[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
LESSONS FROM THE STATES:
RESPONSIBLE PRISON REFORM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM,
HOMELAND SECURITY, AND INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 15, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-108
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia, Chairman
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan
Wisconsin JERROLD NADLER, New York
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT,
LAMAR SMITH, Texas Virginia
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ZOE LOFGREN, California
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
DARRELL E. ISSA, California STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
STEVE KING, Iowa Georgia
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona PEDRO R. PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico
LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas JUDY CHU, California
JIM JORDAN, Ohio TED DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah KAREN BASS, California
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania CEDRIC RICHMOND, Louisiana
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina SUZAN DelBENE, Washington
RAUL LABRADOR, Idaho JOE GARCIA, Florida
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas HAKEEM JEFFRIES, New York
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia
RON DeSANTIS, Florida
JASON T. SMITH, Missouri
[Vacant]
Shelley Husband, Chief of Staff & General Counsel
Perry Apelbaum, Minority Staff Director & Chief Counsel
------
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., Wisconsin, Chairman
LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas, Vice-Chairman
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT,
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama Virginia
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia PEDRO R. PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona JUDY CHU, California
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
RAUL LABRADOR, Idaho CEDRIC RICHMOND, Louisiana
Caroline Lynch, Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
JULY 15, 2014
Page
OPENING STATEMENTS
The Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., a Representative in
Congress from the State of Wisconsin, and Chairman,
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and
Investigations................................................. 1
The Honorable Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Virginia, and Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and
Investigations................................................. 2
WITNESSES
The Honorable Cam Ward, Chair, Prison Reform Task Force, Alabama
State Senate
Oral Testimony................................................. 6
Prepared Statement............................................. 9
The Honorable John E. Wetzel, Secretary, Pennsylvania Department
of Corrections
Oral Testimony................................................. 21
Prepared Statement............................................. 23
The Honorable Jerry Madden, former Chairman, Texas House
Corrections Committee, Senior Fellow for Right on Crime
Oral Testimony................................................. 29
Prepared Statement............................................. 31
Nancy G. La Vigne, Ph.D., Director, Justice Policy Center, The
Urban Institute
Oral Testimony................................................. 39
Prepared Statement............................................. 41
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Prepared Statement of the Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr.,
a Representative in Congress from the State of Wisconsin, and
Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security,
and Investigations............................................. 4
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Bob Goodlatte, Jr., a
Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, and
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary........................... 4
Material submitted by the Honorable Jason Chaffetz, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Utah, and Member,
Committee on the Judiciary..................................... 62
H.R. 2656, the ``Public Safety Enhancement Act,'' submitted by
the Honorable Jason Chaffetz, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Utah, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary...... 69
Material submitted by the Honorable Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, and
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland
Security, and Investigations.............................116
deg.OFFICIAL HEARING RECORD0
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record but not Reprinted
Submission from The Urban Institute titled ``Stemming the Tide:
Strategies to Reduce the Growth and Cut the Cost of the Federal
Prison System.'' This material is available at the Subcommittee and
can also be accessed at:
http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412932-stemming-the-tide.pdf
LESSONS FROM THE STATES:
RESPONSIBLE PRISON REFORM
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2014
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism,
Homeland Security, and Investigations
Committee on the Judiciary
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in
room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable F.
James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (Chairman of the Subcommittee)
presiding.
Present: Representatives Sensenbrenner, Goodlatte, Coble,
Forbes, Chaffetz, Gowdy, Labrador, Scott, Conyers, Bass, and
Richmond.
Staff Present: (Majority) Sarah Allen, Counsel; Alicia
Church, Clerk; and (Minority) Ron LeGrand, Counsel.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Subcommittee will come to order, and,
without objection, the Chair will be authorized to declare
recesses of the Subcommittee at any time. Hearing none, so
ordered. The Chair recognizes himself for 5 minutes for an
opening statement.
Since the 1980's, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has
experienced a dramatic growth in its prison population. The
number of inmates under the BOP's jurisdiction has increased
from approximately 25,000 in fiscal 1980 to over 216,000 today.
Since 1980, the Federal prison population has increased on
average by approximately 5,900 inmates each year.
The increasing number of Federal inmates contributes to
overcrowding in the Federal prison system. Overall, the Federal
prison system was 36 percent over its capacity in 2013. The
problem, however, is particularly acute in high and medium
security male facilities which operate at 52 percent and 45
percent, respectively, over rated capacity. The inmate-to-staff
ratio has increased from 4.1 inmates per staff member in 2000
to 4.8 inmates per staff member last year.
This overcrowding leads to inmate misconduct and creates
safety issues for both inmates and corrections officers. To
increase available bed space, wardens have resorted to double-
bunking and converting shared recreational space to house
inmates, among other things. The overcrowding also affects the
availability of rehabilitation programs for inmates, including
substance abuse treatment. There should not be waiting lists
for these key programs that help address recidivism.
BOP's budget has similarly grown dramatically in recent
years. Today, with an appropriation of more than $6.8 billion,
the Federal prison system accounts for 25 percent of the
Justice Department's budget. The cost to house each inmate has
increased over time, going from $21,000 in fiscal year 2000 to
$29,000 in fiscal 2013. This means that the cost of running
Federal prisons will continue to increase quite dramatically
even if no inmates, no new inmates, are added to the system.
The Federal Government is not alone in facing an
overburdened correctional system. The States have struggled
with similar issues in recent years. While the number of prison
inmates across the country has been slowly decreasing since
2008, as of 2012 there were still over 2 million people
incarcerated in prisons or jails nationwide, and the cost of
incarceration has increased in the States. In 2012 alone, the
States collectively spent more than $51 billion on corrections.
Each of the States faces unique challenges that drive
prison costs and overcrowding, but it is commonly accepted that
high rates of recidivism greatly contribute to these problems
on both the State and Federal levels. A number of States and
localities have taken innovative approaches to managing prison
growth and recidivism through the Justice Reinvestment
Initiative, a program done in conjunction with the Justice
Department and several nonprofit partners. Through this
initiative, participating States and localities conduct a
comprehensive analysis of the jurisdiction's criminal justice
data to identify drivers of corrections, populations and costs,
and help to adopt appropriate policy changes to address prison
growth, recidivism, and cost controls without comprising public
safety.
The participating States are at various stages of the
process, and broad reform cannot clearly happen overnight.
However, a January 2014 report on the Justice Reinvestment
Initiative found that the savings from implementing the
initiative could save participating States as much as $4.6
billion over 10 years by helping to ensure that fewer inmates
endlessly cycle in and out of prison. This is encouraging news.
Today we have before us a distinguished panel of witnesses
to share how different States are tackling prison reform
responsively and effectively, and hopefully how some of these
reforms might be translated into the Federal system, and we are
honored to have all of you here today.
It is now my pleasure to recognize for his opening
statement the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, the gentleman
from Virginia, Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, we have too many people in jails and prisons
in America today. The Pew Center on States estimates that for
any incarceration rate over 350 locked up today for every
100,000 in population, the crime reduction value begins to
diminish because at that point you certainly have all of the
dangerous people locked up. Pew's research also tells us any
rate above 500 locked up today for every 100,000 population,
the rate becomes counterproductive, meaning that it generates
more crime than it stops. That is because unnecessarily locking
up people wastes money that could be put to better use,
families are disrupted, making the next generation more likely
to commit crimes, and too many people are suffering from the
collateral consequences of felony convictions, making their
legal job prospects dim.
Most countries lock up between 50 and 200 per 100,000, but
as a result of emotionally appealing tough-on-crime slogans and
sound bites, the United States incarceration rate not only
exceeds 500 per 100,000, it leads the world at over 700 per
100,000 in jails and prison today. Research shows over 500 is
counterproductive, and we are at 700 per 100,000, and some
minority populations are locked up in the thousands.
Furthermore, our correctional institutions fail to correct.
More than 4 out of 10 adult American offenders are right back
in prison within 3 years of their release. So it has become
apparent to many policymakers that the status quo is not
sustainable because of the crime policy, but certainly because
of the expense. And as you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, we are
wasting billions of dollars.
This waste is particularly egregious because we know that
alternatives can reduce crime and save money. These
alternatives include so-called back-end solutions,
appropriately dealing with people who have committed crimes,
and front-end solutions, evidence-based prevention and early
intervention programs which can avoid crime being committed in
the first place.
The back-end solutions include drug courts and alternatives
to incarceration, such as home monitoring, which are less
expensive than incarceration and more effective in reducing
recidivism; and in sentencing, eliminating mandatory minimum
sentences and other excessively long sentences. Mandatory
minimums have been studied and shown not only to waste money,
but also do nothing to reduce crime. And rehabilitation
programs, such as drug treatment, education, job readiness in
prisons, all have been proven to effectively reduce crime and
most save more money than they cost.
At today's hearing we will focus on what can be done on the
back end, that is after a person is convicted, but we should
also not ignore the cost-effective initiatives that get young
people out of what the Children's Defense Fund calls the
cradle-to-prison pipeline and into a cradle-to-college-and-
career pipeline with comprehensive, evidence-based, locally
tailored strategies which significantly reduce crime and save
money.
So I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses, all of
whom have made significant progress in solving the problem, not
only by reducing crime, but also saving money, and then
reinvesting that money into initiatives that will reduce crime
even more and save even more money.
I also look forward, Mr. Chairman, to working with you in
dealing with cost-effective, evidence-based strategies that
can, in fact, reduce crime and save money. And I yield back the
balance of my time.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you.
