentry program for non-
violent offenders with substance abuse issues.
I thank both of you for joining us here today. It is good
to see you both again. I appreciate the opportunity to work
with you. This Committee appreciates your appearing here today
to give us the benefit of your expertise in this area.
I am going to note that each of your written statements
will be made a part of the record. And I call now on Mr. Wolf
for any remarks that he might have.
Mr. Wolf. Welcome.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Lewis. Ms. Amison, you proceed first.
And, again, your written statement will be made a part of the
record. And you proceed as you will.

Ms. Amison Opening Remarks

Ms. Amison. I would like to thank you first for inviting me
to testify at this hearing on reentry. I have been in the
trenches for 18 years working with offenders. I started out at
Indian Creek Correctional Center in the State of Virginia,
which has 1,085 men incarcerated in that prison. And while they
were incarcerated, three to six months later I saw them coming
back. And I was astounded, because substance abuse was their
main issue, this full prison, was a substance abuse treatment
facility. And I saw them come back three to six months later.
And it really troubled me.
And the resonating theme between all of them was I can't
find a job. I have to pay fines and restitution. I have nowhere
to live. I have to pay child support. And I am having trouble
getting my driver's license so I can get back and forth to meet
the probation officer or parole officer or whatever.
So in the State of Virginia we developed a continuum of
care where in this therapeutic community program, once the
individuals got out of a four-phase program of treatment, they
come to our program, which was the fifth phase. The name of our
program is the Gemeinschaft Home. It is German. And it means
community.
I am the Executive Director. I have been there eight years.
Our program is a premiere program in the State of Virginia. I
traveled last year to Tokyo, Japan. And in Japan, I testified
before 100 Japanese on our program how to reduce recidivism in
Japan. Although they drink saki, it was kind of hard to
convince somebody to stop doing that.
But anyway, I testified before them. And they came over to
Virginia to Harrisonburg. And they adopted our program and our
structure in their halfway houses in Tokyo, Japan. They did a
two-week study over here. We entertained them for two weeks.
And let them study our way of doing things.
I am also Director of Replications for the Milton S.
Eisenhower Foundation. And I have traveled all over the United
States replicating what works. And what works is the program
that we have. And I would like to explain that to you now.
It is a six-month residential program. Our referrals come
from the Virginia Department of Corrections. And we have a pre-
release program. They come to us six months early prior to
their release after they have finished their substance abuse
treatment, because as we all know, well know, the majority of
the non-violent offenders that are incarcerated, they have
substance abuse issues.
And after their incarceration, they come to our program.
And we give them a holistic approach to treatment. Now, if an
offender gets out with $25.00 and what they have on their back,
my contention is they are going back to what they know best.
However, if they have a program where they can come and
they have a roof over their head, a residential program where
they are getting employment services. I have an employment
coordinator. I have a health service coordinator. We have a
mentoring program. We have a fatherhood initiative. We have a
parenting program. We do financial planning. We do everything
under one roof. And it is a holistic approach.
Not only that, we network with the community. We do a lot
of community service projects. And our community is very
supportive of the work that we do, because one of the things
that I teach in our program is you have to make restoration to
the community. It might not be the community that you come
from. But you have to restore your faith in a community. And so
they do community service projects with all of the non-profit
agencies in our community. We network with James Madison
University that is in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Eastern Mennonite
University, and Bridgewater College, all from which we get
interns.
We have a study that shows our success rate, the results
are included in your packet. We have a 75 percent success rate.
Dr. Peggy Plass in the Criminal Justice Department from James
Madison University did our statistics for us to study our
program and the study was three years out.
And we looked at the rearrest, the recommital, and the rate
of--the kind of violations that they were going back for, which
were ordinance crimes for the most part, those that did go
back.
Our program has been successful, because of the holistic
approach. And the approach that the State of Virginia uses. I
believe that reentry starts when a person enters the prison
gates. It is too late to start working with a person on alcohol
on drug abuse once they get out and all of the other issues
that they have, because I worked in a prison for ten years.
They can get high inside the institution. Drugs are in prison.
And if they want to use, they can use inside prison. And I have
seen that. I have seen men test positive for drugs inside the
institution.
So my thing is reentry planning should start and need
assessments done to find out what are the needs, because you
can deal with one issue, which might be the substance abuse.
And not deal with the behavior that clouded their thinking. And
you still are going to end up with the problem, or you might
have the finest employment program in the United States. And
you can hire an ex-offender. And you can give him a job. But if
he is still drinking, and drugging, and using, how is he going
to maintain the job?
So it is not just a band-aid approach that we use. We use
the holistic approach. And not only am I talking from being in
the trenches and experience, I am talking about traveling
throughout the United States. Right now I am working with CCDO,
under the Department of Justice, providing technical assistance
to their weed and seed sites.
This is a need, because people want to know how to help
these people that are coming back to their communities. Seven
hundred thousand men, you all have heard the statistics, are
coming out of prison this year. And they are coming to your
communities. And it is cheaper to have a non-violent offender
in a program such as ours to be replicated throughout the
United States that works. Instead of having just practices than
to have them locked up behind bars and costing the taxpayers
more money with no services and then letting them out after
three, four, five, six years with $25.00 and the clothes on
their backs. And my contention is we either pay now or we pay
later.
Prison, we can find the money to build them. And we are
building them at a rapid rate. And we have a lot of level-one
prisons that house non-violent offenders. And I heard the
gentleman say earlier about violent offenders. What about the
violent offenders? Well, it is going to be a long time before
violent offenders get out. And I agree that we need to think of
innovative ways, because I believe that violent offenders are
the less likely to recidivate and studies show that, because
they are less likely to commit a violent crime.
But, however, how many of you sitting in this room want a
house full of violent offenders living in your neighborhood?
Raise your hands. I didn't think so. So that is the problem
with violent offenders. It is hard pressed to have a community
to accept violent offenders into the community as a whole. They
will work with them individually, the churches and the faith-
based organizations.
But with an innovative program like this, they don't mind
non-violent offenders. They don't mind working with the
females. You tell them they are non-violent offenders, they
don't have sexual crimes and, hey, the community welcomes that.
I just traveled to St. Louis and Philadelphia and helped
set up a program similar to ours in those two states and also
working in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. They want to replicate.
They want to do something for reentry.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Ms. Amison. We look forward----
Ms. Amison. Oh, yeah, I could talk all day. Go ahead.
[Written statement by Jennie Amison follows:]

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1247B.057

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1247B.058

[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1247B.059

Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. To your answering questions.
Mr. Lewis, Judge Manley is here today. And I know you think
highly of him. Would you like to say a few words?
Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really came in no
small part, because I heard you had two of my friends appearing
before the Committee.
I have the privilege of serving as the Ranking Member on
the Appropriations Committee, so I will try to spend as little
time interfering with the Subcommittee Chairman and the Ranking
Member's work as I can. They don't need people like me hanging
around and interfering.
But in the meantime, the work that you all are about impact
the effect upon our society and people's lives by attempting to
help us figure out what is the appropriate role for the federal
government, as well as local government and so on, and breaking
this cycle for people, particularly the non-violent criminal,
but the cycle of recidivism that is so dramatically impacting
our society.
I first got to know about Judge Manley's work, because of
his relationship with Judge Pat Morris who is now the Mayor of
San Bernardino, California, my hometown. And he played a role
in this total effort to attempt to have drug court have an
affect upon those individuals who are involved in essentially
non-violent crime. But making sure that we are activating the
community to be heavily involved in trying to turn this pattern
around.
The federal government does have a role. It is not just
money but the spirit that is reflected in this panel. The
Chairman is a wonderful and fabulous human being. And if you
don't know Frank Wolf, you should know him.
In the meantime, I just wanted to come to express my
appreciation to Judge Manley. And we will be chatting more
while you are in town.
Judge Manley. Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
Judge Manley.
Judge Manley. Thank you very much for the opportunity to
testify, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Wolf, Mr. Lewis.
I would like to, just by way of background, first of all
address an issue and that is this, I would like to thank this
Subcommittee and all of you for what you have done in this past
year. And prior to that, your many efforts to assist the drug
courts, our JAG and Byrne programs, our reentry programs that
are court related.
It really does make a difference. We really do believe that
this works. And often our pleas fall on deaf ears. But always
in this Subcommittee you have given us the respect and support
that we are so grateful for, because I am just a practitioner
out in the field.
As a judge I work very hard in trying to develop new and
better responses. And I would like to talk, spend my time if I
may, speaking about that in terms of reentry. I think you are
all aware that California I think has the most severe problem
of any state in the nation. It is not dissimilar. But the
volume, the numbers are horrendous. Seventy percent of all
individuals placed on parole are returned to state prison
within a year to two years.
What is driving our increase in the prison population is
not new crimes. It is being driven by people being returned to
prison who are on parole. And when you have that number going
back, and you are talking about 120,000 on parole every year,
you have to start thinking, I think, about changing the entire
paradigm of the way we approach this issue.
And I did most certainly enjoy listening to the previous
presentation. But let me suggest this to you. You don't get to
prison simply because, you do not get to prison, you do not get
to jail without a judge. It takes a judge to send you there, a
judge to make a determination that you go there. And we so
often place all of our emphasis and discuss these issues
looking down the line at, well, now they are going to get out
of prison. And we do this in California. And I know that it is
done elsewhere. Let us have a plan. And let us develop
something so that we integrate. And let us stop this revolving
door.
But we never look at the beginning. And I think that what
happened here over the years, starting some 15 years ago, drug
courts judges, it was a judge-driven initiative, basically said
what is wrong here is we are doing the same thing day after
day. And I have been a judge now nearly 30 years. I am falling
into that group of older Americans who support their country. I
have watched this 30 years. And I traditionally--I can sentence
someone to prison in one and one half minutes unless there are
aggravating factors. I see the same people come back. I see
their grandchildren. I see their children.
I discovered early on we were not getting anywhere thinking
that punishment was the answer. And where did it all lie? It
all starts out with the judge. And so what I am suggesting to
you today is that rather than only look at parole and
probation, this wonderful program you just heard about, why
aren't we thinking about these things in the beginning?
Everyone ends up released other than a small percentage of
offenders who will not be released. So leaving those aside,
people are going to come back. And they will come back to our
local communities. California I do not think is dissimilar from
other states. When you start out in my county committing
crimes, go to prison, you come back to my county on parole. If
you stay in my county, you are on probation.
So why don't we change the paradigm and say the judges
should accept accountability and responsibility for outcomes?
Now I know this may sound very different from other testimony
you have heard. But I firmly believe that this is where we have
gone wrong. And this is why the drug court movement has worked,
because in drug courts judges simply said, look, enough is
enough. We are going to take this on ourselves to form a local
team to put in accountability, to use carrots and sticks, to
motivate offenders to change their lives, to deal with the most
pressing problems. And I know you have heard other testimony.
But I guarantee you in California, the Chairman discussed
this, substance abuse, mental health are driving our prison and
jail populations. They drive all other crimes. It doesn't
matter what the crime is. You will find these factors there.
When we sentence traditionally, we don't look at these
factors. We simply look at the past. Judges, we are very good
at looking at the past. We rely on precedent. We look at what
they did before, what the facts of the case are, how many times
they have been to jail, how many times they have been to
prison, we get a probation report that has not changed in 20
years, in my jurisdiction or in the State of California, and
then we give a sentence, and then we go through the door into
our chambers, and we forget about the person. I think that's
all wrong. I think we ought to have the accountability of
monitoring that person in coming back into the community and
doing well.
And I think you start doing that by having an assessment.
There has been a lot of talk about risk and needs. And I want
to be very quick about this. It is a complex area. But I think
there are two kinds of an assessment. The first one you need is
a risk. How dangerous is this person to the community if you
let them out? How dangerous? And that has to be considered,
because if this person is going to be a danger to the
community, we have to look to punishment and other
alternatives.
However, the vast majority of people are not going to score
high on that scale. And yet they are going to go prison and
jail. What we ought to look at to them is to the risk in terms
of their succeeding in the community. What is the risk? What
are those factors? They don't have jobs. They don't have any
education. They don't know life skills. They have a substance
abuse problem.
All right, then we start talking about the needs. How do
you meet these things? You have got to give them substance
abuse treatment from day one. If you don't start looking at it
that way, you don't get anywhere. Then you develop a plan, not
when they are getting out of prison.
In California, we have this marvelous new system. We are
going to plan for people 90 days before they are released. Well
that is 90 days too late. It is 100 years too late. We should
have started from the day they were sentenced. We should have
assessment built into the sentencing. So that we know this
person is coming back, let us start planning for them coming
back now. And then when they come back, let us place them in
tracks.
In other words, what I am calling for and truly believe
in--I do it in my county. I have seen it all over this country.
I monitor 1,600 offenders. You could say how can you do that,
one judge? I know them. Why, because those who need the least
monitoring get put on a calendar where they see me very seldom
if it all.
Those who need to be watched daily, those who are using
drugs every day of their life, those who are mentally ill and
cannot stay on their medications or will not, those who
repeatedly violate restraining orders and other things that
they are not to do, they see me weekly if necessary.
The point is if you use a group of judges and design a
system this way and build on motivating offenders to change,
get away from this determinate sentencing. You know what is
wrong with determinate sentencing? Very simply, you say to
somebody okay, you get out of prison in two years. All that
person thinks about is the two years when he gets out. He
doesn't think about changing his life or her life. They don't
care about that. They have got an end in sight. When you say to
them, ``I don't know what is going to happen next, it all
depends on you,'' it changes.
And I think that is what we have learned from drug courts
and from reentry courts. And I urge you to incentivize reentry
courts, because if you pull the courts in, we have one great
advantage over state parole and over probation departments. We
can bring everyone to the table. And we can say you need to
work together. And I can tell you working with parolees every
day, I spend more time getting people to the table and getting
them to change the way they think about things. If they were
left alone, nothing would change. And we would see no
difference.
So I know time is a factor. And I want to end very quickly
with this, we have a proven example in California of how badly
a system can be when you leave the courts out of it. We have a
mandatory initiative, a vote initiative, that requires us to
place people who are sentenced and are low-level drug
offenders, use or possession, into treatment, no incarceration.
We have a system for paroles separate from the courts that
mandates they put them into treatment.
If you look at the outcomes, the court where we monitor as
judges how that person performs, make sure they get into
treatment. Have wonderful programs like this in our community
who we know and can work with in comparison with the state that
contracts with some huge program that has no oversight and
never follows through. And the individual offender never sees
anybody they can relate to or be held accountable by. You have
failure.
Sixty percent of those people don't even--from the state
system don't even enter treatment. Whereas, you know, reentry
court model it is the opposite, 70 percent enter. And in our
state, our legislature has said this, and I urge you to think
about this, incentivize this, they have given us a mandate in
drug courts. You either reduce prison days or you don't get the
money. Believe it or not the entire court system in our state
changed. And we are saving money, because sentencing practices
are changing.
So I leave you with this. Please give courts the
continuing--urge, make this a part of your reentry program,
that courts must have the continuing obligation to supervise
offenders. Use a real risk and needs assessment from the start
of booking through sentencing on through the offender's life as
they come back into the community. Require the judges to use
it. And then develop a system so that when people come out of
prisons and jails, they will be monitored in a drug court,
reentry court-type setting.
It can be done. Thank you very much.
[Written statement by the Honorable Stephen Manley, Judge,
follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Judge. Judge Manley, you say you
have a 70 percent recidivism rate in California?
Judge Manley. Yes. But for those individuals who are
released on parole. This is a state system.

DRUG COURTS

Mr. Mollohan. Now how do drug courts impact that recidivism
rate? And if you would----
Judge Manley. Okay.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Explain the difference.
Judge Manley. In my court, I have parolees. I have an
informal written agreement with the director of parole and the
Board of Parole Hearings that allows me to have the
jurisdiction. In California you lose all jurisdiction over
anyone you send to prison the minute you send them to prison.
You have 90 days to change your mind. But you have no
jurisdiction over what happens.
They agree to give me the jurisdiction. Therefore, when the
parolee comes back in the community and tests dirty, in
California you go back to prison. That is a technical violation
of parole. If you don't show up at a treatment program, you go
back to prison. If you don't show up to see your parole agent,
you go back to prison.
If I have the control, I don't have to have that be the end
point. I can say, ``All right, you will see the parole agent
tomorrow. And if you don't, you will go to jail for one day.''
One day. There is nothing parolees hate more than having their
lives interrupted for a short period of time. It drives them
nuts. And to be held accountable gets the result. And that is
the big difference.
The parole system, they see their parole agent once every
six weeks. You can't monitor or supervise anyone. In the end,
the technical violations are rule driven, or as in the court,
we have no real rules other than we want a better outcome. We
want treatment. We are going to make sure you get into
treatment and stay there. And if you don't, there will be
consequences. Parole has none of that.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you have a statistic for recidivism, under
the drug court scenario versus the parole scenario?
Judge Manley. In terms of going back to prison, we have the
opposite of what happens when you send people to parole. You
have 30 percent. All right? So in other words, parole it is 70
percent. We drop that down to 30 percent, dealing only with
parolees, because to all offenders, it is in the neighborhood
of 13 to 17 percent recidivism. By that I mean, commission of a
new crime.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. I really want to understand the
difference there. But just staying with parolees, because the
70 percent recidivism rate relates to parolees obviously.
Judge Manley. Yes. Recidivism, Mr. Chairman, means that
they are returned to prison. And they may be returned to prison
not for committing a new crime, but for violating----
Mr. Mollohan. Violating their parole. I understand.
Judge Manley. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. But I am just trying to compare apples to
apples here a little bit. And trying to see the impact of drug
courts in the lives of those who are under, criminal
jurisdiction.
Judge Manley. Then that will come down to 17 percent or
less.
Mr. Mollohan. In drug courts?
Judge Manley. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. And the same population managed by you in a
drug court environment----
Judge Manley. Right.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. And drug court scenario, you
reduce the recidivism rate from 70 to 17.
Judge Manley. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. Over what period of time?
Judge Manley. Over three years.
Mr. Mollohan. And is that your measurement? Do you have
outcomes----
Judge Manley. The measurement is----
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. For three years, four years,
five years?
Judge Manley. Yes. We have a five-year study going on right
now. We are up to--we have done it for two years. And the
measurement is really recidivism in terms of committing new
crimes. And the length of time in custody is another outcome we
measure. And the third outcome we measure is how many people go
back to prison or jail.
Mr. Mollohan. And those statistics are written up so that
they can be made a part of the record?
Judge Manley. There is a MacArthur study. There was a
MacArthur grant study that has been done for jurisdictions, two
in California, one in New York, and one other state. And that
they have issued preliminary findings and the rest will come
out later in this year.
And I can make those available to you, sir.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Thank you, Judge.
Ms. Amison, can you talk about the benefit of your programs
in terms of reduction in recidivism? And give us some
comparisons.

GEMEINSCHAFT OFFENDERS

Ms. Amison. Yes. Our study started with our first cohorts
in June 2000. And our first cohorts entered June of 2000, last
cohorts entered January of 2002. And at the time of this
report, the prisoners had been out of prison a minimum of 1.5
years and a maximum of 3.5 years.
Now what they based this on was people that have
therapeutic community with no transitional therapy in the
communities against people that had no therapeutic community or
no transition therapy through the community at all. And were
released from prison during the same time period that
Gemeinschaft offenders were released from prison.
And what is significant--the Gemeinschaft offenders were
less likely to be rearrested than were either prison TC or non-
prison TC controls. Prison TC controls they had lower arrest
rates than the non-prison TC offenders. The whole report is in
here. And the reconviction rate, the Gemeinschaft offenders had
a significantly lower reconviction rate than the control
groups.
And then as we went to the recommital rates, the
Gemeinschaft offenders had significantly lower recommital rates
than the controlled groups. And we have the bar graphs to show
the rate that James Madison University did.
Mr. Mollohan. What document are you referencing there?
Ms. Amison. The study that was done by Dr. Peggy Plass from
James Madison University.
Mr. Mollohan. Would you make that study a part of the
record?
Ms. Amison. It is a part of it.
Mr. Mollohan. Oh, it is a part of your testimony. It's
already there? Okay, terrific.
Ms. Amison. Yes. It is in here.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you.
Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis. No, no, please.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis. I am here to----
Mr. Mollohan. Well, I will let you two decide.

DRUG COURTS OPERATIONS

Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of
questions. And I would appreciate your comment. Judge Manley,
are drug courts drug courts all over the country, the same way
they operate? Do the ones in Virginia operate the same way as
the ones in California? Is it pretty much?
Judge Manley. Yes. They follow a basic model.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. I have never been. I should go to one. And
I was invited----
Judge Manley. Oh, I urge you.

DRUGS IN PRISON

Mr. Wolf [continuing]. And I didn't go.
Ms. Amison, a couple of questions. When I asked Director
Lappin yesterday I have been told by some prisoners that what
is available on the street is available in prison. He acted
like, well, yes, just a little bit sometimes. Is that fairly
common, or what is available in the street is available in the
prison with regard to drugs?
Ms. Amison. Yes. It is available. I worked in prison for
ten years. And we had them tested right there in the prison and
urine screens done there. And the same substances that they
were getting on the street were inside the prison.
Mr. Wolf. Now this is not asking you for your program, but
overall for the State of Virginia, the state that I represent,
how well does Virginia do? You heard your own testimony. You
gave it. You heard Judge Manley. You also heard the three
previous witnesses.
Ms. Amison. That is a good question.
Mr. Wolf. How well do we honestly do?
Ms. Amison. Let me tell you. We were doing real well for
many years. But not right now we are not doing well at all,
because the state has cut out all programs. My doors are about
to be shut.
Mr. Wolf. Right.
Ms. Amison. So all of the programs, community programs,
have been cut out as far as reentry is concerned. We were doing
real well. We had the ideal models as far as non-violent
offenders. The Department of Corrections was doing a superior
job as far as making referrals to the program. You did not have
enough beds due to the lack of money to accommodate the number
of prisoners that were getting out of the therapeutic community
programs.
But as far as the continuum of care, we had the best thing
going in the State of Virginia around--that I have seen as far
as reducing recidivism.
Mr. Wolf. And that changed--when did we begin to see the
change in the State of Virginia, the last three or four years,
ten years?
Ms. Amison. We started seeing the change when the banks got
into trouble and Wall Street got into trouble. And the money
started going away. That is when we saw the change. And we
could have used money for more beds in the State of Virginia.
And we could have--and our goal in Virginia was to replicate
this model.
Mr. Wolf. Well, your model how much is your model
replicated say in Richmond or in Tidewater and Northern
Virginia? I see one guy shaking his head no. I mean, are we
replicating it or are you sort of a stand-alone operation?
Ms. Amison. We kind of stand alone. We have a program where
they have some beds designated for the type of people, non-
violent offenders, that are coming out of the TC in Richmond
called Rubicon.
Mr. Wolf. Have you testified before the General Assembly?
Ms. Amison. No. This is the first time anybody, I have got
the best thing going. And this is the first time anybody ever
asked me to testify.
Mr. Wolf. Who discovered you other than Mr. Mollohan we
will give him the credit.
Ms. Amison. Other people around the United States have
discovered me.
Mr. Wolf. We will let the record show that Mr. Mollohan
discovered her.
Ms. Amison. The Chairman, I had a long session with him
last year, before that.
Mr. Wolf. Good. Well, to Mr. Mollohan's credit.
Ms. Amison. Yes.
Mr. Wolf. The last question is I think you said something
that really had to be said. And I think, again, Mr. Chairman,
let me just say and probably--is the Bureau of Prisons person
here? Yeah, I would have thought there was someone. Oh, you are
with the Bureau of Prisons? Okay, Justice.

HALFWAY HOUSES

Mr. Lappin made everyone feel guilty about the fact that
you didn't want a halfway in your neighborhood with violent
criminals. And that he was having trouble. He was saying, ``We
are having trouble in your area in Virginia, Mr. Wolf.''
I think you have painted it in a very accurate way. No one
wants a violent criminal group with armed robbery or all that
other stuff in your neighborhood. And I think if you said I
want one, you would be kidding yourself. But I think the way
you explained a non-violent offender, bank fraud or something,
it makes all the difference in the world. So I think it is
important that I think Mr. Lappin is correct that, because I
think the way you explain it makes it more reasonable and more
understandable than the way that he did yesterday.
Ms. Amison. And it is less threatening to the community.
When you say non-violent offenders, it puts a different face.
Our offenders go into the schools, the elementary schools, high
schools and talk to the students at school to keep them from--
--
Mr. Wolf. Have you had any or many situations where people
who were in your program went out and committed a crime in
Harrisonburg?
Ms. Amison. I have had two instances----
Mr. Wolf. Out of how many people?
Ms. Amison [continuing]. In the eight years that I have
been there. And we serve 120 people a year.
Mr. Wolf. If you could send--do I have a copy of it? We are
going to send a copy down to Secretary Marshall and to others.
Ms. Amison. He knows me well. I call him all the time.
Mr. Wolf. And I assume, Judge, I have yours too. Ask them
what their--what they are doing. And I think with the
combination of the two of you with the last three, offers an
opportunity to really test the system, see if what you are
saying is really accurate, or if it was just.
But, thank you. I thank you both.
Ms. Amison. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Lewis.
Mr. Lewis. Thank you very much, Mr. Mollohan, for just
letting me in the room. I wanted to mention to those who are
listening that I am not a lawyer. I don't spend time in these
rooms with these competitors of mine very often, because they
do their jobs very well. But there has been a long history in
our State of California where we have tried to get a handle on
the interplay between drug problems, mental health and violent
crime.
And Judge Manley could tell you that it has been at least
four decades ago that Laneron Petree Short tried to make a
change in our state. That is, we had a long history of when
people had demonstrated some difficulty we essentially sent
them to a local mental hospital and threw the key away. And the
design was to attempt to unravel that, stop that pattern of
non-concern about humanity.
The legislature took some dramatic steps. Made it very
difficult to incarcerate people in terms of the mental facility
at least, but we also had another piece of that. Another
important stool was to--the leg on the stool was to have
clinics in communities that would make certain that families
were enough involved so that people had treatment care and
otherwise. The second phase of it never was put in place. And
because of that there are humans who get trapped in this
process and the story does not begin when they walk in the jail
cell, it begins an ongoing part of their life.
So Mr. Chairman, we have some opportunities ahead of us
with this stimulus package. As you know I am not for spending
all the money in the world, but for programs that are
demonstrating their ability to work, helping us exercise the
models that can help other communities around the country, are
very much worth our attention, as long as we don't put people
on a pathway where two years from now the money is going to
fall off and they will be off a cliff again. But drug court is
an illustration of exactly that.
One of the things that I have seen working, and having a
real impact upon people's lives is what--is that experiment
that took place in California, and I hope is rapidly impacting
other locations.
But Judge Manley, he and I will be talking further about
this question, but if there is a way I can at all help you, Mr.
Chairman, I want to.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you.

DELANCEY STREET

Ms. Amison. Can I say one quick thing? Sustainability is
also the key for these type of programs, and we are also one of
Delancey Street replications that is in San Francisco,
California.
Mr. Mollohan. Say that last sentence again? You are one
of----
Ms. Amison. A replication of Delancey Street in San
Francisco, California Dr. Mimi Silbert gave us her blessings
and gave us technical assistance, and we started an auto
detailing business. We didn't have enough money to sustain the
business, but right now we are doing a refuge pickup where we
get paid quarterly, and our guys go out and pick up refuge on
the weekend for the local restaurants. And we are getting ready
to start a catering business.
So we also work on sustainability and sustaining ourselves
so we won't have to continue to find ourselves in this fix
without any money and we can support ourselves.
Judge Manley. Well following up, I agree with what Mr.
Lewis said, that if you fund something high then all of a
sudden it crashes down two years later, you in essence are
pulling the rug out.
Mr. Mollohan. I wanted to ask you one other question, both
of you, and it is probably not a fair question, but I am going
to do it. What is your evaluation of the three witnesses who
testified earlier? Did what they said ring true? I mean the DOE
Program and job opportunities, did that ring true to you?
Ms. Amison. All of that rang true to me, and I agree with a
lot of what was said. But I still stand on a holistic approach,
because there is a mirage of needs that offenders have once
they are released.
Judge Manley, my hat goes off to him, because what he said
about the drug court and the way he is doing the drug court is
ideal. And the other gentleman, and I know Pat that was here,
they do excellent work. And all of these together, all
communities are not the same and everything is not going to
work in every community.
I went to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and I was like this type
of program is not going to work because of the combination of
offenders and things that they had going on in Pawtucket, and
the steering committee that they had, and the collaborations.
Well a drug court might work very well in Pawtucket, Rhode
Island, so I feel that the five witnesses that you had testify,
all of them were excellent ideas. It depends on the area, the
city, and the state that you are in, which program will fit.
Judge Manley. Well in fact, you work in consort with Judge
Manley or with a judge--with a drug court. Folks that are going
to drug court could very well be in your program. Is that
correct?
Ms. Amison. They could be, but we don't have a drug court.
Judge Manley. No, I understand you don't.
Ms. Amison. Yes.
Judge Manley. But I'm saying, you would be complimentary
for a drug court person.
Ms. Amison. Oh yes, it would be ideal.
Judge Manley. Yes, you would like that, wouldn't you?
Ms. Amison. I would love it.
Judge Manley. Yes, you would, because you would have a
hammer, which you don't have right now.
I would just say in response to Mr. Wolf, I think the
testimony is--the previous testimony is right on point.
I think what I am trying to emphasize is that what I have
observed, the real problem is, you can create a lot of programs
that are very fine and they do a very good job with offenders,
but if you can't get offenders, enough of them, into the
programs and retain them there, then the program really doesn't
meet the need.
And I am especially aware of this in California, and of
course any other state that faces our problems where we are
under a court order to reduce the prison population by 40,000
or more, maybe as high as 60 or 70,000.
You see, to move that kind of a program to make it real
without having monitoring supervision and holding people
accountable to enter and stay in treatment, that to me is the
key if you can get people to take advantage of these programs.
I will tell you on a daily basis I have offenders ask me to
send them to prison, because they don't want to do this
program. They don't want to get job training. They have given
up on themselves. They are addicted. They don't think there is
any tomorrow, except drugs, and they are resistant to this.
And so part of a judge's job has to be to motivate an
offender to do the thing they don't want to do, even though the
programs are outstanding, and a tremendous outcome results that
we could show the offender. The offender sits there and says, I
just want to do my time. And I spend every week, a vast amount
of my time, convincing people do this, try this, believe in
yourself and get out there, then come back and show me you did
it. And if you screw up I am not going to send you to prison.
You see, and that is what their mentality is, if I do that
job training program or if I go to her program and I screw up,
that judge is going to hammer me, or the parole agent will
hammer me, or somebody else will hammer me, and that is where
it all goes wrong I think.
We need to have, and she calls it holistic, to me holistic
means we involve the courts, since we are the center where all
this stuff starts. We should be involved to make it work, and
to do everything we can instead of standing back and ignoring
it.
Mr. Lewis. I never thought about the courts in Earl
Nightingale terms before.

