[House Hearing, 107 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PRISONER RELEASE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: THE ROLE OF HALFWAY
HOUSES AND COMMUNITY SUPERVISION IN PRISONER REHABILITATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 20, 2001
__________
Serial No. 107-23
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
_______
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76-341 WASHINGTON : 2001
____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
STEPHEN HORN, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
BOB BARR, Georgia ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JIM TURNER, Texas
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
DAVE WELDON, Florida WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida ------ ------
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho ------
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee (Independent)
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland, Chairman
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia, DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida ------ ------
------ ------
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Russell Smith, Staff Director
Howard Dennis, Professional Staff Member
Matthew Batt, Legislative Assistant
Jon Bouker, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on July 20, 2001.................................... 1
Statement of:
Clark, John, corrections trustee, D.C. Office of Corrections
Trustee; Dr. Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, Director, Bureau of
Prisons; Charles Ramsey, chief of police, District of
Columbia; Edward Reilly, chairman, U.S. Parole Commission;
Jasper Ormond, Jr., interim director, Court Services and
Offender Supervision Agency; and James Anthony, deputy
director, D.C. Department of Corrections................... 73
Patterson, Kathy, chairperson, Committee on the Judiciary,
D.C. City Council; Margret Nedelkoff Kellems, Deputy Mayor
for Public Safety and Justice; Laurie E. Ekstrand,
director, Justice Issues, General Accounting Office; and
Jeremy Travis, senior fellow, Justice Policy Center, the
Urban Institute............................................ 12
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Anthony, James, deputy director, D.C. Department of
Corrections, prepared statement of......................... 137
Clark, John, corrections trustee, D.C. Office of Corrections
Trustee, prepared statement of............................. 76
Ekstrand, Laurie E., director, Justice Issues, General
Accounting Office, prepared statement of................... 35
Kellems, Margret Nedelkoff, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety
and Justice, prepared statement of......................... 23
Morella, Hon. Constance A., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 4
Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Representative in Congress
from the District of Columbia, prepared statement of....... 9
Ormond, Jasper, Jr., interim director, Court Services and
Offender Supervision Agency, prepared statement of......... 128
Patterson, Kathy, chairperson, Committee on the Judiciary,
D.C. City Council, prepared statement of................... 15
Ramsey, Charles, chief of police, District of Columbia,
prepared statement of...................................... 109
Reilly, Edward, chairman, U.S. Parole Commission, prepared
statement of............................................... 116
Sawyer, Dr. Kathleen Hawk, Director, Bureau of Prisons,
prepared statement of...................................... 89
Travis, Jeremy, senior fellow, Justice Policy Center, the
Urban Institute, prepared statement of..................... 54
PRISONER RELEASE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: THE ROLE OF HALFWAY
HOUSES AND COMMUNITY SUPERVISION IN PRISONER REHABILITATION
----------
FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2001
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Constance A.
Morella (chairwoman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Morella and Norton.
Staff present: Russell Smith, staff director; Heea
Vazirani-Fales, deputy staff director; Robert White,
communications director; Matthew Batt, legislative assistant;
Shalley Kim, staff assistant; Howard Dennis, professional staff
member; Jon Bouker, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority
assistant clerk.
Mrs. Morella. I'm going to convene the Subcommittee on the
District of Columbia for our hearing and welcome you all to the
fifth hearing of this subcommittee.
Our issue at this hearing is ``Prisoner Release in the
District of Columbia: The role of Halfway Houses and Community
Supervision in Prison Rehabilitation,'' and it's a vital issue.
It not only affects our Nation's Capital, but it affects the
communities that are facing the phenomena of prisoners
returning in numbers from Federal and State prisons due to new
sentencing guidelines.
I want to commend all our witnesses for the leadership that
they have provided on this issue and for sharing with us their
expertise and concerns. You'll be interested in their
individual testimonies, and I hope that we can glean some
solutions from the collective tests.
Special welcome to all our witnesses: The Honorable Kathy
Patterson, chairperson of the Committee on the Judiciary of the
District of Columbia City Council; Margaret Nedelkoff Kellems,
Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice; Laurie Ekstrand,
Director of Justice Issues at the General Accounting Office;
Jeremy Travis, senior fellow, Justice Policy Center, the Urban
Institute. And these witnesses will comprise the first panel.
We'll have the second panel comprised of John Clark,
corrections trustee of the D.C. Office of Corrections; Kathleen
Hawk Sawyer, director of the Bureau of Prisons; Charles Ramsey,
chief of police, District of Columbia; the Honorable Edward
Reilly, chairman of the U.S. Parole Commission; Jasper Ormond,
interim director, Court Services and Offender Supervision
Agency; and James Anthony, deputy director of the D.C.
Department of Corrections. So, again, I welcome everyone again.
In an opening statement preliminary to hearing from the
witnesses and the ranking member, I want to comment on the fact
that more than 2,500 felony inmates will return from prison to
the District of Columbia this year. That's a significantly
higher figure than in past years, and it represents the
beginning of a trend, not merely a statistical anomaly. city
officials expect a similar number of inmates to leave prison
each year in the near future. This presents real challenges for
the District. How does the city reintegrate these inmates back
into society? How does the city ensure they get proper drug
treatment, medical services, other assistance? What can be done
to prevent recidivism, to buck the odds that show as many as
two-thirds of released prisoners are rearrested within 3 years?
And, finally, how and where does the city and the Bureau of
Prisons place additional halfway houses, which have proved to
be an effective rehabilitation tool?
There is a shortage, we understand, of 250 halfway house
beds in the District. An unwillingness among many neighborhoods
to be home to such facilities exacerbates the problem. I think
there has to be a public education effort here from both the
city and the Bureau of Prisons to drive home the fact that
these prisoners are coming back to the community regardless,
and if they are not entering a halfway house, then they're
likely heading right back to the streets and the life-style
they practiced before being incarcerated.
And although this subcommittee deals narrowly with
oversight of the District of Columbia government, it is clear
that the District is not alone in facing an influx of returning
prisoners. Nationwide, more than 600,000 inmates are scheduled
to be released into their communities each year. That's roughly
1,600 a day. Some will go to halfway houses, some will get drug
treatment. Most will be supervised by a parole officer. And yet
studies tell us that most will return to a life of crime.
Nearly half will end up back in jail or prison.
While D.C. is indicative of a national trend, it also faces
some particular obstacles. To begin with, the city, as a
completely urban jurisdiction, has a higher incarceration rate
than any of the 50 States. Its prisoners are nearly twice as
likely than the national average to have prior convictions, and
they are more likely to have serious drug and/or medical
problems.
This is not just a corrections issue. This is a community
public safety problem, one that has failed to receive proper
attention nationally, although I must commend the District for
taking some meaningful first steps in recognizing this problem
and that it affects the community at large.
While we know the numbers, we know too little about what
works in the sense of keeping ex-prisoners out of jail. There
is no hard substantive data to guide local policymakers on how
to best cope with ex-inmates in terms of helping them become
productive members of society, preventing additional crimes,
and protecting the safety of the general public.
The unique structure of corrections in the District of
Columbia, however, provides an opportunity. Felony inmates from
the District are now sent to the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
which does a significantly better job than most prison systems
of assessing and rehabilitating criminals. And the new Court
Services and Offender Supervision Agency has taken the lead in
post-correctional supervision.
We have the mechanisms in place to do a better job of
tracking inmates from the time they first enter prison to the
time they are paroled, released, or sent to halfway houses, and
as such we can begin to learn what types of programs, both
inside and outside of prison, are most helpful in reducing
recidivism and ensuring safe communities. The District can and
should be used as a national model, a national model to examine
these critical prisoner release and rehabilitation issues.
I will be considering legislation to use the District of
Columbia corrections system to determine what are the best
practices, the best methods for rehabilitating prisoners and
reducing crime. This hearing is focused on a burgeoning problem
facing the District that, as I mentioned, the city has in many
ways been proactive in responding to the issue.
While the number of halfway house beds in the city is down
considerably over recent years, the current situation is a far
cry from 1997 before the Revitalization Act when the city
stopped using its halfway houses and simply placed returning
felons on a bus from Lorton and dropped them directly into the
community.