Let me introduce our witnesses. Before doing that, without
objection all Members' opening statements will be placed in the
record at this point.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sensenbrenner follows:]
Prepared Statement of the Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., a
Representative in Congress from the State of Wisconsin, and Chairman,
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations
Since the 1980s, the federal Bureau of Prisons has experienced a
dramatic growth in its prison population. The number of inmates under
BOP's jurisdiction has increased from approximately 25,000 in fiscal
year 1980 to over 216,000 today. Since 1980, the federal prison
population has increased, on average, by approximately 5,900 inmates
each year.
The increasing number of federal inmates contributes to
overcrowding in the federal prison system. Overall, the federal prison
system was 36 percent over its capacity in 2013. The problem, however,
is particularly acute in high- and medium-security male facilities,
which operate at 52 percent and 45 percent, respectively, over rated
capacity. The inmate-to-staff ratio has also increased from 4.1 inmates
per staff member in 2000 to 4.8 inmates per staff member in 2013.
This overcrowding leads to inmate misconduct, and creates safety
issues for both inmates and corrections officers. To increase available
bed space, wardens have resorted to double bunking and converting
shared recreational space to house inmates, among other things.
Overcrowding also affects the availability of rehabilitation programs
for inmates, including substance abuse treatment. There should not be
waiting lists for these key programs that help to address recidivism.
BOP's budget has similarly grown dramatically in recent years.
Today, with an appropriation of more than $6.8 billion, the federal
prison system accounts for 25 percent of the Justice Department's
budget. The cost to house each inmate has also increased over time,
going from $21,000 in fiscal year 2000 to $29,000 in fiscal year 2013.
This means that the cost of running the federal prisons will continue
to increase quite dramatically even if no new inmates are added to the
system.
The federal government is not alone in facing an overburdened
correctional system. The states have struggled with similar issues in
recent years. While the number of prison inmates across the country has
been slowly decreasing since 2008, as of 2012, there were still over 2
million people incarcerated in prisons and jails nationwide. And the
costs of incarceration have increased in the states--in 2012 alone, the
states collectively spent more than $51 billion on corrections.
Each of the states faces unique challenges that drive prison costs
and overcrowding, but it is commonly accepted that high rates of
recidivism greatly contribute to these problems on both the state and
federal levels.
A number of states and localities have taken innovative approaches
to managing prison growth and recidivism through the Justice
Reinvestment Initiative, a program done in conjunction with the Justice
Department and several non-profit partners. Through this initiative,
participating states and localities conduct a comprehensive analysis of
the jurisdiction's criminal justice data, identify drivers of
corrections populations and costs, and help to adopt appropriate policy
changes to address prison growth, recidivism, and cost controls without
compromising public safety.
The participating states are at varying stages of the process and
broad reform clearly cannot happen overnight. However, a January 2014
report on the Justice Reinvestment Initiative found that the savings
from implementing the initiative could save the participating states as
much as $4.6 billion over ten years by helping to ensure that fewer
inmates endlessly cycle in and out of prison. This is encouraging news.
Today we have before us a distinguished panel of witnesses to share
how different states are tackling prison reform responsibly and
effectively, and hopefully how some of these reforms might be
translated to the federal system. We are honored to have you all here
today.
__________
[The prepared statement of Mr. Goodlatte follows:]
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Bob Goodlatte, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Virginia, and Chairman, Committee on the
Judiciary
Thank you, Chairman Sensenbrenner. I am very pleased to be here
today to discuss the important issue of prison reform. With more than 2
million people and growing in prison in the United States, and state
and federal budgets straining to support their corrections systems,
this is a topic that deserves close review.
So much of the recent attention to the U.S. prison population has
focused on sentencing practices, particularly for drug crimes. This
focus, however, completely ignores a critical piece of the puzzle--what
happens in our prisons and upon release to help stop the endless cycle
of criminality that is a significant contributing factor toward our
prison overcrowding.''
In April of this year, the U.S. Justice Department released
shocking numbers on the rate of recidivism in this country. According
to a study on prisoners in 30 states, more than two-thirds of released
prisoners were arrested for a new crime within three years of release,
and more than 75 percent were rearrested within five years.
The study also found that more than half of these prisoners were
arrested within one year of leaving prison, and that just one-sixth of
the released prisoners were responsible for nearly half the 1.2 million
arrests in the study's five-year period.
These shocking numbers send the message loud and clear--our prison
systems, including post-release supervision, are not succeeding at the
critical task of rehabilitating offenders.
So often, we in Congress think that the best way to effectuate
change is for the federal government to impose its will on the States.
I disagree with that approach--particularly on the issue of prison
reform. When it comes to reforming prison systems responsibly and
effectively, the states are acting as true ``laboratories of
democracy.'' Through the Justice Reinvestment Initiative and other
efforts, a number of states are using data-driven analyses to find ways
to reduce recidivism and manage their prison populations in a more
cost-effective manner, without compromising public safety.
I commend the three states represented here today for their efforts
in this area, as well as the many others that are engaged in meaningful
prison reform, and look forward to hearing about whether the lessons
they have learned might be applied at the federal level.
Thank you and I yield back the balance of my time.
__________
Mr. Sensenbrenner. The first witness is the Honorable Cam
Ward, who is an Alabama State senator, first elected in 2010.
In his first term as State senator, he was appointed as Chair
of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Ward chairs the Joint
Legislative Prison Committee and is chairman of the Alabama
Prison Reform Task Force created in 2014 during its legislative
session to study prison overcrowding. Mr. Ward also served two
terms in the Alabama House of Representatives. He was
previously appointed deputy attorney general for the State of
Alabama, worked as an assistant secretary of state, where he
dealt with election laws and corporate filings, and was also a
district director for Congressman Spencer Bachus, who is a
Member of the Subcommittee. He received his bachelor's degree
from Troy University and his juris doctorate from the
Cumberland School of Law.
The Honorable John E. Wetzel is the secretary of
corrections for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Since his
appointment in 2010, Mr. Wetzel has presided over the first
population reduction in Pennsylvania in over four decades.
Additionally, he has overseen the restructuring of the
community corrections system, the mental health system, and a
reengineering of internal processes to yield a more efficient
system of program delivery.
He began his career in Lebanon County as a correction
officer, treatment supervisor, and training academy director.
He also served a 9-year tenure as warden of the Franklin County
jail. Under his leadership, Franklin County saw a 20 percent
reduction in its population while the crime rate declined. He
was then appointed to the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons as the
board's correction expert. He is a member of Harvard's
Executive Session on Community Corrections, which is a joint
project of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and
the National Institute of Justice. He received his bachelor of
arts from Bloomsburg University and has done master's level
coursework in applied psychology at Penn State University.
Mr. Jerry Madden has served 10 terms in the Texas
legislature where he has served as chairman of the Committee on
Corrections, as well as a member of the Judiciary and Civil
Jurisprudence Committee. He headed Texas' 2007 criminal justice
system reforms legislative initiative, which sought to divert
individuals from prison through mental health and substance
abuse treatment programs, provide more opportunities in prison
for rehabilitation, and properly utilize probation and parole
mechanisms to avoid greater costs if new prisons were built.
In 2010, he was appointed to serve on the Texas State
Council for Interstate Adult Offender Supervision and was named
co-chair of the National Conference of State Legislatures'
Sentencing and Corrections Work Group. After completing his
legislative career in 2013, Mr. Madden was named a senior
fellow for the Right on Crime at the Texas Public Policy
Foundation, where he serves today. He received his bachelor's
degree from the West Point Academy and his master of science
degree from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Dr. Nancy C. La Vigne, and I probably mispronounced it.
Ms. La Vigne. It is La Vigne.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. La Vigne. Okay. Is director of the
Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where she
oversees a research portfolio of projects spanning a wide
variety of crime, justice, and public safety topics. Before
being appointed as director, Dr. La Vigne served as a senior
research associate at the Urban Institute directing research on
prisoner reentry, crime prevention, and the evaluation of
criminal justice technologies.
Prior to joining the Urban Institute, Dr. La Vigne was the
founding director at the Crime Mapping Research Center at the
National Institute of Justice. She later served as special
assistant to the assistant attorney general for the Office of
Justice Programs within DOJ. She has also held positions as
research director for the Texas Sentencing Commission, research
fellow at the Police Executive Research Forum, and consultant
to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Dr. La Vigne
received her bachelor's degree from Smith College, her master's
degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University
of Texas at Austin, and her doctorate from the State University
of New Jersey.
We ask that all of you limit your comments to 5 minutes. I
think you know what the red, yellow, and green lights mean. And
without objection, all of your written statements will be
placed in the record prior to your testimony.
Senator Ward, you are first.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE CAM WARD, CHAIR,
PRISON REFORM TASK FORCE, ALABAMA STATE SENATE
Mr. Ward. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank you
for giving me the opportunity to address you today on a very
serious issue that is facing Alabama. My comments come from a
unique position that my State would be what you would call a
failed correction system. However, these challenges have forced
us to take advantage of many opportunities that we know are
proven and available to us if we have the political will and
courage to take them on.
We have the highest incarceration in the United States
today. At 192 percent, our prison system is more overcrowded
than almost any other country in the world. But we also have
the eighth highest crime rate. That tells us one thing: Locking
them up and throwing away the key is not a solution to our
problem.
In order to reach a capacity of 137 percent overcrowding,
we would have to spend nearly $600 million to build our way out
of this problem. That would be over half of our entire general
fund for the State of Alabama. Not only is that not feasible,
that is fiscally irresponsible and morally unacceptable. Today
in Alabama we spend $42.50 a day per inmate that we put in
incarceration. In order to reach the same level of our
neighbors of Florida and Georgia, we would have increase
spending per inmate by 20 percent. Due to the recession and
other fiscal restraints, that is just not feasible either.