OTHER PROGRAMS FOR OFFENDERS

Mr. Mollohan. In your experience, Judge, do you use or are
your offenders in some program----
Judge Manley. Oh absolutely.
We have 70 providers, you know, in every area. I mean, you
have to look at what the assessment tells you. If the person
needs life skills, if they are mentally--I work with a large
number, and you did make mention to mentally ill offenders.
Mentally ill offenders provide a great challenge. But if you do
not have the treatment for them and the placements--and I spend
most of my time----
Mr. Mollohan. And do you do that? Do you place them?
Judge Manley. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you direct them to get into a program, and
then you monitor their being in that program?
Judge Manley. Well you have a choice. You either get in
this program or you go to jail.
Mr. Mollohan. You work cooperatively in that process.
Judge Manley. Oh absolutely. And I follow the direction and
assessment.
For example, if there is a medication change and the doctor
or clinic wants me to encourage the offender to try it, that is
my job, to work with them with the treatment program to get the
outcome they want to improve the offender's life and to make
sure they stay in the program.
Mr. Mollohan. Now you were here when Deputy Director
Schrantz was testifying about the system in the State of
Michigan?
Judge Manley. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Were you here during that?
Judge Manley. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. How would drug courts fit into that
architecture?
Judge Manley. Well they could, as far as I am concerned,
they could fit right into it if it was made a part of it, yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Are there drug courts in Michigan?
Judge Manley. There are drug courts in Michigan.
Mr. Mollohan. And so they are a part of this system.
Judge Manley. They are part of a system, but what I am,
what I am urging is that what we really need is to look at
whether or not we are having enough people enter the system, is
it large enough to take them all, and are they staying in it?
And so that we are really affecting a large number of people.
And the courts see all these people. And so if you have a
court system, then you can make sure that there is followup on
each offender.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay, and what I am asking is, is what you
are talking about complementary to the very comprehensive,
integrated systemic program that Deputy Director Schrantz was
talking about in Michigan?
Judge Manley. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Is there a role for drug courts there?
Judge Manley. There most certainly is.
Mr. Mollohan. And is that role occurring today; do you
know?
Judge Manley. It is occurring today up to a point, but only
in some parts of Michigan.

FUNDING FOR DRUG COURTS

Mr. Mollohan. Oh, he is over here. Yeah, well I will ask
him that then in just a second.
But I have a few more questions.
First of all let me compliment you, because you have worked
day and night for drug courts. You believe in them, you have
worked hard at them, you have developed them in West Virginia.
I know Judge Gahn speaks so highly of you, and I haven't been
back for another drug court session, but I certainly intend to
go and will this year to catch up.
And in response to our belief that drug courts work, and
scaled up they work, we have gone from $15 million in funding
to $40 million in funding in fiscal year 2009. Now we are going
to be looking to you for kind of a report card on this and to
see how we are doing with regard to it.
And let me ask you, do you have any hesitancy that that $40
million cannot be spent efficiently?
Judge Manley. Not at all, not at all. I think the incentive
of that funding is incredible.
I can tell you the California state senate, the chair of
the Budget Committee has introduced legislation for reentry
drug courts spurred on by this growth of drug courts in
California where we have more than any other state based on
that small amount of funding.
Mr. Mollohan. What does your funding profile look like? How
much money comes from the state, how much from the federal
government, and how much from other sources?
Judge Manley. In California approximately $5 million comes
from the federal, and I include Byrne Jag, SAMHSA, DOJ. The
state, of hard general fund dollars at a time when they don't
have them, they continue to fund us at over $30 million. So for
every dollar you invest they invest far more.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you have data to compare the cost of your
reentry court approach compared to sending an offender to
prison?
Judge Manley. Yes, we do, and I can provide that to you.
Mr. Mollohan. For the record?
Judge Manley. Yes, we most certainly can for the record.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you.

DRUG COURTS IN MICHIGAN

Let me ask Deputy Director Schrantz if he would join us at
the table here, just to answer this one question, unless Mr.
Wolf has additional questions.
We didn't ask you about drug courts in Michigan. Do you
have them, and are they working, and how do they work?
Mr. Schrantz. Yes, we have drug courts in Michigan, but
they are not reentry courts, because in Michigan the judges
have no jurisdiction over parolees unless they were to commit a
new crime.
So in our state--it is an indeterminate sentencing state.
The Parole Board has authority over all parolees, unlike other
states that the judges actually have jurisdiction.
So our drug courts, similar to many across the country,
deal on the front end and do a good job at intermediate
intervention of offenders that perhaps are in the early stages
of their career and need to be turned around so they don't
become violent offenders. And so they help reduce prison
admissions a bit.
But where we are headed I'll quickly say this, is that we
are pushing the drug courts to work with a higher risk
offender, particularly some violent offenders, because we need
that type of----
Mr. Mollohan. How will they work with them if they don't
retain jurisdiction?
Mr. Schrantz. Well they work on the front end with
probationers, and so they help reduce admissions to prison as
opposed to working with parolees.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. And the difference in those two
approaches is that Judge Manley and the drug courts that we are
funding in our legislation are courts that have jurisdiction
over parolees.
Mr. Schrantz. Yeah, I am not sure about your funding----
Judge Manley. Right. It will vary from state to state. In
California we are no different than Michigan in that control is
rested with the Board of Parole hearings.
Mr. Mollohan. But you have a contract that is given to you.
Judge Manley. But due to the dismal results that they were
getting, they decided to try this alternative, and that is what
has lead to this legislation that we will have.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. That gets me to the point I wanted to
be at to ask the deputy director. Does that sound like a good
idea?
Mr. Schrantz. Yeah. We have actually had some judges that
have wanted to explore it, but unlike California we are doing a
very good job without complicating it with judicial----
Mr. Mollohan. So you are hesitant to embrace----
Mr. Schrantz. I have told many judges that if they are
willing to sit on a reentry panel and hold that panel in their
court, that I would love to have that type of community
leadership.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Schrantz. Because the real important thing about drug
courts that we have learned over the years is that the offender
wants to do well because he doesn't want to let the judge down.
And so if that paradigm of relationship can be applied in
reentry, we are more than welcome to do it, and we don't care
that much about the jurisdiction issue. But so far I haven't
had any judges take me up on the offer.
Judge Manley. You have to have, you have to be pushed, and
you have to believe in it, and you have to get judges willing
to do it, but what he references to is so important to me.
In my court we have everyone at the table. We have the
parole agents, we have the Board of Parole hearings, we have
all of the programs there, and there is in a sense a true
reentry panel where the judge is really the least important.
The judge is more assisting his programs or whatever direction
everyone feels----
Mr. Mollohan. Well the judge is the controlling figure in
that.
Judge Manley. The motivator, the person that holds the
person accountable, and as he says, there are certain
offenders, and it is very correct. That is why I believe so
much in this tracking system in the reentry courts. There are
some offenders who need very strong judicial supervision, and
perhaps those offenders are the ones who should be in a drug
court.
Mr. Schrantz. I will mention that what Mr. Noland said
earlier about a catalyst being necessary to get this work done,
I think we would see all across the country that catalyst can
come from many places. And when the local jurisdiction is the
place where the work is happening, as opposed to the state
level like it is in Michigan, you have got to go wherever the
leadership will take you.
So if it is a prosecutor, as it is in New York City, that
is where you go, because he is willing to use his community
leadership. If it is a judge you go with a judge. If it is a
parole officer or warden, in many respects you can build a
reentry model with any leadership, because it requires
collaboration, it is just a different person who brings them
all together.
Mr. Mollohan. And the Michigan model?
Mr. Schrantz. The Michigan model, it comes from the
governor to the director of corrections, and then we spread it
out, you know, and we are the ones that bring folks to the
table. But if we weren't doing the work, I am sure somebody
else would try to figure out a way to, you know, pull it up,
you know, and get it moving.
What we have that is very beneficial I think and
extraordinarily productive, is that we had a governor come in
promising this, and she had eight years. She will have eight
years then to produce it.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mr. Schrantz. And that is how you tackle a state.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, I understand that, but the real
difference is that yours is systemic, which creates a
uniformity throughout the jurisdiction.
Mr. Schrantz. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Which in this case is the State of Michigan.
Mr. Schrantz. Uniformity is tough. Standards of quality, we
are now starting to design a total quality management system,
which is another mountain to try to climb, because we have
suffered from expanding very broadly, and perhaps not getting
as much quality.
Mr. Mollohan. And so my question, let me ask it again if I
might.
In your system, is there a place for drug courts if judges
wanted to assume this responsibility?
And what I am becoming very appreciative of here at this
hearing that I wasn't quite so appreciate of before, is the
commitment that this takes on the part of the judge. I mean,
your caseload, you become effectively a case manager really at
that level, if you accept that responsibility.
Judge Manley. And I mean, I would just say that, you know,
every state is going to be different. There is no perfect
answer to this, but we have the opposite of what Michigan has,
in that our parole and our programs are an absolute disaster at
a cost of billions, because there is no system in place. There
are silos.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Judge Manley. And to me what needs to happen is we all need
to come together, you know, with court leadership, because
everyone looks to the courts. I mean, we are starting to do
that in California, and I think that that, you know, has a
value that should be reinforced and supported.
Mr. Mollohan. And Deputy Director Schrantz, just again I
want to hear you say, in your system Ms. Amison's services
would be out there, that would be the local provider and----
Mr. Schrantz. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Thank you very much.
If Mr. Wolf would like to ask you some questions you might
want to stay at the table.

Mr. Wolf Questions

Mr. Wolf. Well, I just have one question. Why do you not
have a drug court in Harrisonburg? And how do you constitute
drug courts? We had one in Loudoun County.

DRUG COURTS IN VIRGINIA

Ms. Amison. We have drug courts in Virginia.
Mr. Wolf. Yes, I know that, we have them in Loudoun County,
but how does a county bring a drug court, and why would you not
have one in Harrisonburg? What is that?
Mr. Mollohan. Will you identify yourself, please?
Mr. DeBlasio. Keith DeBlasio. I work on the state level as
a lobbyist. In Virginia the law is written that we have a
certain number of counties who are allowed to put in drug
courts. Anything that is an expansion of Virginia has to pass
the General Assembly and signed off by the governor. And in the
western part of the state what we see is a lot of the rural
jurisdictions. If the legislators in that area like Senator----
oppose that drug court, the General Assembly will never pass
it.
Mr. Wolf. Why would he oppose a drug court? I mean, he is a
good fellow, I know him well. Why would he oppose the drug
court? I mean what? I mean I don't know, you just rolled your
eyes. What is that? Why would he oppose it?
Mr. DeBlasio. I am really not sure, because we have--of
course in Virginia we have some of our most conservative
members who recognize--our jurisdiction--well, Winchester area,
Delegate McDonald is a huge supporter before coming an attorney
general of the drug court, so I am not really sure, you know--
--
Mr. Wolf. Well maybe we can check. Okay, so the reason
though that you would not have it then in Harrisonburg is
because the number that has been called for in the law is now
at that number, and so therefore to have one more--even if
Harrisonburg wanted to have it, they would have to come back to
the General Assembly and ask them to.
Mr. DeBlasio. It is not a matter of having one more, it is
specifying the jurisdiction. Our code in Virginia actually
lists what jurisdictions are allowed----
Mr. Wolf. And how is that determined? Was it by at that
time people said I want one, I don't want one?
Mr. DeBlasio. Each legislation can bring the legislation to
have it in your jurisdiction and then the General Assembly
votes on it.
Mr. Wolf. Well maybe what--Judge I am going to get your
testimony. Send it to Mark Obenshain and--he is a pretty good
guy. He is a very good guy. And it would seem to me that you
would want to have the drug courts and you could almost.
Ms. Amison. It would be wonderful.
Mr. Wolf. It almost doesn't add more--so much more money
does it? Because if they are in this court or that court, they
are in--you could carve out and the drug court is the drug
court, and they are going to be in court so they can----
Judge Manley. They will be there anyway.
Mr. Wolf. They got to be there anyway. Well if I can get a
copy of your testimony, and yours and we will send it to him
and ask him to take a look at it.
Does the Attorney General have much impact on this issue?
Mr. DeBlasio. Yes, he would.
Mr. Wolf. No, but the reason is, no, Bill Mimms who is now
the Attorney General was my AA.
Mr. DeBlasio. Yes. He has pushed this. We have worked
together.
Mr. Wolf. Bill has pushed it. Yes, I would think Bill would
be for it.
Well we will get the copy from to him and then see if----
Ms. Amison. And I would like to sit or have you to come--
this committee to come and see exactly what we are doing.
Mr. Wolf. Well, maybe I will tell Bob Goodlight.
Harrisonburg used to be in my district. I should go down to
Broadway, but we sort of have a congressional courtesy. I don't
go roaming into areas that--I am kind of down in Harrisonburg
and he said well what are you doing in Harrisonburg?
Ms. Amison. He supports our program.
Mr. Wolf. He does? Well good. Well maybe some time when I
am kind of down near there I could come on by. But if I could,
Judge Manley, get your thing and we will send it and we will
let you know what happens.
As I leave Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you for the
hearing, so I think they have been very good.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Wolf.

SECOND CHANCE ACT

Judge Manley, the Second Chance Act also authorized a drug
treatment alternative to the Prison Grant Program.
Judge Manley. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Under that program an offender's prison
sentence would be deferred if he agreed to participate in a
substance abuse treatment program. If a prosecutor determined
that the offender was not complying with the treatment program,
the prosecutor would be able to send the offender to prison.
Just being a lawyer and not having practiced in the
criminal system, the prosecutor just doesn't seem to me to be
the right place for this authority to reside. First of all they
are busy prosecuting, they often pick a folder up as they are
walking in the room, which isn't much attention sometimes they
pay to certain cases. Of course there are certain cases they
work very hard on. What do you think about that authority
residing in the prosecutor?
Judge Manley. Well, I agree with you Mr. Chairman. I think
it is a very dangerous precedent to set. I think what you will
see is, what we have seen in California and other states. When
you give an opt out to one side of an adversarial process, you
end up with results that you are not in the best interest of
anyone. And I think, that is why usually it is framed in a
sense that the prosecutor may recommend--or any recommendation,
the prosecutor must be given great weight by the judge, but you
leave that decision to the judge.
The problem with letting an opt out or a prosecutor make a
decision, the prosecutor doesn't then take any responsibility
for the outcome. The prosecutor is just saying this guy goes
back to prison. Whereas with the judge has to say okay, are we
at the point where there is nothing more we can do here? And to
me that is far more, because then you are placing
responsibility on the judge for the outcomes. The outcome is
reduce recidivism, fewer people going to prison. So I mean I
have that responsibility every day, and I am very reluctant,
because I know that once I send him back to prison I will see
him again.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, and I can see it being awfully hard for
a prisoner to--not a prisoner, a person to do much bonding with
a prosecutor. Positive bonding.
Ms. Amison, do you want to speak to that?
Ms. Amison. I think that would be a difficult situation for
a prosecutor.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, from the prosecutor's standpoint
perhaps.
Ms. Amison. From a prosecutor's standpoint. I think if they
work together with the lawyer and probation officer and they
made a joint decision as far as the need for that individual,
it would probably come out better. But just to have the
prosecutor to make that sole decision, I think that would be
very lopsided.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes. Well again, the Second Chance Act
authorizes a state and local reentry court grant program to
fund initiatives that help monitor and coordinate services for
reentering offenders.
Now I haven't looked at the elements of what go into that,
but that kind of sounds like drug courts and what you do.
Judge Manley. Yes. Drug court, reentry courts, yes. Indeed
it is exactly what we do and that is what I think is really the
future for how we can be more effective in terms of helping.
Mr. Mollohan. So is that the drug court program?
Judge Manley. Well that is a type of drug court. As the
witness pointed out, there are various types. There are some
that work with offenders who before they enter the process,
some during their entry, some just with probationers, but
reentry is a major part of what drug courts do most effective,
is monitor people when they are in the community after they
leave prison or jail.
Mr. Mollohan. Do you have a familiarity with this
particular authorization in the Second Chance Act?
Judge Manley. I have a familiarity with the language and
with the funding stream. I do not know specific programs. I
know of some.
Mr. Mollohan. I was going to ask you whether you think it
is meritorious.
Judge Manley. Whether it is meritorious?
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Judge Manley. I think it is meritorious.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Judge Manley. Yes, I think it is pushing us right in the
direction that Congress should push us.
Mr. Mollohan. Because these funds authorize this stuff.
Judge Manley. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. And we fund it.
Judge Manley. Right.
Mr. Mollohan. So we just want to know.
Judge Manley. Well I would just urge you to fund it. Simply
put I think this works.
Ms. Amison. Is there is anything in there for residential?
Mr. Mollohan. I expect there are some grant programs you
should be looking at, but don't rely on me to tell you that. I
don't want to take responsibility for you missing maybe a great
grant program.
Mr. Honda, welcome to the hearing.
Mr. Honda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is really great to see a champion for justice in drug
courts too in both of you.
Are there any questions that we haven't asked that you want
us to ask? [Laughter.]
I know the Chairman is very----
Mr. Mollohan. The Chairman has asked every question.
Mr. Honda. And I know that the Chairman has a great
interest in finding ways to make sure that folks don't get into
the criminal justice system, and that we find ways to reduce
recidivism. And I know that in your work and the national
reputation all of you have and the way you rally people
together to make sure that Congress supports the kind of work
that you do is great, so I am just proud to be able to say that
I know you all and that we are here to make sure that you
realize the kind of success that you can really have, and we
understand the policies that you are going to need to support
that.
Thank you Judge. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Honda.
You would be proud of the witness's testimony.
Let me just have a--if I might have a suggestion for you in
maybe working with your representative or with Mr. Wolf.
We are sorry to see that the General Assembly has not
funded or has reduced funding for your program and like
programs, and think that is very shortsighted. And you may have
some advocates here. But if you have done any calculations on
how much your program saves the state, or if somebody else has
looked at that, you can often appeal to folks who look at these
things only through the fiscal prism, if you will, on the basis
of, hey look, my program is saving money and it is
demonstratable. If you have those statics, you might want to
work through your congressman.
Ms. Amison. I have been, and I have tried.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Well, I am sure you are. Let me restate
Mr. Honda's offer. If there is anything else either of you
would like to say, to get on the record here today, I invite
you to do that.
Judge Manley. Well, I just want to express appreciation for
your interest and the questions, and I think I have set out
everything that I think we in drug courts firmly believe in. We
very much want to be part of the reentry process, I think that
court supervised treatment and rehabilitation really works. I
think we have demonstrated that. We repeatedly demonstrate it.
And anything Congress can do to move that entire program
forward would be greatly appreciated, because we need to go
back and convince our states to do this, and that begins with
California.
As I say, we have a legislature that is now looking for the
first time to establishing reentry drug courts throughout the
state, and that is a beginning, but we need that across the
country. And your support of what we are doing I think is not
only greatly appreciated, but it is greatly needed.
You don't know the effect you have when you say this is a
priority to Congress. The states then see it as something they
need to pay attention to. And also they see it as a means of
leveraging funding. They are willing then to invest money if
they know they are going--that it is outcome driven, that they
are expecting the drug reentry courts to produce better
outcomes in the disaster they already have, then they are more
willing to fund.
So thank you again.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Judge.
Ms. Amison.
Ms. Amison. I would just like to say that on December the
4th I will be 20 years clean and sober, and I have been through
this model of treatment, and I know what can happen if you have
the right combination of people working with you and what you
can aspire to do and what you can aspire to become.
I never dreamed that I would be sitting before a senate
subcommittee and testifying on anything, and it is a pleasure
and a honor, and I am proud, because this is hope that I can
show the men and women that I work with that they too can
overcome their substance abuse issues, they can become clean
and sober and have a meaningful life with the right services. I
know it can happen because it happened for me.
And I just urge Congress to please, people need a second
chance and they need a hand up, and I urge Congress to please
take hold of this and make it happen.
Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. I want to tell you how glad I am that you put
that on the record. That is really inspiring, I think. And the
best counselors are folks that are recovering, aren't they?
They don't fool you.
Ms. Amison. Not at all.
Mr. Mollohan. They don't fool you.
Well thank you all very much for your testimony. We look
forward to working with you into the future.
Thank you.
Thursday, March 12, 2009.

``WHAT WORKS'' FOR SUCCESSFUL REENTRY

WITNESSES

HON. DANNY K. DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE OF CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF
ILLINOIS
JEREMY TRAVIS, PRESIDENT, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
JAMES M. BYRNE, PH.D., PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND
CRIMINOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, LOWELL

Opening Statement by Chairman Mollohan

Mr. Mollohan. The hearing will come to order.
This morning, before we begin with the hearing panel, we
are very pleased and honored to welcome our colleague,
Representative Danny Davis, to testify about the theme of this
week's hearing, Prisoner Reentry.
It is particularly fitting that Mr. Davis joins us here
this morning because he was the sponsor of ``The Second Chance
Act,'' which was enacted last year and which promises to help
fundamentally change the way we approach prisoner reentry at
both the federal and state levels.
Danny, thank you very much for taking time to appear here
today. We appreciate it. We look forward to your testimony.

Mr. Davis Opening Statement

Mr. Davis. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And let
me first of all thank you and the Committee for holding this
hearing.
I want to express real serious appreciation for the
evolution of the interest and the concern that is being
expressed relative to the whole question of prison reentry.
I happen to believe that this is one of the most serious
problems facing America, especially urban communities with
specific population groups.
It's common knowledge that our country has become the most
imprisoned nation on the face of the earth in both proportion
and actual numbers of population.
Studies suggest that about 700,000 of these people return
from prison each year. If we would consider that large number
of individuals coming home from prison every year, you can
imagine the numbers that have escalated. Many of them actually
return to specific communities in geographic areas.
For example, in the State of Illinois, where we have about
40,000 people returning, most of them come to one county, that
is Cook County, and they come to seven community areas in that
county, which really means that those people in those areas
besieged. I mean, you can walk down the street and meet 20
people and if you were to talk to them, sometimes about half of
them would be individuals who have prison records or
individuals who have some impediment that prevents them from
obtaining jobs, housing and access to much needed entitlement
programs.
And so it is my feeling that the extent to which you can
help these individuals reintegrate back into normal life, that
is the extent to which we not only improve the quality of their
individual lives, but also the lives of everyone with whom they
come into contact as well.
There are large numbers of children, for example, whose
parents are either incarcerated, returning home, and all of
these children often time suffer the pains of having both
parents with prison records, which means that they then miss
just normal opportunities.
We were pleased that ``The Second Chance Act'' found its
way through the processes of passage and the fact that the
President has proposed $75 million in FY 2010 budget.
But, as I said to the President two days ago I was becoming
a little bit concerned because I did not see as much money in
the ARRA for reentries, nor did I see it in the 2009 Omnibus.
Moreover, I was heartened when I saw the 2010 budget proposal.
It is my hope that at the very least $75 million will be
maintained and we will find other resources to fully fund The
Second Chance Act. FY 2010 proposed funding level services to
50 states is the equivalent of less than a million per state.
This funding is inadequate and will not benefit states with
greater population of individuals returning to society. States
are hard pressed with decreases in revenue and the rising costs
of public safety.
Today at one o'clock, I will reintroduce ``The Federal
Prison Work Incentive Act of 2009,'' a piece of legislation
designed to restore good time in federal prisons and correction
facilities.
As you know ``Tough-on-Crime'' public policies deprived
individuals with federal convictions of parole or probation and
requires them to serve at least 85 percent of their conviction
or their sentence. Many of them before 18 or 20 years are
actually in a position where they could return to their
community, go to work, and become assets rather than remaining
liabilities to society.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for the interest you have
displayed and continue to place not only in this particular
issue, but in a range of issues related to criminal justice and
related rehabilitation issues.
I appreciate being here and yield back the balance of my
time.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, the accolades go to you. And it takes
somebody who is really insightful about these things to the
point that they become intuitive and just understand what ought
to happen. And I think that is reflected in your whole career.
You know, I have told you often that, of the requests when
we were doing VA HUD, the requests that you submitted were
always totally appropriate and extremely sensitive and relevant
to your community. And we always had to fund them because of
that.
It is a credit to your sensitivity and to your knowledge of
your community, to the point of being intuitive about it. And
that is obviously reflected in ``The Second Chance Act.'' And
we will be looking very carefully at it.
Now, so far as the appropriation is concerned, I mean, we
have not had much of a chance here on ``The Second Chance
Act.'' So you have got to give us a first chance----
Mr. Davis. Right.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. To really look at this. You just
got this done last year. And that is the reason we are holding
these hearings. And we have attempted to be thorough. The staff
has just worked their hearts out to get before the Committee
the kind of witnesses that are going to guide us and help us in
applying what you acknowledge and point out are scarce
resources.
There are some programs, and I do not want to hold you up
too long, but there are some programs that the testimony has
been very positive in favor of.
And as we look at ``The Second Chance Act,'' which of these
grant programs do you think are most important?
Mr. Davis. I think that those programs that can result in
an individual being able to find employment after everything
else is said and done, after a person has been helped with
their drug addiction problem.
They may have been helped with their anger control problem.
They may have been helped with their inability to read, write,
and communicate, maybe even have developed a job skill. But if
they cannot find employment, that will actually in many
instances drive them back into old behaviors.
I have actually had people come and sit and cry in my
office because they will have done what they thought they were
supposed to do and, yet, every place that they went to try and
find a job, they were told that we do not hire ex-offenders or
you have got a record and we just cannot take a chance.
And I think that is one of the reasons we ended up calling
this activity ``Second Chance,'' because in many instances,
unless individuals get that employment opportunity, then they
are totally frustrated.
I mean, there are so many barriers to reentry. You cannot
live in public housing. It is against the law. And some states
say to get a license to be a barber or even be a nail
technician to put fingernail polish on someone's fingernails or
you cannot be a butcher, you cannot be a plumber, you cannot
work around any health facility, you cannot cut the grass at a
hospital unless you can get a waiver.
Mr. Mollohan. Is this true in Illinois?
Mr. Davis. And it is becoming one of the more progressive
types trying to deal with the problems. But in Illinois, there
are still 39 of those kind of----
Mr. Mollohan. Cannots?
Mr. Davis [continuing]. Licensure----
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Davis [continuing]. Requirements, that if you have a
felony conviction, you cannot meet them. And so there you are.
We have had people who would go to school and we went to watch
some of the career education institutions who will allow people
to go through programs knowing full well once they complete the
program that they are not going to be able to work unless they
can get a waiver because the state does not allow it. But
slowly but surely, I mean, we are tearing those down. We
actually had 55 three years ago.
But we have been able to get our legislature to wipe some
of them out, so we are down to 33.
Mr. Mollohan. When were those put on the books?
Mr. Davis. Many of them were put on the books as we decided
that we needed to get tough on crime in the 1980s and the early
1990s. All of the----
Mr. Mollohan. When were they put on?
Mr. Davis. Late 1980s----
Mr. Mollohan. The 1980s, 1990s?
Mr. Davis [continuing]. 1990s. Three strikes and you are
out. Mandatory minimums. The real war against drugs. I think if
we could find a way somehow or another to prevent individuals
from becoming drug addicted because about half the individuals
who end up prison are there because of some drug related
activity, whether it is addiction, whether it is trafficking,
conspiracy.
I mean, we have a terrible problem, for example, in
Illinois. Cook County has 800,000 drug users. And, I mean, that
is an awful lot of people.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes. It certainly is.
Mr. Davis. We have 3,000 people use drugs every day, as
often as they can get them.
Mr. Mollohan. Are you following OJP's promulgation of rules
and the release of grant announcements and can you comment on
how they are doing?
Mr. Davis. Well, I think they are doing quite well. As a
matter of fact, we do follow that very closely as well as we
monitor many of the programs that people actually do. And even
faith-based programs. Some people do not have as much faith in
some of those.
But I find that with those programs, without much money,
oftentimes they are quite effective because there is something
that happens in good ones that we cannot always describe.
Mr. Mollohan. You cannot know.
Mr. Davis. Yes. I am a trained psychologist and, of course,
many of my friends are psychiatrists and psychologists. And
they do not have necessarily, some of them do, the same kind of
faith in these kind of programs.
But oftentimes people just kind of get caught up in what is
taking place and you follow them for years and they are okay. I
mean, they, amazing grace somehow or another----
Mr. Mollohan. Lifts the spirit.
Mr. Davis [continuing]. Move them from where they were. And
they do not cost much. I mean, it is generally facilitation
money that groups like these need. And so they do not need a
lot of money to----
Mr. Mollohan. Well, we had an excellent panel, a number of
excellent panels yesterday. One of them spoke particularly to
this job issue. One is Mr. Nolan's faith-based program and then
Mr. McDonald with----
Mr. Davis. Pat Nolan.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, Pat Nolan and Mr. McDonald with the Doe
Fund. Those two spoke to the job issue very eloquently in words
and obviously their deeds.
Are either one of them active in Chicago?
Mr. Davis. Oh, we work closely with Pat and the Prison
Fellowship and all of them.
Mr. Mollohan. And how are they doing on the job side of
things?
Mr. Davis. They are doing well. The jobs that people are
able to get really come as an organization develops a
relationship oftentimes with an industry or with a particular
employer so that they can follow the individuals and monitor.
One of the most effective groups that we work with, of
course, is the SAFER Foundation, one of the oldest groups that
has been around. And they have a pretty decent track record
because they monitor closely the individuals who go out and end
up working, provide supportive services, give them help.
Many employers will actually hire ex-offenders as long as
there is someone to work with them and they do not necessarily
want the general public to be aware of it because if they found
out, they would be overpowered with applicants.
But there are entities. For example, Clark Construction
Company right here in D.C. has a very excellent approach.
Pennzoil in California has a great approach where they actually
train individuals to operate their oil changing apparatuses.
And then some people have actually developed small
businesses that are working. We have got one where the lady got
the idea of teaching ex-offenders how to extract honey and so
now they have a business of----
Mr. Mollohan. That is great.
Mr. Davis [continuing]. Honey. It is a million dollar
business now.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, let me commend the Doe Fund to you,
that model. They have, based on their testimony yesterday and
reputation, they have had excellent results at the work aspect
of all this and the reduction in recidivism that has resulted.
I commend you.
Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Just welcome, Mr. Davis.
I think the testimony was good. I think faith makes a big
difference. John Newton wrote Amazing Grace. The faith issue
was the issue that changed him.
The other thing is work and work makes the big difference.
And that is what the panel said. I mean, you cannot get
somebody to come out of prison and give them a hundred bucks
and let them go on a Saturday night at seven o'clock and then
have no job for months and months and months. And so I think
the combination of the three of them.
Also, the State of Michigan has a very aggressive program.
And I think that is the answer. I think we are building more
prisons, putting more people away when we ought to be putting
more money into training and work both in prison--Prison
Industries is another important issue and, yet, this Congress
is generally going the other way.
We are going to offer an amendment that sets up a program
whereby prisoners can work on making products that are no
longer made in the United States, so we are not in competition
with any American jobs, an example being there are no
televisions made in the United States.
This is an extreme example, but perhaps if you could have
them working on making televisions, which I think would be
beyond what we could do, although Emerson at one time was
willing to do that and there was opposition, and then they
would be getting training that they could do as they got out.
And then the idea of once they leave prison, upon leaving
prison having a job whereby they can work and they really have
dignity.
Does it make sense to you of doing something whereby people
could work on products that are no longer--doing real work. I
do not mean laundry, linens, and picking up cigarette butts,
but real work, working on products that are no longer made in
the United States, maybe bringing that product back, if you
will, that would help, but also giving a person an opportunity
to do something that makes a difference. Does that make sense
to you?
Mr. Davis. Oh, I think unequivocally and without a doubt.
For example, you mentioned television sets. There used to be a
Zenith plant about a mile from my home. And, of course, they
moved to Mexico and that was the end of the individuals who
worked at Zenith.
In addition, you know, those kind of products that are not
generally manufactured in our country, I think there is also
the maintenance and reconstitution.
We have got one program, for example, where the individuals
are taught to redo computers. And we have got a company that
gives them their old computers. They learn to take them apart,
put them back together. And, of course, the test is that they
actually work and then they sell them for three, four hundred
dollars each and earn money that way.
Mr. Wolf. And that gives them the skill that they can then
take out and also earn a living while they are in prison so
that they have a percentage of the money that they have when
they leave and also maybe send some to their families.
Anyway, well, I appreciate your support for this, and thank
you for your good work.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I----
Mr. Davis. Well, thank you. It adds a level of dignity. And
I also want to commend you because you have been one of the
stalwarts in this area certainly ever since I have been here.
And we have always considered you the go-to person when we
needed some help with criminal justice issues. And I want to
thank you very much.
Mr. Mollohan. Before you leave, Danny, we had testimony
yesterday about drug courts and I just want to get your quick
reaction to drug courts.
Are they operating in your area? Do you have a thought
about them?
Mr. Davis. We have had them for a long time actually and
they operate extremely well. Individuals who, I mean, they have
got a drug problem, I mean, the real deal is that drug
addiction is such a heavy number until it is almost impossible
to talk about serious reentry if you are not talking about
doing something with the drug addiction problem that exists in
the country.
Mr. Mollohan. So drug courts work? I mean, they are part of
what works?
Mr. Davis. They are very good. They work extremely well.
And I think they are worth their weight in gold.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, that is good. And I note here the
announcement by the President that he has appointed the Seattle
Police Chief, Gil Kerlikowske, to lead the Office of National
Drug Control Policy. And at the same time, they have announced
a new emphasis on treatment. So I think that is a good----
Mr. Davis. That is wonderful.
Mr. Mollohan. That is a good turn in direction.
Thank you very much for your appearance here today and for
your good work. And as I said before, you need folks around who
are intuitive about these things and that is reflected in ``The
Second Chance Act'' and in your testimony here this morning.
Thank you, Danny.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank
you, Representative Wolf. We appreciate you both.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you. Thank you.
Okay. Next we would like to welcome two witnesses that I
would like to--please, if you will take your seats at the
hearing table. Mr. Jeremy Travis, President of John Jay College
of Criminal Justice and Dr. James M. Byrne, Professor,
University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
Well, this marks the seventh and final hearing of the week
on offender reentry. We chose to dedicate so much time and
effort to this topic because it is more and more apparent that
effective reentry programs are the key to reducing recidivism
and the strains on our communities and prison resources
associated with recidivism.
The prison population in the United States, federal, state,
and local, is soaring. The Pew Center on the States reported
last year that one percent of the population is now
incarcerated.
And last week, the Pew Center reported that one in thirty-
one Americans is under some form of correctional supervision,
either in a prison or jail facility or under some form of
supervised release. That is truly staggering and it has many
negative ramifications for our society.
We must turn this around and there are a number of
promising initiatives around the country that have begun to
move us in the right direction. We heard about several of these
initiatives in our hearings yesterday.
Back in 1974, American sociologist Robert Martinson noted
that when it comes to prison rehabilitation programs, nothing
works. It is apparent from what we have heard this week that
there are things that work. The question now is how to begin
implementing what works while continuing to further refine and
improve it.
For our last hearing on prisoner reentry, we would like to
welcome two respected academicians associated with prisoner
reentry research.
Jeremy Travis is the President of John Jay College of
Criminal Justice in New York City. Among other things,
President Travis served as the Director of the National
Institute of Justice from 1994 to 2000.
Also with us today is James Byrne, a Professor of Criminal
Justice and Criminology at the University of Massachusetts,
Lowell, and editor of Victims and Offenders: Journal of
Evidence-Based Practices.
Welcome, gentlemen, both of you. In a moment, I will ask
you to briefly summarize your written testimony, which will be
made a part of the record. But first I would like to turn to
Mr. Wolf for an opening statement.
Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. I do not have an opening statement.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you.