Although the subcommittee deals narrowly with oversight of
the District of Columbia, it's clear that we are not alone in
facing this influx of returning prisoners, and we are going to
be looking at that issue too. The new Court Services and
Offenders Supervision Agency has also shown some early success
with its commitment to getting more ex-prisoners into
appropriate drug treatment programs and its collaboration with
police and parole offices. More must be done. We're going to
hear about that today.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and working
with Congresswoman Norton, other members of this subcommittee,
and the District's leadership in dealing directly with the
problem that faces our Nation's Capital and other communities
across the Nation.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Constance A. Morella
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6341.095
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6341.096
Mrs. Morella. So it's now my privilege and pleasure to
recognize the ranking member of the District of Columbia
Subcommittee, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, for her
opening statement.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Madam Chair. This hearing is
especially welcome and is surely one of the most important
hearings we have had since the new Chair assumed her role, and
I thank our Chair, Connie Morella, for calling the subcommittee
to hear today's witnesses.
Halfway houses for pretrial defendants and for parolees and
offenders on supervised release have raised community anxiety,
although ironically under their current Federal Government
management, these halfway houses have significantly reduced
criminal activity. However, without a forum such as today's
hearing to lay out the particulars and hear problems,
neighborhoods have resisted such facilities.
The reasons for community angst arise not from the new
system under Federal supervision, but from the old District-run
haphazard halfway houses. Under the city's supervision, halfway
houses became so well known for escapes, faulty supervision,
and recidivism that the city itself discontinued using halfway
houses altogether. The result, however, was the proverbial
``from the frying pan into the fire'' offenders return to our
neighborhoods with little or no supervision and without the
transitional support that is necessary to give offenders a
chance to find employment and resist substance abuse and
criminal activity.
Enter the Revitalization Act of 1997 which transferred
responsibility for offenders to the Federal Government as the
city requested. Inevitable issues arise in a transition to any
system, but it is already clear that the new system under new
management is superior to what it replaced. Instead of Lorton
Prison, with its long documented history of abysmal conditions
and reputation as a factory for crime, offenders now are
supervised by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, perhaps the best and
most progressive prison system in the country.
Instead of pretrial or post-release--a post-trial release
into the community with no monitoring, or with oversight by
overworked parole officers, ill equipped to provide job and
other transitional support, a new, professionally staffed,
well-funded agency, the Court Services and Offenders
Supervision Agency [CSOSA], was established in 1997. CSOSA
provides an impressive array of services to ex-offenders for 5
years, on the average. CSOSA--none of which were available in
the old system, including frequent drug testing, substance
abuse treatment, life skills training, and job referral.
In the past, by leaving ex-offenders to fend for themselves
without a closely monitored and structured way back to normalcy
and to a job, the District was virtually inviting people
released from prison to return to the line of work they may
have known best: criminal activity.
There is no way to keep people who were offenders from
coming back to their home communities, and given what many
offenders were born into, how they were raised, and the
opportunities denied them, no community is free of
responsibility for the conditions that lead to crime.
Now that we have the Bureau of Prisons and CSOSA as a way
to hold offenders responsible for leading productive lives, and
the District now has a way that takes its responsibility for
reentry of these Washingtonians, it must be acknowledged that
the city has a considerable advantage because this occurs at no
cost to the city, because state-of-the-art services to control
and improve offender behavior are now paid for by the Federal
Government.
The city asked for this change in responsibilities and
costs, and the Federal Government agreed. Both must take this--
these shared responsibilities seriously.
Perhaps the most important outstanding issue is the
development of a relationship, a real partnership between the
Federal sponsors of these important services and the
communities in which they must necessarily be placed.
This is an enormous and unprecedented challenge. Never
before has the Federal Government assumed the cost and
responsibility for pretrial offender and ex-offenders of an
independent jurisdiction. It will require skillful leadership
from the city and its community leaders on the one hand, and
sensitive action and response to often delicate neighborhood
concerns by the BOP and CSOSA on the other.
Many of these concerns have been brought to me and my
office by city and community leaders during this period of
transition. That is not where these issues should be resolved.
Both the city and the Federal agencies have shown that they
have the attitudes, approaches, and capacity to make their
unique relationship work. What is not clear is that a smoothly
running system is in place.
This has already been shown--this much has already been
shown. District residents are considerably freer from offender
criminal activity now that release is to highly structured
halfway houses rather than to the community, largely
unmonitored, as before. The evidence was immediately clear as
soon as CSOSA assumed responsibility.
From May 1998 to January 2001, arrests of offenders was
lowered by an astounding 75 percent monthly, and a surely
unintended experiment, control experiment, the rate of new
arrests has increased as CSOSA has found difficulty finding
halfway house space. The District is cutting off its nose to
spite its face. Still the rate of new arrests even now is 50
percent lower than it was before CSOSA took over.
I just hope, if I may say, that we don't have to wait until
the crime rate is all the way back up and then everybody runs
in to say how come these folks are reoffending. They're
reoffending because we are offending by not doing our job as a
city to find places for these Washingtonians.
We'd better face it. You can't put them in Maryland or
Virginia. These are our children, our young people, and much
that has happened to them in the system is our fault. And if
many of us were born into the conditions many of them were born
into, we would have had an awfully hard time not becoming
offenders ourselves. So the NIMBY approach to these young
people entering the city when the costs of state-of-the-art
services are being provided by the Federal Government is simply
unacceptable.
The clear documentation of the superiority of the new
system must be better used to inform the community and to get
the necessary space to provide these crime-reducing services.
The dual jurisdiction responsibilities of the District and the
Federal Government must be rescued from ad hoc neighborhood-by-
neighborhood controversy to a new system, beginning with
wholesale reeducation of residents about the new system, city-
wide allocation of facilities and services on a fair-share
basis without overconcentration in specific neighborhoods,
preparation and consultation with communities and sensitivity
not only to offenders but to the concerns of the law-abiding
citizens who must receive this population into their
neighborhoods.
Because so little is even known, much less understood,
about the responsibilities and the new services, today's
hearing is especially important. I believe we should regard
this hearing as a jump start to improving the efforts and the
responsibilities that we will insist that the Federal
Government and the city now undertake with new and focused
energy to make the new system work with new understanding from
residents and new behavior from offenders.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6341.097
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6341.098
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6341.099
Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Congresswoman Norton. I'm now
going to commence with our first panel, and if I might ask you,
in accordance with the policy of the committee and the
subcommittee, if you'll stand and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mrs. Morella. The record will demonstrate an affirmative
response. We'll start off with you, Councilwoman Patterson, and
we would like to allocate you about 5 minutes for your
testimony so there's time for questioning on the second panel,
and your entire testimony will be included in the record. Thank
you.
STATEMENTS OF KATHY PATTERSON, CHAIRPERSON, COMMITTEE ON THE
JUDICIARY, D.C. CITY COUNCIL; MARGRET NEDELKOFF KELLEMS, DEPUTY
MAYOR FOR PUBLIC SAFETY AND JUSTICE; LAURIE E. EKSTRAND,
DIRECTOR, JUSTICE ISSUES, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; AND JEREMY
TRAVIS, SENIOR FELLOW, JUSTICE POLICY CENTER, THE URBAN
INSTITUTE
Ms. Patterson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you,
Congresswoman Norton, for the opportunity to testify today. I
am Kathy Patterson, the chairman of the Council's Committee on
the Judiciary and the representative of ward 3. I regret that
much of what I have to share with the subcommittee could be
characterized as further statements of the problem rather than
a clear and convincing description of solutions.
You will hear today from Corrections Trustee John Clark and
others that we have insufficient bed space in the District of
Columbia to accommodate halfway houses as transitional options
for District felons returning home from prison. We have
insufficient bed space for pretrial detainees for whom such
placements are deemed appropriate, and insufficient bed space
for sentenced misdemeanants.
We may have insufficient bed space in the D.C. jail, but
few officials, apparently, wish to say that one out loud. All
relevant numbers seem to be going up. I have been convinced by
information shared by the corrections experts that you will
hear from today and from research I have seen that halfway
houses are a good public policy for prisoners returning home
from prison. I've been persuaded that pretrial detention is an
appropriate option for some portion of the pretrial population
in the District, and commend my colleagues on the Criminal
Justice Coordinating Council for their efforts in this area.
Preliminary statistics prepared by the Court Supervision
and Offender Services Agency indicate a decline in the rearrest
rate for those released from prison. At the same time, both the
recent General Accounting Office report, ``Prisoner Releases,''
and the Urban Institute's ``From Prison to Home'' underscore
the need for comprehensive research on what works best in terms
of prisoner reentry.
What I can bring to the discussion today that I hope will
be of value is the perspective of the District of Columbia
Council on some of the underlying issues. As you may be aware,
earlier this year the Council rejected a proposal by Mayor
Williams to renovate building 25 on the D.C. general campus for
a 200-person halfway house as well as administrative offices
for the Department of Corrections.