So what do we do? In my 12 years of public service, I can
tell you, I have rarely seen an issue that generates more
bipartisan support than this particular issue does. Faced with
this problem, a bipartisan effort was initiated this past
spring, launched with the Justice Reinvestment Initiative in
Alabama.
This spring, the legislature created the Alabama Prison
Task Force, and the leaders of all three branches of government
came together--which is rare by the way--to support this 25-
member coalition to bring about new changes in Alabama's prison
system. Governor Bentley named me chairman of this group, and
immediately we went about creating a diverse organization that
both includes prosecutors, victims rights advocates, as well as
inmates' rights advocates.
This group has started working, and right away we have seen
what other States have done that can make a true difference in
Alabama. Recent States that have taken on the Justice Reform
Initiative have seen a drop by nearly 8 percent of their prison
population with almost no crime increases.
Over the years, Alabama, like many States, have passed
enhanced sentences for different crimes. We have limited parole
for nonviolent offenders and refused to amend or update our
Habitual Offender Act. This has created the problem we are in
today. We have stuck our head in the sand and act like it
didn't exist when every day it was right there in front of us.
We no longer have that opportunity.
However, there is a road map forward that shows what we can
do to fix this problem. There has been proven success stories,
and there are several examples of what we can do. For example,
our disjointed sentencing guidelines have varied greatly
between circuits and counties. The Sentencing Commission,
created very similar to what you have on the Federal level in
Alabama in 2000, has come up with a model for presumptive
guidelines that will now make sure there is more uniformity in
how sentencing is carried out. We have had more data-sharing
opportunities between the various criminal justice
organizations in Alabama to show which criminals or which
offenders should be put in for a longer period of time, which
should be released earlier, and which may be qualified for
alternative sentencing programs.
At the end of the day, though, as I tell my colleagues
every day, money is not going to be the solution alone. There
has to be alternative sentencing programs available for the
people of Alabama. Community corrections, which helps reduce
recidivism and increase the productivity of an inmate once they
leave the custody of the State system, drug courts, mental
health courts, and now veterans courts offer us an opportunity
to not only reduce recidivism, but do it for a third of the
cost.
Community corrections in Alabama exist in 48 counties. My
goal would be to expand that to all 67 counties, make it a
uniform process. Currently, today 3,700 inmates who would be
prison-bound are currently in community correction programs.
What is the difference? In community corrections, we spend
$11.50 a day. To put someone in prison, as I mentioned before,
is $42.50 a day. Community corrections is the way forward.
Using that program has shown to reduce recidivism greatly.
Finally, while no one likes to talk about prison education,
it is a must. We must have more prison education programs.
While this is not politically popular due to the cost, it is
shown to reduce recidivism rates by 43 percent in Alabama. We
must invest more in these programs.
Finally, drug courts and mental health courts are the key
to success. Over 56 percent of all inmates have some sort of
mental health disorder, and of those, 75 percent have some sort
of substance abuse addiction. We have to fix those problems.
This is not a politically popular issue, but it is one that
Republicans and Democrats should stand together alike and try
our best to fix.
I look forward to your questions, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ward follows:]
__________
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much, Senator.
Secretary Wetzel.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOHN E. WETZEL, SECRETARY,
PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
Mr. Wetzel. Thank you. Thank you for the invite, Mr.
Chairman and Members, and thank you for allowing me to come and
talk a little bit about what Pennsylvania has done over the
past 3\1/2\ years to really improve our correction system and
criminal justice system as a whole.
The first thing I would absolutely encourage, and I believe
is an imperative as we talk about this issue, to really start
at what we have common ground on. And I think what we can all
agree on, it doesn't matter what room I am in, and, you know,
in this business of politics, there is rarely anything that we
can all agree on, but the one thing that we can all agree on is
what we want out of our correction system. And what we want is
that when someone comes in the front end of the system, when
they get out of the back end of the system they are at least
not worse. I mean, it is just that simple.
So if you start with that, and you start with what I would
call the prime directive, and the prime directive is every
decision we make will be a decision that research indicates is
likely to have the best outcome, and if you sprinkle that
throughout the whole system, starting at the front end, then
you can't go wrong. And in this environment where in
Pennsylvania our budget is $2 billion, we are the third line
item in the State general fund spending, and I know that
because I hear it every place I go, right, so if we are going
to spend that much money, let's make sure we spend it well.
And so when you start at the front end of the system, and I
know the focus of this discussion is what we can do in the back
end, but you can't talk about the back end without talking
about the front end. And if you are not assessing risk when an
individual first comes in the system, I don't know how you make
a decision, I don't know how you reach that goal of having
better outcomes.
So when we talk a lot about risk assessment, think of it in
context of diagnosis. Right? So if I went to a doctor and said
I am not sure what is going on and told him my symptoms and he
said, oh, you have cancer, I would say, well, hold on, you are
going to do some tests, right? That is what you should be
saying to me. Hold on. What do you mean this person has to get
sent to a State prison or Federal prison. You are going to do
some tests. Right? You are going to see if that decision is the
decision most likely to get the best outcome, which is someone
would be less likely to commit crime.
And so that risk assessment or diagnosis needs to also
understand what the root cause of the crime is. And if it is
addiction, provide programming for addiction, because you can
put an addict in prison for 10 years, they are going to come
out the back end an addict if you don't address that. So that
is not a good return on investment from that approach. Or if
they are mentally ill and we don't address the mental illness,
that is not a good return on investment because they are going
to commit another crime. And again, keep in mind outcomes.
So what can we do on the back end? And really when you
focus on the back end, think of it in context of what barriers
remain for the individual to be successful when they get out.
And so what we did is we looked at, first of all, really simple
things. Like in 2008 we released 20,000 offenders and we
released 300 offenders with an ID. Now, what can you do without
an ID in this country today? Not much, right? And when you talk
about does it make sense to buy an offender an ID, they were
spending an extra 2 weeks in a halfway house because they
didn't have an ID, at $70 a day.
So we put an initiative forward. Last year we released
9,000 inmates, up from 300, with IDs, but it is 9,000 out of
20,000. So we are not bragging too much because we should be
closer to 20,000 out of 20,000. But it is just those simple
things.
So what are other barriers? The other big thing we did, and
probably the most impactful thing we did, is we performance
contract our halfway house. So we had a study done in 2009 by
University of Cincinnati, and they found that 95 percent of our
programs were failing. In other words, if I were to release an
offender directly on the street, they would be likely have a
lower recidivism rate than if we put them through a halfway
house. And for these great outcomes, we were spending $110
million.
So we gutted the whole system, we rebid all the contracts,
and we put performance measures in the contracts. So earlier on
in our administration, we did a baseline recidivism study, and
we used that baseline to say to the providers at halfway house
services, listen, when we send offenders through your center,
we want you to do A, B, C, and D. But that is all well and
good. When they come out, they better have a lower recidivism
rate or at least not a higher one. If they have a lower
recidivism rate, you get a 1 percent increase at the end of the
year. If you keep it within one standard deviation above or
below the baseline recidivism rate, you continue in good
standing. If it is increased, you get one 6-month warning, then
we fire you. And if it is a state-run center, we close you.
So the theme here is it is okay to expect outcomes. And,
frankly, for the investment we are doing, we should expect
outcomes from our system. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wetzel follows:]
__________
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much, Secretary.
Representative Madden.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JERRY MADDEN, FORMER CHAIRMAN, TEXAS
HOUSE CORRECTIONS COMMITTEE, SENIOR FELLOW FOR RIGHT ON CRIME
Mr. Madden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members. My name is
Jerry Madden. I served 20 years in the Texas legislature. I am
not a lawyer, never was on a corrections or criminal justice
committee, and never had a bill on correction matters until
early in my 13th year when our conservative speaker, Tom
Craddick, called me into his office in January 2005 and told
me, you are going to be chairman of corrections.
Of course I thanked him, as in my mind I am thinking, oh,
God, why me? What did I do to deserve this? Then I asked him
the second most important question in my life. I asked him, Mr.
Speaker, what do you want me to do? And he gave me the eight
words that changed my life. He said, don't build new prisons,
they cost too much. Mission, guys, mission.
These are the words that led to Texas' reform. I am an
engineer and West Point grad and I worked through the problem
like a military engineer would work through it. First started
by trying to find out who in the Texas legislature knew
anything about corrections. There were not very many. I know
that would surprise all of you here. You wouldn't have them
either. But my friends directed me to the dean of the Texas
Senate and the criminal justice chairman, a Democrat named John
Whitmire. I went to him with my charge. And in about a 2-hour
meeting we meshed perfectly.
Now, I knew John, but I never had worked on legislation
with him. But it was a bipartisan beginning of our team. We
looked at the projections of expanded prison population and
determined first we did not want to violate prior court
directives on overcrowding. So we had two choices: either to
let people out early or to slow the rate of people coming in.
Guess which would not fly in tough-on-crime Texas?
So we went after and looked at how do you break the cycle
of people coming into prison. We always put public safety
first, but we had people telling us that with added resources
there were many convicted individuals we could safely keep in
our community.
We tried a bill in 2005 to work on probation and passed it
through the legislature, but it was vetoed by the governor.
Best thing that ever happened to us. Forced us to go back and
rework our efforts, to bring in a lot more people to look at
probation and the reasons for the veto. We looked at programs
that were available in Texas prison, on parole, on probation in
the courts, and in our juvenile system. We brought in
statistical help to tell us, if we changed our supplemental
programs, what would happen to our recidivism rate.