Mr. Travis Opening Statement

So, Mr. Travis, why don't you proceed first.
Mr. Travis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Mollohan, Ranking Member Wolf, I very much
appreciate the opportunity to testify before your Subcommittee
this morning. This also provides me an occasion to reflect with
Chairman Mollohan of our good working together when I was
Director of NIJ and since. We did good things for that agency
and for the country.
And, Mr. Wolf, to express my appreciation for your support
of the work of Professor David Kennedy who is working on gang
violence issues in your district. And that has been nationally
quite important.
I want to thank the Committee for the invitation, but also
to express my personal appreciation for the series of hearings
that you have held this week. It is quite remarkable in our
nation's history to have a week's worth of hearings on prison
and prisoner reentry issues.
And all of us who work on these topics have been heartened
by this decision by your Subcommittee. And it really marks a
turning point.
I would like to summarize my testimony which is available
in longer form by saying that it is divided into four parts.
First I want to just talk a bit about the scale and the
scope of the reentry phenomenon to put some of the findings
about program effectiveness into context, secondly to talk
about the connection between reentry and public safety, which I
think is the bottom line that Americans care about the most,
third to summarize research findings on program effectiveness,
and fourth to recommend some new directions for Congress and
the nation as we look forward from this point on.
As this Committee is well aware, the reentry phenomenon as
Mr. Davis just alluded to is unprecedented in our national
history. We now have 700,000 individuals each year leaving the
state and federal prison. Thirty years ago, that was 200,000
people. So we are seeing something we have never seen before as
a country.
People ask why this is happening. There is a simple answer
to the question. There are more people in prison and,
therefore, more people coming out. And except for those who die
while they are in prison, everybody comes back home. So it is
what I call the iron law of imprisonment. Everybody who goes to
prison comes back now two and a half years after their entry.
But these figures are well known, but we need to place
these, I think, in a larger context. First of all, we focus on
prison reentry and all my writing has been on prison reentry
and to the detriment of our understanding also jail reentry. So
at a local level, the phenomenon of jail reentry is the
companion piece to the prisoner reentry discussion.
And a wonderful report put out last year by the Urban
Institute and our college documented that there are 13 million
people leaving jail each year. That is nine million discreet
individuals and that is a large number that is influenced upon
the communities of concern here.
The second additional phenomenon besides the 700,000 that
we know well is just to recognize that we have expanded the
nature and the scope of supervision. So when people leave
prison, more of them are now placed on supervision than before
in our nation's history. Supervision has shifted from service
orientation to a surveillance orientation.
And we have had a seven-fold increase in parole
revocations, people being sent back to prison because their
parole was revoked for a technical violation or a new crime. So
a seven-fold increase in revocations standing alongside a four-
fold increase in imprisonment, so we have this churning in and
out at the community level of lots of people coming out of
prison, supervised closely, and being sent back.
And the third important reality that we have to keep in
mind as we think about the research findings is the reality of
what I have termed invisible punishment. Mr. Davis also alluded
to that. We have more collateral sanctions, more legal barriers
to reintegration, more barriers to certain jobs or forms of
civic participation, voting and the like. All of this makes
reintegration more difficult than ever before.
So the net effect of all of these is unprecedented numbers
of people, 90 percent men, removed from families and
communities, sent off to prison, coming back, concentrated in a
small number of neighborhoods, mostly communities of color, and
then supervised closely, revoked at a higher level than ever
before, sent back to prison at record rates, all of them
struggling to get back on track.
And these are the same communities that we should note have
typically poor schools, poor healthcare, weak labor markets.
And we are asking these communities and these families and
these faith institutions and employers to take on this burden,
this national responsibility of reintegrating large numbers of
individuals.
So the reentry movement, if we can call it that, that I
would say is now ten years old, it started when I was in the
Justice Department when Janet Reno first called for reentry
concept papers as a national call for action, continuing under
the Bush Administration with SVORI and the President's reentry
initiative. And I credit President Bush's State of the Union
address now leading to ``The Second Chance Act.''
This is an important moment in our nation's history. The
appropriations that this Committee is well aware of, $25
million in the budget for ``The Second Chance Act'' and 75
million proposed are also important moments in the reentry
movement.
But I would note just as a footnote that even at the $75
million level, if we were to divide that money to all the
700,000 people coming out of prison, it is about $100 a person.
So we are still far short of what might be needed to make a big
difference here.
The second point I want to make is that if we ask the
public what is the goal of the reentry work and ask the
researchers what do they look at when they look at reentry
outcomes, the number one goal is public safety.
I think there is a second goal that Mr. Davis alluded to
which is reintegration. That is reconnection to family, to
work, to institutions such as faith institutions, revoting,
reconnecting to the democratic responsibilities. But I will
focus today on public safety and recidivism reduction.
Three lenses on recidivism, I think, are relevant. The BJS
numbers are well known. Two-thirds of people released from
state prison are rearrested within three years for one or more
serious crimes. That is a recidivism measure.
I would like to focus on two others, one from the BJS data,
which is that the rate of failure is highest right after people
come out of prison. And we tend to forget that. It is not a
straight line over time. The rate of failure is highest and
diminishes over time. That is a signal to me that the reentry
moment, moment of release as we call it, is a moment of high
risk.
It is hard to connect back to family. If you are drug
addicted when you go in and you are coming out, there is a
temptation to return to drug use. There is documented evidence
from the public health community it is the highest rate of
mortality when people come right out of prison, higher than any
other time. That is a health failure, mental health issue in
terms of people connecting and getting medication.
So when we think about reentry and failure, we have to
think about the failure being associated with time and we have
to think about how to put those resources that we devote
through ``Second Chance'' and other funding vehicles, put the
resources where the risk is. The risk is highest when people
first come out.
The third perspective on the public safety measure that I
think is very important, when we ask why is it so important
today to think about the public safety outcomes, why does this
give the Congress and proponents of ``Second Chance Act'' a
bottom line accountability measure for reducing rearrests, it
is both because that has always been the measure of reentry,
but today it has urgency because we have two things going on at
the same time, record numbers of people coming out of prison
and historically low crime rates.
Put those two things together and if you are a Police
Chief, what that means is in your community, the people who are
being arrested constitute a higher percentage of your arrests
than ever before. There is some data to back that up.
In the book I co-edited, there is an article by Rosenfeld
and others. The percentage of arrests from the reentry cohort
out within the last three years in 1994 was 13 percent. By
2000, it had jumped to 20 percent.
So communities are feeling the level of reentry because
lots of people are coming out of prison. But from a public
safety point of view, this cohort of people coming out of
prison, not because they are more dangerous, because they are
not, but because there are fewer arrests and there are more of
them constitute a very high percentage of the rearrest
activity.
So we have this opportunity to focus squarely on people
coming out of prison and do what we can to reduce their failure
rate. And it will have enormous payoffs in terms of community
and safety. We have never been in this situation before.
So this underscores the importance of focusing on
recidivism, focusing on the moment of release because it is
time sensitive, but also the difficulty of the task. A two-
thirds failure rate is a very high failure rate and I will talk
about that next.
The Chairman alluded to the famous Martinson, nothing
works, you know, how far we have come from that observation
which was mostly true at the time. And I am just going to
summarize and maybe Dr. Byrne will pick up on some of this.
There is a body of research literature now, very reputable,
very strong coming from a number of different publications,
Petersilia, et al, Sider, Dr. Aos from Washington State, the
Canadian research, that says basically the following: What
works?
In prison, drug treatment works. A number of studies look
at them through metanalysis. You have got about a 6.9 percent
reduction over time from drug treatment. Drug treatment in jail
works, six percent reduction in recidivism. Drug treatment in
the community, you get a better bang for your buck, about a 12
percent reduction. Cognitive behavioral therapy, about 8.2
percent reduction. Correctional industries, Mr. Wolf was just
mentioning that, 7.8 percent reduction in recidivism.
Vocational education and training, very powerful, more powerful
effects, about 12.6 percent reduction in recidivism. Employment
training and job assistance, some reduction in recidivism,
about 4.8 percent. Adult basic education, the research is not
quite as strong here, about 5.1 percent. And supervision using
treatment programs, drug treatment, you can get to about 21.9
percent.
So this body of research which has emerged over the past
decade or so shows that things work. We also should notice that
the results, what research calls the effect sizes, are fairly
modest here. This is not like medical, take a pill and things
get better. This is hard work. But with good programs, you can
make a difference.
If you were to run through all of those research studies,
you would find these common threads, that our strategies
looking at reentry, so what you do with people when they are
coming out of prison, should focus on behavioral outcomes,
focus on criminogenic needs as we call them, use positive
reinforcements, not just negative reinforcements.
Very important that we target high risk offenders. ``The
Second Chance Act'' is commendable in its focus on high risk
offenders because that is where you get the most, ironically
perhaps, most bang for your buck in terms of public safety.
We should always use risk assessment instruments, also a
``Second Chance Act'' focus, and this continuity between what
you do in prison and back in the community is very important
with the focus being on the community. That is where we got the
biggest results.
We also know some things that do not work. One thing that
does not work is intensive supervision with lots of
surveillance, lots of revocations. Does not work to reduce
recidivism by itself. A good body of research on that.
And in a landmark study last year from Urban Institute, we
know that supervision all by itself does not reduce recidivism.
Just putting somebody on parole supervision does not reduce
recidivism compared to those who do not get placed on it.
So this is the time for us to reimagine what we are going
to do in reentry because we have these findings that really go
to the core of what we had been doing in the past.
What we also know is that you put all--if you would imagine
a world in which we did all these things, funded everything
right, we could get recidivism reductions up to maybe 15
percent, 20 percent or so, and they would pay for themselves.
So the Aos research from Washington State, which is a cost-
benefit analysis, is very encouraging in this regard because we
see the cost effectiveness. It is not just that they work, but
they pay for themselves.
So the implications of this body of research is we should
focus our efforts and our funding on interventions with proven
effectiveness, that is where the research findings are so
important, and that we should always be looking for the next
frontier and fund rigorous research demonstration projects to
test new ideas. And ``The Second Chance Act'' thankfully does
both of those with even a call for a random assignment which is
very important for researching findings.
My final observation to the Subcommittee is that we really,
I think, should not be satisfied with these results. We should,
of course, continue to fund those things that work and fund
more of them. But these reductions, even the ones we could
achieve under the best circumstances, I think, are really too
modest given the concern at a community level.
And our approaches have been in my view too constrained and
too timid. What has been the constraint? The constraint has
been that we think of reentry as an individual level
intervention. What can we do for this person coming out of
prison to improve his or her skill set, human capital, work on
their drug addiction, work on their health issues?
And particularly today with the large numbers of people
coming back to small numbers of communities, we have to focus
on the context within which they return home. So the shorthand
I use for thinking about this different way of thinking, these
are both simultaneous, is not just individual level approaches
but ecological approaches. What do we do at a community?
So in closing, I just want to cite some research that to me
is very promising, new research that suggests that if we focus
at the community level, ecological level in addition to the
individual level, we can get some very positive findings.
Too bad Mr. Davis was not here, but I want to commend the
work in his city. The Project Safe Neighborhoods in Chicago,
which is one of the most successful, works as a violence
reduction strategy. It builds on Professor Kennedy's work. They
do not think of it as a reentry program, but the population
they target are those people coming out of prison and those
coming on to probation.
It is in essence the way we would think of it as a reentry
program. They talk to everybody coming out of prison. They have
what they call a community forum, an offender forum with them,
law enforcement and community providers and faith institutions
and the family members of those people coming out of prison,
talk about the consequences of committing crimes again, talk
about ways out of the criminal lifestyle through an opportunity
to take advantage of Social Services or treatment or
educational programs, and it is a combined community message to
people coming out of prison.
There is a recently published study of this, of the PSN by
Professors Meares and Fagan that shows a 37 percent reduction
in homicides in the target neighborhoods of Chicago compared to
three years before that. And these are starting to sound like
pretty impressive numbers.
Another study recently published on the Boston Reentry
Initiative that works with high risk offenders at a local jail,
small numbers, does everything all at once to make sure that
when they come out, they are met at the gate. There is someone
who works with them over time. There is this combined law
enforcement and Social Service and community conversation with
these individuals.
A new evaluation published by Professor Braga at Harvard
showing a 30 percent reduction in overall violent arrest rates.
Reentry courts, I think, are very promising. I gather the
Committee had a witness talking about reentry courts last year.
They are spreading. I have been told they are in one-third of
all federal districts. This is very encouraging. They are
supported by ``The Second Chance Act.''
Promising results, but here is where we need rigorous
evaluation, but reentry courts as with drug courts have the
same idea of a coordination of services, in this case by a
Judge. You have got the parole people in the room. You have got
the treatment providers in the room. You have got the family in
the room. You have got the pastors in the room. All supervised
by a Judge, so it is the same idea of changing the ecology.
And, finally, there are a number of community-based
interventions that I think the jury is out on them in terms of
their research findings. One, the Safe Return Project in
Chicago is being run by the SAFER Foundation that Mr. Davis
alluded to. Second, the Reentry Partnership in Baltimore was
evaluated by the Urban Institute. And the third, I will say
this, Local Pride launched by our Mayor, Mayor Bloomberg,
called the New York City Justice Corps. These interventions are
truly community based. They try to change the community
attitude towards people coming back home.
The Baltimore Reentry Partnership, the community met
everybody coming back to their community. They had meetings
with them 30 days before they were released from prison,
organized services, organized law enforcement and parole
supervision.
The Urban Institute evaluation found a reduction to zero of
homicides in one of the most troubled communities in Baltimore
compared to two homicides and eleven attempted homicides in a
comparison group.
The Safe Return Project in Chicago, same idea of community
level engagement. Everybody coming back to that community is a
client of this program.
And the New York City Justice Corps, the Chairman was
talking about employment, and I have high regard for the Doe
Fund, by the way, the idea there is to take young people who
are coming out of prison or being placed on probation and
provide public sector jobs in their communities for six months
on work that has been identified by the community as being a
community benefit. So it is changing the dynamics between
community and offender, recognizing that that dynamic will
ultimately improve reentry outcomes and reintegration.
So I think that these represent sort of a new frontier in
reentry innovation and present research opportunities that
``The Second Chance Act'' and I am hoping NIJ will be funded to
do research on these. It is a different way of thinking about
reentry and it is not to gainsay or to downplay the importance
of the individual level interventions, but I think we need to
do both of these at the same time.
So it is an important moment in our nation's history.
I thank the Chair and Committee for the opportunity to
speak to you and would be available for your questions.
[Written statement of Jeremy Travis, President, John Jay
College of Criminal Justice follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Travis.
Dr. Byrne.

Mr. Byrne Opening Remarks

Mr. Byrne. I also want to thank you for inviting me. And
following Jeremy Travis' presentation will not be easy. He
offered an excellent summary of where we are at in terms of new
innovations and new programs.
What I would like to spend my time talking to you today is
evidence-based practice, which is a term we use in the field to
highlight programs and strategies with solid empirical support.
In my presentation, I will seperate the science from what I
call the nonsense in the area of evidence-based practice. While
I do not think I will contradict anything you have heard, I
urge caution in your assessment of ``best practices'' in prison
reentry.
First I should point out that we are at a different point
in our field than we are in, say, the hard sciences because we
have not done enough experimental research. As a result, when
we try to use a ``gold standard'' for reviews, focusing only on
experimental research studies, we end up saying very little
about effectiveness; and it makes it very difficult for you as
policymakers to really figure out what to do.
The gold standard reviews are out there in our field, but
they are just trickling in now, although there has been a push
to move in this direction. Advocates of gold standard reviews
essentially say that we should have at least two experimental
research studies completed with random assignment before we can
say something ``works'' (or does not work) in a particular
area.
These experimental studies should confirm a finding, and
the great bulk of lower level studies, including quasi
experimental studies (you heard about some of those just now)
and nonexperimental research studies, case studies, should say
basically the same thing. If the majority of those studies
confirm the findings from experimental research, we can say a
program ``works''.
So that is the gold standard for evidence-based reviews.
And when you use that standard for review, you do get a
different picture of the effectiveness of both institutional
and community corrections programs than when you use a lower
standard for review.
In our field, just so we can say something, we have changed
the definition of what constitutes an evidence-based review. We
have another standard that I call (and others have called) the
bronze standard. This type of review is essentially looking at
all experimental studies, but also adding in what they call
level three studies which are quasi experiments which have
control groups, and/or some type of pre/post comparisons. If at
least two level 3 studies (or above) can be identified, the
reviewer can offer an assessment as to what works.
When you do that, a large number of studies can be
identified, but then you have all the inherent problems with
lower level science that you are now bringing in to the review.
Today, most of what I will highlight in my review research will
be drawn from the bronze standard reviews.
Much of what we talk about in what works, evidence-based
reviews in our field combine experimental and quasi
experimental research.
There is a third level of review and much of what I see
when I go on the web and Google different topics and look at
what various professional groups, advocacy groups in
particular, say about a specific topic are based on what I call
nonscientific or nonsense reviews. These reviews do not
systematically look at all the studies in a particular area.
One classic approach that people use when they find a
negative study that does not support their position, sometimes
we do in our own relationships with people we disagree with, is
to marginalize. Essentially, you leave the study out of the
review. You just do not mention them. Unfortunately you get
that in this third level of reviews. They kind of pick and
choose studies and they do not have everything in there.
Unfortunately in our field, much of what we call today
evidence-based practice seems to fall into that third category.
This is changing.
The Campbell Collaborative is a group that puts out
systematic reviews in a variety of fields, including criminal
justice. Many of the research studies that Jeremy Travis was
just telling you about, come from these Campbell Collaborative
reviews.
We are getting better in this area, but this is, I think,
an area where we really have to improve the science because we
will improve public policy as a result.
So my first point would be let us separate out the science
from the fiction in terms of what we know. And when you do that
and you go through the reentry research what you find is that
we are in less certain terms in some areas than in others.
For example, if you use the gold standard review criteria
and you conduct a random assignment experiment where you send
some people to prison and put some on alternative sanctions, do
offenders do better in prison or do they do better in the
alternative sanctions?
There are actually five studies over the last 35 years that
do a random assignment, natural experiments in that area.
Overall, the results of these experiments are inconclusive.
However, if you look at the full body of studies that are
quasi experimental, good quasi experimentals (level 3 and
above), you add to those five another about thirteen studies.
When you look across those eighteen studies, what you find is
the majority of those studies (11) show that alternative
sanctions reduce recidivism at a higher level than
incarceration.
So there is a good example of if you use the gold standard,
you are going to reach inconclusive results. We do not really
know whether prison works better than a community-based
scenario. However, when you use the bronze standard, you find
that the majority of the studies really do point in the
direction of alternatives to incarceration.
That is important to keep in mind because as I see the
reentry issue, one easy solution to 700,000 people coming out
of prison is what I call ``pre-entry.'' Pre-entry focuses on
who is going to prison in the first place, and what happens in
prison once they are incarcerated.
And certainly I think there is a body of research that
suggests that we could do other things with offenders and not
put public safety at risk. And there, once again, I think the
bronze standard has been used to conduct these reviews.
But you certainly have to know that there is another view
of that research which is based on the gold standard review.
Using this standard, we would conclude that we are actually
inconclusive in other areas.
So that is point one in terms of where the science fits in
terms of what I would call pre-entry, the issue of the decision
to incarcerate. Point two of pre-entry is what happens to
offenders while they are incarcerated.
Now, what happens in prison does not stay in prison. We
know that. Just about everybody who goes to prison comes back
to the community.
You know, that is certainly true. Does the period of time
in prison make offenders worse? I recently conducted research
and edited a book on the culture of prison violence. As part of
my research I conducted an evidence-based review looking
specifically at what kind of things can reduce violence and
disorder in prison.
And lo and behold, what jumps out at you? Participation in
treatment programs reduce prison disorder. Programming in
general has an impact, but involvement in treatment programs
seems to have the largest effect. What you find is violence and
disorder levels go down the more treatment programming,
programming in general and also treatment program in
particular.
Now, some have taken that overall programming finding to
say, well, that means you can just put offenders in recreation
programs and you will have less violence and disorder in
prison. Maybe it is not treatment. Maybe it is just any kind of
programming. Well, I do think any kind of program is better
than none, but certainly that is something to look at further,
using a randomizing field experiment.
And that is kind of a tie in to talking again about this
notion of pre-entry. What happens in prison does not stay in
prison. So we have to look at ways of reducing violence and
disorder in prison because we know that what happens there is
going to affect what prisoners do when they return to the
community.
So, it is a public safety matter. Even if those studies did
not show reductions in subsequent recidivism when offenders
leave prison, crime reduction in prison is an important thing
to have, but this means that these offenders will have less
exposure to violence and victimization in prison.
The nice thing in terms of the research, I just mentioned,
is that when you look at prison treatment programs, what you
find is statistically significant reductions in subsequent
recidivism upon reentry. I think that is pretty consistent,
using again the bronze standard review, across the majority of
studies currently available for review.
You heard about some of the programs earlier today:
cognitive behavioral treatment, therapeutic community models
targeting offenders with serious drug problems, vocational
training programs, prison to community job placement programs.
All these programs show reductions in recidivism. But, and this
is the caveat, they are marginal reductions (about 10%)
overall. Since many of these programs are multi-modal programs,
it is hard to tease out the effects of individual compounds,
such as employment versus vocation versus treatment because
there are many things happening. We are talking about ten
percent reductions overall; this is not a large effect size.
You will hear people talk about, well, with better program
implementation, that 10 percent can get up to 30 or 40%. There
is not a lot of empirical support that you can cite. There is
one study that talks about changes in level of integrity of
treatment, when you improve the quality, you are going to get
higher results. But we do not have much in other area. So I
cannot say definitively that better implementations will result
in significant reductions in recidivism.
So right now we know individual level change strategies in
prison do have an impact. When these offenders leave prison and
return to the community, the impact is marginal. For this
reason I think the suggestion that you heard in terms of
looking not only at factors that relate to individual change
but also look at community change is critical. We need to do
more research on the social ecology of reentry, focusing on
person-environment interactions. I think that is a critical
avenue for further program development and evaluating research.
A third point I want to make in terms of reentry is that we
also have to consider whether the reentry problems we have
today is at least partially a consequence of failures of
traditional probation and parole. We are talking about a long-
term downward trend in success of both probation and parole
that you probably heard at other presentations. We are talking
today about a 55 percent success rate for traditional
probation, 45 percent for traditional parole. Those are not the
numbers you want to hear.
Go back to when I was 18. Go back to like 1970, somewhere
around there. I guess I was 16 at the time. The success rates
were over 80 percent for probation and close to 70 percent for
parole. So something has happened during this period to make
traditional probation and patrol supervision less effective.
Now, you say, well, tell us what it is. That is difficult
to do because we have not done very much evaluation research on
traditional probation and parole practices at all.
Chairman, you mentioned the Martinson study in your
introductory remarks. If you go back to that ``what works''
summary and you look at community corrections programs, what
you will find is that only four studies were included in that
exhausted Martinson review, five studies. That was a 25 year
review period they used, which adds up to one study every five
years. Things have not improved that much since 1974 when
Martinson released the original piece.
The interesting thing about the original work, though, is
that if you go back to that Martinson piece, you will see that
he does not say that nothing works. He said that in a journal
article and subsequently took that back. What he found is that
there is no panacea that works with everything and with
everyone.
And as a matter of fact, in terms of looking at community
programs, the program that he did highlight that worked was a
combination of control and treatment which modeled very closely
the intensive supervision programs that were evaluated in the
1990s.
Now, you heard that, what does not work is intensive
supervision programs. And I think it is important to kind of
get this on the record. The evaluation research was consistent
that control oriented, intensive supervision, electronic
monitoring programs and boot camp programs for that matter did
not reduce recidivism. That is clear, based on a bronze
standard review.
However, looking more closely at those programs, because
there was a range of programs that were developed under the
general heading of something called intensive supervision, what
you find is there was a lot of variation in key program
components. There are a lot of different types of different
programs out there. Some programs emphasized treatment more
than others; some emphasized central monitoring. That was also
true for electronic monitoring, although less so, and also boot
camp programs.
The programs that combine control and treatment had the
greatest reductions in recidivism. So I think within the,
intensive supervision does not work story is actually a success
story. And that is important to keep in mind when you look at
the next generation of reentry programs because you are hearing
a theme here today and I have heard it in other writing as
well: reentry programs need to find other optimal ``mapping
point'' between treatment provision on the one hand and
offender monitoring and control on the other hand.
Three program elements come to mind (1) high risk
offenders, (2) high risk times, (3) high risk places. I am
mentioning that because I have a piece coming out with the Pew
Center for the Courts in about two weeks which describes
Concentrated Community Supervision, targeting resources to high
risk offenders, high risk times, and high risk places.
I think that if we look at innovation, and you were talking
about community level innovations, and I agree, that is where
we need to kind of look at the next generation of programs. I
think the initial resources you have now for reentry programs
should forget those reentry models that target high risk
offenders, target high risk times, target high risk places.
For some, the focus on high risk offenders is very
controversial. When you say high risk offenders, you have to
keep in mind that when we look at certain groups of people
coming out of prison, we do not care about high risk, do we?
Who are the lowest risk offenders coming out of prison in
terms of recidivism? Sex offenders and murderers. They are not
going to meet your definition of high risk if you are using
risk as saying risk of committing a new crime. So we are going
to have to factor that in to any discussion of concentrated
supervision strategies, because for some groups of people, we
might not care that much about the probability of rearrest.
What we care about is the possibility of a new crime and the
harm done. So it is that risk at stakes kind of issue that we
have, to put on the table.
I think this notion of their getting high risk offenders,
high risk times, in particular the first couple of months
coming out, and high-risk neighborhoods is leading to new types
of strategies. What program developers are talking about, at
least I have heard in several jurisdictions, is front loading
supervision and services to the first couple of months and then
after you see change in behavior, basically dropping offenders
off the active supervision caseload. I think John Petersilia
has probably written the best summary and justification for
that type of behavioral incentive strategy.
What you should know about that is when you look at the
numbers in terms of time to failure, you will find changes in
time to failure overall for all crimes. But when you look at
violence, if you are interested in that subgroup, you will not
see significant changes over time. Violent reoffenders is a
very low probability event, for offenders released through
reentry, a very low probability event, and it does not change
that much over time.
However, overall risk of recidivism is higher for offenders
during their 1st few months after release. A 50 percent
reduction in risk between month one and fifteen, I think, was
cited in the recent National Research Council Report. But keep
in mind that the base rate is actually very low on a month-to-
month basis. And for violence, it does not change that much. So
we have to be careful that we do not tout these programs as
having major impacts in areas that you would not expect them to
have major impacts, given the offender population coming out,
and the types of neighborhoods to which they are returning.
The last point I want to make, and it relates to I think
this Committee specifically, is thinking about new ways of
funding research that would tie the research to the type of
allocations that you have here in different ways. I think what
we need in our field are independent external evaluations of
corrections programs. And you might say, well we have that. We
have the Justice Department NIDA, NSF. We do that now. But as a
person who has applied for grants and received grants I know
that one of the things I have to do is get the cooperation of
an agency that will let me in to do the evaluation. But setting
up that way, where I have to go to New York City and see, maybe
it is Jeremy, or whoever I am going to see to get in, what you
essentially do is allow the person being evaluated to pick
their evaluator. That is not the same as a self-evaluation but
it is certainly at least one step removed. And I think it is
one of the reasons why we have a lot of noncritical,
unscientific research in the field, and why we do not have much
going to the level of quasiexperimental, experimental designs.
I think it is the nature of the beast that to get in the
door we are going to have to convince somebody that we are not
going to make them look bad. And I am sure everybody in this
room feels that way when you make decisions on every aspect of
our lives, right? Nobody wants to look bad or to have someone
make them look bad. However, I think that hurts science,
because it takes away the potential for independent, external
reviews of those programs. What I would recommend is simple:
everybody receiving reentry money has to agree to allow an
implementation evaluation and in those cases where you see full
implementation, researchers should then conduct a rigorous
impact evaluation.
Jeremy and I know that one of the biggest problems we have
with looking at outcome research is that people have not looked
at level of implementation. And when they do, that is where you
find that the programs break down. In other words, we have a
lot of good ideas, a lot of good models, but they just do not
get implemented as designed. So you have to look at
implementation first and objectively, not unlike an auditor
would. And the second part is, well, what are you going to do
after you implement? You are going to look at impact. So after
year one, if you have a program that is up to speed, that is
when you have to allow a rigorous impact evaluation. But again,
I would recommend that you have external evaluations that are
selected in a different way than we have done in the past.
I am essentially recommending a break from past practice
and I hope I have kind of given a rationale for it. I think
over time if we move in this direction you will have more level
three, level four, level five studies, the well designed
quasiexperiments, and at least a larger number of experimental
designs over time. And so we will have better science in our
field. One of the, critical things we need today is better
information to help policy makers make these kind of decisions.
I will stop there. Thank you.
[Written statement of James M. Byrne. Ph.D. Professor,
Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, University of
Massachusetts, Lowell follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Well, thank you both. What excellent
testimony. We have had just a really excellent series of
hearings this week. And I think this is the right panel to end
on. So that was excellent testimony.
Let me start by posing the basic question about what works.
Yesterday we heard from leaders of five successful reentry
programs. And there was a consensus among them that we know
what works. They felt very strongly about that. They sat there
and reaffirmed it. And we need to implement it because they
know what works. But we have also heard from several
researchers this week that there is still insufficient research
in the area. And I do not think this is necessarily
inconsistent at all, let me say up front. But I would like you
both to comment on it. And Dr. Byrne, your testimony seemed to
underscore the limits of the current body of research, so why
do we not start with you?