The Judiciary Committee also rejected an alternative that
would have provided, instead, for up to 100 female
misdemeanants in the renovated building. The Judiciary
Committee action was based on widespread and vocal community
opposition to the Mayor's proposal.
What the Council did request of the Mayor was a
comprehensive plan to address the need for community
correctional facilities. In Budget Request Act language, the
Council precluded the expenditure of capital funds to renovate
facilities in the D.C. general campus area, ``until such time
as the Mayor shall present to the Council for its approval a
plan for the development of census tract 68.04 south of East
Capitol Street, Southeast, and the housing of any
misdemeanants, felons, ex-offenders, or persons awaiting trial
within the District of Columbia.''
The specific prohibition is attached to a particular
location on Capitol Hill, but the plan requirement is much
broader. The Council, I believe, adopted this requirement as a
way of pressing the administration to come forward with a plan
for locating community correctional facilities, a plan that
would presumably encompass the true need for community
facilities and also reflect the competing interests that come
to bear, economic development interests, neighborhood
revitalization interests, and so forth.
I do agree with a sentence that I lift from Mr. Clark's
testimony you will hear later this morning, when he states that
the lack of halfway house beds should be viewed as a basic
threat to public safety.
We have a great deal of work to do as public officials in
building a case for community correctional facilities within
District neighborhoods. There are already many of these
facilities, and some of the older, smaller, well-managed
halfway houses have become an integrated and accepted part of
their communities.
This is a message we have heard too little in recent
months. At the same time, there's a recognition that community
concerns about who will be living in their midst have to be
addressed accurately and frankly.
At the same time this spring that Council members raised
concerns about the particular proposal by the administration
regarding a new halfway house space, my colleagues introduced
legislation to create a halfway house site selection panel.
That bill, authored by Council Members Phil Mendelson and
Sharon Ambrose, would establish a correctional facility site
selection advisory panel with the purpose of, ``preparing
comprehensive recommendations to the Council that identify
tracts of land suitable for correctional facilities within
appropriately zoned sections of the District that safeguard the
health, safety, and welfare of residents and businesses.''
The bill includes a public hearing requirement and notes
the need to work in consultation with the Department of
Corrections, the Court Supervision and Offender Service Agency,
and the Departments of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, Public
Works and Health.
Other jurisdictions have similar site selection advisory
panels, and their chief attraction is the possibility of
bringing some measure of objectivity into the discussion and,
frankly, removing some of the politics from the discussion. The
legislation is before the Judiciary Committee and we expect to
take it up this fall.
At the same time, I would note that there is nothing that
prevents the District government from moving forward with the
same approach, putting such an advisory panel into place
through Executive order, for example, so that the task of
crafting site selection criteria can begin much sooner.
As Mrs. Norton noted in a hearing before the panel in May,
the Council Judiciary Committee hosted a briefing on halfway
house issues for Council members, including presentations from
the Department of Corrections and the Bureau of Prisons. It was
a very useful discussion, but useful in the main in signaling
the large amount of work ahead.
Tasks that remain undone are difficult ones: educating the
public on the value of community correctional facilities and
finding the political will to advocate in support of such
facilities.
District of Columbia residents returning home from prison
are our constituents. They are coming home, not arriving on a
new planet. Their families are here. Their futures, we hope,
are here, and should include gainful employment and
contributions to the community. We do ourselves and the
District residents a disservice by failing to recognize the
value of transitional facilities to sound criminal justice
public policy.
Thank you, and I would be happy to answer questions.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you very much, Chairwoman Patterson.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Patterson follows:]
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[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6341.005
Mrs. Morella. We'll now hear from Margret Nedelkoff
Kellems, the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice. Thank
you.
Ms. Kellems. Good morning, Chairwoman Morella and
Congresswoman Norton. I'm Margret Kellems, the Deputy Mayor for
Public Safety and Justice. I appreciate the opportunity to
testify before you today and thank you for your focus on this
important issue of prisoner releases in the District and the
role of halfway houses and community supervision in prisoner
rehabilitation.
Managing offenders as they reenter communities and prepare
for productive lives is not a new challenge; however, it is one
which is growing in scale as the numbers of offenders returning
to our community grows as the result of high incarceration
rates of the past decades.
As other panelists here today have and will testify, we
expect about 2,500 offenders to return to our communities
before the end of this calendar year. Recognizing this, the
District has prioritized the development of an enhanced system
of reentry services for offenders during fiscal years 2002 and
2003.
As I offer my written testimony into the record, I would
like to take an opportunity to highlight some of the common and
key elements that are found in the statements of many of
today's panelists.
I will also briefly outline our next steps. The first and
most prevalent theme, as you mentioned at the outset,
Chairwoman, and you will hear from most of the panelists, is
that the District has an insufficient amount of halfway house
bed space to accommodate the large number of reintegrating
offenders returning to our communities. The importance of
structured transitional housing for reintegrating offenders is
not in dispute in this or in any city. However, as other
panelists will also point out, it is essential that the
District achieve the political will and the community support
to site these facilities.
Mayor Williams is fully committed to working in partnership
with our Council, with our criminal justice stakeholders, and
with the community to find appropriate and acceptable locations
for halfway houses and other community-based residential
facilities such as group homes and substance abuse treatment
facilities. We are already beginning this process, but we
certainly have a long way to go.
Second, many of the panelists today will point out that
transitional housing is only one aspect of an effective reentry
strategy for reintegrating offenders as well as for pretrial
defendants. The other critical aspects of an effective
community supervision model include drug testing and treatment,
mental health services, job training and employment
opportunities, and intensive community-based supervision by
police and by supervisory officers.
Of course, halfway houses are a vital component of the
offenders' transitional period, providing a structured
environment for offenders who are used to the highly regimented
institutional life to reacquaint themselves with the challenges
of community life. Additionally, as offenders flow through
halfway houses, it provides public managers an opportunity to
assess their needs and bring resources to centralized
locations. But the other elements of the strategy are equally
important.
The absence of these reentry support services only
increases the probability of recidivism which has both social
costs for the communities and direct costs to the criminal
justice agencies.
For these reasons, it is important for the government
agencies to make investments in these services for offenders,
reducing the overall cost of their return. As the
Revitalization Act shifts our justice responsibilities, we are
extremely supportive of the Court Services and the Offender
Supervision efforts to provide these much needed resources,
particularly in the area of substance abuse testing and
treatment.
We have seen the positive impact of these programs on
public safety and on the crime statistics in the District. But
even with all of the support structures, we must not lose
sight, however, of the fact that offenders are individuals who
have already demonstrated a capacity to violate the laws.
Decades of experience have taught us that incarceration
does not deter all future criminal activity. So consequently,
we must closely supervise and provide a system of incentives
and disincentives to offenders under community supervision to
lead law abiding lives. This entails, among other things,
periodic drug testing, multiagency supervision within the
community, restricted freedoms such as home detention or
regular reporting to a supervising agency, and swift
enforcement for violations of parole conditions or other
conditions of release.
Currently in the District we face a situation unlike that
of any other jurisdiction in the country. The separations of
functions and jurisdictions within the District resulting from
the Revitalization Act has made development of a comprehensive
system of management a challenge.
Our success to date, though, gives rise to great optimism.
In fact, the third common element in many of the testimonies
today is the acknowledgment of our progress in working together
as a team to effectively manage the offender populations in our
city.
Most notably, CSOSA has demonstrated its willingness and
ability to collaborate with District agencies to develop
integrated support and supervision services. In November 1998,
the Metropolitan Police Department and CSOSA began a pilot
partnership in one geographic area in which they conducted
joint supervision activities and home visits. In that area
there was a 35 percent reduction in reported part I crimes
within weeks of implementation. Because of the success of this
program, it is being expanded citywide.
Another example of our success is found in the Interagency
Detention Work Group chaired by the corrections trustee, and
comprising principals from corrections, BOP, CSOSA, the
Pretrial Services Agency, the U.S. Parole Commission, Superior
Court, and the Mayor's office. This work group has made great
progress in developing solutions to a short-term capacity
problem within halfway houses in the District.
These examples demonstrate not only a willingness but also
a capacity among criminal justice agencies in D.C. to work
together to manage offenders that are coming back into our
communities. It is this collaborative spirit that is giving us
the foundation for moving forward, building on success,
leveraging resources, and planning for an even more robust
range of services. As we move forward in enhancing our reentry
system, these programs and existing relationships will be
assets to us.
Before I close I would like to very briefly outline how we
are planning and seeking to develop a model reentry system in
D.C. Next week, my office, in partnership with CSOSA and the
Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, is cosponsoring
a symposium on the vision for integrated housing, employment,
treatment services, and supervision of offenders in the
District. It is our intention to not only involve the criminal
justice agencies represented here, but also community
organizations, employers, and service providers.