In late 2006, our Legislative Budget Board came out with a
prediction that we would have 17,700 more prisoners in Texas by
the year 2012 and we would need to build three prisons in the
2007-2008 biennium, costing over $530 million. Our plan was
ready at that time and would keep our prison population stable,
according to our data, and would cost less than half of the new
prisons. We went to the governor and legislative leaders with
our plan and were given the go-ahead.
This is what we did. We added substance abuse treatment
beds in prison on parole and probation. We added intermediate
sanction beds for parole and probation. We expanded specialty
courts, put more funding for mental health treatment for the
prisoners. We also brought back 1,800 prisoners that we had
sent out to the county jails. All of these ideas and others
were accepted.
And what are our results? Crime rates have continued to
drop to levels not seen since the 1960's. Arrest rates in Texas
are down. Three prisons and six juvenile facilities are
permanently closed. Significantly fewer people are on felony
probation. The parole rates in Texas rose from 24 percent the
years we started to 36 percent last year, and the parole
revocations dropped from almost 11,000 a year in 2005 to less
than 5,900 last year.
Our prison population is the same as it was in 2007, and
LBB last week predicted we would not need to build new prisons
until 2019. Our juvenile populations have fallen from over
4,500 to under 1,300. Our State savings are over $2.2 billion
as of today and growing.
An equally important offspring of our efforts is at the
national level where the Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2010
created Right on Crime, the national conservative voice for
criminal justice reform. These and steps by organizations like
CSG, Pew, NCSL, and ALEC have taken our work as an example for
reforms throughout the State.
I have been asked to give some guidance from Texas on what
would help the Federal prisons in correction reform. Our system
is the State system that is closest in size to your Federal
system. We did our work in a bipartisan manner in an area where
even at the Federal level today there is hope reform ideas can
be bipartisan. We have the examples of the States that have now
done reforms in this manner. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Kentucky,
Alaska, South Dakota, Idaho, and Texas legislatures passed
their major reform packages with overwhelming support from both
parties.
In each of the States there are think tanks, organizations,
and individuals with a great deal of knowledge and numerous
ideas about what can be done. In Washington there are even more
people who would be willing to work together for positive
reform. You already have legislators from both parties and both
chambers presenting legislation that can be used for
improvements, and most of them are based off the ideas we
started in Texas.
Also, there are now evidence-based practices to give
direction to policymakers about programs that work and those
that do not. Evidence-based practices should be required for
all of those. We have several recommendations Right on Crime
made. I will leave them there in the documentations that we
have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Madden follows:]
__________
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much, Representative.
Doctor.
TESTIMONY OF NANCY G. LA VIGNE, Ph.D., DIRECTOR, JUSTICE POLICY
CENTER, THE URBAN INSTITUTE
Ms. La Vigne. Hi. Good morning. Thanks very much for the
opportunity to speak with you today and to testify alongside
these gentlemen who have really demonstrated what engaging in
responsible prison reform on the ground means and also engaging
in evidence-based practice. You are kind of living what the
Urban Institute promotes through its own research on what
works. So I thank you for that.
Since you have heard about the successes in the States
already I don't want to belabor the point too much, but I would
like to refer you to this publication that the Chairman
referenced in his opening remarks, and that is a report the
Urban Institute did assessing the Justice Reinvestment
Initiative looking at 17 States. It documents the sweeping
reforms that the States have engaged in and the projected
impact of those reforms.
That report was released earlier this year, but a few
months prior to that the Urban Institute released a report
called ``Stemming the Tide.'' In this report we looked at the
growth in the Federal system, the drivers of the growth in that
system, and a variety of policy changes and the impacts that
those changes would have, both on population and cost. So what
I would like to do today is to describe that a bit and then
talk about lessons learned from the States and how it can be
applied to the Federal system.
As we know, the Federal system mirrors the experiences of
the States in terms of growth in many ways, although arguably
more so compared to many States experiencing a nearly eightfold
increase since 1980. That growth has caused severe
overcrowding, between 30 to 50 percent, depending on the
facility, much higher for the high-security facilities across
the BOP.
BOP's budget has been increasing alongside that population
growth. It is crowding out other important public safety
priorities. The BOP budget has grown at twice the rate of the
DOJ budget over time, and yet those budget increases aren't
sufficient to maintain staffing. Inmate-to-staff ratios have
increased 20 percent since 2000. All of this creates a scenario
where you have serious overcrowding that poses a threat to
public safety. It poses a threat to safety on the inside, the
safety and security of the staff and the inmates who reside
there.
But it is also a threat to public safety on the outside
because when facilities are crowded you can't offer the
programming and treatment necessary to prevent recidivism, so
if you can't prevent recidivism you are causing more
victimization in the community.
In this report we document the drivers of the growth in the
Federal system. It is basically simple math, more people going
into prison, staying for longer periods of time. By far drug
offenders are the biggest fear of the growth in the system, and
this is the population that would yield the biggest impact on
any efforts to reduce or slow that growth.
Many solutions have been tested and proven by the States.
They are documented here, and we have heard from the prior
witnesses about them. States have slowed prison growth. They
have reduced overcrowding. They have saved taxpayers money in
the process. And according to a recent Pew Charitable Trust
report, these States have experienced declines in the crime
rate alongside the States that have not engaged in reform.
So what lessons are transferable to the Federal system? I
think it is first important to note that there are differences
in the system. The Federal system has a different population,
much less violent on average than most State prison
populations. It is also the case that the Federal prison isn't
driven by supervision violators, as we see a lot in the States.
And yet there are reforms that are transferable, and these
are both front-end reforms, as we call them, and back-end
reforms. By front-end reforms, I am referring to changes in
sentencing policies, who goes to prison, how long is their
sentence length. And by back-end, I am talking about earned
credit mechanisms that encourage program participation and good
behavior. And I don't have to tell this Committee much about
those reforms because many of you have signed on to legislation
that promotes those reforms on the Federal level, the Smarter
Sentencing Act, the Justice Safety Valve Act, the Public Safety
Enhancement Act. These acts are looking at both front-end and
back-end changes, including reducing mandatory minimums,
expanding the safety valve, expanding judicial discretion in a
number of ways, and incentivizing inmates to participate in
programs and treatments that they can benefit from.
It is also important to acknowledge that there is another
kind of front end, and that is embodied in evidence-based
practice that looks at the importance of prevention, education,
and employment even prior to someone entering the system to
encourage them to avoid that altogether.
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. La Vigne follows:]
__________
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much, Doctor.
The Chair will withhold his questions till the end. The
gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Coble, is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is good to have you all with us today.
Senator Ward, Alabama has just passed a statute authorizing
the Alabama Prison Reform Task Force at an earlier stage in the
Justice Reinvestment Initiative process with other States. Are
there certain States that you are looking for to serve as
leaders in this model, and what reforms do you think have been
most effective in those States?
Mr. Ward. Congressman, I would say, first and foremost, I
look to my friend Representative Madden down here from Texas. I
think they are the model probably for reforms across the
country. As I have said before, there is really no silver
bullet answer to the question of what is going to solve the
prison problem. I think that the answer comes about in many
facets. Most importantly, as I said before, one, your community
corrections program; two, drug courts; and, three, mental
health courts. All those provide tools not only for the front
end, before incarceration has to occur, but also on the back
end, and reduces recidivism rate and is also cheaper on the
taxpayers.
I think the more that we utilize those programs, the less
you are going to have a turnaround of someone coming back into
the system, and that is the key for everyone. If you can reduce
recidivism, in the long run you will reduce your prison
population. I think Texas has been a model reform for that.
Most recently other States have also adopted it, prison
ministry work in Georgia. We have seen also a new pardon and
parole data-sharing process in Mississippi which has been very
successful. Also, community correction incentives, where
incentives are given to community correction programs that show
a higher reduction in recidivism rates. Then the financial
reward for those programs are rewarded through the budget
process, as they are doing in Arkansas.
So there are a large number of options out there. However,
I would have to point to Texas being the model for the rest of
the country, and it is due to the Justice Reinvestment
Initiative.
Mr. Coble. Thank you, Senator.
Each of you I think mentioned the enormous cost involved.
If these reform programs result as hoped would be the case, it
seems to me that savings could be realized. Am I missing the
mark when I say that?
Mr. Ward. Not at all.
Mr. Madden. Not at all.
Mr. Coble. I mean, recidivism and overcrowding are two
issues that continue to plague us, and they are obviously
related.
Doctor, does the BOP currently perform a risk assessment of
its inmates for purposes of administering recidivism-reducing
programs or determining the likelihood to re-offend.
Ms. La Vigne. My understanding is that the BOP does use
risk in these assessments for some purposes. I don't know the
details of how they are used to guide who gets what types of
programs or treatment.
Mr. Coble. Anybody else want to weigh in on that?
Mr. Madden. I was just going to weigh in on your previous
question about States that are examples, though.
Mr. Coble. Fire away.
Mr. Madden. I will follow on that because North Carolina
did some wonderful work also in their things, and they are an
example that I use nationally when talking to States about what
they did in their technology aspects for their probation and
parole divisions. They really have done some creative work
there that has caused a reduction in their prison populations
also.
Mr. Coble. On that, your favorable note to my home State is
appreciated.
And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Madden. I was honored, as a matter of fact, to be there
when the governor and the speaker and your senate pro tem
leader decided to go ahead and start that. I was actually in
the room with them at that time, about five of us.
Mr. Coble. And I will convey that when I go back home.
Thank you, sir. Thank you all for being here.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, one of the themes we have heard from all of
the witnesses is a reliance on research and data rather than
slogans and sound bites.
Senator Ward, can you say a word about the applied research
service and what they do for you?