EVIDENCE BASED REVIEWS

Mr. Byrne. Well, it would be nice if there was a
systematic, evidence based review of the current generation of
reentry programs on which to build. There have been excellent
reviews of specific treatments programs that are out there, but
there is no systematic evidence based review of reentry
programming. You cannot go to the Campbell Collaborative
website, which is where I would go, where most researchers here
would go to try to find one. It is not there yet. That needs to
be done. And what you end up doing when you do not have that
type of systematic review of specific programs is looking at
reviews of other program models, or for example you look at
prison treatment and you assume that that has got to be
something that relates over here. Or you look at community
treatment programs that were not necessarily run as part of a
reentry program. And you do not have the answers that you need.
So my immediate suggestion would be, let us do an evidence
based review. The reason it is not there is there have not been
enough experimental and quasiexperimental studies done. But I
think that is something that needs to be done. I saw that when
I was putting my testimony together. Certainly, I can make
definitive statements in the area of intermediate sanctions. I
can make some pretty clear statements, if you look at my
testimony, on prison effects. I am less certain when I get to
parole and reentry, and that is frustrating, because obviously
this is an important time in terms of developing, you know, new
reentry programs and models. It is certainly a frustration that
we do not have that.
Mr. Mollohan. Now, for everybody who is impatient, and
everybody is with regard to this, and anxious about getting
that systematic evidence-based review, the other side of my
question was, what do we do? The science has not made it
perfect. We do not know exactly what works in all
circumstances, nor do we know exactly the A to Z, the soup to
nuts solution. But what is appropriate before we get to that
definitive answer----
Mr. Byrne. I think you identify----
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Through evidence based review.
Mr. Byrne. Well, even if that review was here in front of
you I do not think it would be definitive. With my knowledge of
the research out there I think it would be inconclusive.
However, I think you identify models. And you have a number of
models out there. You have heard case study summaries of
programs. Jeremy Travis has highlighted some new community-
based initiatives, for example, that need to be implemented and
evaluated. I think you look at model programs. And I would look
at them across the board. I would look at proposals and model
programs that are, for example, that cut across the control
versus treatment. And, you know, certainly you fund evaluation
at models in both areas and see what you find. I would say that
even if I had a definitive evidence based review, because this
is a whole new generation of programs, a whole new ball game
now. And I think, you have some new models out there. That have
not been evaluated. You have, certainly, self evaluations and
some, I would describe them as quasiexperimental research out
there that we can argue about how good it is. But good or bad,
there are models out there. Test them rigorously and refine the
programs, and let us keep going. I think we are at a watershed
point in terms of program development. I think it is an
exciting time to be talking about these issues, because there
seems to be a growing recognition that we need to find out what
works in this area.
Mr. Mollohan. Fund them and implement them, and review
them----
Mr. Byrne. Absolutely.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. Almost as research projects?
Mr. Byrne. Well, I would. I would, and the demonstration
projects----
Mr. Mollohan. They create opportunities for the research
that you are calling for.
Mr. Byrne. Sure.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you. President Travis.
Mr. Travis. It is a welcome question and I think we all
love the impatience to sort of get things done and make a
difference. If we were having this conversation in a different
context I think we would be talking about a different approach
to developing evidence. If we were imagining a health issue
that was plaguing inner city communities and we were asking the
Director of the National Institutes of Health what he or she
wanted to do about those issues, there would be a significant
investment in research, testing of new ideas, replication of
promising projects in a systematic way across the country, the
development of protocols for doctors to implement when that
condition presented itself when somebody walked through their
door. And we do not have, certainly we do not have the same
resources but we also do not have the same approach in crime
policy. And I know, Mr. Kennedy, that Colonel Esserman has been
talking to you about this idea of a sort of teaching hospital
model in the policing world. And we need that way of thinking
about how do we develop evidence.
And The Second Chance Act, which I think is wonderful in
many ways, talk about random assignment, talks about research
based demonstration projects, but has not created a sort of
systematic way of building knowledge that will influence
practice. Rather, we now fund practice, we fund programs, and
ask for the evaluation, the research community to run along
side it and try to do an evaluation to see whether it works or
not.
So a more sort of long term knowledge development agenda
would start by saying, ``What needs to be evaluated that we are
now doing that has never been evaluated?'' And then you have a
set of studies to evaluate that. What is promising that may be
the next frontier, where we want to set up the evaluations as
we implement the programs? So that we are doing it in a
purposeful way, because we want to develop knowledge for the
country.
The third piece of all of this, however, is to make sure
that when funding decisions are made by state corrections
agencies, state parole agencies, the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
social service agencies, police departments, that they are
allocating their resources, that we have some rigor in terms of
how those resource allocations are made that they can only
follow the evidence. So we now allow people to come in and say,
``This is a great idea. It is my idea. I am going to do it.''
And it may or may not be a good idea. And it gets money, but it
does not necessarily follow the body of evidence.
Now, the risk in all, there are two risks in what I just
said. One is, evidence is always old. Right? We are always
evaluating what was last decade's good idea. And it takes time
and that is the way research works. And we do not want to
freeze a field. We do not want to take a field, particularly
like this one, that is in this ferment, this wonderful ferment,
and say, ``The only thing that we are going to provide taxpayer
money for is what worked last decade.'' Right? Because then you
freeze the field. So we have to have some way of testing new
ideas in a rigorous way so that you develop the field.
The second limitation or sort of drawback in what I just
said is really a science limitation. And that is that our gold
standard, as Professor Byrne alluded to, is random assignment.
And in this way we feel, we think a little bit too much like
medical researchers. We always want the placebo. We want the,
you know, there is somebody to get it, somebody not to get it.
Wait a couple months, you know, and keep everything else
constant. Well, in the work that we are talking about you
cannot keep everything else constant. And particularly if you
want to do this ecological work that I recommended for the
Committee's consideration. At a community level it is very hard
to hold everything constant. So it is very hard to do random
assignments. Sometimes impossible to do random assignment, I
would say in that regard.
So we cannot let the standards of science get in the way of
new ideas in either sense. Either because it freezes the past,
or because it does not allow for us to do things that are
working at the messy level of community and family. And this
means a different research design, because we cannot do the
gold standard for all types of interventions. But this requires
a federal funding strategy for science that tries to get an
answer to the Chairman's question. How do we develop best
evidence? And then we have to hold practitioners accountable.
So the resource center, which is in The Second Chance Act,
is this wonderful idea of a national go to place, where
practitioners will go and say, ``What is the standard of
evidence that if I do this I will get these results?'' And
fidelity to program design is really important. How does this
program actually get implemented? Because we have all evaluated
programs that sound good on paper, lousy implementation, and
you get no results. And people blame the idea rather than the
implementation. So the resource center, I hope, becomes for the
field this place where you can go to answer your questions. But
there needs to be some discipline about how we spend taxpayer
money after that.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you. Thank you both. Mr. Wolf.

FAITH BASED PROGRAMS IN PRISONS

Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a lot, I have
been writing a lot of notes. One, I have been disappointed that
you all, neither of you ever mentioned the issue of faith.
Neither of you did. It is kind of incredible because I have
talked to a lot of prisoners. And I have been in a lot of
prisons. I do not know as much as you two guys. But I have been
in a lot of prisons. I was a probation officer. I was involved
in prison programs where we used to go into prisons. I think
you are complicating it a little too much. People in prisons
are people. They have moms and dads and husbands and wives and
kids. And they are not statistics. And one, you never mentioned
faith, which I think is kind of amazing. Because a lot of the
prisoners that I have talked to, faith has made all the
difference in their life.
Secondly, I think we cannot wait for all of your research.
I mean, it is great that you are doing it. But we cannot wait.
You cannot tell a man that is in prison that we are going to
researching this to see what we really do to see, I mean, we
have got to do this. And we have asked, and I appreciate the
Council of Governments putting on a conference sometime late
this year or next year with the Pew Foundation, bringing in the
best practices. I think we do have the best practices. Now,
maybe if you all do your research you could refine it and kind
of change it. And maybe, you know, it can be adjusted or
calibrated or a difference. But I think we have got to begin
now.
I think faith makes a difference. I do not think it is the
sole difference. I think work makes all the difference. I do
not think it is the sole difference. I think drug
rehabilitation in prison to make sure anyone who is in prison
has that drug, gets in a rehab program, almost guaranteed if
they want to get in there and not have a long, long waiting
line. But, you know, we are dealing with people.
And on the employment issue, do you think it would make
sense, Mr. Davis, I was going to ask him but I did not know how
long he was going to stay, that we do a tax credit for
companies to hire prisoners who are coming out of prison? That
we give a tax credit? We give tax credits to do everything to
move, would it make sense to give companies like UPS, or
Lockheed Martin, or whatever, a tax credit to hire a person
just coming out of prison for two or three years? Whereby, you
know, the company would gain something and the person would,
would that make any sense?
Mr. Travis. I would like to respond first to the faith
issue, Mr. Wolf. The, each of the community coalitions that I
mentioned in both my statement and in my oral presentation has
at the table a faith institution that is part of that
community. And that has been an important ingredient in those
sort of offerings to people coming home.
On the work front, just to look at it from the big picture.
There is research that shows that the mere fact of having been
in prison diminishes an individual's lifetime earnings by 10 to
30 percent. So anything that we can do to reverse that trend is
worth considering. So in effect, by having lots of people, 90
percent of them men, coming out to a small number of
communities, mostly communities of color, who have a diminished
lifetime earnings of 10 to 30 percent we have depressed the
gross domestic product of those neighborhoods.
Mr. Mollohan. Right.
Mr. Travis. By the fact that they have been in prison. So
our prison build up is having long term consequences for the
economic well being of those communities. So that to me makes
an argument for a public policy to reverse that and to sort of,
in essence to try to help people get back on track. I think a
job is the most important, centering thing, for all of us, an
important centering part of our lives. It helps provide for
families. It does a lot of the work, there is this wonderful
saying that a boss is the best parole officer. Right? So it
does a lot of the work of supervision.
But the important challenge is to get people into the job
in the first place. And the research by Professor Holzer at
Georgetown has showed that people who, that people with records
are at the lowest level of employability, if you look at it
from an employer's point of view. They are below welfare
workers, welfare recipients. They are below immigrants. They
are below people with spotty records. They are at the bottom of
that totem pole. And there is this combined race effect that if
somebody, a white person with a criminal record is more likely
to get hired than a black man with no criminal record. So we
have this combined effect of criminal record and race that puts
lots of returning offenders at the very bottom of the
employability totem pole.
So tax credits are a good idea.

TAX CREDITS

Mr. Wolf. Do any companies, are there any states that give
tax credits? Do you know of any?
Mr. Travis. Yes. And there is some federal supports, as
well. I am not sure what it is called but there is a federal
tax credit for people to hire somebody with a criminal record.
Mr. Wolf. We will look it up. But do you know what it is?
Mr. Travis. I cannot find, I do not know off the top of my
head.
Mr. Wolf. If you could tell me?
Mr. Travis. Yes, we could do that.
Mr. Wolf. I wonder, do most companies know about it?
Mr. Travis. I do not know.
Mr. Wolf. I mean, UPS or whatever. I mean, should we call
the Business Roundtable and tell them to take advantage of this
opportunity? And, I mean, companies, tax credits, we use our
tax code to influence policy and results. Do many of companies
take advantage of, do you know, Dr. Byrne?
Mr. Byrne. No, but I think the idea is a good one. And I
would also tie the incentives to the prison part of the work
program. We are not only interested in employers hiring upon
release, but also in developing the job training program in the
prison. It is the prison to work strategy.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I think that would be a good idea. The
problem is that this Congress has diminished the amount of work
that prisoners can do. I mean, when Director Lappin was here, I
mean some of the things that the Congress has actively voted
on, has spoken on on the floor, has taken away the amount of
work. So I think knowing what some of the chambers of commerce
would do, and knowing what some of the organized labor would
do, I think we would have a problem. You know, I would agree
with you. I am going to offer an amendment here to set up a
pilot program to have prisoners working. I think you may have,
or Mr. Davis, working on projects that are no longer made, but
yet are training them in something that would in essence, I
mean, if you are wiring, and an oversimplification. But if you
are wiring a television set you may then be able to wire a
computer, or wire a switchboard, or what. But real work,
dignity. I found work, I think your comment, and work is
dignity. Biblically, it is dignity.
I mentioned the other day, I talked to a prisoner, he got
out, he cannot get a job. He cannot get a job. He cannot get a
job. So he just lives with his girlfriend. He hangs around. And
he cannot get a job. So pretty soon, in three months, if you
cannot get a job, what are you going to do? And so the work,
and that is where the Doe Foundation, and I think I checked,
and we funded the Doe Foundation, you know, when I was Chairman
of this Committee, is work. It is dignity. And it is moving up.
And so, well let us look at the tax credit issue. Maybe I
will see if I can put in something with regard to that. The
other----
Mr. Travis. I just was informed that it is called The Work
Opportunity Tax Credit, and UPS does use it.
Mr. Wolf. I, because UPS has a pretty good record of, I
wonder what other companies use it? Do you, is there a way?

PRISONS OVERSEAS

Mr. Byrne. We will find out for you.
Mr. Wolf. If you can find out. The other thing is, have you
looked at what other countries, are there any other countries,
not states, look at countries that are doing something really
great that we are not aware of?
Mr. Byrne. I was in Dublin last year and I was amazed at
the work programs there. I spent an afternoon in a prison, and
there were 320 people in the prison outside of Dublin I was in,
I forget the name of it. And every one of them had to work in a
job. They had a job training program there, that was very in-
depth.
And the first thing I noticed was the one to one ratio of
inmates to guards. I was a little shocked at that, because that
was not like it is in this country. So certainly there was a
lot more in terms of informal controls in place, because there
was a lot of walking around and interaction between guards and
prisoners. But I sat in and I watched them build brick walls,
and make things. And they were actually, which surprised me, at
this prison they were actually selling some of the things they
made to make money. And they were able to do that. Some of the
prisoners were pretty skilled metalworkers and they were
selling various things.
Mr. Wolf. And what would they pay them?
Mr. Byrne. I am unsure of the amount, but it went on. They
would take some of them out and have them, build their front
walks in their homes. Some of the things they did we would not
allow here in this country.
Mr. Wolf. Up in Massachusetts you have to have a policeman
stand by every construction site, even, my wife is from
Marlborough and even if they dig a hole, if you notice and I
see you are from Massachusetts, there is a, I think it is
Massachusetts state law, the policeman has to stand there while
the construction is going on. And so you get to a certain point
that, I mean, so. But what, I see you are winking from Mr.
Kennedy that you are from Massachusetts. What countries, is
there a way that you could furnish us some information about
what do you think are the most progressive, or that----
Mr. Travis. I think that America stands apart from the rest
of the western world.
Mr. Wolf. Better or worse?
Mr. Travis. Worse, in terms of our approach to, certainly
our levels of incarceration, how we treat people while they are
in prison, and the approach to reintegration. In the United
Kingdom, for example, there is a lot of attention paid to the
Chairman's question about only implementing programs of proven
effectiveness. So there is actually sort of a certification
board that they have established under the Prison Service. I
went to a prison in Germany once, much as Dr. Byrne described.
Work being done in prison, supervised by the union. I mean,
this is a little different from our sort of culture, here,
where the union was helping to guarantee that they would learn
skills that would help them get jobs when they came back out
because they wanted them to be productive.
So I think we have a lot to learn from other countries. We
do things quite differently, not just in the scale of our
imprisonment but our sort of attitude towards how to spend the
time in prison most productively.
Mr. Wolf. Well, if you could give us the list of some of
the countries.
Mr. Travis. Sure.
Mr. Wolf. And lastly, we have asked the Council of
Governments and perhaps Pew to put on a national conference
perhaps next year to gather together some of the best minds and
the best practices. Does that make sense to you, to----
Mr. Travis. Yes. And we could learn a lot from the other
countries.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Byrne.
Mr. Byrne. Yes, absolutely. I think treatment oriented
prisons are where we need to go, that preentry comment I was
making at the beginning ties in here. As I said earlier, before
we talk about reentry, let us talk about preentry. One preentry
strategy would be to redesign the prisons, and this is
something I have written about. I did not cover it in testimony
here, but I think it is critical to think about changing the
focus of prison away from control and towards treatment. And I
think there are ways of using new technologies to do just that.
Right now we have gone overboard, in my opinion, on the
technology of control. We need to think about how to harness
the technology of treatment. I think you are seeing it in the
drug treatment area. But I think there are a variety of other
ways of apply technology to consider. For example, redoing our
classification system so we think about risk reduction in
prison as opposed to risk control. If we did this, it would
lead to a very different configuration of offenders placed in
minimum, moderate and maximum supervision, facilities, and in
special population housing in prison, than we have right now.
Because you would be organizing people, needs first, rather
than risk level, thinking about how to deal with the various
types of problems they have. Expanding the size of therapeutic
community models in prison. Also, fits under the heading of
``Treatment Technology''.
Mr. Wolf. Expanding the size of what?
Mr. Byrne. Therapeutic communities. Expanding that for drug
offenders, because we know that model works. One of the ironies
of the prison research conducted to date is that some of the
best evidence of effective treatment programs are in
institutional settings. And that is something to keep in mind
when you talk about how to balance treatment and control. I
think it is something we really need to think about. For
example, if you have ever had an addict in your family you know
that it is not just getting them into treatment, it is getting
them to stay there. And sometimes you have to use coercion to
get them there. I am sure you have talked about this in other
panels. But to me, that is one of the, major issues that we
need to look today.
Prisons might be the location for long term treatment
because you cannot get these individuals to go to treatment in
community settings. Referral, and participation, in treatment
is something I think treatment oriented prisons can address.
Mr. Wolf. Last question. What is the recidivism rate today
compared to what it was, let us say, in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980,
and 1990?

BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS

Mr. Travis. There are two Bureau of Justice statistics
studies of recidivism looking, one of the 1993 cohort, one of
the 1983 cohort, I think. And it is basically the same. It went
up a little bit. And it is, over a three-year period, after
being released from prison, about two-thirds of the people
being released get rearrested for one or more serious crimes.
Mr. Wolf. Two-thirds?
Mr. Travis. Two-thirds, yes.
Mr. Byrne. You know, we use that one study over and over
again. I have never seen one study cited so much. We do not do
enough cohort research so we keep citing that study over and
over again. We need to update it, because we are talking now
twenty-five years later.
Mr. Travis. We should do this regularly.
Mr. Byrne. Right.
Mr. Travis. The Second Chance Act envisions money going to
both NIJ and BJS. We need a lot more understanding of the basic
phenomenon here.
Mr. Wolf. Okay, thank you. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Wolf. Mr. Kennedy.

HEALTH CARE REFORM

Mr. Kennedy. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome,
both of you. Thank you for your testimony and your good work.
We have healthcare reform coming up. And so I would like to ask
you what your thoughts are about how to integrate these ideas
into healthcare reform. In the sense that, you know, 45 percent
of the kids that graduate from our foster care system graduate
into our adult corrections system. And when I, about three
weeks ago, went to my juvenile corrections facility I asked the
kids how many of their parents were in jail. Over three-
quarters of them raised their hands. So, the best determinate
about whether someone is going to jail is not only whether they
have been to jail but whether mom or dad has been to jail. So,
knowing that, what are we doing to look at this in terms of, if
The Second Chance Act has a provision for family counseling. We
know already if a child has a parent in jail they are umpteen
times more likely to end up modeling what they see, and ending
up in that environment. So can you talk about, the need for us
to be working with the social service system, the healthcare
system, to try to preempt a lot of this stuff from moving
forward?

HEALTH CONDITIONS IN PRISONS

Mr. Travis. If you look at any health condition that we
care about, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, sexually
transmitted diseases, mental illness, drug and alcohol
addiction, and you were to look at the population of people in
prison, they present at rates four to ten times higher than the
general population for all of those. So the policy question,
public policy question, public health policy question, I think,
is given, and I do not like that we are in this state of the
world. But given that we have so many people in prison, what do
we do to use the time while they are in prison to do something
about those health concerns, recognizing that they all come
back. And we have this anomalous situation that prisoners are
the only group of Americans that have a constitutional right to
healthcare. Under the Eighth Amendment they have to be provided
healthcare. Healthcare is often one of the things that is cut
when budgets are cut. So it is not good healthcare but it is
some healthcare. And we do very, so we do not identify these
diseases while they are in prison. We do not do educational
work to help people avoid particularly communicable diseases
when they get back out. We do not work with their families as
much as we should. And in particular we do not pay attention to
the fact that they all come back to the communities, which is
your point. So they go back home and we do not, we do not
ensure that they have medication, to make sure that those who
are mentally ill get medication when they come out.
Mr. Kennedy. Right.
Mr. Travis. We suspend Medicaid eligibility when people go
into prison.
Mr. Kennedy. Right.
Mr. Travis. And we should, you know, our state, my state
just passed a law to ensure that when somebody comes out their
Medicaid eligibility is automatically restored if they had it
going in. So they can get the medication. So we send people out
with, you know, enough medication for a couple of days and then
we wonder why they are wandering around the streets in a week.
Mr. Kennedy. Yes.
Mr. Travis. We do not link drug treatment. We should make
sure that when people who have drug addiction are coming back
home that they go to the head of the list rather than the back
of the list for drug treatment. Why do we tell somebody to go
home and then wait five months to get drug treatment, when we
knew they were coming out on whatever date it was. We could
have planned it so they would have a continuity at this high
risk period. We do not coordinate these services to reduce
risk, and reduce failure. And health is one of those, it is
like work. It is one of those things that we know enough to be
able to figure out how to make those connections better.
And too often the view, and this is sort of not the
universal view, but the view of some corrections professionals
is they are done when the guy leaves the facility. The policy
view should be that we have a responsibility to the communities
that we turn to and we have to do everything we can to make
that journey successful. And health for some people is right at
the center of that. And if we do that we can then reduce those
communicable diseases in particular, and the public safety
consequences of particularly the mental illness when people
come back. But that requires, both inside and outside, a whole
different approach to the health continuum.
Mr. Kennedy. Would you talk a little bit about the Esserman
concept that you were bringing up with me earlier, and pairing
those within the field.
Mr. Travis. Well, Colonel Esserman, your police chief in
Providence, who is both a friend and one of my heroes. He is
really, you are very lucky to have him, as you know, has this
idea that we should start to build a criminal justice and law
enforcement mentality that borrows from the health model. And
in the health model we have the notion of teaching hospitals
where young doctors go to learn how to do things with the
current techniques, and there are research hospitals so that
the best scientists in the field are testing new interventions.
And we locate within the profession institutions that are doing
this important work of raising the standards of the profession.
So Colonel Esserman's idea is that a police department can be a
teaching department if it has the academic support, which we
and others have offered, and Roger Sherman and others at Brown
have sort of partnered up with this on this. And that the
police department will look at this as a way to develop
effective best practices.
So it is this marriage between research and practice that
has been lacking, as Dr. Byrnes said, in our field that the
teaching hospital would make possible. So you can imagine
teaching prisons.
Mr. Kennedy. Yes.
Mr. Travis. You can imagine teaching parole departments
where you have the idea that we have to always be learning, and
we have to open to the idea that things do not work. And those
things that do work have to be standard, required protocols as
would be the doctor's way of thinking about something. If FDA
says this is an accepted drug, a doctor is supposed to use it.
If a patient walking into the office says, ``I have this
disease,'' the doctor knows what to do about it. We need to
develop that way of thinking and that body of science evidence
in our field. That is why that idea is so attractive.
Mr. Kennedy. Genomics, what is the future for testing for
people's proclivity towards violence and so forth in terms of
the justice field.
Mr. Travis. Not my area of expertise.
Mr. Kennedy. There has been great debate about the future
of that.
Mr. Byrne. We are now conducting research identifying
genetic links to a wide range of physical and mental health
problems. For example, OCD, my stepson actually does research
on identifying an OCD Gene. A whole range of health problems
because we have these incredible abilities with databases that
we have never had before. I just gave this lecture to my
students a couple of weeks ago.
I think within ten years you are going to have good
information on genetic predispositions to violence, and you are
going to be making very different decisions based on access to
that information. And, although we do not need to talk about
abortion issues here today, I suspect that the knowledge at a
genetic predisposition may be a factor for prospected parents
to consider at some point in the not so distant future. But
certainly you are going to have that information, I would
predict within a decade from reading the literature. Given the
advances in genetic research terms of problems like OCD just in
the last three years, major identification of, the gene that
produces it. Well, you know the next step will be, once we test
for these things, what we do with the information?
So the short answer to that is I think we are within a
decade you are going to see, answers to these questions but a
lot of that will depend on, because researchers go where the
money is, if we are funding this line of research. Although we
are funding it for various diseases. I do not know if we will
do it in the area of violence.
Mr. Travis. If I could just add, the brain research, I
think, is an important contributor here, particularly on
understanding addiction and relapse. And the brain research
that shows the influence of an environment on cravings, so that
when people, because someone comes out of prison, he has been
in that unusual environment for two to three years. He goes
back home, goes back to the old neighborhood where he used to
cop drugs or hang out with his buddies, the mere sort of return
to that neighborhood can trigger a brain process that
stimulates a craving so that the addiction and the relapse
phenomenon is associated with just the return home. So that is
why there is this moment of release and this sort of managing
the environment is so important.

VETERANS

Mr. Kennedy. Veterans, you see a big influx of veterans
going to be entering our criminal justice system because of the
trauma that they have suffered during the War. Can you comment
a little bit about what that is about? I mean, the particular
needs they are going to have?
Mr. Travis. This is just a fact of numbers, but it is also
a consequence of the experience that they have been through,
and the current economic situation. I think it is going to be a
very difficult time for returning veterans. And, you know, I am
thinking about that more as the President of an educational
institution. How do we welcome our returning soldiers into an
educational setting so that they can sort of get back on their
feet? And I think there will be lots of consequences for a lot
of social service sectors not just the criminal justice sector.
Mr. Byrne. It is the culture of violence aspect of it, too.
I mean, you had to be involved in violence to survive. And the
irony there is many of the communities we are talking about are
poverty pocket, high risk areas that have a culture of violence
that you have to at least talk about. So I think it would be
one of the issues we will have to look at. What are the
cumulative effects of going back to high risk environments,
when you are also exposed to violence, not only in the prison
setting but also in terms of your previous military experience.
Mr. Kennedy. Some ideas there in terms of veterans courts
would be helpful if you guys could provide some ideas. Trying
to be sensitive to the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and also
of course the brain trauma that they have suffered from a
criminal justice point of view. Now they are in a population
and what trauma they have suffered, especially treatment wise
how they are going to get taken care of. That would be helpful.
Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Fattah?
Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me first commend
the Chairman for the funding of the legislation, for The Second
Chance Act. It is a new beginning. The President's budget also
attempts to build on that and that is important.
I want to go back to the basics here. You know, we all say,
we incarcerate more people than in the rest of the world. We
have got so many people in our criminal justice system. The
majority of the people in prison in our country, have they
committed a violent act?

VIOLENT CRIMES

Mr. Byrne. 52 percent of state prisoners, a little over a
third of federal prisoners.
Mr. Fattah. So the majority are----
Mr. Byrne. Of violent crime.
Mr. Fattah. What was that? I am sorry.
Mr. Byrne. They have been convicted of a violent crime.
Mr. Fattah. 52 percent of those in state and local.
Mr. Byrne. In state prison today, yes.
Mr. Fattah. And a third of the ones in federal, right?
Mr. Byrne. It is about a third, a little over a third.
Mr. Fattah. So I want to ask the question again. A majority
of those incarcerated, therefore, have not committed a violent
crime?
Mr. Byrne. Right.
Mr. Fattah. That is correct.
Mr. Byrne. Just about right, when you put them both
together.
Mr. Fattah. So I am going to your testimony in particular.
You said that the first issue is to get to the decision about
whether to incarcerate?
Mr. Byrne. Yes.
Mr. Fattah. And that is something that society has had to
really think through. Because as best as I can tell, in the
empirical information, particularly when we start talking about
younger offenders, the minutes we decide to adjudicate and
incarcerate, the only real outcome is that they go into a
system that produces them as, much more engaged offenders over
the long term.
Mr. Byrne. Yes.

JUVENILE DELINQUENT

Mr. Fattah. That is that we essentially decide to harvest a
juvenile delinquent into an adult inmate over time. Because we
are putting them in a place in which they are inculcated with
and surrounded by information and activities that do not bode
well for their future. So I want to go to your first question
in your testimony. You said, the decision to incarcerate. What
is your thought about where we might start to maybe retreat
from this ace to, spend $100,000 on a cell, and tens of
thousands a year to put someone in prison who has not committed
a violent crime?
Mr. Byrne. I would focus on drug offenders and on technical
violators. If you could take those two groups out you would
have a major impact on prison population size. And that would
be very specific. The problem of just saying ``Don't
incarcerate the nonviolent'' is that when you look at the
criminal records of many people we put in prison for nonviolent
crimes they have committed serious crimes or have long records.
The reason judges are putting them in prison, even though they
have committed a nonviolent crime, is that----
Mr. Fattah. That they are not boy scouts, right?
Mr. Byrne. Correct, they are not boy scouts.
Mr. Fattah. So you take Bernie Madoff, he has ripped off
billions of dollars, he is going to go to jail, he did not
commit any violent crime. So there are people who do not commit
violent crimes who have done enough bad, might require that
they be incarcerated. But there are people who, if someone
wrote a bad check, or failed to pay a traffic fine, or, there
are juveniles in my state who were incarcerated because they
were for-profit juvenile prisons. And a couple of judges
decided to take $2 million of kickbacks personally to
incarcerate juveniles for little or no reason.
So my point is is that we kind of always skip over the fact
that we, decide to lock up more people than anyone else. And
then we get to the bigger issues about, reentry, and how we are
going to do it, and why they are in prison, and so on. And I
think that we should kind of start at this first point, here.
Which is, we need to think anew, I believe, about who we are
going to incarcerate. There are people that society needs to be
protected from. But we do need to think about the fact that we
are throwing away a lot of lives because under the best of
circumstances people do not leave prison as a better person
than when they went in. And, I think that it raises a lot of
questions about why we would invest billions of dollars of the
taxpayers' money in creating a system in which it does nothing
more than create more harm for all of us.
Mr. Kennedy. Could you do a study for us on comparative
effectiveness in, criminal justice policy in terms of, so the
taxpayers out there in this country could see what would make
them safer per dollar spent? That would make a big difference,
I think. Because people would be really impressed about, per
the dollars you spent for jail cell for picking up someone for
however, what drug charges, versus putting X number of cops on
the street for stopping assault and battery and B and Es. And
putting it in treatment instead because you can now be able to
do, and being able to analyze them. That is what you kind of
academics do. And pull out that, and do a real matrix.
Mr. Byrne. There was a good report last year, Vera
Institute of Justice put it out, that did just that. That
looked outside the criminal justice system and said, ``We spend
this money in incarceration, and, we can identify an effect;
small, but an effect. What if we spent that same amount of
money, a what/if scenario, on something else?'' And they looked
at education. They looked at employment. And the impact in
terms of crime reduction was much greater at the same cost.
There is a summary of that research in my written testimony.
Mr. Travis. I would focus, as did Dr. Byrne, in answer to
Mr. Fattah's question, on, we can make those investments and
they will pay off in the long term. I am also very interested
in reducing the level of incarceration in the near term. And
the suggestion was made to folks on parole revocations. And
that is a clear place to start. But I think that we have an
opportunity that we have not seen before to think differently
about drug enforcement. And with Mr. Kennedy's permission I
also want to allude to another innovation in his city, in
Providence.
Two years ago, three years ago, Colonel Esserman and
Professor Kennedy, our Kennedy, from John Jay took the High
Point Drug Initiative developed in High Point, North Carolina
and brought it to Providence, to Lockwood, to that
neighborhood. And this is building on the work of Professor
Kennedy in the gang violence area, but looking at drug markets
in particular. And asking can we, instead of arresting people
for drug offenses, can we build cases against them an then
bring them into this community setting of the drug dealers, the
prosecutors, the federal and state law enforcement agencies,
the family members of those individuals, the leaders of the
faith institutions and social service providers, and basically
say, ``We could arrest you all today but we are not going to.
We are not going to if you decide to stop dealing drugs in this
neighborhood. And if you want to get out of this life, here is
a job, here is an educational opportunity for you.'' The most
powerful voice in those meetings, and this is what we did in
Mr. Davis' district as well, is the voice of the community. It
is the mothers, it is the girlfriends, it is the uncles, it is
the employers saying, ``You are hurting our community. You have
got to stop it.'' And the law enforcement say, ``We have this
videotape of this buy and bust operation. There you are. We
could arrest you. We are not going to. We have a warrant we
could get signed for your arrest. We are not going to. But all
of that is going to fall on you if you start dealing drugs
again tomorrow.''
So here we have a near term opportunity to use the statutes
that we already have in a way that does not involve arresting
people. It really says this is going to stop. And the Lockwood
results are phenomenal. We are doing it now in Hempstead, Long
Island, right outside of New York City. I know these data
better.
In a one-year experimental period, in the worst drug market
in Nassau County, the level of drug arrests have been reduced
by 80 percent. So there are hundreds of people not going to
prison in New York State this year because we used this
different way of thinking.
So I think there are ways in the near term of organizing
these coalitions differently, of law enforcement and service
providers and the community voice, that moral voice that comes
from the community, to both reduce gang violence and to reduce
drug markets. And if you do those, you reduce incarceration.
Mr. Fattah. Let me just join in. I agree with the
Congressman that research in this area would be important.
There has been research in this area and I think the more, the
better, especially something that would really quantify it on a
broader basis.
There is a world of difference between, you know, a joy
ride in which the police officer takes this young person home
to their parents and says this is what happened and you should
talk to this kid and locking a kid up for grand theft auto. And
there are two different paths of what happens here.
Now, we know in every instance where this has been reviewed
and studied across the country. As you mentioned, there other
influences, race in particular. That is that in every instance,
race creates a more severe set of circumstances when the same
issue is at hand, whether it is retail theft or any other set
of dynamics in which the decision to arrest, the decision to
what to charge, you know, what happens through to sentencing,
in terms of incarceration versus diversion.
So we know that race has an impact and it is a very
unfortunate impact when you look at the long-term consequences
for the individual and for the communities and for our broader
society.
So I do think that evidence-based research is the way to
go, you know, but I do not think we should just start at the
reentry part of it and that we should get down to the question
of how to look at whether or not people should be entering the
incarceration phase of our Criminal Justice System on the front
end and make sure that all the stakeholders understand the
implications of what happens when you take youthful offenders
who are involved in antisocial and sometimes criminal activity
and put them into a system in which they essentially go to
college to be better criminals.
I mean, that is at the end of the day. And they may start
out nonviolent, but after being away in one of these penal
institutions, in many instances, when they do get rearrested,
it is for a violent offense because they have become a lot less
of what we would want for them while they have been
incarcerated.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.