One of the important outcomes of this meeting will be the
development and submission of an application for a Federal
grant of approximately $3 million to enhance reentry system for
young offenders.
We have also earmarked an additional $650,000 of current
funds to support the development of a sustainable system. In
these ways we are not only planning for the development of a
coordinated and improved system, but we are also beginning to
resource that system. Certainly all of the members of the
justice community, our elected officials, and the community at
large recognize the need for an infrastructure and an operating
model that can support and manage the needs of ex-offenders,
the pretrial and probation populations.
I'm optimistic about our likelihood of success in building
this system. While there are difficult decisions to make and
scarce resources to be marshaled, the payoffs in increased
public safety and increased human capital in our city are
great.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak before you and I
would also be happy to answer your questions.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Ms. Kellems.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kellems follows:]
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Mrs. Morella. Now I'm pleased to recognize Laurie Ekstrand,
who is the Director of Justice Issues at the GAO, the General
Accounting Office. Welcome.
Ms. Ekstrand. Thank you, Chairwoman Morella and
Congresswoman Norton. Thank you for inviting me to discuss the
findings of our recent work on prisoner releases and
reintegration programs. Our report emphasizes the significance
of these issues for the Nation. My testimony also includes some
information that relates to the importance of the issues for
the District of Columbia.
Both criminal justice policies and other factors have
resulted in high national incarceration rates in recent years,
bringing our total prison population to 1.3 million inmates in
1999. The incarceration rate for the District of Columbia
exceeds that of any State in the Nation. In fact, it is 2.8
times greater than the national average. Almost all inmates
will be returned to communities at some point.
Nationwide, the number of inmates being released to
communities surpassed the half million mark in 1998 and it is
likely to stay high--at high levels for some time to come.
Unfortunately, many of those who are released will return
to prison and in many cases have just a brief period of street
time between incarcerations. Although current national data are
limited, available indicators seem to show that recidivism
rates tend to hover around 40 percent. While we don't have a
recidivism figure for the District, some available data seem to
indicate that rates may even be higher.
According to testimony before the Subcommittee on the
District of Columbia, Committee on Appropriations, last year,
98 percent of all adult probationers had prior convictions,
almost twice the national average of 50 percent. In relation to
drug use, about 57 percent of Federal and 70 percent of State
inmates reported having used drugs regularly before prison, and
this is according to a 1997 prisoner survey.
In relation to D.C., a June 2000 National Institute of
Justice report indicated that 69 percent of adult males
arrested in the District tested positive for at least one type
of drug in 1999. This figure was 5 percentage points higher
than the median rate for comparable arrestees in the 34 urban
sites covered by the report.
Although not all drug users may need treatment, our
analysis of 1997 prisoner survey data indicated that for those
scheduled to be released within 12 months, 33 percent of
Federal and 36 percent of State inmates participated in
residential inpatient treatment for drug or alcohol abuse. In
terms of other in-prison programs that help prepare inmates for
self-sufficiency after release, our analysis of 1997 data for
soon-to-be-released inmates show that about a quarter of both
Federal and State inmates participated in vocational training
programs, 11 percent of Federal and 2 percent of State inmates
worked in prison industry jobs, and 37 percent of Federal and
12 percent of State inmates participated in pre-release
programs.
As has already been discussed and is well known, D.C.
prisoners are almost all in Bureau of Prison facilities at this
point, and all will be by the end of the year. BOP intends that
its inmate preparation for release involves all three phases of
the criminal correctional system: the in-prison phase, a
transition to the community and community-based halfway house
setting, and a period of community supervision.
In response to the growth in prisoner releases, the Federal
Government has designated about $90 million for two grant
programs intended to provide support in communities for
offenders' releases from State prisons, juvenile correction
facilities, and local facilities housing State inmates.
A joint effort of the Departments of Justice, Labor and
Health and Human Services, the first of these two grants, the
Young Offender Initiative Reentry grant program is soliciting
applications now. Although there are some technical and
administrative factors that would need to be addressed in
relation to the District's participation in this grant program,
they do not seem to be insurmountable. Nevertheless, this is a
competitive grant program and only those jurisdictions with the
strongest grant applications are likely to be awarded funds.
This concludes my oral statement, and I will of course be
happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Ms. Ekstrand.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ekstrand follows:]
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Mrs. Morella. Now we'll hear from Jeremy Travis. Thank you
for coming.
Mr. Travis. Good morning, Chairwoman Morella and
Congresswoman Norton. I'm very honored to be invited to testify
before your subcommittee this morning, and I commend you for
undertaking this review of a difficult and timely issue, one
that is of great concern, understandably, to the residents of
the District.
Let me first introduce myself and my organizational
affiliation. I'm a senior fellow with the Urban Institute,
which is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based here in
Washington, and I'm affiliated with the newly established
Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute. And prior to that
I served as Director of the National Institute of Justice in
the prior administration for 6 years, and I now lead a team at
the Urban Institute that is developing a national policy and
research agenda on this issue, the issue of prisoner reentry.
And last month we published a monograph entitled, ``From Prison
to Home'' that you were kind enough to refer to.
I don't pretend expertise on the issues involving the
District, but I have been involved in both my current and prior
position in criminal justice reform efforts in the District,
but I hope this morning that my testimony can help put some of
these issues in the national framework, and I want to provide
as well some--an analytical approach for thinking about where
we go from here.
So I wish to make in the time allotted three points: First,
the phenomenon of prison reentry in the District of Columbia is
unique in the Nation both because of the distinctive nature and
the changing nature of the institutional arrangements for
managing reentry and because of the high level of imprisonment
in the District. This changing nature of the District's
criminal justice system presents, as others have--have already
testified, both risks and opportunities for effective reentry
management.
Second, the current approach to prison reentry being
developed by the responsible agencies in the District in my
view reflects the key principles of effective reintegration; so
in my view, a solid foundation is being constructed.
Third, to be effective, the agencies involved should adopt
a common mission statement that reflects the principles of
effective reentry, and should be asked to develop performance
measures based upon those principles.
Because other witnesses have and will cover the first two
points, I'll touch on them briefly and focus my attention on
the third. Clearly, the criminal justice system in the District
is unique and is undergoing significant changes, and these
changes will affect the nature and the composition of the
reentry population within the District.
Parole decisions are now being made by Federal, not a
District entity. Preparation for release is now the
responsibility of a Federal, not a local agency, and prisoners
are now being held in Federal prisons as far away as New Mexico
and Arizona, far removed from the families and other support
systems that are essential to effective reintegration.
Supervision is now the responsibility of a new agency,
Court Services and Offender Services Agency, that has a much
broader mission. So it's understandable that in this complex
and shifting environment, there are, as the Deputy Mayor
alluded to, significant challenges to developing effective
integration policies.
There's another challenge that we must acknowledge, that
the chairwoman alluded to in her opening statement, that the
level of imprisonment and therefore the scale of the reentry
phenomenon is very high in the District. In 1999, slightly over
1,300 of 100,000 District residents were incarcerated, which
compares to a national average of 476; and the number of
inmates from the District who are incarcerated has increased by
15 percent over the past 2 years to slightly over 10,000, a
prison population the size of that in Massachusetts or Nevada.
And according to BJS data, there are approximately 600--I'm
sorry--6,000 people under supervision in the District, the same
as the parole population of the States of Virginia or Arkansas.
And the number coming home, 2,500 prisoners returning to the
District this year, is a prisoner flow the equivalent of that
found in New Mexico or Oregon.
So this is a significant phenomenon to deal with, and it
impacts, as both Members of Congress alluded to, has a
disproportionate impact on the neighborhoods of the District,
neighborhoods already facing other enormous social problems.
The reach of the criminal justice supervision has also
consequences for our pursuit of racial justice. Ninety-seven
percent of the District's prison population is African American
in a District that is nearly 40 percent white. And on any given
day, nearly half of the young African American men of the
District are in prison or jail or on some form of probation,
parole, or other pretrial release. So this is only to restate
the point that this is a very important and difficult set of
issues that the committee is addressing this morning.
The second point is the District of Columbia's approach to
reentry in my view is--reflects sound reintegration principles.
I've been impressed by the level of cooperation that I've seen
here and compare it only to other States around the country
where it's very difficult to even find the level of discussion
that we see around the District.