Mr. Ward. Yeah, absolutely. The problem with corrections
traditionally has been the policymakers, you and I. We take it
upon ourselves what sounds good, as you said, the policy sound
bites. Can I lock them up and throw away the key because it
fits on a bumper sticker, and guess what, it win elections. And
that is unfortunate, and that is how we got in the
circumstances we are in today.
Applied research in short takes a data-driven approach to
corrections. It determines this particular offender, what
classification should they be classified in with regard to
their sentencing guidelines? Are they perhaps eligible for, due
to their background, due to their education level, due to the
circumstances of their act, are they eligible perhaps for
community corrections instead of incarceration?
The data-sharing actually goes on throughout all the
correctional facilities in Alabama. Therefore, it is a broad-
based view of each individual inmate to determine what level of
incarceration is maybe more appropriate and is an alternative
sentencing program possibly better for this inmate. That is how
it works in Alabama, and I think that is a big part of the
Justice Reinvestment Initiative as well, and that is what they
try to promote, is instead of policy or a debate by your heart,
it is more about data driven through your head as to what is
more logical.
Mr. Scott. And you and Mr. Wetzel talked about the triage
going in, assessing people. How does that work if you are
saddled with mandatory minimums and no parole?
Mr. Ward. And I have to tell you, I think the notion of--
that is one of the problems how we got where we are--the no
parole, particularly for the nonviolent offenders. You have to
look at a change in your parole policies. In Alabama, for
example, we have 53,000 offenders currently under the
supervision of our Boards of Pardon and Parole today. That is
actually 200 offenders per individual caseworker. The national
average is 75 offenders per caseworker. The no-parole notion
for nonviolent offenders particularly, it just doesn't work. In
my opinion, that is one part of the broken system we are in
today.
Mr. Scott. Now, what effect does overcrowding have on the
effectiveness of job training and education programs in the
prison?
Mr. Ward. It has a huge impact because what has happened
is, as society has looked around and States are having
shortfalls in all their budgets, what has happened is, as we
have had to cut back on K through 12, it is very hard to go
back home and sell politically, well, but we have got to invest
more in prison education. The overcrowding problem, what it has
created is, you have so many inmates that you actually don't
have, one, the physical plant facilities to provide the
education, skill opportunities they need. But, two, it has
created a situation where you are spending so much money on the
actual incarceration, the feeding, and the health care, that
the education component is being left aside, and that, in my
opinion, is what leads to a higher recidivism rate as well.
Mr. Scott. Thank you.
Ms. La Vigne, you had mentioned reinvesting the savings in
some of these programs. One of the problems and challenges is
the people saving the money aren't the people making the
investment. And so you make the investment and then somebody
else saves the money. How do you recapture the savings in that
scenario?
Ms. La Vigne. That is a tremendous challenge, I think, that
the States are experiencing, and many of them are handling that
by actually engaging in what we call up-front reinvestment, so
that at the point of passing legislation where they know that
their projections show that the policy changes will yield
meaningful reductions in populations and thus yield savings, at
that very same time they will say, let's right now use those
anticipated savings and dedicate them to activities like
treatment, diversion programs, more supervision, et cetera.
Mr. Scott. You mentioned front end, kind of dual front end,
one, front end after conviction but also the very early primary
prevention and early intervention. How do you recapture those
savings?
Ms. La Vigne. So capturing savings from very, very early
prevention efforts is very difficult to do, and it is not
usually something we discuss when we talk about justice
reinvestment because justice reinvestment is largely about
averting growth or reducing the prison population, yielding
savings that way. I am not aware of people who have actually
looked at early prevention programs and looked at how cost
beneficial they are, but we at the Urban Institute have looked
at various recidivism reduction programs and have found that
several of them are, indeed, cost beneficial.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from Utah, Mr. Chaffetz.
Mr. Chaffetz. I Thank the Chairman.
And thank you all for being here. It is a very important
topic. It is something that literally affects millions of
people and yet doesn't always rise to the tier one level that
it should. I believe it is one of the core things that
government should and has to be involved with. So your
expertise and your participation here today, we certainly do
appreciate it.
Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the
record two articles. One is by Mr. Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan,
``An Opening for Bipartisanship on Prison Reform,'' as well as
a Salt Lake Tribune op-ed, ``A Better Way Than Filling Jails
with Nonviolent Offenders,'' by Kirk Jowers, that was published
on July 13.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Without objection.
[The information referred to follows:]
__________
__________
Mr. Chaffetz. Mr. Madden, I would like you to talk a little
bit about--and then Mr. Wetzel if we could--about risk
assessments. Do they really work? I mean, you have somebody who
has come into prison. Can you very quickly go through this
assessment process? How does it work? What is your experience
with it? And how do we make the most of it?
Mr. Madden. They actually work--they can work very well if
you use the right ones. There are a lot of risk assessment
tools that are out there. I always say to everybody, I am not
sponsoring any one risk assessment tool because there are a
whole a lot of different ones, but to come down at least on one
that you are consistent with in your State and use that, and it
is a great tool.
Now, that is the one thing. There were two things that now
happen in justice reinvestment actions throughout the States
that we really didn't put in, in Texas, to start with because
we were two legislators that were wandering, so to speak, in
the dark. We didn't have the Pew people. We didn't have the
Council of State Governments like all these guys had. We were
just us doing what we thought was the best thing in the
criminal justice system.
We did not do the risk assessment thing, and it has been
put in later, in later legislative sessions than what we
started in 2007, but it is one of the two things that I tell
the States that they all need to have and they all need to do,
is have a risk assessment tool. They really do work. And you
should use it as often in the cycle as is really fiscally
responsible. You should do it when a person is first arrested,
when they go before the judge the first time, when they go to
probation, et cetera, et cetera, and in the prison system, too.
Mr. Chaffetz. Thank you. I want to get to Mr. Wetzel,
please.
Mr. Madden. I was going to say in the prison system in
particular, you could do it when they first come, and you
should do it in subsequent periods of time while they are
there. And there is two things on risk assessment----
Mr. Chaffetz. Hold that thought for a second. I do want to
follow up with you, but I am going to run out of time if I
don't allow Mr. Wetzel to jump in.
Mr. Madden. I understand.
Mr. Wetzel. Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes the notion of risk
assessment, people act like it is a new thing, but I am pretty
sure an 18-year old young man pays higher car insurance than my
82-year-old mom who drives a VW bug, right? Why? Actuary risk
assessment.
Mr. Chaffetz. You got an 82-year-old mother who drives a VW
bug, really?
Mr. Wetzel. I do. I do. Slowly.
Mr. Chaffetz. With you in it? I would like to see that. All
right. Keep going.
Mr. Wetzel. So risk assessment has been around forever.
Applying it to this and having an understanding of who comes in
your system, every system does that. Every system does
something when someone comes in.
Mr. Chaffetz. All right. But what works and what doesn't
work?
Mr. Wetzel. What works is actuarial risk assessment, so it
is research-based, and it identifies both the risks that the
individual presents and also their needs. And then the rub,
though, is that you have programming that addresses those
needs, especially the criminogenic needs that are able to be
impacted, like addiction, criminal thinking, those kinds of
things.
Mr. Chaffetz. Thank you. I have introduced, and many of the
Members here on this panel have helped cosponsor a bill, H.R.
2656, the ``Public Safety Enhancement Act of 2013.'' I do think
it is time for Congress to take a much more proactive role in
pushing the Bureau of Prisons in this direction. I appreciate
panel members on both sides of this aisle in helping that.
Perhaps as a follow-up, if you all could look at this
legislation and help us get your feedback, we would certainly
appreciate it.
[The bill, H.R. 2656, follows:]
__________
Mr. Madden. I already have, obviously, with Senator Cornyn
as a sponsor, has also talked a little about what we did in
Texas. Let me analyze one thing on the risk assessment since
you have got 30 seconds left.
Mr. Chaffetz. Sure.
Mr. Madden. The risk assessment, there are two different
types of risk you have: the risk of the people redoing the same
crime that they did and the risk of violent offenses. And you
need to make sure your risk analysis truly analyzes the
differences between the two because a lot of your prisoners are
low risk of violent crimes but high risk of doing the dumb
thing that got them to prison the first time.
Mr. Chaffetz. Thank you. Yield back.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Conyers.
Mr. Conyers. Thank you, Chairman Sensenbrenner. I just want
the record to show that this is the most informative and
thoughtful panel on this subject that I have heard in a long,
long time. And I thing you and Ranking Member Bobby Scott
should be congratulated on putting this together.
And, you know, I am beginning to feel like there are more
Republicans like yourself, Senator Ward, that are thinking
about this. It is a wonderful thing. And what I wanted to start
off by asking Dr. La Vigne is, how would we prioritize these
legislative recommendations? I am going to get copies of this
discussion here today because I think it needs to be shown
around the country, not just to the people that are looking at
it now or reading about it later. Where do we start? How do we
get this thing on the road?
Ms. La Vigne. Right. I wouldn't recommend any one piece of
legislation over another, but I will emphasize our conclusion
in our report, and that is that you really need more than one.
You cannot achieve meaningful reductions in the Federal prison
population looking only at, for example, earned release or
other back-end measures.
The reason is because, as we have mentioned already, the
degree of overcrowding is so great. It is so great that you
really need to do a lot of different things to achieve
reductions. So what we conclude is that it really needs to be a
combination of both back-end and front-end reforms.
Mr. Conyers. Would you, Senator, like to add anything on to
this discussion?