CHANGING THE CORRECTIONAL APPROACH

Yesterday we had again some really excellent testimony and
some of it went to the question of systemic reform. We had
testimony about the State of Michigan, which is in the process
of fundamentally changing its correctional approach to focus
much more significantly on rehabilitation versus punishment.
We also heard from several smaller programs that are having
important successes, but on a much smaller scale.
If we hope to seriously address the recidivism problem in
the country, don't all states need to undertake the kind of
systemic transformation that Michigan is undertaking?
President Travis, why don't you speak to that first.
Mr. Travis. Two months ago, I spent some time in Michigan.
I was very impressed with what I saw and was pleased to see Mr.
Schrantz here yesterday.
What they are doing is really nationally at the cutting
edge. I think there are some other states, Kansas and others,
that are in the leadership position as well.
And it starts at the top. I mean, here we have a Governor,
Governor Granholm who ran for office saying that reentry was
going to be one of her priorities. That is remarkable. And she
meant it.
And so at the CEO level for the state, she then convened, I
do not know what they call it, but some cabinet of all of her
secretaries of her various agencies and saying that all of you
have a role to play, the health folks, the education folks, the
labor folks, the licensing. We talked about licensing. You all
have a role to play in successful reentry and get with the
program here. This is not a corrections issues alone. Everybody
has a role to play.
And that is critically important. And I think we can do a
lot, and I am not in favor of spending more resources here, but
we can do a lot of good work here by using existing resources
in that more coordinated way.
They also in Michigan were able to get a lot of involvement
from the philanthropic communities, so they have foundations
involved. They have work underway in some of their high
concentration reentry cities so that they have Mayors involved.
So I think the lesson here from the Michigan success is,
and it is hard work, but is that you can organize the agencies
of government to support successful reentry.
There are now taking the next step which is to say how can
we also reduce the rate of incarceration so that we are not
just making reentry more successful, we are actually reducing
the number of people going to prison in the first place.
So this type of systemic reform, which I think is the right
phrase to use, is critically important. It is not the sort of
thing that gets funded through a grants program. It is the sort
of thing that I think the Congress can in essence require as a
condition to get some types of grants, maybe through Byrne or
maybe through ``Second Chance Act,'' that states come forward
with that sort of organized plan to have all the resources
working at the same time.
Mr. Mollohan. Dr. Byrne.
Mr. Byrne. I think your Committee should consider various
types of federal government incentives for systemic change.
Identify where you think best practices should be and where
incarceration rates, for example, are too high, identify a
specific tipping point. When you drop it below that, financial
incentive.
And, you know, I think there have been several studies now
that have identified ``tipping points'' for incarceration at
both the state level and the local level. This strategy would
be an interesting one where you would essentially tie
appropriations, not unlike we did in the early 1970s with the
de-institutionalization, to very specific reform benchmark.
So if you are really serious about reform, we can go back
to an old model that the feds used to convince the states to do
things that maybe they otherwise would not do: link specific
benchmark to financial incentives. I think we have done it in a
number of areas and that is one thing I would look at.
I would not rely in today's world with the private
foundations myself, given the financial situation we have,
being able to, you know, take care of.
Mr. Mollohan. My point here, in listening to this, is that
in whatever system you are working or what part of the system
you are focusing on, whether you are talking about a whole
state, a county or a jurisdictional area, there has to be an
authority that, I do not like using this word, has the ability
to enforce.
If it is the state, the state is requiring performance. And
if there is not--in Michigan, this came out over and over
again--and if that performance is not there, then there is some
sanction that is associated with that failure.
If it is at the local level, then a drug court may serve
that purpose with regard to an individual offender. I mean,
they are enforcing that. So there is a sanction. There is a
standard and a sanction for not meeting that standard.
Mr. Travis. This is a wonderful line of inquiry. There is
another example in addition that I would mention which is
welfare reform. We saw a lot of innovation within the states
where the goal was to reduce welfare case rolls. And there was
a lot of federal support for that innovation.
So I think this idea of government taking a lead in
creating opportunities for states to be pace setters for the 50
states of the country and creating incentives for states to be
successful, in addition to program funding, I think is a very
important idea.
And it does work both at the state level--my view is I
think Corrections Commissioners should be held accountable for
recidivism rates. They do not like that way of thinking.
Mr. Mollohan. We had some of that testimony yesterday.
Mr. Travis. And I think that this is something the Governor
is entitled to expect of his or her Corrections Commissioner.
But the action is at the local level. The action is at the
community level.
And before coming to head up NIJ, I was General Counsel of
the Police Department in New York and had the privilege of
serving for a short time with Bill Bratton as the Police
Commissioner. And he is the author of the comstat idea which
has, you know, swept the country.
It was a very simple idea which is that we are responsible
for crime rates in our jurisdiction. And I think we need a
similar sort of accountability benchmark for both the
recidivism rate of people coming out of prison and this
ultimate reintegration rate for people coming out of prison.
And everybody in the jurisdiction has to contribute to that
goal. And so whether it is the Mayor or some local official has
to have a comstat for reentry success. It is a public safety
measure.
And you can make this a bite size operation. And I suppose
it is a challenge to a number of jurisdictions, Chicago being
one recently, to say let us figure out how do we reduce the
failure rate in the first 30 days or 60 days or 90 days for the
next cohort of people coming out of prison.
We know that is the time of high risk. We know that is the
time where lots of things can go wrong. You would then organize
your resources, everybody's resources to that very simple goal.
If you do that enough, then you have got an overall success.
So we do not have a way of thinking about public
accountability in this area that has bite, that has some real
teeth to it. And it is at both of those levels.
And somewhere, some Governors in this fiscal crisis that we
are in are going to say, look, the long-term goal for my state
is to reduce our level of imprisonment because it is just too
expensive. We cannot do it anymore. And I am going to commit my
state just as Governor Thompson did for welfare reform to
reducing this burden on the taxpayers, that we cannot afford
this anymore.
And that is more than what California unfortunately is
doing now or other states are doing which is sort of managing
in sort of reactive mode how do we reduce the prison budget. It
is a systematic approach.
So just as the federal government helped states create
incentives for states to think about welfare reform and move
people from welfare to work, I think the federal government can
help states think about justice reform and move people from
prison to work in exactly the same way. That requires a
different way of thinking about funding and incentives.
Mr. Mollohan. Dr. Byrne.
Mr. Byrne. I agree on the incentives. I think that is the
idea that I would put out there as something to consider----
Mr. Mollohan. Okay.
Mr. Byrne [continuing]. For this appropriation you have,
the next phase.
Mr. Travis. It is a big idea.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. And you used the word ``important.''
Systemic reform, and you have to have some of that kind of
leadership and that kind of imposition of authority down
throughout the system, you said was very important.
I was kind of looking for you to say it is absolutely
essential.
Mr. Travis. I am there.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Based upon the testimony we have had
this week and this morning, arguably if the states were to
imitate the attitude of Michigan and to execute on that
attitude, you would have this hopefully fundamental change in
the approach and a significant change in outcomes. With our
scarce resources, how can we, and you can make suggestions here
or for the record if you need to think about it, how can we
incentivize states to do that? It would be one thing for the
federal government to do it in its system, but it is another
thing for the states to do it in their system. How can we with
our scarce resources incentivize that systemic reform in the
states?
Mr. Byrne. Well, you have that resource allocation, right?
You have created a spot where people can go for resources that
relate to----
Mr. Mollohan. We are the resource center.
Mr. Byrne. Built into that are some very specific
benchmarks that you are looking for and tie compliance with
those benchmarks to a new round of awards. That would be my
initial thoughts on how to tie it into the structure that you
have there now, kind of expand on that resource center model
and identify benchmarks.
And, the most obvious benchmark to consider would be
incarceration rate reduction, I would think, and certainly
revocation policy changes, link reductions in incarceration and
changes in revocation policies to financial incentives.
For me personally, I would like to see treatment oriented
prisons added to the list at pre-entry benchmark. If you have
to use the word prison, you are really talking about
residential treatment, but we have to say the word prison to
sell it. That would be a third area.
But certainly I think you could do it within the structure
you have now if you expand on that resource and also make it
kind of a best practices driven strategy where you identify
incentives for best practice in these areas.
Mr. Travis. The Chairman will recall the VOI/TIS
legislation, the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-
Sentencing legislation, which in essence did what you are
suggesting in reverse. It said you can get certain money for
prison construction if you would enact legislation that
embodies certain principles.
And one result of that was to increase incarceration,
increase--it had the desired effect. So you are thinking about
something that would have the same model going in the other
direction. So that model is there, and I am sure there are
probably some other examples. That came with a--this is all
part of the Crime Act--came with big appropriations for prison
construction, because states were really suffering at the time
in terms of the prison growth.
But what we are talking about here is federal leadership,
both in reducing prison level incarceration, promoting public
safety at the same time, and improving reentry outcomes.
So the best thing out of it is there is money behind it so
the states get something in return for meeting those
benchmarks, so there would have to be some sort of
appropriation that would go along with that.
But if you are moving towards a much more robust funding of
the Second Chance Act and you want to influence state policy,
this is one way to think about a next wave of funding out of
the Second Chance Act that would say, there are certain things
that we would like to see the states do, and then you would
have sort of a shopping list of desired outcomes for changes in
state policy.
Mr. Mollohan. Well in that regard, the reentry resource
center, besides being a place for best practices, how do you
envision it playing a positive role, beyond what you have
eluded to here?
Mr. Travis. Well, I think this is one of the most important
things in the Second Chance Act, because it creates a capacity
that is funded by the federal government for jurisdictions that
are interested in best practices, latest evidence, technical
assistance opportunities, a place to go to get that
information. It is a rapidly changing field. Ferment is
welcome, but in that sort of environment you want to have a
place where people can go just to figure out what is being
learned in other jurisdictions or what is the research showing
at us.
Looking at it from an academic perspective it is a place
where we can start to have a sustained conversation about
practice, about the evidence, about what is known, about what
works, about what doesn't through the resource center.
So it is really this sort of idea knowledge hub for the
nation that will benefit practice, but also benefit the
research community, because we will have a place it's almost
like Campbell collaborative, wouldn't it?
Mr. Byrne. Right.
Mr. Travis. It is a place to house the research knowledge
that can benefit.
Mr. Mollohan. A clearinghouse, so to speak.
Mr. Travis. A clearinghouse, yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Byrne.
Mr. Byrne. I think you want more than a clearinghouse
though don't you? Don't you think you need that TA component?
Mr. Travis. Yes.
Mr. Byrne. I think it is critical. You have that right now
with the National Institute of Corrections, but that is kind of
a small effort. I have done, NFC TAs in several states over the
years, and I see those are very quick kind of in-out reviews.
What you are talking more is about larger scale reform efforts
and that might take a different type of structure. So that
clearinghouse notion I think is a good start, but thinking
about how to tie it into these critical--as you said--critical
benchmarks and maybe identifying incentives that relate to
that. Maybe you pick the big three, or you know.
Mr. Mollohan. Well we would invite you to elaborate on
that.
Mr. Kennedy.

JUVENILE JUSTICE

Mr. Kennedy. In the area of juvenile justice, obviously our
policies of funding the Office of Juvenile Justice through this
Committee, that is a very direct way through a juvenile justice
title five programs and grants. And so we can effect the way
states operate in a lot of respects, because they have got a
whole patch work quilt of state statutes.
So that is where the stipulations we put kind of in terms
of our funding could make a big difference.
Mr. Travis. That is another good model.
Mr. Kennedy. So if you could give us some ideas, given the
fact that from whence the kids came that often determines where
the kids go, and if the kids--we don't pick them up too quickly
and put them into prison, especially in prisons where there are
adults and so forth, they are less likely to end up in adult
correction institutions down the road.
Mr. Travis. That is a good analog. There is no adult system
equivalent to the OJJDP funding formula, but I think that is
what we are struggling with here, is how to come up with
something similar to that.
Mr. Kennedy. Maybe you could give us some of those
concepts.
Mr. Byrne. Sure, I'd be happy to.
Mr. Mollohan. With regard to the reentry resource center,
the solicitation is out on this so let me just revise my
request. If you all would look at this, you are not an agency,
so we know you don't have to be responsive here, but if you
would graciously look at it and give us your comment on it if
there is anything that needs to be tweaked, calibrated, or
otherwise changed.
Well, there have just been excellent questions here and we
have covered a lot of territory.
I guess I could ask as a just general question, how you are
grading Department of Justice's home work here on the Second
Chance Act? Are they implementing it in the right way and do we
need to make any suggestions for our part to the Department of
Justice in regard to that implementation?
Mr. Travis. I think it is a little early.
Mr. Mollohan. A little early?
Mr. Travis. The solicitations are for public response at
this point. I haven't looked at them carefully, but I think
they have tracked the legislative purpose pretty well. Not
every part of the Second Chance Act is now funded. I am
particularly concerned about research funding and the data
collection funding.
Professor Byrne mentioned the--we should not be in this
situation as a country where we have to wait every decade to
get recidivism data from the federal government. We don't have
a good understanding. We mention parole violations and people
going back to prison. We don't have a good understanding of
that phenomenon across all the states. You know, every state
should be able to turn to its federal government, to the BJS,
to get recidivism data that's comparable across states. We have
to wait, it is expensive work, but we wouldn't stand for this
lack of basic statistical information if we were talking about
a health condition, for example, or about labor markets.
You know, the Bureau of Labor statistics can tell us down
to the level of industry, you know, what is happening with job
creation, what is happening with job loss, what is happening
with--you know, we have no similar sort of capacity to
understand some of----
Mr. Mollohan. That is a great insight, we will look at
that, sure.
Mr. Travis. And then we need to fund that.
Mr. Byrne. Yes, I think the one area that I would say
really needs to be addressed immediately, and I put it in my
testimony, is this notion of how we fund and how we structure
the selection of evaluators. I think that does go against the
teaching hospital model, but it doesn't mean you can't have
more than one model, because that model essentially identifies
long-term collaboration between program developers and
evaluators, and in my opinion that can be problematic. But that
is one model, and I think it is certainly there.
But in terms of kind of up and down audit review functions,
I think it should be independent, external, evaluations. I
mean, we have changed the way we look at money. I have a son
who is an internal auditor, he does that now. There are now a
lot of jobs apparently in that area.
Mr. Mollohan. I wonder how many times he heard that when he
was growing up.
Mr. Byrne. I hear about federal laws from him and
everything else related to compliance with. Oh God. [Laughter.]
Yes, that is funny.
But you know, certainly that function independent audit,
and I think that is--only because I hear it from my kid, he
just moved back in with me at 24. If this is part of the record
you can move out sooner. Just kidding, he is a good kid, and he
can stay as long as he wants.
Mr. Mollohan. Only to move back in.
Mr. Byrne. That is right, back and forth, the churning that
happens it is there for kids in their 20s with the housing
situation and everything else, right?
But I think trying to come up with a formula in this act
that will generate independent external evaluations I think
would be very helpful. And that is not saying that we don't
have some very good people that have developed long-term
collaborations with, you know, city police departments around
the country. Certainly, David Kennedy in terms of his work, is
a model. But there are others to consider.
But I think in this case there is a lot riding on this in
terms of, you know, allocations. I am looking at 25 million and
then 75 million in the area of reentry. I think you really have
to build in the external audit function for the implementation
of reentry initiating because I think what I worry about is
this money is just going to be----
Mr. Mollohan. I get that, I really do.
Mr. Byrne [continuing]. Moved from one area to another and
moved over to somebody else. Borrow from Peter to pay Paul in
hard financial times.
And the second part of it is getting external quality
impact evaluations.
Mr. Mollohan. We are going to look at that very carefully,
and we appreciate that advice, we really do.
Mr. Travis. If I could just add, Mr. Chairman, I have been
thinking a little bit more about your question.
We have a new administration, new Attorney General, we are
about to have new presidentially appointed heads of these
agencies that come up for review before the Senate, and it is a
new day with the Second Chance Act.
And consistent with that I think it would be certainly
appropriate for this Committee to ask the Justice Department,
and particularly the heads of those two agencies, to specific
the long-term research agenda. What is it that needs to be
learned that can be learned in the area of reentry, both from a
statistical point of view, what should the statistical series
look like that will help us understand this phenomenon better?
And what are the big questions, and how do they propose to
answer them?
Having sat in the seat of the NIJ director I know that what
happens too often is you follow the program dollars and you try
to do good evaluations of those programs rather than saying
what are the important questions?
Mr. Mollohan. Rather than being asked.
Mr. Travis. That is right, that should be answered.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, that is a great idea.
Mr. Travis. So that is the old science agency is to scope
out a multiyear agenda and then make investments accordingly.
So it turns the conversation in a different direction by
saying what are the big questions, rather than does this
program work? It may be that those become the same----
Mr. Mollohan. Well it makes it a little more interactive
too, which is always more respectful.
Mr. Travis. And then the programs say well here is a big
question to be answered, let us see if we can help the country
answer this question.
So it just flips the--and I think this Committee would be
the right one to sort of ask for that type of agenda.
Mr. Kennedy. And maybe some continuing education for the
judges before sentencing in terms of what works and what
doesn't and what can we do there. Because we are bringing up
the--we obviously fund judges and so forth. What can we do
there? Continuing education?
Mr. Travis. There is a lot of discussion about sort of
evidence-based practice throughout the entire criminal justice
system and how this applies to sentencing decisions.
Mr. Kennedy. Right, right.
Mr. Travis. It is some really interesting questions.
Mr. Kennedy. Right.
Mr. Travis. It is the intersection of social science and
juris prudence.
I recently was honored to chair an all day discussion by
the American Bar Association and the Kennedy Commission on
second look provisions. Ways to think about taking a second
look at a sentence after its been imposed, whether through
pardon or through parole release or compassionate release or
whatever, and I think there is an opportunity now for judges to
be part of this conversation in ways that they haven't been.
Mr. Kennedy. Right.

DRUG COURTS

Mr. Travis. Reentry court is squarely right in the middle
of that. And let learning from drug courts--judges have to be
trained in relapse and how does a job make a difference.
Mr. Kennedy. Right, right, right.
Mr. Travis. The role of mental health issues. So we didn't
get this in law school.
Mr. Kennedy. No, no.
Mr. Travis. So the judicial education as part of reentry
thinking is an entirely different education.
Mr. Kennedy. Huge deal.
Mr. Travis. And I don't know that--certainly law schools
aren't training prospective lawyers to think that way, but is
the National Center for State Courts helping to think about
judges thinking about things differently, or the drug court
professionals group.
Mr. Mollohan. So as you increase the funding for drug
courts, for example, you are suggesting in response to Mr.
Kennedy's question, you should at the same time think about the
education of the judges who are going to----
Mr. Travis. Professionals involved, and it applies to
prosecutors as well. They are thinking differently. Defense
lawyers have to think differently.
At the center of this is the judge. And if he or she isn't
thinking differently then the whole thing falls apart.
Mr. Kennedy. Okay. If you could get us some of your
perspectives on that and what is going on in that world.
Mr. Travis. Sure.
Mr. Kennedy. Thank you. And anything about that reentry
court.
Mr. Travis. Right, yes.

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

Mr. Mollohan. The staff suggests a good question. Is there
a role for the National Science Foundation in any of these
studies, in any of this research?
Dr. Byrne, why don't you speak to that first.
Mr. Byrne. Well obviously that would be beyond the gold
standard certainly, and should be assessed. The whole field of
criminal justice is one that is, kind of not still looked at as
a science, and so, moving in that direction, and certainly, the
NSF part in terms of what they fund would generate research, so
that--that is positive.
And the National Research Council review completed last
year, even though a lot of it kind of rehashed what we had out
there for, a few years, that kind of review I think helps too.
I think when you get a respected group like the National
Research Council pulling together and what we know, I think
that helps the field.
So certainly anything that would generate experimental and
high quality quasi experimental research I think that is what
we have to hope for.
Mr. Travis. I think just to extend that one step further. I
think the hope would be that any research institute with
federal funds, that would include NIH and NSF and the Education
Research Institute within DOE, would see the intersection
between incarceration reentry and their sort of core research
questions, and that there would be some encouragement from
Congress for those research institutes to devote some resources
to try to understand the connection between Mr. Kennedy's
observations, mental health or brain functioning and
incarceration of reentry. Alcoholism and drug abuse, which are
NIH functions, and incarceration of reentry. NICHD looks at the
family issues impact on children and reentry. NSF, which does
basic understanding of--dealing with the sociological research,
you know, communities and the dynamics between individuals and
their behavior in community life. So all of them have a role to
play.
So the NIJ, you know, I think should receive more money in
this area and should be directed to do work on behalf of the
nation. But these other research institutes clearly have a role
to play, and for whatever reason they have not been let us say
eager to fund research in that area. Some of them put their big
toe into the water, but I think they could be encouraged.
The National Research Council, I should just give my bias
here, I am on the Community of Law and Justice of the National
Academies, is now thinking about taking a look at the whole
incarceration phenomenon in the country in trying to see what
knowledge do we have about the impact of this, in essence, an
experiment we have done over the past 30 years of quadrupling
the rate of incarceration? What knowledge do we have about the
impact of that on our country? So that is the mackerel question
that the National Academy is hoping to take a look at.
So there are many ways in which these research institutions
can be coalesced to--you know, NIJ is a small budget and
probably always will have a relatively modest budget, but these
other research agencies have a role to play as well.
Mr. Mollohan. Well we have gone well beyond the scheduled
hearing time, but if you all would bear with me just another
second.
I think there is a broad consensus, if not total agreement,
that drugs and addiction are at the very heart of a lot of our
recidivism problems, in addition to a huge percentage of our
sentences in this country. And as I look at that, the craving
is at the center of that. And there are all kinds of
strategies, treatment, 12 step, faith based, secular based, and
then there is also a whole new, and not so new, but beginning
to be tested and studied medical treatment, which I think is
very helpful. I mean if you have got a chemical problem, maybe
there is a chemical solution, so I am very hopeful about that.
But I would like you all to talk about that a little bit
generally, how that fits in. And then specifically I would like
to ask you about your attitudes towards the use of Naltrexone,
those kinds of medications in drug treatment, and the different
forms that that can come in, like 30-day injections, implants
and daily doses of this medication.
So either one of you can start. I would like very much a
comment from both of you.

DRUG ADDICTION/TREATMENT IN PRISON

Mr. Byrne. This is the most frustrating part of the whole
area of reentry for me, and I have seen it personally in terms
of addiction.
When you actually have to get somebody in a residential
treatment program, if you are rich you can do it, but we are
talking a lot of money. A thirty-day inpatient treatment
program with a three-week follow up----
Mr. Mollohan. Which doesn't work anyway.
Mr. Byrne. But that is 30-day program. If you look at the
research in terms of long-term residential treatment for drug
addiction, it is a different story. If you can get them in for
six to nine months you can maybe have an impact, but outpatient
is what we currently use. Residential treatment is the
exception.
It is very difficult to get anyone to pay for residential
treatment, in addition a lot of the residential treatment that
is out there is putting together 23-year-old heroin addicts and
55-year-old alcoholics, and that is a social issue with that
trying to do long-term residential with those groups.
So we have a major issue in terms of the funding of
residential treatment that I think you are right, this just
cuts to the core of a lot of the offenders that we are going to
be dealing with because they will have serious drug problems.
And I don't see the answer in this allocation or even in
drug courts, because drug courts have a hard time dealing with
the long-term addicted individual. They can deal with kind of
the low- to middle-level drug offenders, but they can't deal
with this group. And to me that is the core--like you said--the
core issue.
I think the need for residential treatment and trying to
develop mechanisms to get, in particular young people who we
know fail at very high rates, but still getting them into
treatment and getting them to stay in treatment. I think that
is critical.
And I know you had Dr. Taxman here a couple of days ago,
and, I am sure she had her feelings on it, but most of what you
have out there is outpatient in part because it is driven by
managed care systems that don't want to pay unless you have
failed several times in outpatient for even short-term
residential. And so to me that is a problem.
Now the second part about the new types of drugs. This is
part of the technology of treatment that you have to bring out.
There are some excellent new drugs out there where, you know,
maybe you don't want to have somebody on Methadone, but there
are alternatives to that with blockers, and I don't know all
the names of them, but if you will go on the NIDA website, you
know, everything is kind of there now, and that is certainly I
think an area we need to look at.
But I imagine, that you come back to this notion of
coercive treatment, involuntary civil commitment for periods of
time to get people in treatment. It is kind of if you build it
maybe they will come. But we don't have that structure there in
terms of long-term residential treatment.
What we have right now is very short-term treatment, almost
all of it outpatient, and I think that is a structure--you were
mentioning Michigan's model, that is a structural change that
is at the core that beyond what we talk about in terms of, you
know, specific reentry programs is having access to treatment
on demand and to be able to match offender's problems with the
type of treatment they need I think is critical. And it would
be a sad state that we would have to go to prison to get
treatment.
Mr. Mollohan. Well it is horrible. You have to get somebody
in a criminal situation, to treat a medical problem, so it is
profane, really. It is horrible that the system doesn't deal
with this problem, which at its root is a craving problem,
without getting somebody into a criminal vice, if you will.
What you described kind of brings us up to date
historically.
But I am really looking for some insight for the record on
the qualitative advancement that some of these medications
represent. And I am really not talking about Methadone, I am
talking about beyond that. It is not even beyond Methadone I
don't think. I don't think it is the same, and I am far from an
expert. I don't think Naltrexone, Buprenex, and some of these
drugs are on the same path. And also the strategies are
different for how they are applied.
It is one thing to ask somebody who has cravings everyday
and thinks about nothing other than where the next resource is
going to come from so he can get the next fix. To ask that
person, okay will you take a pill every morning so it will take
away your craving, and if you use it will block the effect?
That is a hard thing to ask somebody who is experiencing
cravings, I think.
But if you have a different strategy for administering
medication, such as 30-day shots, well if you wake up and you
can't think about that, that choice has been taken away from
you.
It seems to me--and again this needs scientific research
obviously--but it seems to me that gets you a lot further down
the road, because you have dealt with what? You have dealt with
the craving issue. You have dealt with it so you have taken
choice away. Maybe that is one of those places that you need
the authority or the incentive. If you are incarcerated, for
example, and you participate in the drug treatment program, you
get out a year earlier. But if in addition to taking drug
treatment, you would be required to participate in this
aftercare program through which you receive a shot every month.
Now there are all kinds of appropriateness and civil
liberties issues that go along with that, but I think that, in
spite of those challenges, it seems to me that that is a very
hopeful avenue in dealing with cravings.
Mr. Byrne. And you will make some parents very happy of
those kids, because they won't have to worry that the kid is
taking the drug every day, they know it is only every 30 days
they have to worry. So just on that small level you have taken
some stress out of that whole situation.
Now you could also do drug testing. Use the drug testing
follow up, which is what is being done.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, exactly.
Mr. Byrne. But you could take that kind of technology of
control off the table by simply having a pill that went one,
two, three. Absolutely.
Mr. Mollohan. Are we looking at that in all of this?
President Travis, do you want to speak to that?
Mr. Travis. I wish I knew more about this area of research
and medical research, I am not familiar.
Mr. Mollohan. I think it is an area that we have to look
at. As you are looking, I think we have to know more about it.
Mr. Byrne. Well, I think that is the intersection of public
health and public policy that you were talking about before
going through the statistics on the various types of
communicable diseases of offenders that coming out of prison.
Certainly you throw drug addiction into that mix that you were
talking about, and that is what is critical I think in terms of
cooperation between, public health and whatever these program
models look like. Because the key is not figuring out whether
Jim Byrne has a drug problem, the key is getting me into the
right level and type treatment and getting me to stay in
treatment.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Travis. So you know, when we talk tolerance that is
probably the most important thing we teach judges, right, and
these programs what we are trying to do is, you know, deal with
various forms of misbehavior, but get them to stay in programs.
And your strategy that you are talking about in terms of
utilizing these drugs, will at least get them to deal with that
craving issue for a longer period of time. And the longer that
they are away the more likely they are going to get better over
time. But we know the failure rates of these programs are still
remarkably high. Higher than anything we will talk about in
terms of recidivism rates.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, it just seems as we think about all
these structural changes and the DOE fund projects and all
that, drugs undermines their program at high percentages before
their participants complete one year. They start measuring
success after one year. Well they have a number of
disappointments during that one year.
Well, it is all related to drug addiction. So it seems to
me that is the center of the problem, because it is so
prevalent. And it does get down to the individual and it gets
down to the family. It really gets down to the core issue.
Mr. Byrne. The interesting treatment on demand
demonstration program may be one of your sites in New York, and
to see--to demonstrate what would happen if we really put the
drug involved offender into the correct level of treatment. And
obviously that has implications for all of us who might have
addiction issues, regardless of whether we are currently
involved in the criminal justice system; but you certainly have
that group.
Mr. Mollohan. Well think about how you could drive these
numbers. If you could deal with the craving issue here, all the
counseling, all the brain scans. I want to learn more about all
of that. But if you could deal with the craving--I mean, I love
ice cream, and man I will tell you, for me to stay away from it
at night is--honestly I have thought about that. If it is in
the refrigerator it is hard to stay away from that. I had a
doctor tell me once that the craving for heroin is a thousand
times greater than one of the most fundamental drives in the
human body. One hundred times greater. That is very powerful.
Mr. Travis. Just think of this as a federal science
question. We have NIDA that is funding a lot of research that
you mentioned, we have centers for substance abuse treatment
and prevention within NIH, those are located in a different
cabinet agency, but their work has a lot to do with what we are
talking about here in terms of crime and reentry and community
well being.
So the question from where you sit is how are those
resources being used to help answer questions over here that
can provide policy? And you know, I love this idea of a--I
would have a multisite demonstration so it wasn't one site,
where we would say with our NIH partners, we want to fund a
demonstration to test the availability of both the--we will
call them behavioral interventions and the medical or
pharmaceutical interventions to do something about addiction at
a community level, and we are going to do that for five years.
That is probably what it will take to run it up, you will get
it up and running. And one of the measures we will look at is
the reductions in crime, in addition, there will be over
measures of well being. But that is thinking bold, that is
thinking big, but it is also thinking from a public health
perspective, which is what they should be accustomed to, and it
is not the way our community is accustomed to thinking about
things at that scale. But if you want to go to some of the core
issues of employment, addiction, family functioning, you have
to think big, and you have to be willing from a scientific
point of view to design some big interventions.
There is another idea that is getting some currency in our
field, particularly the Brookings Institute had a number of
hearings on this--or workshops on it--which is borrowing from
the welfare reform era to adopt this idea from prison to work.
What would it take to say that we want people when they leave
prison to have employment available to them to help them
transition for some period of time? Just as we did with people
coming off of welfare. We made work available, we incentivized
it. Granted that's a little different, but we can incentivize
it here as well, and Bruce Western is a sociologist at Harvard,
Larry Meed who did work at NYU on welfare reform, they are
thinking about this big idea. That would require the Labor
Department to say let us test prison to work. Frankly it is not
the way the Justice Department thinks about designing and
testing interventions.
So I think we are just at that point in history where we
have a real good understanding of the phenomenon, we see some
big opportunities, they are right in front of us, and they
require a different way of thinking about program design,
program intervention, and research.