As I alluded to in my testimony, I was responsible, working
with Janet Reno, for the Reentry Partnership Initiative, and
there are a number of jurisdictions that would be envious of
the level of cooperation seen here. Why is that? I think there
is some obvious--the Revitalization Act has provided an obvious
incentive for people to work more closely together and the
entities that are now in place, the capacity that's being
developed is--provides the cornerstone for effective
reintegration. Halfway houses, I think, are an important
ingredient of effective reintegration.
The siting issues, I think there's some national experience
that can help the District in thinking about ways to resolve
some siting issues. In particular, I allude to the Safer
Foundation's work in Chicago. The work of CSOSA in transitional
interventions is a second key cornerstone that's very important
to effective reentry; and, third, the approach generally of
effective--of comprehensive supervision is essential.
Finally, I'd like to just allude to some framework issues
that I think will be important to the District and the
committee in moving forward. One is a recommendation that the
agencies involved think carefully about what the common mission
is of their work, and this is more than effective coordination.
This is asking what are the goals we hope to achieve by
effecting successful reentry of this number of prisoners? It's
not just recidivism reduction, as important as that is. It is,
I argue in my testimony, community safety, and that involves
community engagement. It involves engagement of people about
very difficult issues. It's not merely being able to say that
we've reduced recidivism by X percent, as important as that is.
The second goal that I would urge the committee and the
members of the criminal justice community to think about is the
goal of reintegration, which is a distinct goal from the goal
of even community safety; and that is, the goal of reconnecting
the 2,500 people coming back from the District to the world of
work, to productive and effective family relationships, to good
health care, to social services, to productive peer group
relationships, to active civic engagement.
Reintegration is a goal that is separate from the goal of
recidivism reduction, or even producing safety, and is a very
important social goal for all of the agencies involved to
embrace and to embrace comprehensibly.
I then recommend in my statement that the agencies of the
community move beyond that to a set of performance measures
that will enable everybody to know whether we're making
progress in this experiment as we move forward.
So I thank the committee for the invitation to testify and
look forward to the opportunity to answer questions.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you very much Mr. Travis. We appreciate
that perspective and the research that's been done.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Travis follows:]
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Mrs. Morella. To start the line of questioning, this really
pretty much picks up a little bit on what Mr. Travis has said
and what others have said, too.
Maybe I would start off with Councilwoman Patterson. Is
there some plan or strategy that would encourage more
involvement by the community, by--like nongovernmental
organizations to assist, maybe even to take the lead, in
developing community support and activities that would help
with facilitating reentry of prisoners? I mean, I am very
cognizant of the fact, and my colleague has mentioned it too,
that ``not in my backyard'' is a major impediment, and this
involves community safety.
So I just wondered if there is a plan of getting some of
the best and the brightest and the community activists involved
in helping.
Ms. Patterson. I can't speak to any formal plan or anything
that's on paper. I can speak to a number of informal
conversations that I have had through the course of the last
several months with some very good community-based
organizations that work with the prisoner population and with
some of those who are involved with some of the current
successful operations of halfway houses.
Simply, the gist of these conversations has been we need
all to join together to make this case and to participate in
the public education of which you spoke and of which Mrs.
Norton spoke, but no specific plan. I think the point of trying
to request of the administration a plan for siting was the
first step, and I think the notion of a facility site selection
panel, that's another piece of it. But no; no formal plan that
I'm aware of.
Mrs. Morella. Ms. Kellems, do you want to comment on that?
Ms. Kellems. Sure. I hope that is one of the outcomes of
this symposium that we're having on Tuesday. I think that is
our attempt, a first step to bring together the practitioners,
the community organizations, and start talking about what is
the vision going forward and what are the immediate first steps
that we need to start rallying around, one of which is
community outreach and education. How do we engage in a very
street-level education process?
Some of that is beginning already with the community
supervision officers who are out there. A number of the justice
agencies have community outreach specialists that at a street
level are trying to educate some of the neighborhoods, but it
is not--as the councilwoman said, it is not yet a big
framework, a big strategy at all levels of communication. And
that's where we need to get, and I hope that we can at least
start to do that on Tuesday at our symposium.
Mrs. Morella.
Thank you. Ms. Ekstrand, do you think that's important from
a GAO point of view?
Ms. Ekstrand. I definitely think that it's important to
have a variety of participants and for all of them to work
cooperatively and effectively. In the spring we issued a
comprehensive report on the D.C. justice system, and one of our
main points there was the tremendous need for cooperation
across all the agencies involved.
Mrs. Morella. And Mr. Travis, the Urban Institute's
perspective?
Mr. Travis. My own perspective on this is that this is the
essential ingredient to success. The District is trying to do
that which, in my experience, no other city in the country is
trying to do, which is to say we want to have a comprehensive
community-based reintegration strategy that involves the siting
of facilities for most, if not all, people coming back home.
So to do that in a way that is successful will--the goal
here is to have the District of Columbia be an example for the
country--require their involvement. It's just not should we; it
will require the involvement in the community in some very
difficult questions. So it's more than a community education
about what we're doing. It really is an active partnership in
trying to think through an issue that is our issue. It's a
combined issue. So I couldn't agree more.
Mrs. Morella. Right. Good. Excellent. You know, from the
materials that I have perused and read and discussed, I do not
know how many halfway houses there are in the District of
Columbia nor do I know how many beds there are. Can anybody
enlighten me?
Ms. Kellems. I can give you an idea. There are--first of
all, halfway houses, as we are defining them, are places where
offenders are integrating. Some people in the community use
``halfway house'' to refer to group homes and to refer to other
community-based residential facilities. There's a set of
halfway houses in the justice system operated by BOP, and a set
operated by Corrections. I think the total number--I'm looking
at the corrections people. I think the total number is about a
dozen. I'm sorry. There are five operated by DOC and then a
number operated by the Bureau of Prisons. And the total DOC
capacity is 557 beds.
Mrs. Morella. And the estimate is that there are 250 more
beds that would be needed?
Ms. Kellems. Here we go. Thank you. I'm sorry?
Mrs. Morella. The estimate is that 250 more beds are
needed?
Ms. Kellems. At a minimum. It depends on which populations
you're talking about. We are estimating anywhere from 200 to
400 beds short right now, just for the folks who are coming
back who are on the schedule to go to a halfway house. The more
beds we have, the more people we can put into them. If we need
to maximize our bed space, you can add more beds, you can move
people through them more quickly, or you can put fewer people
through them. That's sort of--so it's a little bit of a
difficult question to answer----
Mrs. Morella. So all of these things are being done,
probably. I mean, probably----
Ms. Kellems. We're trying to----
Mrs. Morella [continuing]. Incarcerated for longer periods
of time to make sure there's opportunities at halfway houses or
going into halfway houses and out faster, you know, into the
community, so all--you know, all three are being utilized. So
something needs to be done. So obviously what we need to do is
to make sure we are working together for a concerted plan. And
I note that mention was made of the Federal grant that is being
requested. You've already met the deadline for that, have you
not, to submit----
Ms. Kellems. I believe the application----
Mrs. Morella [continuing]. It June 1 or something?
Ms. Kellems. We went to the preapplication conference. The
final application is due, I believe, October 1, but you had to
express an interest. There was a team of folks from the
District who went to the preapplication conference and have
expressed our interest, and I think that's why they're now
trying to sort out the details of whether the District can
participate in the program.
Mrs. Morella. What would it involve? What are you asking
for in the grant?
Ms. Kellems. The grant is essentially to fund elements of
the reentry strategy, meaning programs most specifically. The
group really has the opportunity to define how it would use
those resources. The grant is very broad. It allows--it limits
only based on a few characteristics of the population, most
notably the age of the population. Other than that, they are
really looking to the applicants to outline their vision,
outline their strategy, what programs do you want to implement,
and how do you intend to implement them in partnership with
these community-based organizations.
Mrs. Morella. We wish you well. My time has expired and
I'll now defer to my ranking member, Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mrs. Morella. Before I begin the
questioning on this very important testimony, first let me
express my thanks for the candor and the information that was
available in this testimony. I'd like to say a word to Ms.
Ekstrand first. It really has to do with methodology, and it's
not simply the GAO methodology. It's the methodology that--of
everybody who collects statistics. Mr. Travis was a little less
this way.
Let me just say to the GAO and to all of our official
government agencies, until statehood is granted to the District
of Columbia, you don't give us accurate statistics when you
compare this big city to States, and you damage the reputation
of the Nation's Capital by insisting upon treating us as a
State for every purpose except the right to vote the right to
tax as other people do, and I'm about tired of it.
I understand why it's not--don't let me beat the messenger
up here, because there's--everybody does the same thing and
they do it because it is the District of Columbia. It is the 50
States and the District of Columbia, and that's how the
Congress always refers to it, and there are good reasons even
for referring to it that way. But among the good reasons is not
a comparison of prison populations.