Mr. Ward. Real briefly, Congressman, what I would say is
this. It is going to take some political courage more than
anything else. I mean, the tools and the data that you have
heard here today from my esteemed colleagues on this panel, I
mean, we have experts from all over the country that can tell
you some of the road maps. The problem we have--and let's face
it, I am from the reddest of red States, I am almost as red as
Utah, I mean, we are a very Republican, conservative State--but
at the end of the day what we have to realize is the level of
incarceration spending that we are doing now, the conditions of
the facilities that we are doing and what we are expecting as
far as what comes out on the back end, is not sustainable. It
can't be sustained by our current fiscal policies in State
government. It can't be sustained by what we would consider
adequate conditions under the Eighth Amendment.
The data is there. We don't have to reinvent the wheel of
the States. They have already been done. But we have to have
the political courage to say, this is broken, we have to fix
it. Whether you are from a red state, blue state, purple state,
we all agree there is a broken system, and this is one area
that I think we can all agree on how to fix it because the
tools are out there.
Mr. Conyers. Well, are there more conservatives coming
around to this point of view being expressed here in the
Judiciary Committee?
Mr. Ward. Absolutely. I think there are people here on
Capitol Hill that have expressed on several occasions, both in
the Republican Party and Democrat Party, that it is one issue
we can work together on. And I think in State government we
realize, too, as a conservative, I want to see a much more
efficient way of government being operated. But you can't run
an efficient government the way we are doing it right now with
corrections. So, yeah, I think there are.
Mr. Madden. May I take a shot at that, too?
Mr. Conyers. Please do.
Mr. Madden. Since I am with the Right on Crime people, the
Texas Public Policy, and it is the national conservative voice
that is speaking out on this, I will say that when we first did
all these things and we had Pew conferences, the things that we
basically got out of that from the States that did the reforms,
and that is people like Georgia and Kentucky and North
Carolina, those States basically said go as much as you can,
get all the areas that we are talking about.
So the legislation that is out there now, whether that be--
I have noticed the sponsors on both Senate and House
legislation have been both conservative Republicans and liberal
Democrats, and they are mixed on the bills. That is a great
sign, and I would highly encourage continuing because that is
the opportunities there that we have found in the States, and
the great thing was that most of those pieces of legislation
were passed almost unanimously and almost with total bipartisan
support.
Mr. Conyers. We have a Congressional Black Caucus
conference coming up in September, and I think three or more of
our colleagues who are on Judiciary Committee would welcome a
panel with any of you that can be there with us to help get
this word out.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. If the gentleman will yield, I would
just urge you not to be afraid of the Congressional Black
Caucus because I have been and talked to them and I am still
here.
Mr. Conyers. Well, yeah, but you are one of those
exceptional conservatives that I was bragging about along with
Senator Ward. We are looking for more Sensenbrenners, more
Wards. And we want to come together and make this real and not
just a sensational hearing on August 15.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. I will say the gentleman's time has
expired. Before people on the other side start criticizing me,
the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Gowdy.
Mr. Gowdy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Madden, who in the Federal system do you think is
incarcerated because we are mad at them as opposed to being
afraid of them.
Mr. Madden. Sure. When we discussed that on mad versus
afraid, the ones that we are afraid of are clearly the people
who would do us a great deal of harm, and that is murderers and
rapists and, yes, major drug dealers. I think we have some in
the Federal system.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, you know there are going to be very few
people in Federal prison because of rape or murder----
Mr. Madden. That is true.
Mr. Gowdy [continuing]. Because most of them are in State
prison. So who in Federal prison is there because we are just
mad at them?
Mr. Madden. I would say that those people who are actually
drug users are probably those we are mad at.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, now, Chairman, there is nobody in Federal
prison for using drugs. They may be there for possession with
intent to distribute, they may be there for conspiracy, but
they are not there for using drugs. So I ask you again, who is
in Federal prison because we are mad at them, not because we
are afraid of them?
Mr. Madden. The nice thing is my studies that I had,
Representative, was that I don't portray myself as an expert on
other systems that they have. What I do have is I do have the
knowledge of what other States have looked at and the data that
they have looked into. I agree with you, though----
Mr. Gowdy. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am not the one that said
it.
Mr. Madden. I understand.
Mr. Gowdy. I didn't write that people are in Federal prison
because we are mad at them and not afraid of them. That was you
that said that.
Mr. Madden. I think I wrote that we have people in the
prisons that we are mad at and afraid of, and that was distance
that use, particularly in the States and our discussions there.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, that necessarily assumes that the only
reason to send someone to prison is because we are afraid of
them, and I would argue that there are lots of other reasons to
send people to prison other than the fact that we are afraid of
them, like maybe the fact they didn't learn when we gave them
probation. Maybe they didn't learn when we put them through a
diversion program.
Mr. Madden. One of the things that we look at the Texas
Public Policy Foundation and Right on Crime is
overcriminalization and things that are made criminal law, that
basically we look at the things like mens rea provisions. And,
again, I am not a lawyer, so I am speaking in terms as the
gentleman who says there are things that we make as
overcriminalization, and we have specifically talked about
that. I know there have been hearings up here about----
Mr. Gowdy. There have been.
Dr. La Vigne, let me ask you to help me understand a phrase
that sometimes I struggle to understand, which is nonviolent
offender.
Ms. La Vigne. Right. This was a challenge in our report
because we lacked the data that we really needed to see what
the criminal histories were of the people in the Federal
system.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, give me a for instance of a nonviolent
offender.
Ms. La Vigne. So what we did instead was to use security
level, so those housed in low security Federal facilities we
assumed were nonviolent.
Mr. Gowdy. Did you look at the incident report?
Ms. La Vigne. I am sorry, the what report?
Mr. Gowdy. Did you talk to the victim? I am trying to get
an idea, because I have heard multiple witnesses use the phrase
nonviolent offender.
Ms. La Vigne. This is a really good question and one that
we would very much like to answer if we can get the right data
from the Bureau of Prisons.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, here is the challenge. And I readily
agree, at least 80 percent of the crime I saw was drug and
alcohol fueled. The difficulty we ran into when we tried to put
a defendant in a nonviolent fact pattern into drug court, his
or her defense attorney objected because it was much easier to
just go straight probation than go to drug court. So how do you
make someone post-adjudication go to drug court?
Ms. La Vigne. I don't have that answer.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, look, I am with you. Drugs and alcohol
drive 80 percent of the crime. And I am not suggesting other
people don't have the victim's perspective, but I am much more
interested in the victim's perspective than I am the inmate's
perspective. But when you have a defense attorney advising
people to go straight probation even though they are an addict
because that is easier than going through drug court, I don't
know what you expect the State to do about that.
Mr. Ward. Congressman, I would say you incentivize it. I
would say you make it more attractive. And I think everybody up
here agrees the victim's rights should always come in front of
the inmate's. We all agree on that.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, how do you incentivize it other than
shortening the term of incarceration?
Mr. Ward. Well, what you do, for example, if you have a
choice of post-incarceration of probation or drug court, make
it more attractive to go there. And I don't know the answer how
you make I think more attractive. Make it more attractive.
Maybe shorten the term of the probation, maybe lighten the
terms of the probation to incentivize them.
Mr. Gowdy. But that is post-adjudication. That is not a
diversion program.
Mr. Ward. Well, then do it ahead of time. Do it on the
front end as well. You could do it on the front end as well. I
mean, there are ways to incentivize it to make it attractive as
opposed to what the alternative is, and that is how you get
around the defense attorney's argument.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, regrettably, I am out of time, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. The gentlewoman from California, Ms.
Bass.
Ms. Bass. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for holding this
hearing, and also to the Ranking Member.
You know, like my colleague, I also have the victim's
perspective in mind, and one of the things that has happened
over the years as the incarceration rates have been so high is
that we have not really thought about when we release people in
a lot of instances around our country you have a tremendous
number of people who are released to certain communities. And
then they have no options. Because of collateral consequences,
they don't have an opportunity to work in the legal economy and
they go right back and commit crimes. So having an
overconcentration of people coming out of prison to particular
communities then revictimizes those communities.
And so what I wanted to ask you about, because you talked
about evidence-based programs--I come from California, by the
way, so you know we are really struggling with this and the
courts have required us to release people. So one of the issues
that we are dealing with is that when people get out, how do
you then reintegrate them into a community so that they have
other options? So I wanted to ask you if there has been
research about reentry programs that help people navigate their
way so that they don't wind up incarcerated again. And then,
which collateral consequences do you feel we should eliminate
at the Federal level?
Ms. La Vigne. Okay. Yes, there is ample research on ways
that people can be prepared for successful reintegration. A lot
of that research is actually embodied in the What Works in
Reentry Clearinghouse. It is something that the Urban Institute
developed in partnership with the Council of State Governments,
funded by the Second Chance Act. And what we strove to do was
to identify only the most rigorous studies out there, because a
lot of people point to studies that are effective or not, but
then when you look at them you realize they are not really well
conducted to begin with.
So after screening out only the most rigorous studies, we
then identified by different types of reentry mechanisms, say,
enhanced education, employment, housing, treatment, what
programs worked and for whom. And all of that is housed on a
Web site that is searchable, and you will see that there is an
ample body of research that suggests several things.
One, reentry should really start at the point of
incarceration. So you use the risk and needs assessment to
identify what kind of programs and services and treatment that
they need, make sure that they get them, and then also that you
really need a very good transition from prison to the
community. So you don't just release them and say, good luck.
You release them and you have that handoff to the community
services and support.
Ms. Bass. Right. That is one of the things that we are
doing in California, unfortunately, is releasing, and some
people who have been in solitary confinement forever getting
released and going straight on the street with not a lot
happening. So one of the phenomenons that is kind of happening
in the Los Angeles area, and in LA, since we have 30 percent of
the prison population who come out, one of the things that is
happening is a number of formerly incarcerated individuals are
starting their own little mom-and-pop nonprofits to essentially
hand hold people. Some people who have been locked up too long
don't even know how to use public transportation or do the
basics.