DRUG ADDICTION ROLE AND RECIDIVISM

Mr. Mollohan. Well let me ask you this. If you design a
research program to look at these issues one by one or in some
sort of a comprehensive design, if you do not look at--well
first let me ask you.
To what extent does drug addiction play a role in the
failure of preventing recidivism? What role does relapse play
in recidivism? Just generally.
Mr. Byrne. Well for starters you have the technical
violators. You know there are a majority of technical
violations where we are sending people back to prison for six
for nine months because they fail drug tests. You know, we----
Mr. Mollohan. So just on that basis it is huge, let alone
going out and committing another crime to feed the habit.
Mr. Travis. And three or four people in prison have a
serious history of drug and/or alcoholism.
Mr. Mollohan. So can we then agree it is a big piece of it.
Mr. Travis. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Right. So are we designing studies that kind
of ignore that? Or maybe that is not the right way to ask that,
but shouldn't we be designing studies for which that is at
least a significant part of it, so that at the end of the study
we will understand different outcomes based upon different
treatments for that condition?
Mr. Byrne. That is the problem. I mean we basically develop
a design and then we then try to work with existing treatment
providers to provide that treatment. And within the whole area
of managed care, who is going to pay for it? So you have that
and it is a problem.
Mr. Mollohan. Now what do you mean? What is a problem
exactly?
Mr. Byrne. Well in the sense that you are not unless you
are going to develop a multisite demonstration program that is
going to have treatment on demand being funded by that program,
then the funding for treatment exists in the real world. Which
means you might have better healthcare than me. We have
different access to treatment. Or you might not have healthcare
at all, so you have no access.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, but isn't that a policy problem at the
end of it?
The real question is, just as a scientific question, if you
can provide these different kinds of treatments for the
addiction, including medication, then you can start asking what
are the effects of the treatment on the disease, and then you
can ask the question, how does that impact recidivism?
Am I wrong about that or----
Mr. Travis. I don't know if I am disagreeing with Jim or
not, but I think we have a pretty good body of research on the
effectiveness of treatment that links in-prison treatment with
community-based treatment. I think we have a pretty good body
of research over the years that is funded, that looks at the
effectiveness of particularly therapeutic programs that link to
community-based programs. I don't know whether they have added
the latest advances in the sort of medical approach.
And in the drug court context we have some pretty good
research on the role of coercion in helping people find their
way to treatment.
We have this interesting experiment now in Hawaii called--
--
Mr. Mollohan. Which is a good thing.
Mr. Travis. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Excuse me.
Mr. Travis. It was very effective. And in Hawaii we have
the Hope Project, which is testing drug testing as the
intervention basically.
But what we don't have, and where I think the Chairman's
question is taking us, is what would be the effect of bringing
all types of interventions to bear in a systematic way for
people who are coming out of prison so that whatever is right
for them they can get and it is available in the way that Jim
says is not now available?
That is the large scale demonstration project that could
lead to very important policy implications, particularly when
we are talking about healthcare reform, because this is a
population that finds it difficult to get access to treatment
dollars, treatment facilities.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, but that is a different question isn't
it? I mean, that is a policy question after you learned what
was affected. Then you would go to try to solve that problem.
But the question is--no?
I mean, that isn't a leading question, I am not trying to--
--
Mr. Travis. Well, if you are designing the study that we
are talking about, you would take let us say three communities
around the country, you would say for--let us just make it a
reentry issue--for people coming out of prison treatment will
be available. We use the word on demand, but we will say
treatment will be available. We will use the coercive power of
parole supervision to make sure that, to the extent we can,
people stay in treatment, that is always hard, and it will be a
range of options that are tailored to what the treatment needs
are that will include whatever the appropriate range of options
are, and we will see--and we will try to do it in a random
assignment way, we will see what the effect is on their
recidivism and their well being, and their relationships with
their families, all the key indicators.
At the end of that study, let us say it is a three to five
year study, we will be able to know the cost effectiveness of
that intervention.
Then you have the policy question that you eluded to, which
is can we afford to do that? Right?
And what would be the results in terms of safety, of public
health, of family functioning? And we will say to the public,
it is worth the investment of public dollars.
We are not there yet, but we can put together pieces of it,
but if we are thinking about a world in which we can do
anything, we would do that level of study. Is that close to
what you were saying?
Mr. Byrne. Absolutely. And I think that is where you do
have a possibility of funding different models, and you know,
looking at one that has a significant treatment component.
Because I would think right now the way this money is going to
be allocated, what is going to happen at the local level is
they are going to utilize existing resources for treatment. But
it is going to be existing resources.
What we are talking about is actually taking over the
treatment piece for a period of time to demonstrate impact.
When you talk about the community context of treatment, you
need to consider, first, where is the treatment located? And
secondly, what is the availability of residential versus
outpatient? And then you need to examine the quality of
treatment, which is a third big issue.
Mr. Mollohan. I mean a huge number of the variables and the
success of the whole involves the drug treatment part of it.
Mr. Byrne. I think so. Like you said, it is the core
problem that reentry programs need to address. And I think you
can't get away from that when you look at the current
allocations strategy, because essentially you are going to be
setting up reentry programs that will not be funding the drug
treatment component.
Now maybe you can pull back some of that and do
demonstrations to demonstrate it for the next wave, I would
recommend that, which is why the multisite demonstration that
Jeremy suggested I think is an excellent idea.
But you know, that is the big missing link, and you pointed
it out. We should have talked about treatments resources more
in our presentations and we missed. You had it correct. And
that is it is the core problem, is the drug crime connection in
terms of this group of offenders.
Mr. Mollohan. Can we work with you on that----
Mr. Byrne. Sure.
Mr. Mollohan [continuing]. As we go forward with spending
the scarce resources. I think we are going to have more with
this administration, I certainly hope.
Darek has handed me Subtitle A, Drug Treatment, Section
201. Offender Reentry Substance Abuse and Criminal Justice
Collaboration Program. It authorizes the Attorney General to
make grants to the States, local governments, and Tribes to
``improve the provision of drug treatment to offenders in
prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities, to reduce the use of
alcohol and other drugs by long-term substance abusers during
the period in which each such long-term substance abuser is in
prison, jail, or a juvenile facility, and through the
completion of parole or court supervision of such long term
substance abuser.''
So we are authorized to do this at $15 million.
Well, are there any other final comments. You have done
very well. If so, now is the time to make them.
Mr. Travis. My only final thought, other than to thank you
for a very lively discussion, I think we both felt pushed,
which is great.
Mr. Mollohan. Well wait, that wasn't the intention.
Mr. Travis. No, this is what we live for.
I just want to come back to the public safety bottom line.
And in my testimony and my statement I underscored this
relationship between the reentry phenomenon and crime levels in
communities. And we tend in the way we do research, and we tend
to in the way we talk about reentry to folks on individual
outcomes and program interventions and the like, but we have to
step back from that and realize that this is a big phenomenon,
unprecedented in our country's history, and the impact at
community level is something that we have never seen before.
And part of that impact is a criminogenic impact, and we need
to basically recognize that the communities are saying to their
police chiefs and their majors that their well being needs more
attention.
So it is another argument for thinking big here and moving
beyond our sort of individual medical model paradigm and
looking at some big questions. And the public safety benefit
that is possible here, if we think about this very creatively,
is I think enormous, and that is beyond funding individual
programs that work well according to basic evidence--the latest
evidence. It as a way of thinking, the way we have been talking
about here, so it is the mackerel of the environmental level.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you.
Mr. Byrne.
Mr. Byrne. I have spent my career trying to write about
social ecology and community context, and I think what you just
summarized is exactly where we need to kind of go with this
whole issue of reentry. I use it to look at larger community
level problems.
What is it, half of all offenders that came out last year
came back to only--I think it is five states, and within those
five states they came to several dozen communities within these
few states.
So the big lie of offender rehabilitation program, I think
I say it in my testimony, is that individual change is going to
effect the overall crime rate. It won't for most communities
because offenders don't live in most communities. They live in
a small number of high crime, high minority concentration,
poverty pocket areas, that have not seen a long-term reduction
in violence that you have seen in the rest of the country. And
there hasn't been a constituency for that group until now. You
know it hasn't affected me where I live, as much as it affects
the group that is kind of disenfranchised.
And so that is I think the challenge for you here is to
demonstrate to the general public why it is important to look
at these areas that we have essentially ignored for several
decades, while we have seen overall reductions in violence,
which is a good thing, but it has not improved in those areas,
it is actually gotten worse, and it has been, you know, I think
that is pretty well documented.
Rob Samson out of Harvard spent most of his career looking
at that whole issue, and I think he has really highlighted it
in some of his recent studies, and I cite him here in my
testimony.
So I agree, the community context I think is the key to all
this.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, Dr. Byrne, President Travis, thank you
very much for your testimony today. We appreciate it. It is
excellent testimony, a wonderful panel to end I think a very
good series of hearings.
Mr. Travis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you all very much for appearing today.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009.

JUSTICE REINVESTMENT

WITNESSES

MIKE THOMPSON, COUNCIL OF STATE GOVERNMENTS JUSTICE CENTER
REPRESENTATIVE JERRY MADDEN, VICE-CHAIR, HOUSE CORRECTIONS COMMITTEE,
TEXAS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ROGER WERHOLTZ, SECRETARY, KANSAS DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Opening Statement by Chairman Mollohan

Mr. Mollohan. Well I think we will be uninterrupted here
for a little while so the hearing will come to order. This
afternoon's hearing builds on the series of hearings that we
held three weeks ago on prisoner reentry programs. Throughout
the course of that week we heard from witness after witness
about the need to invest more money in reentry services, the
importance of coordinating services, and the need to employ
evidence-based approaches and follow up with independent
evaluations. Another critical lesson from those hearings is
that while individual reentry programs can help transition
offenders back into their communities, we need to organize our
efforts on a large scale if we hope to have large scale impacts
on overall recidivism. And beyond reentry, we need to find ways
of reducing the number of prison admissions to produce savings
for strained budgets at the state and federal levels while
improving the security of our communities.
The focus of today's hearing is Justice Reinvestment, an
initiative of the Council of State Governments that attempts to
take such a comprehensive approach to reforming criminal
justice systems at the state level. I would like to welcome
Michael Thompson, the Director of the Council of State
Governments Justice Center, along with representatives from two
of the states with which the Center is working. The Honorable
Jerry Madden, who is vice-chair of the Committee on Corrections
of the Texas House of Representatives; and Roger Werholtz, the
Secretary of the Kansas Department of Corrections. Welcome,
gentlemen.
We look forward to learning more about the Justice
Reinvestment initiative, including the way in which it is being
implemented in Texas and Kansas, and how it is affecting the
size of your prison populations, the capacity of your
communities to provide services to offenders, and the safety of
your communities. Your written statement will be made a part of
the record. Before asking you for your oral testimony, I would
like to call on our Ranking Member, Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Welcome.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you. Gentlemen, we will start from left
to right here. Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wolf, members of
the Subcommittee, thank you very much for inviting me to
testify today to talk about the Council of State Governments
Justice Reinvestment Initiative. As you know, prison and jail
populations are increasing. These increases are fueled by
revocation of probation and parolees. There are also a
significant number of failures, and people leaving prison with
no supervision whatsoever. What you all did over the past year
to ensure the passage of the Second Chance Act and to ensure
its funding through the Second Chance Act was really a landmark
event, and we believe that that can really have a significant
impact on recidivism, and we are looking forward to seeing it
implemented.
That said, states across the country, as you know, are
facing major fiscal challenges, a combined $350 billion
shortfall currently in their budgets. They do not have the
resources to take reentry initiatives to the scale that we need
to see a significant impact on recidivism. They are either
shelving their reentry initiatives or they are dismantling them
altogether in order to balance their budgets. What they are
finding money for is to build more prisons frequently. And when
they build more prisons they find themselves dismantling
community-based services and supervision, which then fuels the
prison growth further.
Prison spending is taking an increasing portion of state
spending. One out of every three who works for the state in
Michigan and Ohio now works for the Department of Corrections.
Florida and California really illustrate what happens when
states continue to go down this path. Florida's prison
population is projected to grow by about 25,000 inmates over
the next five years. In order to build some facilities to house
some of that growing the population the state spent $305
billion last year to build more prisons. At the same time they
cut community corrections, they cut community services. They
also cut education by about $1 billion.
Eventually, states run out of funding to kind of continue
this growth. California is an interesting case study of that.
It is one of the most crowded systems in the country. It has
become so crowded, the state not having the money to build more
facilities, a three federal judge panel has just ordered the
mass release of 57,000 inmates to the community. That is a very
scary, dangerous situation, especially when the community
services and support that I referenced earlier have been
dismantled.
It is in this environment that the Council of State
Government's members, conservative Republicans and liberal
Democrats from across the country, have asked us to find a way
to keep dangerous people locked up in prison, to increase
public safety, and to actually reduce spending in corrections
ultimately. And it was with that mandate that we created the
Justice Reinvestment Strategy. And Justice Reinvestment is
about analyzing why prison populations are growing and what the
crime trends are, translating those findings into policy
options, and then tracking the actual impact and to make sure
that the results are actually gained.
We have done work now in ten states across the country. In
eight states where we have worked, and you will hear about
Kansas and Texas in just a moment, but the results are in and
they are very encouraging. Comprehensive criminal justice
changes enacted that are all data driven, using the data that
we have provided them. And since those changes have been
enacted prison population growth has subsided. Prison
populations have flattened altogether. And in some cases prison
populations have even dropped. At the same time, where we have
crime data from those states, we are seeing that crime has
actually dropped at the same time. So the results of increasing
public safety and spending less on corrections has been
achieved.
We want to thank The Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Bureau
of Justice Assistance, and Open Society Institute, and other
foundations that made all of this work possible.
I want to just tell you about some themes that we have seen
from across the state that are sort of cross cutting. The first
is that no one size fits all. Every state's criminal justice
system is different. You just take the case of Kansas, where
parole revocation will go back for up to six months. And then
you take Texas where parole revocation going back to prison
will go up to four years. Every criminal justice, every state's
criminal justice system is distinct.
The second issue is bipartisan collaboration. In order for
Justice Reinvestment to work you need to make sure that there
is bipartisan collaboration across the branches of state
government, and that we really effectively engage local
government stakeholders, the prosecutors, police, judges,
etcetera. And those in fact have been engaged in the states
where we have worked Justice Reinvestment.
The third issue is data. It is really astonishing the lack
of data that is in front of policy makers as they are making
very important decisions. As an example, Wisconsin runs $1
billion corrections agency, has a research budget of zero. They
are essentially policy makers blinded, trying to figure out
what part of the elephant they are touching, fumbling thousands
of jigsaw puzzle pieces, making huge decisions about the future
of public safety without the information they need.
The fourth is that place is very significant. We know that
people released from prison return to very particular
communities. In the case of Arizona we know that they return
generally to Maricopa County in Phoenix. But if you take one
neighborhood within Phoenix we found that it is 1 percent of
the state's population, 6 percent of the state's prison
population. If you want to have an impact we need to do
something in that community to make sure the supports and
services are available to help people succeed. Within those
communities we need to make sure that we are targeting high
risk people--50 percent of the people released form prison will
fail, but 50 percent will succeed. And too often we see
resources targeted on people who are going to succeed, and
ironically the research shows that if you target people who are
already slated to succeed you actually increase the likelihood
of recidivism.
And the last issue is that we need to make sure that we
measure what actually happens. We need to actually track what
was projected to be the impact and make sure that those results
are actually achieved.
And that is Justice Reinvestment in a nutshell. The demand
for Justice Reinvestment across the states is overwhelming. We
have a long queue of states, governors, and legislative leaders
who would like us to work there. We are having a lot of trouble
meeting that demand. But we look forward to talking to the
Committee about how to make that happen. Thank you very much.
[Written statement of Mr. Michael Thompson, Director,
Council of State Governments follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Werholtz.

Mr. Werholtz Opening Statement

Mr. Werholtz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wolf,
members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity as well
to come and talk about Kansas' experience in offender reentry,
Justice Reinvestment, and risk reduction.
I think that you will hear a repetition of the same themes
from all three of us, but we each have a different perspective.
Mine is as a practitioner, I am Secretary of the Kansas
Department of Corrections. With the help of an awful lot of
people and a lot of organizations, we have been able to achieve
some things in my state that we are very proud of, and which we
think have been of great benefit to us, and which I think give
hope to people considering these kinds of policies that they
are intelligent, that they are a good investment, that they are
something worth reconsidering. And let me just share with you
some of the data that we have been able to track in Kansas.
We have been able to shrink our prison population from its
historic high in 2004 by 7.5 percent. We have reduced our
monthly parole revocation rates from the 2003 levels by 48
percent. Our facilities report that inmate grievances have
declined from their 2004 levels by 36 percent. Our special
enforcement officers, which are our armed parole officers,
report that parole absconders have declined by 70 percent from
their historic highs. Those are the individuals who are
actively evading supervision. But I think the most important
statistic that I can share with you, and the one that I think
for policy makers in my state have convinced us that this is
good public policy, is that parolees are committing fewer
crimes.
What we have done is compared the reconviction rates for
felony convictions committed by parolees under our supervision
for the time period prior to us actively engaging in the
reentry risk reduction process, with the most recent four-year
time period where we have got sufficient data because of the
lag times coming in that we think it is a valid comparison. And
we have seen a 35 percent reduction in felony reconvictions by
people that we supervise.
I think if we were simply ignoring negative offender
behavior nobody would argue that this is a policy worth
pursuing. But when we can save resources and at the same time
make our state safer I think everybody has become convinced
that this is something that is worth our investment.
We began this work by taking a systematic self-examination
of our operations, and ended up characterizing what we were
doing as risk management. And within that label of risk
management charted out two paths. What we labeled containment
and what we labeled risk reduction. And in the simplest terms
if you think about our business of operating a prison system or
a correction system, the concept of risk containment simply
says that we are going to contain offender behavior, negative
offender behavior, within an environment that minimizes the
opportunity for that individual to harm a citizen within our
state. And we want to use the minimum amount of force and the
minimum amount of resources necessary to contain that
individual. The concept of risk reduction says that we want to
reduce the probability of negative offender behavior occurring
regardless of the environment that those individuals are in.
If you look at our business and how we have measured our
performance, we and most prison systems in this country are
really good at the containment business. If you divide our
average daily population by the number of escapes that we have,
or the number of walkaways that we have from our minimum
facilities in a given year, the probability of a Kansas inmate
getting out and doing physical harm to a citizen in our state
is less than two-one-thousandths of 1 percent.
And so regardless of the amount of additional resources
that we invest in that effort, it is going to be difficult for
us to improve very much on that level of performance in our
state. But at the same time, when we were looking at 2003 and
earlier, 55 percent of the people that were released from
Kansas prisons or more were coming back for new crimes, or for
violating their conditions of release. If we were going to make
our state safer that was the opportunity that we had for
improvement. And that is where we decided to focus our efforts,
without reducing the level of commitment that we had to the
containment side of the business. But saying, ``We want to try
and do as well on the risk reduction side.''
So we made a commitment to improve our agency's level of
performance in the area of risk reduction. And we began this
effort by looking at what the correctional research literature
said yielded the best results. And you heard Mike mention to
you some of those things. We wanted to look at what in our
jargon is often labeled as the ``what works literature.'' We
received help from a large number of organizations at the
local, state, and national level, including Council of State
Governments, the National Institute of Corrections, the Center
for Effective Public Policy, the Pew Center, the JEHT
Foundation, just to name a few. We literally had dozens and
dozens of organizations coming to help us out.
And based on what we learned we took that information to
the Kansas Legislature, outlined in appearances before our
Budget and Judiciary Committees what our strategy was. And we
requested that they endorse that strategy. The reason that we
did that is that we needed to be able to take that back to our
employees, and the other organizations, particularly in
corrections and law enforcement with whom we worked, to say
this is the policy track that we are going to pursue and we
have the backing of our state's policy makers.
We also, and this is really critical, asked them not to
judge us on individual events, but to judge us on our ability
to influence overall trends. Regardless of the revocation rate,
given the population that we work with there are some offenders
who are going to go out and harm people once they are released
from prison, and in some instances harm them very, very
seriously. And we cannot offer certainty. But what we asked the
legislature to judge us on was our ability to reduce the
frequency with which those events occurred. And they agreed to
do that.
With the broad based support that we got from the
legislature coupled with very public endorsements from my
Governor, Kathleen Sebelius, and our senior senator, Senator
Sam Brownback, we began a massive skills redevelopment effort
within our agency, trying to equip corrections officers,
corrections counselors, parole officers, and other individuals
working within our agency with a set of skills that would help
them become more effective in changing offender behavior, and
try and allow us to achieve the same level of performance that
we had on the containment side of the business. And those
skills, again, going back to some of the things that Mr.
Thompson mentioned, help us identify who to target for the
interventions, what specific issues to target with them, and
how we should go about addressing those issues. In our jargon
risk needs and responsivity are the terms that we use.
But as recently as 2007 the Kansas prison population was
still projected to grow quite dramatically because of the high
level of probation revocations, people coming in from the front
end of the system. And I know Representative Madden laughs at
these numbers because there are not enough digits in the prison
population, and not enough zeroes in the budget. But we were
looking at growing our prison population by over 2,000 in the
next decade, and seeing an additional half a billion dollar
investment on the part of our state to house and supervise
those individuals. And for a state with a population the size
of Kansas those are huge numbers.
In response to that, our legislature, after seeing the
preliminary results of our work on the parole side of the
business that I just shared with you, made a policy decision
that rather than expand prison capacity they would invest an
additional $4 million, on top of the roughly $15.5 million that
they put into our local community corrections programs, to try
and allow them to put in place the same strategies that we used
at the back end of the system with people at the front end of
the system. That was Senate Bill 14 in our 2007 legislative
session. It also created some modest incentives for prisoners
to address the issues that contributed to their incarceration.
And it increased their opportunity to earn time off their
sentence if they were convicted of certain lower level crimes.
The Council of State Governments in an independent estimate
performed for our legislature concluded that Senate Bill 14
will allow my state to avoid an additional $80.2 million in
additional costs over a five-year period.
We have not been immune from the economic problems that are
facing this country. And we are experiencing some of the issues
that Mr. Thompson referred to. We are having to undo,
currently, some of the things that we put in place that helped
us achieve these results. But I am hopeful that based on our
experience when the economy does turn around we will have a
roadmap to rebuild what we had in place, and then improve upon
that performance.
I appreciate the opportunity to come and share our
experience with you today.
[Written statement of Secretary Roger Werholtz follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Werholtz. Mr. Madden.

Mr. Madden Opening Statement

Mr. Madden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wolf,
members of the Subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today to
talk a little bit about what Texas has done in Justice
Reinvestment. Our strategies, which really did work across
party lines in a bipartisan manner, to reduce recidivism and
increase our public safety, and particularly to help our Texas
taxpayers.
I got started in this, I was chosen Chairman of the
Corrections Committee in 2005. And was given the instruction,
basically, to look at the cost of prisons, because they cost a
lot to build. I started looking at them, okay, if we are not
going to build new prisons what can we do? What differences can
we make in this whole system? I am neither a lawyer, nor
anybody that has been in the criminal justice system, and I do
not even have a prison in my district. But I had the challenge
that was there. And I heard some things from people in my
district. Because you would ask them, ``Well, who is in
prison?'' I have 157,000 prisoners in the State of Texas. It
matches pretty closely to the federal system, you know, the
federal prisons. We have 112 prisons. The 2,000 prisoners Roger
was talking about, that is about a two-week input in the State
of Texas' system, to put it in the scales of what we are
dealing with.
But how do we make those differences? Because what the
people were telling me is, and I got real quickly was that
there were two types of prisoners we had. There were the really
bad guys that really ought to be locked up for a long time, and
then there were the others that we were mad at. That they had
done something in violation of the law that hurt some people.
That, you know, made them mad, but would not have that much
effect on them.
And I started asking the question of people out there in my
district, and I am a conservative Republican. I started asking
them where, you know, who are these guys that are out there?
How many of you have family members that were or are in the
prison system, or involved in the drug programs? How many of
you went to school with somebody that you know? And how many of
you did, have grown up with or grown up playing sports in this
community, or had people you worked with, in that category? And
where they really bad guys? Or were they people who had made
mistakes and deserved those kinds of second chances?
And I will tell you, yes, we certainly ran into some that
were really bad guys. But the vast majority of them said, you
know, they had some pretty good redeeming qualities. They just
made some terrible mistakes. And what can we do? What are the
differences that we can make?
So we started looking at, Texas has a history of spending
lots of money on building prisons. As I said, I have got
157,000 prisoners right now. The 112 facilities that we have
out there we spent over, almost $2.5 billion in twenty years to
expand our prisons. And we went into the 207 legislative
session with a projection that we were going to have to build
about 17,000 new prison beds by the year 2012. And that we had
in our budget projection, in our budget that we had prepared by
the governor, we had three new prisons costing just under $600
million would be the additional cost of building those prisons
to hold the first wave of those 17,000.
I worked closely with a lot of people. This was more of a
legislative thing that we looked than it was coming in from the
Governor, or coming from the prison system itself, but coming
totally within the legislature. And I worked very closely with
my compadre in the Texas Senate, Senator John Whitmire, who is
a Democrat. He is the Chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice
Committee. And we did a lot of, we requested a lot of technical
assistance, particularly anything we could get from the Council
of State Governments and their Justice Center, to get us the
information on what works. What can we do? If I am going to
control the prison population I have got to do one of two
things. I have either got to keep people from coming back in,
or I have got to stop them from coming in the door in the first
place.
And so, what are the programs? What do those things that we
found, and at our request they conducted an analysis of the
state prison population and identified several key factors that
drove the growth. Low rates of parole, high rates of
recidivism, and a shortage of treatment programs and capacity.
It was not so much that we did not have treatment programs. It
was that we did not have the capacity in them to handle them.
We started looking at the type of prisoners we have in the
State of Texas. 5,500 of those 157,000 that I have are there
for repetitive DWIs, and we do not take them obviously for
first and second ones. They are there at least three, four,
fifth, sixth, DWIs. They are habitual drinkers. And we had over
50,000 that were drug offenders. Most of them nonviolent first-
time offenders. We incarcerated large numbers of people with
mental illness, mental health problems. We are the dumping
grounds for the mental health system.
Before the end of the 2007 session we in the Texas
Legislature enacted a package of criminal justice reforms that
looked at the whole process. We looked at the parole process.
We looked at the probation process. We looked at what happened
to the people in prison. And to be honest, I looked way back in
learning how to break that cycle. And then doing the things we
did, we put in 800 new beds and residential treatment for
people on probation, supervision with substance abuse needs. We
opened up 3,000 slots for outpatient substance abuse treatment
for people on probation. Or we put 1,400 beds in intermediate
sanction facilities to divert probation and parole technical
violators from coming back to prison.
And one of the things we found out was people ended up in
prison not because of another offense, but because of either a
technical violation of probation or parole. Which in most cases
meant dirty urinalysis. In most cases they were not sent there
just because they had another offense. Those were sent for
other, those were clearly identified to us as repeat offenders
of some other type. But they were just technical violators.
They had not shown up for meetings. Usually a compound number
of those things that had happened to them.
We had 300 new beds in halfway house facilities for people
under parole supervision. We put 500 new beds in a facility for
our in prison treatment unit targeting these DWI people. So we
expanded the capabilities we had there from 500 to 1,000 beds
that we could treat these DWI offenders. Because we found out
in our system there were people actually coming in and they
were alcoholics, and they were not even getting our DWI
program. They got back out, and guess what? They came back in
the door. Because there had been no treatment program that had
been actually put into those people.
We had the same thing for substance abusers. We found out
that some of them were not getting in a timely manner the
substance abuse programs that they had. That is why we put in
1,500 new beds in a prison for intensive substance abuse
treatment programs. And we put in 1,200 slots for intensive
substance abuse programs in the state jail system. Our state
jail system takes our lesser offenders.
A portion of these savings were reinvested in strategies to
improve the outcome. So I looked at things that break the
chain, and we looked at a program called the Nurse-Family
Partnership. And I would highly advise any of the members here
to take a good look at a program that has the history and the
background and the statistics that it really works, and has a
difference not just in criminal justice and not just in family
violence. But it does help in schools, and it does help
programs for mothering. It is a tremendous program.
Since the enactment of these new policies our crime rates
are down, revocations are down, and our prison population is
stable. I am going to use one of the quick charts here, guys, I
actually ran up, which is this one right here which is the
Texas prison population and what has happened to it since we
did those things.
[Chart]
Mr. Madden. The top line, the red line, is the projection.
The blue line is what happened. And we can now say for certain
that what we did, and the things we have done, in all of those
areas, have led to the point where we capped out at about
$156,000 prisoners and we are down to somewhere about $154,500
right now because of the things we have done. And we have a
projection from our Legislative Budget Board, which is our
people that make the projections for us, that indicated to us
clearly that in the next seven years we will not have to build
one new prison bed in the State of Texas because of what we
have done. So what I am saying is, the strategy does work and
it works well.
[Written statement of Representative Jerry Madden follows:]

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Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Madden.
Mr. Madden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Well, it is all very impressive testimony.
Going back to that chart, just before I get into questioning.
Mr. Madden. I hope the Committee was provided----
Mr. Mollohan. Well, we would like to have a copy of it for
the record.
Mr. Madden. Absolutely.
Mr. Mollohan. Because I am going to ask you questions on it
for the record, and it would probably be hard for the record--
--
Mr. Madden. By the way, Kansas is down here someplace, down
here. And their numbers will be down here.
Mr. Mollohan. I am sorry?
Mr. Madden. Kansas' numbers will be somewhere down here on
the chart.
Mr. Mollohan. I see. Well, it is all relative, is it not?
Mr. Madden. It is. It is.
Mr. Mollohan. Where on this chart did you enact the
legislative initiative that----
Mr. Madden. The budget things we did were in our 2007
legislative session. It went into effect, most of them I think
went into effect in September 2007.

TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Some of them started a little earlier, because we were
working with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice all
along. They knew we could do some things on probation and
things that they could have done, so we were working as fast as
we can with those guys.
Mr. Mollohan. It is a very impressive line. What you have
actually done is leveled off the population, you kept it from
growing.
Mr. Madden. We have actually seen about a 1,500 prisoner
reduction.
Mr. Mollohan. There has been a bit of a reduction, you can
see. That is very impressive.
Let me ask you gentlemen, each of you. One of the premises
for reform which is particularly appealing to some, those who
are deficit hawks, is that these kinds of initiatives save
money. And I heard at least two witnesses testify that because
of the fiscal condition that states find themselves in, that
you have had to curtail this initiative. Well, if these
initiatives, these anti-recidivism initiatives, actually save
money, why would states choose not to pursue them, particularly
in a declining budget? Mr. Thompson, why do you not start.
Mr. Thompson. No, it is a puzzling situation. We feel you
cannot put a price on public safety.
Mr. Madden. You cannot put a price on public safety. We
want to make sure that we are maximizing public safety with the
options that we are talking about. But we do think that you can
spend less and get a better public safety outcome in a lot of
these instances. And you are absolutely, there are these,
targeting resources in a correct, and smart sort of way you can
actually get a better outcome in crime. So why are states not
doing it?
There are really two reasons. And it is back to my image
of, I gave Wisconsin as an example, it is a billion dollar
agency and they have no research capacity whatsoever. It has
all been eliminated. And what they know with their prison
population, it is growing very quickly. And there is a rush to
figure out a way to make sure that they have the additional
capacity to house those prisoners. And the only way they can
find the money to increase the prison capacity is essentially
to strip whatever funding existed from efforts that were based
on the community and the supervision. And it is an ironic and
troubling situation. But in the absence of any good hard data
and information, that is exactly what policy makers end up
doing.
Mr. Mollohan. So they need to know.
Mr. Madden. That is right.
Mr. Mollohan. I mean, there needs to be a real
communication. Are you satisfied that in fact that premise is
accurate? That there are savings and that they are
quantifiable?
Mr. Madden. Yes I think that we have the two terrific
examples here where Kansas has literally averted, you know,
over the ten years Secretary Werholtz was talking about a $500
million savings. And in the case of Texas, $800 million in
savings in terms of the construction plans they were looking
at.
Mr. Mollohan. Secretary Werholtz.

CLOSE PRISONS

Mr. Werholtz. Let me talk about our experience for a
minute. The cuts that we had to take would have been worse had
we not engaged in this effort. I was able to close three small
prisons because we did not need the beds, and close a cell
house, a major cell house, in a fourth prison and take, I do
not want to try to do the math in my head, but take a
significant number of beds offline because they were not
needed. In my explanation to our legislature about the cuts
that we were recommending, those were the ones that I testified
were the only cuts that I could recommend that would not have
some adverse impact on public safety.
I do not have the statutory authority to release prisoners.
So if I am required to house the population that I am dealt, I
have got two choices. I either seriously overcrowd what prisons
I keep on line and try to close some larger ones down. That
puts my staff at risk. It puts the offenders who reside in
those facilities at greater risk. It increases the probability
of us being unable to contain the population as well as we do.
The other alternative is to start to undo some of those
things. In fact, there was an editorial that was run in one of
our major papers in our state today where the editor had asked
me, ``Is this not a penny wise, pound foolish proposition?''
And I had to admit that yes, it was.
Mr. Mollohan. What was the proposition exactly?
Mr. Werholtz. Well, that we start to systematically undo
some of these things that in the long run are likely to
increase the prison population. Produce less favorable public
safety results and increase the expenses. It was what, I guess,
we considered the least onerous of a number of bad choices. My
hope is, and what our testimony has been in hearing with our
budget committees, is that I hope when the economy turns around
we remember what we did so we can start to put those things
back in place when the resources are there to do it.
The other thing that I would say is that while some of the
treatment and education options, and housing options, are going
away in our state temporarily, the skills that we infused into
our staff we hope will remain. And the partnerships that we
have built with other organizations at the state and local
levels we hope will remain. And what I think we are going to
learn in this state is whether it is the way we work with
offenders that is most important, or whether it is all of the
tool that we have available to provide for them that is most
important in contributing to public safety. I firmly believe
both are important. But I am hopeful that the skills that our
staff have acquired over the last few years and the
partnerships that we have built will mitigate the loss of some
of these really important resources.
Mr. Mollohan. Representative Madden.
Mr. Madden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In Texas' situation we
are still in our budget cycle right now. We are still in
session right now and we are going for another seventy-some
days and our budgets are still being worked on at the present
time. I am fairly optimistic that the money that we put in in
the last session is actually going to stay. We have had support
from the Governor's Office. We have had great support from the
legislative leadership in doing the things that we have done.
And I am very optimistic that most of those programs will in
fact stay in the budget.
Mr. Mollohan. Can you make arguments to our colleagues that
if you stay the course that you will save money?
Mr. Madden. Absolutely. We are obviously on that path and
we are beginning to get the statistics to show that. They know
the difference now that we did not spend in the $600 million
for the new prisons. We all recognize the fact that what we
have done, and that the programs seem to be working. Our crime
rate is down. Texas has the advantage of being big, and it has
a lot of statistics, a lot of numbers that we can go on. And
when we look at the numbers we clearly have a recidivism rate
that appears to be improving. That we have the programs that
appear to be working, particularly in things like our drug
courts. They are really, we have got enough testimony out there
from people that say these are really working.
And we spend $50 a day for each prisoner that we put in the
prison. So if I just cut 1,000 prisoners, that is $50,000 a day
that we are not spending on the prison system in Texas. And I
think my colleagues, the message came across very loud and
clear. We were both being smart, and we were being tough on
crime. We are putting the people in prison that need to be, but
putting other people where they needed to be also.
Mr. Mollohan. These incarcerated individuals that you are
releasing, is the state incurring a cost in pre-release
treatment?
Mr. Madden. The state has put money into these alcoholic
and drug treatment programs. We are obviously, that has an
expense to us. That was part of the $247 million that we added
into the budget.
Mr. Mollohan. So it is still a savings overall?
Mr. Madden. Absolutely. A substantial savings, over $600
million, in new prisons. And the fact that we would have had to
add that many more guards when we have, obviously, a shortage
of guards.

JUSTICE CENTER PARTNERS WITH STATES

Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Thompson, can you describe the process
through which the Justice Center partners with states?
Mr. Thompson. Yes. For us to be engaged in a state we need
to get a written letter of request from the governor, from the
legislative leadership, the speaker, senate president, chief
justice. And then we sit down with them and we ask several
questions. Is the state willing to work in a bipartisan way to
begin to analyze the situation? I should add to that, are they
willing to work with the local government stakeholders who play
such a key role in what is happening in their criminal justice
system? And then we also look to determine whether they will
provide us with access to all the information systems that we
need. There is a lot of information that is often sort of
sloshing around in state government. But they just have not
been able to actually look at it, analyze it, etcetera. And we
are going to need access to all of those different information
that are housed in the multiple agencies. And then we need a
commitment that they are actually going to use this information
in a constructive way. We do not want to get involved in a
situation where we become a political football. So once a state
can demonstrate adherence to all of that criteria, and then I
should also add that they will also take a financial stake. We
look for them to cover some of the costs that are associated
with this.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you. Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Mr. Chairman, I want
to thank you for the hearings. I think they have been very
good. I think it is the most extensive since I have worked in
this institution, that there has been so much time spent.
Also, Mr. Werholtz, if you vote for Sam Brownback for
Governor you will have one of the finest guys that I know.
Because he cares deeply. I mean, I have traveled with Sam on a
number of occasions and he really cares deeply about these
issues. And so it is not a partisan issue.
Also, I think all of you covered, I wanted to ask, but
before I do is, I thank whatever is done really has to be so
authentically, truly, bipartisan. And we have been talking
about maybe putting together some sort of commission to look at
things. And I am going to ask you if you have been in touch
with Pew, I am going to ask you a little bit about that. But if
you get a group of people that look at this who are either, you
know, the prosecutor who says I am going to lock everybody up
and throw away the key, or if you get the head of the ACLU,
forget it. It is over. It is history. It is finished. It will
never happen.
And I think, you know, I do not know what your background
was, I do not know what you are, and I do not really want to
know what they are. But I think if you can truly, if you could
get a Chuck Colson who really understands these issues, and
then get one of you men, or one of the three that were on the
panel before, the gentleman from Michigan, and you had the Doe
Fund. And some people who really are not in this political
business, and they are not so predictable that you know where
they are.
I think there is a unique opportunity. I think we are
coming to a storm economically, the figures that came out
today, the unemployment rate. And I think there is a later
report coming out this afternoon saying 25,000 state and local
jobs are gone. And I am sure a lot are going to be prison jobs.
So here is an opportunity to do something. So I do think it has
to be so truly bipartisan that it stands the test no matter who
comes at it.
The questions are several. One, I had asked before at the
last hearing, and the Council of Government had somebody, and
we have talked to the Pew people. Have you spoken to the Pew
people about putting a conference on in the fall or something
that really brings together the best minds? Where is that?
Mr. Thompson. Yes. We have spoken to The Pew Charitable
Trusts. They are a key funder of ours. Actually, there is a
representative from The Pew Charitable Trusts right here and--
--
Mr. Wolf. Who is that, just so I, okay.
Mr. Thompson. Jake Horowitz is here. And they would, well I
do not want to speak for them, but I know there is a huge
interest in having that conversation, about that meeting that
you are talking about. And we just need to get dates and we
will be meeting with your staff in a heartbeat to get that set
up.
Mr. Wolf. Okay. I think, too, the same thing would hold
true when you do that, that you have it, both sides, if you
will. People who really understand, who are not trying to, you
know, make a political statement one way or another. So that it
carries credibility. And I think that the Chairman has had a
great group of witnesses who can, you know, kind of
participate.
The other thing is, is it not time, and maybe both of you
two, I was going to ask you, what state is the best but I am
not going to ask you that.
Mr. Madden. We would have divided counsel on that for you.
Mr. Wolf. Well, I think it is interesting. Kansas is
different than, I mean, you have different areas and, you know,
you have rural area, different types. And you have Wichita,
where you have urban cities, you have Houston. But the
combination is good. But do you think it is possible that if
this conference works out well, that there can truly be a model
law best practices, so that it stands the test of time. That
any Secretary of Corrections who gets appointed will have a
place to go. This is the best practices. This is the best
practices on the issue of work. This is the best practices for
the issue of faith. This is the best practice, I mean, can we
establish, is there a model law, number one? But can we
establish a model law and the best practices that can withstand
the test from all different----

MODEL LAWS

Mr. Madden. I have got to tell you, when I was doing the
things that we were doing, Mr. Wolf, I did not find a model
law. Because each of the states were different. And each of our
demands and needs were different than the other states. And I
did go looking. I mean, obviously, there are organizations,
from the National Conference of State Legislatures, that look
at model laws. And we did not find anything that says, ``This
is a cookie cutter that we should be using.'' There are great
recommendations, though, that can be put into those. And it may
be that it is needed, it just was not there to go grab hold of.
So we had to, at the stage, at least in Texas, invent what
we thought was going to be the best practice. Now, we were
fortunate. There a couple of groups out there. The Washington
State people have a wonderful research group that does great
data on many of the programs. And they do great comparisons. I
would highly recommend that your staff look at what Washington
State has provided.
We did also have the advantage that Texas had such a group
until 2003. So we did have some of the statistics in Texas. And
fortunately, some of that is now with the Council of State
Governments with the Justice Center, that they are specifically
doing some of those additional data items. So that they are
there for us to get that kind of research that we needed. But
we did not have all that to fall back on. So what we
specifically did look at is, ``Okay, look, those things we have
in our state,'' say, ``How are they working? What is the data
that we have that shows whether they work or not?''
And we found that really the problem was not so much that
there were not programs out there, that there were not things
out there, that there just were not enough of them. That they
were not being used in the right manner. You were right when
you talked about the different groups that are out there. We
were fortunate in Texas. In 2005 when I started doing some of
these things, we looked at, ``Well, what are these groups
bringing in?'' And, you know, when you come into these hearings
you will hear from different groups from side, and different
groups from the other, and their think tanks come in with all
sorts of ideas.
Well, what I found when I got all sides in there, was that
with the exception of a few things on the extremes, that they
really breed in this area. That there are lots of those things
that those people who were intelligent, thoughtful individuals
agreed on. So between the 2005 and 2007 session that we had I
actually pulled those people in the room and said, ``You guys
work on this probation bill. I have got to do a probation
bill.'' It did not. It came one vote short. The Governor did
not agree with it.
But we came back up, and we passed it with a lot of other
things that we did. But I pulled them into the room and said,
``Okay, you guys pull together.'' And ACLU was part of it, and
so were some very conservative attorneys groups that said,
``Okay, there were lots of things you guys agreed on when you
talked to me about this. Sit down at the table and let us see
what those are.'' And that is actually what we pulled together,
was those things that actually they all, almost totally, agreed
on. And so we were able to do that kind of thing like you
talked about.
And you are absolutely right. It will become a point-
counterpoint if you do not do it so that all sides have that
place. But I will tell you, I have talked to both the
conservative and liberal think tanks around the country. And in
this particular area that is a lot of consensus on things that
do work. Things that work in the way of drug treatment
programs, things that work in the way of alcoholic treatment
programs, things that work in mental health. They can in fact
make big differences in this whole structure for us.
Mr. Wolf. Well, should, and then maybe Mr. Werholtz, should
there be if not a model law but a reservoir of knowledge and
information on everything that, whether the Council of
Government, that a new secretary can go to directly.
And that is the first, and to follow up it, and now both of
you, I want to ask you, if Kansas was so progressive on it or
whatever, and Texas, was this led by a bottom up? Or was there
one or two individuals in each that say, you know, William
Wilberforce, who abolished the slave trade, who worked on
prison industries and reform in Great Britain, it was from a
man, or a group of men and women, who got together. It kind of
came back, so did Kansas come because of Texas? There were
three or four people who felt this burden? Or did it just, how
did it come about? One, tell me about the model, or having this
one place that everyone can go to. And then, how did both of
yours come about?
Mr. Werholtz. Well, I agree with Representative Madden that
there is no specific model piece of legislation. I think what
was most helpful for us was that our policy leaders made a very
explicit set of expectations for us.
Mr. Wolf. But what led them to do that?
Mr. Werholtz. I think it is different in each state. I
think in Kansas it probably was a bottom up movement to some
degree. But there was also a coalition because that was, you
know, something that Senator Brownback was working on at the
national level. And maybe we met in the middle. I am not really
sure I can tell you exactly how it evolved, but it did evolve.
What was really helpful for us was both my Governor and my
Senator saying to a group of legislators, and Senator Brownback
said it most clearly, he said, ``I want to see recidivism cut
in half in this country in the next five years, and I want it
to start in Kansas.'' Very simple, very straightforward.
If you look at the enabling legislation for my department,
that would take you in one policy direction. If you look at the
sentencing laws in my state, that would take you in a
completely different direction. So the thing that Congress can
do, the thing that state legislatures can do that does not cost
a penny, is set a clear sense of direction and expectation. And
resources are obviously necessary and very helpful. But it is
that set of expectations that is most helpful.
There is no single model out there. But what I would say is
set an expectation that says that whatever you do and whatever
you invest in will be based on the best evidence that is out
there of the strategies that work with offenders on the
particular issue that you want to address. You know, we
oftentimes will characterize things, that substance abuse
treatment works. Well, sometimes it does and sometimes it does
not. You have got to have the right model with the right
people, implemented in the right way at the right time. And you
have got to come back and monitor it constantly.
So a clear set of expectations on outcomes. Clear set of
expectations on how resources will be invested. And then, this
is a personal crusade I am on, but a way to collect the data
and compare it across jurisdictions. You heard Mike talk about
Wisconsin and the fact that they have no research capability
and no data. The information technology platform in my state is
over thirty years old. The one in California is even older than
that. The people that know how to program our platform are all
retired. And frankly, are dying off. And, you know, the federal
government has invested in a lot of criminal justice
initiatives. The one that comes to mind is the VOI/TIS
Initiative, Violent Offender Incarceration/Truth in Sentencing.
That changed the direction of criminal justice policy in this
country remarkably. And the federal government invested
billions of dollars. For a much more modest investment I think
you could modernize the information technology platforms in all
the states across the country, collect uniform data, get a
sense of what the results of your investment are, and provide
policy makers and practitioners like myself the tools to make
informed decisions.
Mr. Wolf. The last question is, what about the issue of
faith? Prison Fellowship is in my district. I have gone into a
number of prisons with them and without them. The men that I
have spoken to, both with them and also when I have gone in by
myself, faith has seemed to be, and I know there is one, or you
have some prisons, you have one or two prisons in Texas that
are heavily----
Mr. Madden. We have several.
Mr. Wolf. Can both of you talk about the impact of faith
and religion?

FAITH AND RELIGION

Mr. Werholtz. We have an IFI Program in our state as well,
Inner Change Freedom Initiative. It is the Prison Fellowship,
Chuck Colson program. We have over 800 volunteers who are
primarily faith-based that come in to assist them, which at the
size of ours that is one volunteer for every ten inmates. What
the science says about faith is that finding God, in whatever
way that you understand God, is probably not sufficient to turn
that person's behavior around. But it may be the doorway
through which that person walks to get all of the other
resources that they need to stand a bona fide chance of making
it in the real world. And if you look at, if you just look at
an IFI Program, The Inner Change Program, you look, you do not
listen to what is being said, you just watch what is going on,
it is exactly the same process that you would find in a
substance abuse therapeutic community. And what those faith-
based programs often bring are all of the other resources that
the person needs to survive: access to a job, access to
housing, access to pro-social support groups, all of the other
things that help people succeed. So from my point of view I do
not care if it is a religious experience, an educational
experience, an influential staff member. I do not care what it
is that hooks that person and gets them motivated to change
their behavior. But I need to be open to all of them because,
again, going back to that principle of responsivity, each of us
responds to something different. And you do not shut the door
on something that lets people in.
Mr. Madden. And I am going to say I totally concur with
what Roger just said. The faith-based units that we have in
Texas also offer the followup for their people. When they are
leaving prison they provide them with the mentoring, they do
provide them with someone in the community that can support
them. That is a major part of any of the programs they have
got. Because the critical steps are, yes, they may have found,
you know, they may have found their religious target that they
wanted to find. But what we have to do for them beyond that, I
believe, is make sure when they, that somebody is there when
they leave. That they have someone who does care about them,
because there are many of them that are, in our prisons that
have very few people who care about them on the outside. If
someone cares, if someone is helping them provide their way
into the community, takes care of those first few days when
they get back into the community and the changes that they have
in their life. And then in the long term there is a mentoring
support system. So the churches do a great job of doing that.
And we need to be encouraging them. And anything we can do
expand on their ability to do that. But it is like they are
changing one life at a time like we have to do.
Mr. Wolf. Well that would be the challenge. And that is
what Chuck Colson does, take a person out. Not just for the
three years they are in prison, but then the thirty years after
they get out. And so, anyway, I thank you.
Mr. Madden. And I would like to also say there are other
programs that do that, not just the faith-based programs. But
we have some other great substance abuse programs and other
treatment programs that are doing some of the same kinds of
things within their community, too.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Wolf. Mr. Serrano.
Mr. Serrano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me echo Mr. Wolf's comments on the fine set of hearings
you have been holding, and I am glad that my schedule of
chairing my own committee has allowed me to be here. Then I
will be disappearing soon for my own hearings, and I hope you
remember that I made an effort at the end of the session.
Mr. Mollohan. It is well documented.
Mr. Serrano. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. With excellent inquiry.

LATINO POPULATION

Mr. Serrano. A little inside baseball here, but from
chairman to chairman we understand.
Gentlemen, I want to thank you and join everyone in
thanking you for your testimony today and for the work you do.
It is such an important issue.
And I want to bring you to an issue that came up at another
hearing when the Federal Bureau of Prisons was here, and that
is the increase in the Latino population in federal prisons,
and we imagine throughout the state prisons. One-third of the
federal prison population, for instance, is Hispanic, and
Latinos were 40 percent of all those convicted of federal
crimes.
What we couldn't establish clearly at that hearing, at
least to my satisfaction, was--and this then speaks to the
state prisons as well--how many of these folks were there
because they are non-citizens who have committed other crimes
or--well let me backtrack a second.
It was clear that the increase was in non-citizen
Hispanics. So were they there because they had committed other
crimes which put them in prison? Or, and this is where I
couldn't get a good answer, and I don't say a straight answer,
because I don't think they had the information, was a largely
significant number of those folks in prison for immigration
related issues?
Which then would speak to your whole strength and your
argument that some people should not be in prison for certain
situations, they should be elsewhere.
So number one, has there been an increase at your
localities in the Latinos population?
Secondly, is that in any way related to immigration issues,
and you feel they should be somewhere else and not in prison?
Perhaps getting into a situation which will make them real
criminals when they come out.
And just for the record, I know that to a lot of people in
the country entering the country illegally is a crime, and
certainly under our law it is, but we as human beings know that
that is not the same crime as my stealing something or killing
someone or assaulting someone. It is a desire for a better life
and in the process you break a law.
So anything you want to tell me on those numbers that I
presented to you on what you know in your states and speaks to
the federal issue.
Mr. Madden. Let me fire Texas first of all.
Yes, there has been an increase in Hispanic population, and
there has been a large increase in the Hispanic population in
Texas.
I don't believe, in fact most of our--we have very few
immigration related prisoners in the state prisons. They are
felony offenses, have to be, most of those would go that are
felony offenses would be in the federal system not in our state
system.
We have in our prisons, of that 157,000 population, we have
about 10,000 which we now call illegal aliens, okay, because
the difference not necessarily they were here illegally to
start with, but--I am sorry, the term is used criminal aliens,
because they are not U.S. citizens, and therefore we have them
as non-citizens, and they would be at some stage deported by
the state of Texas after they serve their terms, but they are
there for felony offenses, and that would not put them there
because of immigration status. But the number is just over
10,000. It varies every day but about 10,700.
Mr. Werholtz. Our experience I think is quite different
than Texas.
We have looked twice recently at the request of our
legislature, at the question about whether or not our prisons
were becoming flooded with illegal aliens.
We have about 8,500, 8,600 people in my prison system on
any given day. We can identify 80 that fit the criminal alien
definition, and every one of them was actually convicted of
another offense, a criminal offense in Kansas.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement had approached us
about a program that they are taking a look at, actually
promoting quite actively, to remove criminal aliens from state
correction systems and deport them back to their country of
origin.
A number of states, I think in particular New York and
Arizona, have taken advantage of that, because that did remove
large numbers of prisoners from their system.
We have not, because first of all the number is so small,
and secondly, we had no assurance that they would not return
and re-victimize Kansas citizens.
And the kinds of offenses that were of concern to us were
obviously violent and sexual offenses, which is what they were
serving time for.
We do have a disproportionate incarceration issue. Latinos
and African Americans are disproportionately represented in our
prison system, but I don't think that immigration or illegal
immigration plays much of a role in our particular system.
Mr. Serrano. So then it is clear from your testimony that
the folks you know about are not there for any immigration
related issue, it is just that they happen to be here with also
an immigration issue, and they have committed other crimes.
Mr. Werholtz. Yes, sir.
Mr. Serrano. I have a quick question then. With that growth
in population, and I am sure that is a challenge in terms of
creating ESL programs or other services within the system, what
can you tell me about that?
Mr. Werholtz. It is a huge problem for us. One of the
primary issues is that most of our prisons are located in rural
areas that are predominantly white. It is extremely difficult
for us to recruit Spanish speaking employees.
If you look at our prison population, about 35 percent of
it is African American. If you look at our employee base about
11 percent of our employees are African American. That is
greater than the proportion of the state's population, but
significantly lower than the proportion of our prison
population.
And one of the things that we firmly believe is that our
facilities are safer and easier to run when the staff looks and
talks the same language as the people that we incarcerate. You
know, if nothing else in terms of Spanish language, our being
able to understand what is being said by the prisoners that we
supervise is critical. And when we can't do that, that creates
a security problem for us.
It is something that we are struggling with, and I don't
have a good solution for it yet, because my prisons are in the
wrong place to recruit the kinds of employees that I need to
run the system as well as I could. I have got to figure out a
way to attract people there that I need.
Mr. Serrano. Let me ask one last question.
Do you recall, I should know the date, it was in the 80s,
the Mariel boatlift, the folks that came from Cuba. That is one
of America's best kept secrets, is that a large number of those
folks are still in prison because they were not deported to
Cuba. They were sentenced here, in some cases for coming here
illegally, although it was a boat lift, and they didn't fit
into the category that most Cubans fit into, which is if they
arrive here and they touch land they can stay, apply for
citizenship and become a citizen in two years rather than five
for everyone else under the Cuban Adjustment Act. But many of
them are still around.
And I know Texas had a population, Georgia had a
population, and some other states. And I was wondering, I am
always trying to find out where are these folks? But many of
them are still in prison 20 odd years later after serving--in
many cases they served two or three years, but no one knew what
to do with them after that, so they kept them in prison. Do you
know anything about that?
Mr. Werholtz. I don't know for sure where they are. I
visited the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth at--and this
has been probably 10, 12 years ago--where a large number of
Cubans were incarcerated, and if I were to speculate, I would
guess that they are still residing somewhere in the Federal
Bureau of Prisons. I doubt it that they are in state prisons.
Mr. Madden. I am not familiar with any, but I will be glad
to get you the answer and the Texas program criminal justice
give me an answer if there are any of them that were related
from that time period or here for immigration violations. I
would be glad to get that.
Mr. Serrano. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Serrano.
Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CELL CONSTRUCTION

Mr. Thompson, let me ask you. What is the average cost of
cell construction?
Mr. Thompson. I am sorry, of what?
Mr. Fattah. The average cost of prison cell construction.
Mr. Thompson. Oh, boy, well it does vary a lot in different
states.
Mr. Fattah. Right.
Mr. Thompson. So I would be----
Mr. Fattah. Well give me the----
Mr. Thompson. I think always in Pennsylvania what I recall
Secretary Beard saying is that a medium security facility, just
the construction, bricks and mortar, of about 500 per facility,
I recall him saying $250 million. And I want to double check
that to make sure that I have got that right.
And then I guess the second thing they would always tell me
is, and again, defer to Secretary Werholtz here, but is that
the construction is just a fraction of the overall cost, that
what they are really looking at are the operating costs. That
is really where the major money goes down the road.
Mr. Fattah. Then Mr. Secretary, why don't you help me with
this then?
Mr. Werholtz. Based on Kansas numbers, depending on the
kind of bed that you are building, whether it is a minimum
security dormitory style bed or a maximum security single cell
bed, I think the figure you are looking for is probably the
latter. That will run $100,000 or more to build a high security
bed in a relatively low cost state like Kansas.
We have had success in bringing beds on line for fractions
of that when we are adding them to existing facilities. But any
time you are building a new facility from scratch the costs are
very high in that $100,000 figure for a maximum or medium
security cell would run around $100,000.
In our practice, and I think this is an important point to
remember, we will single cell a maximum security prisoner, we
will double cell a medium security prisoner. So you get two
beds for the price of one, depending on the custody. And it is
those little nuances that you have to keep track of when you
are trying to identify costs.

OPERATING COSTS

Mr. Fattah. What about the operating costs? The issue that
was raised?
Mr. Werholtz. Our average operating costs in Kansas is
about $25,000 per bed, per year.
Mr. Fattah. Go ahead.
Mr. Thompson. And I was going to say, and that number will
vary significantly from one state to the next. You know, you
look at some of the northeastern states, for example, that will
be significantly more expensive.
But one of the things that is always frustrating I know for
the legislators that we serve is how difficult it is for them
to compare across state lines. Because one state will
incorporate healthcare costs in that figure, another state will
not. Another state will include bonding and also the capital
improvements to it, another state will not.
So there used to be a list of sort of how much it cost per
inmate in each of the different states and they stopped keeping
it because a lot of people felt it was so misleading because
you were comparing apples to oranges.
Mr. Fattah. Yes. To my colleague in the state house there
in Texas. So you have got a prison system that approximates or
is as large as the entire federal system.
Mr. Madden. We do.
Mr. Fattah. You got a lot of people in prison.
Mr. Madden. We do. We have 157,000 that are in the prison
systems. I have about 430,000 on probation. I have just under
80,000 that are on parole. So if you put them all together, I
have got a fairly large, fairly substantial percentage of the
total population in the state of Texas. It is actually in one
of those categories that fit within the whole departments that
we are dealing with.

COST OF BUILDING A PRISON

Mr. Fattah. Now what does it cost you to build a prison
cell?
Mr. Madden. Prisons for us, we had in our budgetary request
during the last session for three new facilities about 6,000
beds. It was going to be just under $600 million for the
construction costs alone.
We figure for a maximum or medium security facility, which
holds somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 prisoners, that the
cost for those is 250- to $300 million each. So when you are
looking at expanding a prison in Texas that is about the cost.
Texas is notoriously cheap on our expenses. We spend about
$50 per prisoner per day. Somewhere around $18,000 a year is
our cost per prisoner, per day. That is very low compared to
many of the other states. You are going to find that many of
the others have a significantly higher cost than we do.

FEMALE PRISONERS

Mr. Fattah. Now one of the not to often mentioned realties
of prison in America today is that the increase in female
prisoners. Is that----
Mr. Madden. We talked a little bit about that. Because we
have some, the numbers are growing. It is still a very small
percentage. I think Roger says in Kansas it has gone up a
couple percentage every year, but it is a comparatively small
number of our prisoners.
Mr. Fattah. What has been your experience?
Mr. Werholtz. It represents about seven percent of our
population now.
Mr. Fattah. Well what is the increase over say five years
ago? Has it doubled, has it tripled?
Mr. Werholtz. As a proportion of the population it is
probably only gone up one or two percent.
Mr. Fattah. I am not asking as a proportion. I am talking
about the percentage increase of female prisoners to what it
was five years or so ago.
Mr. Werholtz. I would have to look that up and get it to
you. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, and I
don't want to wing it.

CHILDREN IN PRISON

Mr. Fattah. Okay. Now one of the things that we know about
prisoners is many of them have children.
Mr. Werholtz. Yes.
Mr. Fattah. And their children are the most likely people
in our country to end up as an inmate themselves. The numbers
are just enormous in terms of the likelihood of the children of
prisoners who end up being prisoners.
Is that a part of the work that you now are looking at? I
know I have a former mayor who has been spending some time out
in Texas----
Mr. Madden. Yes.
Mr. Fattah [continuing]. Working on this issue.
Mr. Madden. Which mayor do you have in?
Mr. Fattah. Mayor Good.
Mr. Madden. Okay.
Mr. Fattah. He has been doing some work around in Texas and
a few other states and working with the children prisoners.
Mr. Madden. Yes.
Mr. Fattah. And trying to target programs.
Mr. Madden. Wonderful program with Amachi that they are
doing out there.
Mr. Fattah. Right, Amachi.
Mr. Madden. In fact we have had that in Texas.
Mr. Fattah. You want to comment on that Mr. Thompson?
Mr. Thompson. Yes, sir. Our board, and Representative
Madden is one of those members, as well as other leaders have
highlighted the exact issue that you are talking about, and we
will be presenting an action plan that provide recommendations
about how to improve outcomes for those children, and we are
looking to do that in the next couple of months.
Mr. Fattah. Can you share with the Committee what the
percentage--absent any change, what the percentage of these
children who would now become inmates in prison.
Mr. Thompson. You know, there is a number of studies that
people sort of elude to when they talk about the likelihood of
someone going to prison or jail if they have a parent
incarcerated, but a lot of people have questioned some of that
research.
So there is different studies out there, but there is no
definitive study that is out there that provides that number.
But I would be happy to refer you to some of the stuff that is
there after the hearing.
Mr. Fattah. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.