When you say that D.C. has a higher incarceration rate than
any State in the Nation, I have to ask you does it have a
higher incarceration than New York, than Chicago, than L.A.,
than Atlanta? Then I have something to know I have something by
which I'm comparing apples to apples, and I'm just not sure if
I am or not. And I may be, because it's a very high
incarceration rate here.
Our Council has been very strict--very strict crime
statutes. When--I think it was Mr. Travis who talked about the
flow back to Detroit, flow back, when--we can only be informed
accurately of what we are to do if we can compare ourselves
with like jurisdictions. And it is--if I may say so, I find it
without any value to compare us to a State, even though I
acknowledge that if we were to do the city-by-city comparisons,
I believe in my own mind that the District would still be very
high.
I would like to ask you, Ms. Ekstrand, if you would ask
your staff to look at your testimony and to give this committee
within 30 days a comparison--the information that is in your
testimony compared with other large cities, or other comparable
cities, just so I would have perhaps a clearer idea of how to
look at the city.
Again, I make no criticism of the methodology used because
it is the accepted methodology. It just would be more useful to
the committee, often.
Ms. Ekstrand. I think you're raising a valid point. We'll
do the best we can to comply. We'll try to get it to you as
fast as possible.
Ms. Norton. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Ms.
Kellems, let me read to you from the testimony in my May 11
hearing, so that everyone here can see the background of the
question I'm about to ask: ``as the GAO indicates, the
equivalent of 23 full-time officers were devoted to court
appearances in 1999. I'm sure that the agencies involved have
explanations from the perspective of their missions. However,
after years of insufficient attention and incalculable losses
of funds, patrol time in our neighborhoods, and probably even
injury and loss of life for residents, I'm going to insist
today that the relevant agencies, especially the courts, U.S.
Attorney, and the MPD, submit at least a preliminary plan to
the CJCC, the''--that stands for what, Community Justice
Coordinating----
Ms. Kellems. Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.
Ms. Norton [continuing]. ``Criminal Justice Coordinating
Council, within 60 days and to this committe within 90 days.''
July 11th marked the 60th-day time limit. Was that deadline
met?
Ms. Kellems. It came late on the 11th. I know most people
got it on the morning of the 12th.
Ms. Norton. Well, that's good. That's good. For D.C. that's
awfully good. If you can be--we'll give you a day's lead time
if you'll get it to us in 90 days, that is real progress.
Ms. Kellems. Thank you. We actually have August 12th
circled in red ink in our calendars. We're ready.
Ms. Norton. I suppose--let me express my disappointment
here. Here the Federal Government for 3 years now has been
making one of the most notable improvements in decades in the
District of Columbia. There is no issue of greater concern to
our residents, even those who live in areas where there's not
much crime, than crime. We are 3 years into CSOSA, BOP, and
everybody has acknowledged that what they have is in a
different ballpark from the crumbling, disgraceful system they
inherited.
So what does the District got? Well, I have been trying to
discern from the testimony anything even approaching a plan, 3
years now, CSOSA, if it was 3 years, we'd be really on the back
of the Federal Government. If BOP was 3 years--if BOP was late
closing Lorton, there would be sanctions from the Congress.
Those folks have been on time. They have been improving our
system. And I cannot find what in the world the District has
done.
So far, I appreciate that the council has done some things,
although, I must say so, Ms. Kellems, that I think in any
strong mayoral form of government, the major responsibility for
leadership lies with the executive. The council has been an
impediment, but the council has also put forward some things to
do. The Mayor has too. Of course, he has been turned back by
the council. The District's budget request has in it a
provision from the council for a plan, quote, for the housing
of any misdemeanants, felons, ex-offenders or persons awaiting
trial within the District of Columbia. That's very hard.
Then the council on May 1st prepares another bill. I think
Ms. Patterson referred to this bill 14-213, the Correctional
Facility Site Selection Advisory Panel Act of 2001. It provides
for the establishment of this 15-member commission to prepare
comprehensive recommendations to the council that identify
tracts of land suitable for correctional facilities within the
appropriate zone sections of the District.
Now, I think this came in part out of what I can't blame
members of the council for doing. When members of the council
see Ms. Kellems that somebody says--and CSOSA has to find some
place, CSOSA goes to the city with no plan in place and CSOSA
says these people are coming back, find us some place. And if
what the city does is to say here, and then in this case I
think it was a Council Member Ambrose woke up and found the
dart had landed on her, you will never find a member of the
council that says great, it's my turn now, I concede.
So I hold the council responsible in one sense, but they
have to reflect their constituents. And the executive has given
them nothing to answer back with. So that if everybody in your
ward is running saying how come you're letting them put a
facility here and you don't even have the capacity to say well,
wait a minute, they've got a fair share plan here, wards 1
through 8 have here, here it is, it's our turn, then, of
course, you can't expect Ms. Ambrose to do anything but reflect
what she has heard. So I can't figure out what the difference
is between what the council's Budget Act asked for and what
bill 14-231 has. And I can't figure out why it has taken the
District 3 years to even get to startup which I can't even hear
in any of this testimony. That's my question.
Ms. Kellems. I'll go first. I think in the last several
years, there has been progress on a number of operational
fronts, but not on the issue I think your criticism lands.
We've not been progressive in the facility-siting issue. We
have started good partnerships with CSOSA together with the
police department. We have put some programs in place for job
opportunities, job training through the Department of
Employment Services, but on the specific issue of siting
facilities we have not done what needs to be done. We agree 100
percent with the council's demand for a plan. There does need
to be a city-wide plan, not just for justice-based halfway
houses, but for all community-based residential facilities.
What the administration has done so far is begin a process of
cataloging and mapping where all of these are so that we
understand the highest concentrations of these facilities.
There's a tension philosophically between where you site
these in relation to the people who need them and ending up
with too high of a concentration in those same neighborhoods
and stifling those neighborhoods. If you look at a map of the
District where we've plotted all of these, you see the highest
concentration of folks who need these services in the same
place where you see the highest concentration of facilities.
The problem is the result of what happens as a result of that.
We're trying to do several things. One is disaggregate some
of these types of facilities. Because different types of
facilities, while they create the same community concerns,
might have different impacts on a neighborhood. We have
developed this sort of inventory, and I think the council's
suggestion that there be a site advisory panel is a very sound
one. We'd like to be able to take to them--start the process
with some information about what is there so that it's an
informed discussion going forward. I think we are within weeks
of being able to roll out this--exercise this facility plan--
I'm sorry, the facility map of where things are at the moment
which is an important starting point.
Ms. Norton. Before Ms. Patterson answers, Ms. Patterson,
you indicated something that caught my attention. You said that
your 15-member commission that the Mayor could if he wanted to
do it by Executive order and start the thing going. I will ask
you, Ms. Kellems, you all should have done this in the first
place or something like it. They passed a bill. What concerns
me now you are so far behind. I know you have been working in
good faith. I know because every time my office is in touch
with you, it's a very results-oriented office that gets things
done.
I believe that you will always be behind the 8 ball unless
there is something in place that allows you to start. And the
ad hoc way in which you are being forced to operate is a
completely impossible way to deal with this problem. 2,500
people, we're told, are coming back into the community within,
what, by the end of the year, you have 500 beds? You are in
such deep trouble that either you are going to be--you, the
executive, are going to be responsible for new explosion of
crime or you got to do something fast. And I want to know for
starters whether you will recommend to the Mayor that he sign
an Executive order before the end of the month setting up the
functional equivalent of what the council has asked for, so it
doesn't have to come here and sit for 90 days, the stuff we
have to go through here to get legislation passed, so that it
can be operative by next month.
Ms. Kellems. I'd be happy to talk to the Mayor about that.
I think, as I mentioned earlier, that on Tuesday, we will
really get a lot of valuable input from experts about the
composition of a group like that, how it should be formed, what
its role should be, its responsibilities should be.
Ms. Norton. You have to be very careful because it's a 15-
member commission. If it consists of members of the community,
this may be, you know, very circular reasoning. Unless the
staff is prepared to come forward with how the plan would be
done, you say to people in the community be prepared to site
your community, perhaps, as one of the places for this plan.
I'd like to ask Ms. Patterson.
Ms. Patterson. I think the point of trying to have an
advisory panel would be to come up with some specific and
objective criteria. Obviously, you want community input on
that. You want input from the community organizations that work
with the prison population but you also want input from some of
our advisory neighborhood commissioners, from people who are on
the ground working in their neighborhoods to help with you the
criteria. I think the site selection advisory idea is to have
that criteria in place as administration District government
policy, then you can match sites up against that criteria.