And so I am wondering, in your evidence-based research, do
you have very small nonprofits that have been studied like
this? And that is for anybody.
Ms. La Vigne. I haven't found those in any of the very
rigorous studies that we have looked at, but it stands to
reason, and actually there is some anecdotal evidence to
suggest that the best kind of support for returning citizens is
that that comes from folks who have already experienced
incarceration and can really relate and speak to them and help
them and understand what their challenges are.
Ms. Bass. And for the other panelists in my remaining time,
do you see a difference with private prisons, people coming out
of private prisons versus government-run prisons?
Mr. Wetzel. Pennsylvania doesn't do private prisons.
Mr. Ward. In Alabama, we spend so little on our
incarceration rate that actually it costs us more to use
private prisons. And from the data that we looked at around
2006 when we actually did experiment with private prisons,
there was absolutely no difference between the two facilities
as far as the outcome-based results of the offenders released.
Ms. Bass. Texas?
Mr. Madden. Texas has some private prisons. The recidivism
rate that you get from the private prisons, since they are
generally there for our lower-level offenders, match pretty
closely the State facilities that we have for low-level
offenders. They are about the same.
Ms. Bass. Okay. Thank you.
Yield back my time.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. The gentleman from Idaho, Mr. Labrador.
Mr. Labrador. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ward, and this applies to everybody on the panel as
well, but the theme that runs throughout most of your testimony
is the need of flexibility in our criminal justice system,
alternatives to detention, individualized approaches to parole,
treatment, and much else.
I have a bill with Congressman Scott, it is called the
Smarter Sentencing Act, which would give judges more
flexibility to make individualized sentencing determinations.
Can you address the issue of flexibility in sentencing in your
State and the importance of an individualized approach in
criminal justice more generally?
Mr. Ward. Unfortunately in Alabama we had a situation where
we had, and use the phrase too much flexibility, up until about
2006. Basically I could go to one county and be sentenced to
community corrections or probation, I could go to the next
county over for the exact same crime, the exact same instance,
and be sentenced to 10 years in prison.
So what we did was we came up with a uniform voluntary set
of guidelines. Those guidelines, again, were still ignored by
some of the judges, taken on by other judges. These guidelines
were created through a data-driven empirical analysis to look
at the system.
We now have presumptive guidelines in Alabama. The
presumptive guidelines do give the judges flexibility, because
there are certain circumstances when the judge says this person
really belongs in community corrections, and they can show an
exception to the presumptive guidelines in writing and say,
this is why I believe this inmate should go to or this offender
should go to community corrections.
The flexibility is necessary because the moment you start
putting everyone in a small box, you are hamstringing yourself
and you are restricting the judicial right to determine
individual case-by-case basis. And that is how alternative
sentencing has really been successful, because drug courts are
handled by judges who say we need an exception to this set of
circumstances. So in my State, I think that is a very good
thing and it has been very successful as well.
Mr. Labrador. Excellent. And that is what we are trying to
do here in the House of Representatives as well, is to give a
little bit more flexibility within the guidelines to give the
judges a little bit more flexibility.
You also discussed the benefit of certain sentencing
reduction programs, and I think these are all good ideas. But I
am wondering why we don't get the sentences right in the first
place, which sounds like that is what you were doing in
Alabama.
Mr. Ward. You are exactly right.
Mr. Labrador. So according to a review of the Justice
Department records of prisoners released since 1994, prisoners
are more likely to recidivate the longer they stay in prison.
And the reason why America has such a larger population of
prisoners than Europe is that we imprison them so much longer.
Given these facts, Ms.--is it La Vigne?
Ms. La Vigne. La Vigne.
Mr. Labrador. La Vigne. Shouldn't we have the goal at the
outset of making sentences fit the crime and give judges the
ability to avoid unnecessarily long sentences?
Ms. La Vigne. Well, this is my own personal opinion, but I
think that judicial discretion is kind of an interesting thing.
When I was working many, many years ago in Texas for the
Sentencing Commission, at the time judges had between 5 and 99
years for first degree felonies. It was too much discretion.
Everybody agreed with that. But in the Federal system you see
restricted discretion because of mandatory minimums. And your
bill, sir, to have mandatory minimums for certain types of drug
offenders I think makes sense because it is not mandating that
sentences be lower, it is just giving the judges a little bit
more discretion.
Mr. Labrador. Okay. Now, I just have a general question. I
was a criminal defense attorney, so I don't dislike them as
much as my good friend here to my left. But I always wondered
why we don't have shorter sentences and harsher punishment. So
have any of you considered what could we do at the State level
or at the Federal level to make sure that the sentences, when
you go to prison, you actually have harsh punishment?
I will just give you an example. I went to talk to a junior
high school class of Hispanic students, and one of the students
kept looking at me. I was trying to explain to them why it was
important to go to college and do all those things, and one of
the kids just looked at me and says, hey, I have an uncle in
prison, and he gets three meals a day and he has four walls and
he gets fed, and he is enjoying, he is actually enjoying being
in prison. That broke my heart to hear something like that.
What could we do at the State level and at the Federal
level to actually make prison a little bit more difficult so
they are not thinking that they are actually on a vacation
while they are there?
Mr. Ward. Congressman, I was just going to say, first of
all, these rehabilitation programs, forcing them to learn a
skill, forcing them to work while they are in there, not only
does it make the sentence harsher, but also makes them more
productive when eventually they do get released, and 95 percent
do get released. And as your colleague to your left said, the
crimes that occur in State prisons or what got you to the State
prison are very different from what got you into, say, a
Federal prison. We have a lot more violent offenders. So you
have got to give them those skills, make them work harder. And
while they are working, they are learning a skill while they
are incarcerated.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Richmond.
Mr. Richmond. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
calling the hearing.
Senator Ward, and you mentioned the political will and the
political courage to get it done, and my colleague, Mr.
Chaffetz, entered into the record the Newt Gingrich article.
The disappointing part about it is that the article was written
in 2011 calling for all of us to come together. And I think
that you see mutual ideas here and in fact that many of us are
on the same page, but it is 2014 and we are still on step one.
So part of the question is, how we move it forward without
people who are afraid of it being branded, I guess, soft on
crime, and I just think it is something we have to do.
Let me ask you, I am going to give you a figure and then I
want you all to give me your estimate. And I am not going to
hold you to it, but right feel for you. With the Federal
prisons, what a good time credit would be. We give about 54
days a year. For every 7 additional days that we would give, we
would save about $200 million over 5 years, about $30 million a
year.
In my State of Louisiana, we went in and doubled good time
under a Republican governor, a Republican legislature, because
we saw it made sense. And all of our Southern States are kind
of moving in that trend.
If you just had to throw out a number of how many days of
earned good time you think you can absorb without making the
public less safe, if you had to throw out a number, what would
you throw out, or a range?
Mr. Ward. I would say in Alabama you could probably add 10
additional days. That would be the general consensus. Again, I
am speaking off the cuff, 10 additional days from what we would
do now. But we would still be below what Louisiana's average
is.
Mr. Scott. Ten days for what?
Mr. Ward. I am sorry? Ten additional days from what we do
now, which I believe is 54.
Mr. Richmond. We are 54 in the Feds. And while Mr. Wetzel
answers, I will look and quickly glance and see what Alabama is
at.
Mr. Wetzel. We are not a good time State, and so that is
not really how we relate to the world. We really try to
introduce risk assessment at sentencing, so make a good
decision. So everybody knows at the sentencing time how much
time at minimum the individual is going to serve. And then to
the extent you can individualize decisions and make good
decisions at who can get out earlier, I think that is what
makes sense in our context.
Mr. Richmond. Well, I think it still incentivize behavior
that will----
Mr. Wetzel. I am not disagreeing with that.
Mr. Richmond. Right, that will reduce your sentence.
Mr. Wetzel. I don't have a point of reference to throw a
number out to you.
Mr. Richmond. Okay.
Mr. Madden. It was interesting. I was over in your State of
Louisiana before their legislature this last session on several
bills that they were doing, that they have done, and a couple
that they didn't do dealing with the powers of individuals in
your State. But a couple of recommendations that are there. We
have a parole board that looks, we are probably more of a good
time State than John's is, but we are not a good time State
either when it comes to incarceration, but what you can look at
is what are you doing with your parole and your parole actions
that you have in putting people or releasing them, what amounts
to release time.
One of the things we actually did in our looks was we had
the parole board that was saying, this person is eligible for
parole, all they have to do is have this drug treatment
program, this 18-month drug treatment program. The problem we
had in Texas when we did this is there was a waiting period for
that drug program of over a year, people just sitting there.
Before they started an 18-month program, they were sitting
there and waiting for over a year.
This is the great thing as an engineer who could sit there
and think about studies of queuing theory and how much did we
spend on just keeping those people to wait for a program that
they needed and then were eligible for release. We saved a lot
of money by putting in additional drug treatment facilities in
the prisons, so we shortened that waiting time substantially.
And those are the kinds of things you can look at doing.
Mr. Richmond. Have any of you all enacted reentry courts? I
passed a reentry court bill a couple years ago, and now it is
coming full circle, and we have just run some awards in
Louisiana which would allow the judge to sentence a person to--
and actually, they send them to Angola, which is our State
penitentiary, with a range of between zero and 10 years. But
after completing programs and going through training, at some
point the warden will declare that they are not a risk to
society and the warden then has the ability to petition for
their release.
And that has been a very effective model in getting people
actually treatment, skills, workforce development, and all of
those other things to put them back on the streets in an area
where our recidivism rate with those offenders are very, very
low, even though they are going to our State penitentiary.