INQUIRIES FROM STATES

Mr. Thompson, your testimony indicates that you get
inquiries, expressions of interest, on a regular basis from the
states. How many of them do you follow up with, and is that a
function of continuing interest or resources?
Mr. Thompson. Yes. We are getting inquires constantly. As a
matter of fact, just the general assembly in North Carolina is
asking Representative Madden to go and testify asking for us to
give explanations of what is happening. I was in Columbus last
week. I was in Concord, New Hampshire the week before that.
We are getting one request after the other, and we have
what we call a queue that we have established where we try to
prioritize those states that are closest to meeting all the
criteria that I described earlier. But we ourselves are not
able to meet all the demand that is there for this kind of help
under Justice Reinvestment.
Mr. Mollohan. Do states pay a fee for this service?
Mr. Thompson. They do. We prioritize those states that can
actually contribute to the cost of the study and the analysis
that we do and the follow up work, but then the lion share is
actually picked up by folks like the few charitable trusts and
the Bureau of Justice System and other funders.
Mr. Mollohan. That fund the council?
Mr. Thompson. That give us funding support, yes.
Mr. Mollohan. Or the Justice Center.
Mr. Thompson. Right. But at the end of the day those
dollars don't go far enough for us to create the capacity to
meet the need in all the states.

ASSISTANCE FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Mr. Mollohan. Do you get any assistance from the federal
government, the Department of Justice, or any other entities?
Mr. Thompson. We do receive some support from BJA, yes, the
Bureau of Justice Assistance.
Mr. Mollohan. What percentage of your budget is dependant
upon support from Justice?
Mr. Thompson. I would say in terms of the work that we do
under Justice Reinvestment, you know, I would say almost about
a quarter, you know, comes from the Bureau of Justice
Assistance.
Mr. Mollohan. Well why would states not--well let me
understand your testimony.
Is your testimony that you are not able to follow up with
some states because the Justice Center just doesn't have the
resources to do that?
Mr. Thompson. Yes.
Mr. Mollohan. If it were a fee for service, why wouldn't
the Justice Center have resources to follow up with any
particular state that wanted to hire its services?
Mr. Thompson. That is something we are definitely asking.
But you know, you hear about this incredible fiscal crunch that
states are talking about where they are laying off staff, for
example, and it is very hard for them to justify bringing in
outside expertise or consultants. And so the best they can do
is come up with a very limited percentage of the overall cost.
We have not had a state that has been able to come up with
the entire cost of the assistance that we are talking about
providing.
Mr. Mollohan. I know that it has to be different with every
state, because they are different systems and just on the basis
of scale, but can you give the Committee some sense of how much
it would cost a state to have the benefit of your services from
soup to nuts, beginning to end?
Mr. Thompson. Sure. Yes. It does vary significantly,
because you will get some states that just don't have much of
an infrastructure at all in terms of data, and when you are
working with, you know, just paper base files, for example, it
is a much more----
Mr. Mollohan. When you do your assessments?
Mr. Thompson. Right. I mean, so much of what our time is
spent is analyzing data and pulling it from a number of
different information systems. And you will take some states
that are fairly sophisticated, like in Texas, for example, and
other states where you are dealing with paper base files, and
so that is a factor.
The time, you know, it is typically 12 to 36 months, you
know, because we want to make sure that there is some follow
up, to make sure that the results that were projected were
actually realized.
So recognizing that there is all this variation, I would
say on average, you know, we look at about 250- to $500,000 a
state.
Mr. Mollohan. What is your annual budget?
Mr. Thompson. For the Counsel of State Governments Justice
Center our budget is, we are expecting to close out this fiscal
year at about $5.4 million.
Mr. Mollohan. And so if I were to divide that by that
number that would give me eight states you could deal with? Or
is that----
Mr. Thompson. Boy my math is not very good, but that is
what we have all these expert researchers for.
Mr. Mollohan. Well that is not a lot I guess is the point.
Mr. Thompson. But I will say that we have a number of other
projects. We do a lot of work around the mentally ill and other
issue areas.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Going back to a couple lines of
questioning, Mr. Wolf's and a couple other folks here I think.
I take it you feel that you have access to best practices.
That is the way I think might be the best way to describe what
you have.
Mr. Thompson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mollohan. You have best practices that you can apply to
a state situation after you conduct an assessment.
Mr. Thompson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Mollohan. And you then go into this interactive mode
where you fashion recommendations based upon your best
practices and the state circumstance. And I suggest that a one
size fits all model just wouldn't quite work; is that correct?
Mr. Thompson. That is right.
Mr. Mollohan. Where are we on the best practices? If we
don't have a model that works for everyone, where are we in
terms of best practices?
Do you feel comfortable that we currently have the best
practices that, if states chose, they could apply and
significantly improve their correctional systems and the issue
of recidivism?
Mr. Thompson. Yes, I do think we know a lot about what
works. And Representative Madden referenced something that the
Washington State Institute of Public Policy put out that talks
about the effects of well designed interventions.
The trick is, as Secretary Werholtz was saying, is making
sure that the program that you provide actually adheres to all
of the principles of that effective program, and then that you
apply that program to the right population.
So there are, for example, particular mental health
interventions that are very effective. You need to make sure
that that mental health service that you provide is being
integrated oftentimes with substance abuse treatment. We need
to make sure that there is integrated mental health and
substance abuse treatment. But that treatment isn't often
available in the community. And what oftentimes is you will pay
for two parallel treatment models. Well that is not going to
have the same impact.
And then furthermore, we need to make sure we are targeting
particular service models to the populations that need it. And
too often what we find is people put together a service package
and then they end up targeting a population that didn't need
that particular service package, and then you do not see the
results that had been projected.
So I think we know a lot about what works, but actually
then translating that into practice, both in terms of the
program model and then targeting the right population, that is
where we hit a snafu, and I think that is where the data
becomes so important.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. If I may.
Mr. Mollohan. Please.

Mr. Wolf Questions

Mr. Wolf. Let me try and answer the question from a
recipient's point of view, too.
The experience that we had with Mike and his folks and some
of the other resources that our benefactors brought to bear was
that they were willing to come to the State of Kansas, spend a
considerable amount of time, and help people think through what
was best for us, both at the state, but even more importantly,
the local level.
Our probation system is a very fragmented one, and it is
locally based. We have got 31 different community corrections
programs. And we required with that $4 million addition that
our legislature gave to us, that each of those community
corrections programs identify for us how they were going to
achieve the 20 percent reduction in recidivism that the
legislation asked for. What strategies they were going to use
to accomplish that. What the evidence was behind those
strategies.
And for folks that don't have a lot of built-in resources,
just the fact that we could get folks to come in who really
understood the business of analysis, and understood the
business of facilitating thought around criminal justice issues
moved us forward so much faster.
I do have a research department now in my agency. It took
me four years to recruit her.
These people are so hard to find and they have so many
choices. Getting them to come to a state that has--Kansas is
not boring, but it has got a boring reputation. Getting an
academic to consider coming to Kansas and work for us is no
small feat. And the fact that Mike would bring people and the
National Institute of Corrections would bring people to our
state to help us think this through was enormously valuable.
Mr. Madden. Mr. Chairman, if I may also add.
On our Texas side just one of the things that we really
need to do and the legislature is really looking at, and that
is results. What results do you get from these programs?
Because the research has got to be done, but then we have
got to see what is working and be able to go in and remove the
programs are aren't, strengthen and reinforce the ones that
are, and work on the ones that need working on to be helped on.
Because there are a lot of wonderful programs out there, but we
got to know which ones they are.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes.
Mr. Madden. And the vast number of people that he is
talking about and the vast number of programs, you have got to
pick out which ones are really working and which ones are
failing.
Mr. Mollohan. Good point. Mr. Thompson, how much followup
is there with the states, and do you ever let them go? Do you
stick with them?
Mr. Thompson. It is interesting. We think that the followup
is very important. And I think, you know, you get people like
Secretary Werholtz and Representative Madden who are really
interested in tracking the results. And we found I think
sometimes that the legislature in other states quickly wanted
to run on to the next problem and the executive branch wanted
to be sort of left alone to implement. And what we have
realized as a result of that is that we need to start making a
clear condition of our work. That there will be a phase three
of this, which is, we are going to stick around for the next
one to two years to make sure the results that were projected
are actually realized.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE

Mr. Madden. One of the things we stuck in our legislation
was a criminal justice oversight committee in the legislature,
which specifically has the task of going in and looking at
program to program results, analyzing the program, and
eventually getting the results.
The problem you have with recidivism studies is, hey it is
three years after they left the prison. When they leave your
prison today you have got at least three years before you get
decent data on whether you have been successful or not.
Mr. Mollohan. You know somehow I can just see you pulling
these people together at the beginning and keeping them
together and marshalling this and pushing them and prodding
them in Texas. I can just see you doing that.
Mr. Wolf.

OTHER STATES ASKING FOR HELP

Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In defense of Kansas though, and I know you meant it in
defense.
My daughter biked across America in Bike America, and when
she got home she said, ``Dad, the people in Kansas were the
nicest people'', in any state that she had been in. She stayed
in churches. I mean, she said, ``It was just amazing.'' Now
your mountains are not like the Shenandoah and the Blue Ridge,
but the people are kind of nice. So I know you meant it as a
compliment to the state.
Has Virginia asked you for any help? Has Virginia been in
touch with you?
Mr. Thompson. We have gotten inquires from some folks in
Virginia, yes.
Mr. Wolf. I mean, but so they haven't asked you though to
come in and help them.
Mr. Thompson. Well we have not been persuaded that Virginia
will meet all the criteria.
Mr. Wolf. And why is that necessary? Because we are going
to talk to that. What does that have to be?
Mr. Thompson. Well, I think, you know, we need to get
written requests from the leadership across state government.
Mr. Wolf. Now what does that take? What--when you say
leadership across, who?
Mr. Thompson. Typically we look for a written request from
the governor, the speaker, and the senate president, as well as
some signal from whether the chief justice will be involved.
And we have come down and presented before the legislature,
as well as talked to the governor, and they are certainly aware
that they are facing a significant challenge with the growth in
their prison population.
Mr. Wolf. We are. Yes. And you are pretty close. I mean,
Richmond would be a piece of cake for you to be. So well, we
will----
Mr. Thompson. Yes, and I may be going back soon.
[Laughing.]
Mr. Wolf. No, I don't know, and maybe not. I mean, because
they just adjourned, but I think I would as we go over the time
talk to them and see if we could, you know, get them
interested.
You know, in closing I wanted to ask you about prison,
prison rape.
Bobby Scott and I were authors of the bill on prison rape,
and this has been a great hearing, but in the reality of the
warm sunshine of a Friday afternoon versus the cold reality of
the rainy Monday morning, this is really pretty tough stuff.
And I know when Mr. Scott and I put the bill in we had
tremendous resistance from the states. We had tremendous
resistance from the Justice Department in the previous
administration. They didn't want to do it. And finally, you
know, it passed.
What are the conditions now in state prisons and prisoners
with regard to the issue of prison rape, and has the
legislation made an impact? Do you know anything about it? What
has it meant?
Mr. Werholtz. The legislation has made an impact both good
and bad in my view. I am probably one of the people who was
part of the resistance, and I need to be up front about that.
I don't know of a corrections administrator, any of my
peers, who would think that it is okay to do that kind of
thing. And I think that as a group we have worked very hard to
make sure that prisons are safe for the people who have to live
in them, as well as the people who have to work in them. And we
get very defensive when it comes across to us that people think
that we are not paying attention to those issues.
That being said, I think it is also disingenuous on our
part if we say it doesn't happen, and that there are not places
where serious attention needs to be given.
One of the concerns that we have about--and when I say we I
should say those of us--me and my peers have--are concerns
about what the standards are going to be for the Prison Rape
Elimination Act when they are issued and what the costs will
be.
And the version of the standards that we have seen are in
our view so expensive that we think it may have the opposite
result of what was intended. And it may cause states to simply
say we will pay the penalty on the grant funds, because it is
too financially burdensome to try and conform to the
requirements as we have seen them.
I have to emphasize, we haven't seen the final version.
The other problem that we have had with the definition is
what all gets categorized within the definition of rape.
In my state it is a felony for any staff person to engage
in any sort of sexual activity with an offender, either in
prison or in the community. I think we have taken a very
aggressive stance against that.
It is also in our understanding defined that any sexual
contact between offenders gets classified as rape, whether or
not that contact was in quotes, ``consensual,'' because they
don't have the ability legally to give consent.
But it has gotten I think characterized as a power dynamic
that we don't know whether in fact this is truly consensual,
whether it is an exchange for goods and services, whether it is
extorted, those kinds of things, but the definition has gotten
so broad that--and the development of the standards now has in
our view been so closed that we are frankly concerned about
what the ultimate outcome is going to be.
And my Association, the Association of State Correctional
Administrators has asked for a couple of things to try and get
what we think is a more balanced look that is really based on
data as opposed to based on anecdotal testimony. And one of the
things we have asked for is for the Centers for Disease Control
to take a look at the transmission of communicable diseases,
and particularly sexually transmitted diseases that occurs in
prison.
We think that that evidence will show that there is not a
lot of that transmission occurring in prison, and that a lot of
it came in with the individuals from the community.
So I have got very mixed feelings about it. I think the
motivation for it was well taken and it was something that was
needed to draw attention to the issue, but I am more worried
about how it is going to be operationalized at this point.
Mr. Wolf. Do you have----
Mr. Madden. In the state of Texas obviously legislative--I
am talking the legislative side--we certainly do support the
legislation and the intent of the legislation. And I think my
problem----
Mr. Wolf. One of the cases we based it on was a Texas case.
Mr. Madden. I know, absolutely. And we do support the
legislative intent and the desire you had there.
I honestly have not spoken to my director--the corrections
director specifically about it, other than to ask about the
various things when the people were down and doing testimony on
it this last time, and why did Texas not do as well in some of
the performances and some information, and so that kind of
conversation we have had with him.
It was, in fact, one of the things that kicked me off into
the thing when we had a little problem with our Texas Youth
Commission two years ago when we had to completely restore
them, put them in a conservatorship and everything else, was
one of the first questions I asked, because I was asking the
same questions to the Department of Criminal Justice I asked my
Youth Commission, ``Where is your PRIA money?'' And they said,
``Well we don't have any problems like that at the Youth
Commission.'' And we quickly found out that looking at any
kinds of data that they had that they clearly did and did not
have that.
So I want to commend you for the legislation and we will
certainly get you some more information from Texas.
Mr. Wolf. Good. Did counsel have any comment?
Mr. Madden. Let me add one other thing, Mike.
One of the things too we found when we dealt with the Youth
Commission is what a great help cameras were in the facilities,
and we put like 7- or 8,000 cameras in our Youth Commission
facilities out of that to make sure the security----
Mr. Wolf. Did that come out of the----
Mr. Madden. That came out of the problems we had with the
Youth Commission and the thing we also did two years ago.
Besides all the other things we did in Criminal Justice, we
did some major reforms in our Texas Youth Commission.
But we also then started asking the questions to our
Department of Criminal Justice, well how many cameras have you
got? In our 15 youth facility locations we have about 8,000
cameras watching. In our Texas Department of Criminal Justice
we only have about three quarters of that, totally in our 112
facilities.
It is much harder to say that something did or did not
happen if you don't have the capabilities to see that. That is
one of the things we are pushing our Department of Criminal
Justice on this time, at least in many of our facilities, is to
expand the use and the monitoring of cameras within the
facilities. Because it makes the prisoners safer, it makes the
guards safer, it makes, you know, a lot of investigations a lot
easier to do if you have got the pictures if something happened
one way or the other. So it is a lot easier to prove that
something did or did not happen.
Because we had one of the witnesses came into us in 2007
talking about prison rape, and the fact that we had like 60
times more than Ohio and 30 times more than California. And we
quickly found that we reported a lot more than Ohio and
California did, and we did believe that despite the fact that
we may have two or three--well, we did have the same number of
prisoners in California roughly and about twice as many as
Ohio, that there was any significant difference in the make up
of the prisoners that would indicate that we have that much
larger a problem in Texas than they did in any of the other
prison systems. So we certainly look at reporting the incidents
is extremely important also.
Mr. Wolf. Does counsel have any comment?
Mr. Thompson. Just that I would say that when the
legislation was passed we worked very closely with your office
and Congressman Scott's and others and were ultimately found
that the legislation--we really appreciated how it was data
driven and this comprehensive study that it authorized and set
in motion and the way that it set up the commission, and so we
were very supportive of it when it was enacted.
Since then we have largely just deferred to our members to
find out what is been going on. We have not had much on a
conversation since then.
Mr. Wolf. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Serrano.
Mr. Serrano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have a
question. I want with your permission to tell a quick story,
which I think you might appreciate.
About oh, ten years ago a group of people from the City
University Community came to me and they said, ``We have been
doing some research and we found out that you are the longest
serving elected official in the history of the United States of
Puerto Rican background, and we want to celebrate that, a whole
weekend where students come in and they speak to you and you
tell them what it is been like, and we want it to be an
educational thing.'' So if you are early enough to remember the
old Jack Benny show, another guy shows up who was invited and
goes, ``Psst, don't do it.'' I said, ``Why not?'' He said,
``You are going to be embarrassed.'' I said, ``Why is that?''
He said, ``Because you are not the longest serving.'' I said,
``There is no one longer than me in Pennsylvania and New
Jersey, Connecticut, and New York.'' He says, ``Yes, but there
is one in Kansas.'' I said, ``Kansas, there is no Puerto Ricans
in Kansas.'' He says, ``This one is.''
Turns out that a young man from the Bronx or from New York
City had joined the military after he got his degree--they know
who it is, and I will mention the name, because I hope I am
right. He had joined the military, he had landed in Kansas
after he finished. He met a local girl, married her. Got
involved in the community, served three years in the state
legislature in the state assembly--the house--and 28 in the
state senate.
At that point I would have been embarrassed, I was not the
longest running. Luckily he was promoted to the parole board
[Laughing.]
So it fits, and now I can have my party. Because now I beat
him.
But Paul Feliciano, am I right? I mean and when I told
Senator Brownback he said, ``Yeah Paul.'' He says, ``He is
Puerto Rican?'' I said, ``Well maybe he operated under don't
ask; don't tell.'' [Laughing.]
But I shared the same story with the Murgia family who have
been at every White House you can think of, and I think there
are what, three judges in the family or something? And they
said, ``Paul's Puerto Rican?'' I said, ``Okay, I am not going
to touch this.'' [Laughing.]
That is my story.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Serrano.
Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. To wrap up, Mr. Chairman, let me first of all
commend Congressman Wolf for his legislation. I think it was
right on point and I was pleased to be supportive of it.
And Senator Webb from Virginia has just announced major
legislation to have a look at our entire penal system in the
country. Because he concludes what I think most right thinking
people have concluded, is the fact that we imprison more people
than any other country in the world. We still have not figured
out any real connection between this imprisonment and lowering
the crime rate, and we seem to be producing better criminals.
Since 90 plus percent of whoever we imprison eventually come
home, they don't seem to come home a lot better off than when
they were sent, and we invested a lot of money in this deal.
So I want to just say that I think that it must be
something in the, I guess the water in Virginia, if Senator
Webb is on this point now and Frank Wolf has been on this point
for a long time.
So I would thank the Chairman for having the hearing, and
thank the witnesses.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.
You have other resources. And I believe, Mr. Werholtz, your
testimony referred to assistance you receive from the National
Institute of Corrections; is that correct?
Mr. Werholtz. Yes.

NIC

Mr. Mollohan. I know that in the '09 budget that was asked
to be zeroed, which we didn't approve.
But can you describe for the Committee the assistance that
the state received from NIC and how it complimented what you
received from the Justice Center, and how that all played in
your reworking of your Justice System?
Mr. Werholtz. I would be glad to. And speaking for my peers
we are very glad that NIC is still around. It is a very
important resource for us.
Mr. Mollohan. Well that is good for you to get on the
record. Thank you.
Mr. Werholtz. Yes. The assistance that we get from NIC is
very diverse. We have the ability to go to them with requests
for, it typically comes in the area of technical assistance,
bringing personnel to Kansas, or taking Kansas to observe
something in another state.
So most of the direct assistance that we receive from them
is relatively modest in the amount. It may be somewhere between
$5,000 and $25,000 at each iteration, but it is very easy to
access. That is something that I think for us is really
important. It is a phone call followed up by a letter. We need
help in this area. We have a person in mind that we need to
bring to Kansas. Or can you suggest people who can help us on
the particular suggest?
That quick response is something that is very useful, and
they are very flexible. Because I may have something very
different than Brad Livingston in Texas or Jeff Beard in
Pennsylvania. You know, so they have tentacles out all over the
place to the best practice people. The researchers in the
country.
And the other thing that NIC does for us, and I am really
fortunate that I get to sit on one of the committees that
guides that, is that NIC, Bureau of Justice Assistance, both of
those agencies fund research, and so they help build the body
of knowledge that we rely on to identify what the best
practices are and how best to use them.
I don't know if I am being directly responsive to your
question, but they have been a great resource for us ever since
I have been with the department.
Mr. Mollohan. Well it is clear they have been a great
resource to you, and that is good testimony.
How has it been different than what the Justice Center has
provided? And then we will ask the Justice Center and Vice
Chair Madden to speak.
Mr. Werholtz. They have brought some subject matter experts
to us that aren't part of Mike's shop, and may have some very
specific skills.
For instance, to cite one example, bringing in experts who
can help train our staff on cognitive behavioral interventions.
Mike doesn't have clinicians in his organization. NIC can reach
out to a group of clinicians or researchers around the country
and help facilitate that knowledge transfer. I think that is
one of the primary differences.
What Mike did for us was a lot of data analysis and
interpretation, and then expert testimony back to our
legislature. And that was helpful because they didn't have a
vested interest in putting forth one sort of policy option as
opposed to another. Coming from me, some people might suspect
my motives or my agenda, but they served as kind of an
objective resource. I guess that is the best way I can describe
some of the differences.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Yes. I just want the underscore Secretary
Werholtz' point about the crucial role that NIC plays in the
field, and just to further illustrate the point in terms of how
what they do compliments what we do.
You know, one of the elements of the legislation--or
provisions in the legislation enacted in Kansas called on
community corrections, each of the local governments to reduce
revocations by 20 percent. So that was the goal that the
legislature set. We told them what would happen as a result of
that and some key things to look for.
To actually make that happen you need to change the
behavior, as Secretary Werholtz is saying, of your aligned
community corrections staff. And NIC can bring in those kinds
of experts and actually do that. We don't do that. We will then
track for the legislature what the results of it are.
There is a second thing too that I want to flag. The
National Institute of Corrections like you all has been very
focused on the growing numbers of people with mental illness in
the criminal justice system.
We are extremely grateful to you for what you did in
enacting the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime
Reduction Act. It is an extremely important piece of
legislation and we are grateful to you for putting money into
it.
The National Institute of Corrections actually, in a
specific program that Secretary Werholtz is looking at, is
trying to figure out how are we dealing with say parolees and
probationers who have a mental illness, and what are we doing
differently with them? That is a real sort of practice issue.
We are doing some work with them to look into that. But it is
another example of how NIC resources leveraging some of this
real big picture stuff that we are doing in the state capitol.
Mr. Madden. They were a major help also, if I may, Mr.
Chairman, in dealing with things in our probation departments.
Particularly they had great resources.
Now unfortunately they had, Jett Foundation was down there
helping us with some of the funding aspects that we had with
some of the things we were doing within our counties with
probation training, with the integration of progressive
sanction models within the various probation departments that
we were working on very hard as part of our overall strategy
that actually is really part of this Justice Reinvestment
program. And training the people how to do the programs and in
the local areas. So that was an extremely important part. And
the Bureau of Justice really could have done that.
Mr. Mollohan. Typically, from the point you are contacted
by a state, Mr. Thompson, how long is the process from that
contact to implementation of changes in any particular state's
correctional system?
Mr. Thompson. You know, usually there is a period of time
where we try to determine whether the state can meet all the
criteria that we have. Then there is the period where we do
this detailed analysis. I would say there is a few months to
figure out whether the state will meet the criteria. And then
there is this phase where we do this real detailed analysis
talking to local government stake holders that I mentioned
earlier. That tends to be another few months. Then there is the
whole process with the policy makers of sorting it into actual
policy options. That is another few months.
I would say, you know, typically to see something enacted
it takes anywhere from about 12 to 18 months. But then there is
that crucial point afterwards that we were talking about and
you were asking about, making sure that you stick with a state
to make sure that the results that they reinvested in actually
materialize.
Mr. Werholtz. Can I give you another example?
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, please.
Mr. Werholtz. We have been working with CSG for at least
four years now, and I was looking around to see if Dennis
Schrantz from Michigan is still here, I think he is gone now,
but we have had this conversation. If you ask us how far along
we are in this process, I think both of us who have been
engaged in this for four or five years, we would say
optimistically we are half way done. This is a very long----
Mr. Mollohan. It is a process not an event.
Mr. Werholtz. And it is cultural. It is really changing the
whole nature of your organization.
Mr. Madden. Probably only one of us would say we have
gotten three quarters of the way at least in doing the things
that we needed to do. And he is right, it is a cultural change,
because we changed the ship--the direction of the ship such
that in this last budgetary cycle that we are now in, my
corrections department came in and requested 400 beds on their
own. We didn't have to do that as a legislature. They came in
and said we need 400 more beds to expand this prison
therapeutic treatment that we have for drug addicts. Hadn't
been done in a long time.
Mr. Mollohan. Yes, I was very impressed with that part of
your testimony.
Mr. Madden. And they also put in that they needed reentry
officers, personnel with NTDCJ, not for parole, not for other
purposes, but to assist the offenders with reentry.
Mr. Mollohan. So this is the evidence of buy in.
Mr. Madden. A buy in. Yes, they bought in. They truly
bought it.
And Mike's optimistic when he says 12 to 18 months, to get
total buy in it is three, four years at least.
Mr. Mollohan. We are wrapping up here. But are there any
lessons learned here for the federal system? Or are you all
able to speak to that?
Mr. Thompson, do you want take a stab at that?
Mr. Thompson. Well, you know, I don't know the ins and outs
of the federal system, but you know, I will say that getting
the same kind of information that we put in front of the state
legislature, your situation does seem somewhat analogous in
getting a really good data driven analysis of what is happening
with the prison population there, and you know, asking the
question, you know, as you all are asking now, how can we get a
better return on our investment?
Mr. Mollohan. Do you look to the federal government for
best practices in any aspect of this?
Mr. Thompson. Absolutely. I mean----
Mr. Mollohan. In the practice of the federal prisons?
Mr. Thompson. You know, I mean, to be honest, I am not as
familiar maybe with some of the practices that----
Mr. Mollohan. So you don't?
Mr. Thompson. Well there is some things, and Roger has a
lot of communication with Director Lapin and DOP.
So there are some things with specialty case loads for
probationers and stuff that we do find really intriguing, but I
should familiarize myself more with the DOP.
Mr. Werholtz. I think the short answer is sure. I think in
every system there are things that each of us do well and
things that we could all improve on, and we have looked to the
federal system for some of the things that they could do,
because you know, their resources are so broad. They have been
able to try some things that the rest of us kind of look back
and wait and see what the outcome is. And we have mimicked a
number of those things.
The one that comes to mind and most readily for me is
around correctional industries issues.
Mr. Mollohan. Mr. Madden.
Mr. Madden. We are also looking at some things that may be
cut backs in our prison industry programs too, so that is a
possibility, too.
From the legislative standpoint I will say that I didn't
get a lot of input on the legislative side in doing the
legislative changes when doing some of the other programs
within the prisons, yes, certainly there is a lot of contacts
that we have and a lot of things that they do well.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, gentlemen. Any other questions?
Mr. Fattah. I have one last question.
Mr. Mollohan. Okay. Mr. Fattah.

EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT LEVEL OF INMATES

Mr. Fattah. Mr. Secretary, can you tell me anything about
the educational attainment level of the inmates in Kansas?
Mr. Werholtz. Yes. It is interesting. I think we are a
little bit unusual in that the majority of inmates that come
into our prison system actually have a high school degree or
higher. I think that is probably different than most other
states.
Mr. Fattah. What about Texas?
Mr. Madden. Texas is much lower than that. The numbers I
have heard, and I didn't have any specific statistics that they
have given me, just the general indications where they were
three years behind the educational levels they were supposed to
be at, which indicated they were somewhere between sixth and
ninth grade levels.
Mr. Fattah. Mr. Thompson, can you add anything to this
answer here?
Mr. Thompson. Just that there is huge variation among the
different states, and that not only are a huge percentage of
people incarcerated do not have high school degrees, but then
you look at average eighth grade education level and then a
very large number who are illiterate all together. And we know
that illiteracy in particular is a huge predictor of
recidivism.
Mr. Fattah. Is there any good data on this that is
available?
Mr. Thompson. There is some, and I would be happy to get it
for you.
Mr. Fattah. Could you supply that to the Chair? Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. Thank you, Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Serrano.

VOTE FOR PRISONS

Mr. Serrano. Yes, I just had a quick question which you
touched on, the whole idea of what the legislature is presented
with, in terms of the request.
Twenty years ago I spent 16 years before that in the state
assembly, and I always found in New York that it was easier to
get people to vote for the building of prisons than it was to
get them to vote for programs for folks coming out of prison
and so on.
Has that changed much? And it was the same throughout the
country. Has that changed much?
Mr. Madden. I think it would be fair to say it is changed
in New York. Prison populations are down in New York. One of
our board members is a good friend of mine who is also on the
prison--chairman of the prison committee, and I guess what is
the correction committee--is the chairman of corrections
committee. Yes, it has also been easier to get votes to build
prisons than it is to do programmatic things. That is a simple
vote.
Mr. Werholtz. I think in Kansas it is changing, and it is
easier now to get money for programs than it is for prison
expansion.
Mr. Serrano. That is very encouraging.
Mr. Madden. I would say that that is also true now in
Texas. In the last two sessions we have changed that.
Mr. Serrano. I remember how tough that used to be, so maybe
we have seen the light.
Mr. Thompson. I would just add. I mean, that is why with
you gentlemen testifying and what you are hearing about Kansas
and Texas is not necessarily indicative of what every state is
experiencing. You are going to see states that it is probably
easier to construct more and then start on distant programs.
The main thing we can do is to deal with the issues you are
talking about.
Mr. Madden. I'm on the board of both of these corrections
committees for both the National Conference of State
Legislators and American Legislative Exchange Conference and we
do see a lot more interest amongst the legislators in the types
of things we are doing, because they recognize the cost
drivers. The fact we can't imprison everybody. The fact that if
we continue on the course we are on right now you will have a,
you know, an unmanageable size in your prison populations in
the not too distant future, and you can't do that. And so we
have to do something that is intelligent, and many of them are
reacting with intelligence to that question of what is the
right thing to do.
So it is being both smart and tough. There are people we
obviously need to lock up and keep there as we have seen in
every place, but the vast majority I talked about earlier,
those that have those things that we are mad at and we want to
figure out some way in making a difference in their lives.
Mr. Fattah. Thank you.
Mr. Mollohan. That was a great way of talking about it, I
thought.
Well it looks like the members have exhausted themselves,
and we hope we haven't exhausted you. But we very much
appreciate your being here today, traveling so far to do that,
and for your expert insightful testimony. It has certainly been
helpful to the committee as we work our bill this year. Thank
you, gentlemen.
The hearing is adjourned.

W I T N E S S E S

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Page
Amison, J. S..................................................... 359
Byrne, J. M...................................................... 397
Davis, Hon. D. K................................................. 397
Glover, Phil..................................................... 153
Lappin, H. G..................................................... 1
Lattimore, Pamela................................................ 229
Lowry, Bryan..................................................... 153
Madden, Jerry.................................................... 481
Manley, Judge Stephen............................................ 359
McDonald G. T.................................................... 278
Nolan, Pat....................................................... 278
Schrantz, Dennis................................................. 278
Taxman, Faye..................................................... 189
Thompson, Mike................................................... 481
Travis, Jeremy................................................... 397
Visher, Christy.................................................. 229
Werholtz, Roger.................................................. 481