That's certainly what I would have in mind.
Ms. Norton. Ms. Patterson, that's not what it says. It says
preparing a comprehensive recommendation that identify tracts
of land suitable. That's what your bill says.
Ms. Patterson. That's the legislation that's introduced by
two of my colleagues. That's correct.
Ms. Norton. Could I ask that you take another look at that.
I know what reading you're on----
Ms. Patterson. I'm expressing what I would like it to be at
the other end of a process. We have rules that require a public
hearing on each bill. So before we move forward, we have to
have a public hearing, and then would have that kind of input.
But I think seeking to have some additional capacity soon is
critical. I think a site selection advisory body is something
that is a medium-term assistance. So I think there are a couple
of things we're talking about here. I think your point about
seeking to have the administration do something perhaps through
Executive order is one way to go to jump-start, and then we can
have the public hearing and really further refine who should be
at the table in coming up with a criteria and the selection.
But that I see as more of a medium term because of our
requirement for public hearings.
Ms. Norton. Did you have a date in yours? Did you have a
date by which this----
Ms. Patterson. I don't have a date for the hearing.
Ms. Norton. I'm talking about, in the council legislation,
does it give the deadline for the setting up of the hall, for
the setting up of the 15-member commission.
Ms. Patterson. There is not a deadline in the legislation,
as I recall.
Ms. Norton. Let's make that unnecessary. Ms. Kellems, I
would like you to take this back to the Mayor and ask him by
the end of the month to have, not the--this does not interfere
with Ms. Patterson's, her legislation at the moment says tracts
of land. And she has explained the difference between which--I
think, at minimally, somebody has to develop the criteria
instantly. That criteria even before it was fully operative
could begin to guide CSOSA on the short term, could begin to
guide BOP so that we have something to go by instead of who
doesn't scream the loudest, then let us let it go there.
So this is July 20th. I don't think it takes a lot of time
to say--to appoint some folks, even if they have to be in-house
folks, as well as community folks to look at criteria, just so
it's a credible commission of people from the community of
people, as Ms. Patterson says, with some offender experience,
but it needs to be done by the beginning of August, 3 years
late already.
Mr. Morella. I'm pleased that we're able to help to move
this process forward of coordination and the--to have the Mayor
present the plan for the developing that census tract and get
the council working on it too. I would be interested, this
entire subcommittee, in what your time lines are as you proceed
recognizing how important it is.
I'd like to ask you, Mr. Travis, as we talk about site
selection, have you noticed in your study there is a criteria
that should be established in terms of where these halfway
houses should be? By that, I mean can you have too many in one
section? Should they be distributed in different ways? That
whole concept of the site selection.
Mr. Travis. Our report did not specifically look at the
issue of site selection for transitional housing. As I said
before, I'm not aware of any jurisdiction that is trying to do
what the District is trying to do. So I think it does raise
some new issues in terms of what you alluded to as a
concentration--the concentration effects of many halfway
houses. But I do think the principles that should guide the
process are to recognize that everybody comes home, comes from
prison and that we want people to be reconnected with the
positive forces of community and society, and to do that in
advance of their actually being released from legal
supervision.
So that does require that they be close to the communities
from which they came. So I think that's the key message, as
Congresswoman Norton said, these are family members coming
home. So that's the beginning point. And then there's a
community engagement piece to that that says how shall we make
this work best at the community level.
Mrs. Morella. You know, I have considered and I'd like your
advice on this, particularly Ms. Ekstrand and Mr. Travis,
considered the idea of using the District of Columbia as a so-
called model to determine what works in terms of recidivism,
etc. What kind of a study would you recommend should be done
and what information would be needed to be collected? Do you
think that's a good idea?
Mr. Travis. I'll go first and then defer to Ms. Ekstrand. I
think there is an opportunity here really, a wonderful
opportunity for the District to provide the learning
opportunity for the rest of the country, in part, because of
the positioning of the agencies that is made possible under the
Revitalization Act, and because of this commitment to halfway
houses and transitional planning, which is unique, in my
experience, throughout the country.
The study that would make sense here is actually one that
the Urban Institute has designed and we're hoping to launch in
the next year which is to collect data about what happens to
people when they're in prison and follow them for periods of
time as they leave prison and have interviews with the
prisoners and their families and the community members
throughout that entire process. And the data from prison would
include participation in the types of preparatory and treatment
programs that make a difference at the period of release. But
it's very important that we connect what happens in prison to
the period of time after they return home. Because that's the
time of greatest risk, the time of relapse for drug offenders,
the time of reconnecting to negative peer influences for young
people in particular.
So it has to connect both the traditional prison-based
literature and the basically nonexistent community-based
understanding of this process of reentry. And I think because
of the entities that are represented at your hearing, there is
an interest in doing exactly that sort of study.
What is particularly exciting, from a research point of
view here, is that the interest in halfway houses and serious
transitional planning really is a way that's going to break
open our understanding of reentry. Because that's what's not
being done sufficiently in other jurisdictions. So the
commitment of the District to do this presents an opportunity
to inform a larger national discussion if there's a proper
student that is underway.
Mrs. Morella. Would there be a particular time period that
would be critical or imperative?
Mr. Travis. Well, I tell you, we've taken a look at this
over the past year and the study that we have designed, we have
invited a number of States and the District to participate in.
It would start with the period of time right before release, so
60 days before people are released, that's an important window
to ask the prisoners how are they prepared, in their own mind,
for this inevitable return home, and obviously you collect data
about their entire prison experience but you interview them at
that point.
Then you interview them within the first month and first 6
months, and within the first year and within the first year and
a half. So it's 18 months at least after their return home, and
you're interviewing, at the same time, their family members and
their peer groups and the communities to which they return. So
that the entire experience is understood from those various
dimensions. So it's in total a 2-year period of time to
understand the phenomenon and in essence to evaluate what's
working. You can design it in certain ways that you're also
testing different sorts of interventions such as halfway
houses.
Mrs. Morella. Excellent.
Ms. Ekstrand, would you comment on that?
Ms. Ekstrand. When we began our work in prisoner releases,
the first thing we did was try to find robust studies of what
worked. Because we really anticipated that we would be able to
include as part of our report a great deal of information from
very strong studies in terms of what works. We were very
disappointed to find out that there wasn't a lot of strong
evaluation work that we felt that we could hang our hat on in
terms of reporting. So there is a real basic need for strong
evaluation research in this area. And it's more than ever
because the number of releasees has increased so rapidly.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you. I look forward to working with
you, both of you in trying to craft and construct something
that would be applicable and consistent with what everyone
feels. I'm now going to defer to Ms. Norton for her last
question.
Ms. Norton. I'd like to ask Ms. Patterson and Ms. Kellems
if they noted that there was any reaction when--in the
community in your own efforts with these halfway houses, when
apparently one of the old contractors had a facility; I believe
it was a juvenile halfway house, if I recall correctly. In any
case, it was very close to a school. And then there was a very
high profile closing of that halfway house by the Attorney
General. Was there any--has that had any affect on the
community's understanding or acceptance of these halfway
houses?
Ms. Patterson. I think, if I recall correctly, I think that
was a Federal facility that was going to go back into a site
and then didn't. And I think, frankly, it simply underscored
the point you made that squeaky wheels get attention. And you
can stop things in your neighborhood if you use your political
muscle. I don't think it--and I appreciate that from a
constituent's perspective from responding to constituents. I
don't think it contributes particularly usefully to the longer
discussion that we need to have about how we make the decisions
about where facilities go.
Ms. Norton. Ms. Kellems, do you recall any repercussions
from that incident?
Ms. Kellems. It actually is down the street from my house,
so I know exactly where it is; it was, in fact, directly across
the street from an elementary school. It had been a facility
for juveniles and there had been a fire and it was closed for
some period of time. And it was being reopened as a facility
for adults. The general sense in that particular community is
exactly as Councilwoman Patterson said, that if you scream loud
enough you can stop these things on sort of a one-off basis.
There are a lot in and around that particular neighborhood
within half a mile or so, and I think the community feels that
we really need to come and understand the plight they're facing
at a very real level, a plight, as they perceive it, meaning
high concentrations of these things in what are considered
inappropriate locations, and it speaks to, as Councilwoman
Patterson said, the need to be more comprehensive, to have
criteria that the community buy into.
The tension that we face is that many of these facilities
are zoned--were purchased in the 60's, and properly zoned and
given certificates of occupancy, and now, because there is such
a community backlash against new facilities, that the only ones
that are there have continued to operate and continued to
exist. We have to figure out a way to spread this
responsibility on a larger scale across the city.