Mr. Ward. That has been a political debate with our State
prosecutors, although I think it is an idea a lot of them are
warming up to now. But, yes, we have looked at that.
Legislation 3 years ago to do that failed in Alabama; however,
I think there is a lot more support now for that than there
used to be due to the crisis we are in.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Forbes.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Chairman, I, first of all, want to thank
you and the Ranking Member for holding this hearing. I think it
is a very important topic.
And thank all of you for being here. I apologize. I have
been in an Armed Services hearing that was in conflict. And I
hope I am not asking you a question that you have already
addressed, but I was wondering if you could give me your
thoughts on the mental health aspects and how we are assessing
individuals when they come into the system, what you view in
terms of our treatment capabilities, and any recommendations
you might have along those lines, to any of you that would feel
that you could offer some suggestions.
Mr. Wetzel. In Pennsylvania, 21 percent of our population
is on the mental health roster, which equates to about 10,000
people, which means that I am responsible for the delivery of
mental health services for more individuals than any other one
entity in the State. And I think that is pretty consistent
around the country.
Mr. Madden. It is.
Mr. Wetzel. And when you talk about a challenging group, a
group that requires, first of all, good assessment, to include
a full psych workup, which means resources and time.
Mr. Forbes. Do you feel you are getting that now?
Mr. Wetzel. Excuse me?
Mr. Forbes. Do you feel you are getting that kind of
assessment?
Mr. Wetzel. Yeah, we do. And we have bolstered that. I
mean, we have come up short on some of the back-end stuff, in
other words, keeping folks healthy in general population. And
what we have seen around the country, and Pennsylvania in
particular, was people not getting sick from a mental health
standpoint and then ending up in segregation. And so sometimes
when you put mentally ill offenders in an intensive environment
that prisons are, it is not the most therapeutic environment in
all cases. So it is certainly a challenging thing.
So I think assessment at the front end, individualizing a
treatment plan for each individual, splitting out the seriously
mentally ill, which is anywhere between 7 and 10 percent of our
population, and putting them on a completely separate track, so
creating safe environments in general population.
And then for reentry for that group in particular, there
has to be a lot of coordination between the prison system and
the community infrastructure, to include case management and
the treatment providers, because we have places in rural
Pennsylvania where you are waiting 2 or 3 months to get an
appointment with a psychiatrist. We are releasing a mentally
ill offender with 30 days of medication. Oops. What happens in
that 30 or 45 days that individual doesn't have medication, and
it is not good. So I think it is a very challenging group.
I think that there needs to be as much attention on
creating a community safety net so mentally ill folks are less
likely to come to prison in the first place. People get
concerned that corrections isn't going to adjust and be able to
deal with mentally ill offenders. I am concerned that we are
going to be able to adjust, and I am not sure that is the right
thing from a public policy standpoint.
Mr. Ward. Congressman, I would say, too, one big issue, and
this is the distinction between the Federal and the State
level, is how do you define mental health problems? The Bureau
of Justice Statistics says that 56 percent of all State inmates
have a mental health problem; however, if you look at the
definition of mental health problem on the Federal level, that
number shrinks dramatically. I have a child, for example, on
the autism spectrum. They would not be considered mental
health. There are those out there who are coming back from war
with post-traumatic stress syndrome. They would not be
considered for these purposes mental health.
So I think how we define mental health is going to go a
long way to how we prevent or give the proper treatment for
those who have already been incarcerated or to prevent them
from becoming incarcerated in the first place.
Mr. Forbes. Good. Anybody else?
Ms. La Vigne. What I would add to this conversation is the
intersection between people with substance addiction and mental
health problems, and those are often co-occurring disorders.
And looking at the Federal system and the large volume of drug
offenders who are in the system, that could be an issue that
you will want to explore.
Mr. Forbes. Good. Well, thank you all so much for doing
that.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. The gentleman yields back. The Chair
recognizes himself to wrap up.
I think the best thing that we can do in the remaining days
of this Congress is to reauthorize the Second Chance Act. That
has been very useful. The gentleman from Virginia and I have
been pushing this. It took a couple years to get it passed the
first time, and I think that we ought to get it reauthorized
and at minimum tweaked so that it is more effective.
What I am looking at in the whole continuum of somebody who
gets involved in the criminal justice system is we start out
with the arrest, then we have decisions that have to be made by
the prosecutor and defense counsel, there is a trial, there is
a conviction, then there is an investigation by a probation or
parole department pre-sentencing to advise the court on what
the proper sentence would be. Then there is incarceration and
what goes on during incarceration and then what goes on after
release. So there is a huge continuum of various groups of
people, often with conflicting interests, who put their oar in
the waters in dealing with the individual who has run afoul of
the law.
My concern in dealing with this is that there is an awful
lot of bureaucratic inertia or the bureaucracy trying to save
their jobs by saying that they have a larger casework than is
really necessary, and it was a result of putting more notches
on the report that goes up to the boss. We end up not treating
those people as humans with special needs.
Now, some of them might require incarceration, particularly
if they are involved in violent crime or drug trafficking. We
have talked about mental health issues, and then we have talked
about what goes on in prison and how they are supervised if
they are released on probation.
How do we manage to lick the bureaucratic inertia that keep
things the way they are because people have jobs and they want
to keep their jobs and they are afraid of losing them if there
are changes? And I would like to ask you, Secretary Wetzel, to
start out with this, because you are the chief of a bunch of
public employees in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who work
in the corrections system there.
Mr. Wetzel. Yeah. I think it is really important to pay
attention to the process, and I think oftentimes we set up
processes that incentivize the wrong thing. So you alluded to a
situation where someone really could benefit or an agency could
really benefit by not necessarily making the best decision and
control caseloads from that manner. So I think it is very
important that we look what we incentivize and we look at how
the system works.
And Pennsylvania is a place where we looked, and we had
2,400 inmates every month come up who were eligible for a
parole hearing. The parole board had the capacity for 1,800 a
month, right? So every month we have 600 offenders.
But here is the rub and here is what we were doing poorly.
We weren't being deliberate about who got skipped. So if I was
an individual who was not following any rules, didn't do any
programs, was in trouble constantly and was in disciplinary,
and you were an individual who has done everything we have
asked you to do, we were equally likely to get skipped. If I
get skipped, it costs me nothing, because I wasn't getting out
anyhow. If you get skipped, it costs us from a standpoint that
you were likely to get paroled, so it is going to cost us real
money.
But beyond that, what message are we sending? If we are
saying we are a justice system, you have done everything we
have asked you to do, and now because of our bureaucracy or
incompetence, however you want to describe it, you are not
getting a hearing. So I think it is those kinds of things,
really looking at how the system is structured and making sure
it is structured in a manner that we are delivering what we
need to do and making just smart, commonsense decisions, I
think we can get where we need to get to.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay. I have 45 seconds left, so,
Senator Ward, you are the incumbent policymaker. How can you
answer my question?
Mr. Ward. One of the biggest areas I have noticed is, is a
disparity in how court cases are actually counted. We had a
situation in Alabama where one southern county counted each
charge filed as a ``caseload.'' And in my particular county,
Shelby County, those five same charges that were filed down
there are considered one case load for purposes of statistics.
We have to make sure we have accurate data with regard to
caseloads.
Second, he is absolutely right, the secretary is right. You
have got to incentivize the idea of, how can I get your
caseload down, how do we incentivize you to have a lower
caseload? If we can come up with that solution, I think it
encourages your judges and your prosecutors to pursue the
alternative sentencing programs.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much. My time has
expired.
I would like to thank all of the witnesses. This has been a
very interesting and fascinating hearing. And it is something
that is really necessary in terms of not only trying to reduce
our prison population, but also trying to reduce the recidivism
rate. And I think there is a public interest in both, but the
greater public interest is reducing the recidivism rate,
because somebody who gets out and re-offends is going to cause
a whole different group of victims. And if we want to protect
those victims from being victimized, the thing to do is to
convince the person who gets out not to continue in a life of
crime.
Does the gentleman from Virginia have some unanimous
consent requests?
Mr. Scott. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I ask unanimous consent that
two op-eds sponsored by Mr. Madden be entered. One is a public
safety op-ed which outlined many of the things he said today,
but also a very articulate article supporting the Youth Promise
Act, which I enjoyed reading since I am the chief sponsor of
that legislation. Also a letter and report from the ACLU,
``Ending Mass Incarceration: Charting a New Justice
Reinvestment,'' * and a report from the Justice Reinvestment
Initiative, State assessment, from the Urban Institute.**
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*The material titled, ``Ending Mass Incarceration, Charting a New
Justice Reinvestment,'' is not reprinted in this hearing record but is
on file with the Subcommittee and can be accessed at http://
www.google.com/
url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=
http%3A%2F%2Fsentencingproject.org%2Fdoc%2Fpublications%2Fsen--
Charting%2520a%2520
New%2520Justice%2520Reinvestment.pdf&ei=bt1XVKavM4PasAS_rYH4Aw&usg=AFQjC
NHfR
k4zDod6rZWcwuLxW9TrCckr4Q&bvm=bv.78677474,d.cWc.
**The material titled, ``Justice Reinvestment Initiative State
Assessment Report,'' is not reprinted in this hearing record but is on
file with the Subcommittee and can be accessed
at www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412994-Justice-Reinvestment-Initiative-
State-Assessment-Report.
pdf.
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Mr. Sensenbrenner. Without objection.
[The information referred to follows:]
__________
Mr. Sensenbrenner. If there is no further business to come
before the Subcommittee, without objection, the Subcommittee
stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:26 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]