Colorado Parolees coming from solitary will get more attention.
The Denver Post
Colorado's parole
officers are reaching out to prisoners in solitary confinement as
they're released from prison, and every prison will have a dedicated
parole officer to work with offenders, corrections officials said
Wednesday.
Executive director of corrections Rick Raemisch and
his executive staff on Wednesday unveiled their reform plans for the
state's troubled parole system during a hearing of the joint Judiciary
Committee.
Raemisch said his team is still working on overhauling
the rules for solitary confinement, also called administrative
segregation, but he already is pushing changes.
"The program that we are putting in place now will put us, I think, at the forefront of the nation," Raemisch said.
Parole officers have begun picking up prisoners when
they are released on parole from solitary confinement, he said. Those
high-level parolees, who during their prison terms were deemed too
dangerous to live with other prisoners, are then taken directly to their
assigned parole officer for immediate supervision, he said.
In
the past, the onus was on newly released prisoners to find their parole
office. Raemisch added that he also has begun requiring some prison
staffers to spend an hour in solitary confinement just so they can get
an idea of what it is like.
Community bulletin alerts also will go
out to law enforcement agencies when a prisoner is released straight
from administrative segregation to parole, Raemisch added.
Twenty-two
parole officers will staff all prisons beginning in the fiscal year
that starts in July, he said. They will help offenders obtain food
stamps and identification cards, and find work and housing.
"All
this stuff should be done before they get out of prison," Raemisch said.
"We need that strong case- management contact with parole officers
before they get out."
How parolees fare during their first two weeks goes a long way toward determining whether they'll succeed or fail, he said.
The changes in policy follow the slaying of former corrections
chief Tom Clements in March, allegedly by a parolee who had spent years
of his prison term in administrative segregation.
The Denver Post reported in September
that more than 100 prisoners were released straight from solitary
confinement to parole in the past year. The Post also found that
Colorado parolees have committed new crimes including murder, used drugs
and disappeared for months without getting sent back to prison.
The
number of prisoners in solitary has dropped to 662 in September from
1,505 two years ago, or 3.9 percent of the overall prisoner population
compared with 7 percent in 2011.
Steve Hager, interim director of parole, testified that improvements have been made since the newspaper's reports.
He said a backlog in risk assessments for parolees identified by The Post has been eliminated. Hager said supervisors now are doing timely audits of parole officer casework.
Corrections officials also are reviewing intensive supervision
standards and electronic monitoring rules, and are monitoring the
results of a new fugitive unit that rounds up parole absconders, Hager
said.
Gov. John Hickenlooper has proposed increasing funding for
parole by $10 million next year, a 25 percent boost, to bring total
annual spending to $49.4 million. Raemisch said he is still developing
plans for how to spend that new money and is waiting for results of a
study on parole officer staffing to make final recommendations.
House
Minority Leader Mark Waller, a Republican from Colorado Springs,
expressed skepticism about whether the proposed $10 million spending
increase is needed. He said Raemisch could have told legislators during
legislative hearings in September that more money was needed, but he
didn't back then.
"I was left with the impression that more
dollars weren't necessary to enhance public safety," Waller said during
Wednesday's committee meeting.
1 comment:
If you get DOC in a room, they always want more money to build their empire. Their finance guy is happy to tell anyone that his 6500 budgeted positions have never been cut in a decade of cuts to other departments, like health and education.
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