Kansas rethinks its prison and parole policies
The US accounts for just 5% of the world’s population but a quarter of prisoners.
More than one in 100 adults are behind bars and last year, more than seven million or one in 32 Americans, were either locked up, on probation or on parole.
Reoffending rates are high – more than half of former prisoners are back inside within three years of their release.
The US’s most innovative prisoner re-entry programme is being rolled out in Kansas. But why here, in the heart of the traditionally conservative Corn Belt? Well, it’s mainly down to cash.
In Kansas, as in many other states, prisons are draining the state budget. The number of people locked up increased by 25% in just a decade and two years ago the state was faced with building an additional 1,800 prison beds at a cost of $500m.
Roger Werholtz, the secretary of corrections, was forced to examine how to spend criminal justice dollars more effectively. For decades, he says, policy in the US has been driven by the public’s emotional response to criminals.
But Mr Werholtz argues locking people up is only a temporary solution since more than 95% of prisoners will eventually be released into the community. “We have to think long-term and stop arguing about what criminals deserve. Instead we need to focus on what we deserve as citizens and that leads us to a very different set of interventions.”
Two-thirds of the offenders entering Kansas prisons in 2006 were guilty of parole violations – 90% of them technicalities like missing meetings with counsellors.
Now parole officers are told to act less like cops and more like social workers. “But you know the old ‘trail em’, nail ‘em and jail ‘em stuff doesn’t work. We want people to come out and stay out and become responsible tax-paying citizens.”
Roger Werholtz admits some parole officers still think the new approach is a terrible mistake but says most are now enthusiastic.
RTFA. It’s long, interesting – and, maybe it’s working.
I haven’t as much experience working with cons and ex-cons as do some members of my family. I live in one of those backwards states that’s more likely to jail a drug-user for using than for stealing stuff to pay for drugs. Absurd as the rest of our drug policies.
But, I grew up in a tough factory town. Everyone had a friend or neighbor who had done time. None of the prisons or reformatories did anything to prepare a con for return to society much less aid in changing their lives on the outside.
I always think of a rainy night here in Santa Fe when I was alone near closing time and a guy walked in the door obviously disoriented. The prison van had dropped him off in the shopping center where I was managing a store. No one from his family showed up to meet him. PieTown had done absolutely nothing to ready him for his return. He didn’t even know we had buses.
I had him wait till I closed up and drove him to a restaurant near his family’s house. He didn’t want to go straight in. We had a quiet snack and nothing alcoholic – he was really afraid of having a drink. And, then, I dropped him in front of his parents’ house. Drove away.
Two weeks later, I read that he’d gone to a bar and gotten into a fight. He was on his way back to prison, again, for violating his parole.
The worst of our crooks probably deserve to be warehoused. I honestly don’t think this guy had to be.