Ms. Norton. That was a classic case of the old D.C. system
echoing to whatever was planned by the BOP. We'll get to that
when we see the BOP. But Ms. Kellems, I do think in your own
neighborhood, what you had was an indication of how lethal a
reactive approach is to this whole question. It just gets shut
down. There's nothing you can do. You got a big article in the
Washington Post and a big editorial, and then the Attorney
General himself goes in and shuts you down, yet it's his
responsibility in the first place that this has happened.
So let me go further finally and ask I am so concerned
with--I couldn't discern the makings of plans or coordination
and I've asked for this commission. But I think it's so serious
that the whole notion of commissions and the rest of it, which
always take time to educate people, which take their own
startup time, is something that I might have expected the
District to do in the transition time between the passage of
the Revitalization Act and CSOSA and BOP coming online. And as
much as I believe that what the council is asking the Mayor
should now do, and I commend that, I'm going to ask you, Ms.
Kellems, if you would be willing to set up something
approaching a temporary emergency transition working group
between CSOSA and BOP and the appropriate personnel in the
District so that pending a plan there is some guided process
rather than perhaps an emergency developing, so that somebody
gets somebody to give them a facility, and then you get a big
blow up with respect to that.
So I think quite apart from the commission, very necessary,
that within the government, some kind of temporary, I call it
``emergency transition,'' because I don't know what it should
be, working group, so CSOSA doesn't have to go to you on a one-
on-one basis so that somebody begins to manage coordination, to
take responsibility for coordination pending the development of
a plan by the city. Could we see such evidence within the next
2 weeks?
Ms. Kellems. Absolutely.
Ms. Norton. Through the submission to this committee of
what it is you have devised. I'm not telling you what to
devise. This is off the top of my head. I am simply saying
something at the staff level that would develop a process that
would give the committee greater confidence, give the council
and the Mayor and the residents of the District greater
confidence that there is some guided process in place and that
these things don't happen just as they fall out.
Ms. Kellems. I think that's a very good idea. I would
suggest that we work with the--there is something called the
interagency detention work group that's chaired by the
corrections trustee that actually you, Ms. Norton, and Mr.
Holder had called for. That group has spent a lot of time in
the last year and a half identifying the specific capacity
needs, the specific capacity issues and short-term strategies
to manage what it is we do have.
I think what we need to do is marry that with the city's
Office of Planning and our facilities folks and look on a
concrete basis at that third piece. In addition to minimizing
the stay of people there, in addition to maximizing the use of
the existing space, what can we do on the third prong to
increase the capacity in the very near term and get some people
thinking about that.
Ms. Norton. It's excellent. I see you know exactly what to
do. Ms. Kellems, would you get us within 2 weeks what this
group consists of and you believe its mission should be? Thank
you, Madam Chairman.
Mrs. Morella. That brings up a question I had in mind too,
was to Ms. Kellems about the status, actually, of that
interagency detention work group that you mentioned. I know it
was established in 2000 and it was to address the short-term
halfway house capacity problems. What has been some of the
actions of that work group and how does that group plan to
address the capacity issues as we go forward?
Ms. Kellems. With your indulgence, I'll leave some of the
details to John Clark, the corrections trustee who is actually
the chair of the work group, and is on the next panel and can
give you much more information. The work group has been very
successful, however, in a whole range of issues in terms of
procedures and guidelines for the individual operating
agencies, how they manage populations going in, time lines for
how long folks are staying in their and what sort of services
they're getting, criteria for who maybe won't go in for quite
as long--they've dealt with some of the court policies and
procedures that we have.
There has been a whole range of activity, and I think Mr.
Clark can probably speak to the detail much more than I have.
But we very much appreciate that that group has been able to
bring the Bureau of Prisons, the Parole Commission, the courts,
the U.S. Marshals, a number of these players around the table
on a monthly basis and really keep the heat on all of us to
make continued progress.
Mrs. Morella. We look forward to hearing from him on that
because that is actually what this is all about, the
coordination, the plans, the strategy, working together, the
best practices that really aren't there, which may lead to
using the District of Columbia as a model to determine some of
that.
I want to thank this wonderful panel for sharing with us
their experiences and hopes for what we can achieve in this
area. So thank you Councilwoman Patterson; thank you, Deputy
Mayor Kellems; thank you, Director Ekstrand, and thank you, Dr.
Travis for this.
Now we'll ask our second panel to come forward. John Clark
corrections trustee the D.C. Office of Corrections Trustee. Dr.
Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, director of the Bureau of Prisons. Police
Chief Charles Ramsey. And the Honorable Edward Reilly, chairman
of the U.S. Parole Commission, Jasper Ormond, Jr., interim
director of Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency and
James Anthony, deputy director of the D.C. Department of
Corrections. While I have you finding your spots maybe I'll
have you stand in place. Clark, Sawyer, Ramsey, Reilly, Ormond
and Anthony. As you stand I'll ask you to raise your right
hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mrs. Morella. The record will show an affirmative response
by all of the panelists. So we'll start off, then you all had
the preliminary, and again, thank you for your patience as we
went through the first panel. And maybe we can coordinate some
of the responses. We'll start off then with you, Mr. Clark,
thank you for joining us.
STATEMENTS OF JOHN CLARK, CORRECTIONS TRUSTEE, D.C. OFFICE OF
CORRECTIONS TRUSTEE; DR. KATHLEEN HAWK SAWYER, DIRECTOR, BUREAU
OF PRISONS; CHARLES RAMSEY, CHIEF OF POLICE, DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA; EDWARD REILLY, CHAIRMAN, U.S. PAROLE COMMISSION;
JASPER ORMOND, JR., INTERIM DIRECTOR, COURT SERVICES AND
OFFENDER SUPERVISION AGENCY; AND JAMES ANTHONY, DEPUTY
DIRECTOR, D.C. DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
Mr. Clark. Thank you and good morning, Chairwoman Morella,
Congresswoman Norton. And thank you for having this very
important hearing. I am going to totally retool the brief
remarks that I wanted to make because we've been hearing
several themes repeated already. And we have a number of other
distinguished witnesses. I want to focus on just a few key
areas. First, I want to make the point that prisoner reentry is
not just a corrections problem. It's not just a responsibility
of the corrections and parole supervision authorities. Rather,
it's a critical matter for community safety and an important
public policy issue. In that regard, having a rational well
coordinated process for releasing felons is a concern for the
entire criminal justice apparatus, and more broadly for elected
and community officials and the community at large.
These offenders leaving prison represent, in my estimation,
the most at-risk group of individuals on our streets, and to
the extent that they're not successfully reintegrated, the
entire community is at risk. I am heartened to see a growing
recognition of that fact in the District, and I am pleased that
your committee has recognized this reality by having such a
broad array of witnesses represented here today.
My second point, and really, Ms. Norton has already made
this point very eloquently, but I think it bears repeating, is
simply that in the 4 years since the passage of the
Revitalization Act, significant progress has been made in
achieving a more effective reentry of felons returning from
prison to the streets of the District, thus, enhancing public
safety.
One thing that I would emphasize here is that and with the
graph that Congresswoman Norton showed, there has been
significant progress in the reduction of rearrests among
parolees as the Federal model has been implemented, but it
wasn't just the Federal folks and court services; a significant
role was played by the District, particularly by the D.C.
Department of Corrections, which actually implemented much of
this policy in their existing halfway houses.
The shortage of halfway house space has already been
adequately mentioned. I would just again summarize that over
the past 5 years in the District, we have lost a net total
between 250 and 300 halfway house beds for males for a variety
of historical reasons that I won't go into.
Madam Chair, to a great extent, I think we've heard that we
know what works in this reentry process, but it is extremely
difficult to establish adequate reentry resources. If, as a
system in the District, we are unable to help the Federal
Bureau of Prisons bring online at least another 250 additional
halfway house beds in the coming months. It appears that the
BOP will have to release a significant number of felons loose
directly into the streets of the community.
I want to--again several of the things I wanted to say have
been mentioned, but one of the questions you raised that I will
try to answer briefly has to do with the number of halfway
houses in the District and the number of halfway house beds. By
my count, there are, in the District, 8 correctional halfway
houses housing somewhere around 700 prisoners. And these are
comprised of one District of Columbia halfway house operated by
the Department of Corrections, five contract halfway houses
operated under contract to the Department of Corrections and
three of those are shared by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And
the Bureau of Prisons, by my count, has two halfway houses in
addition to those three that they share with the Department of
Corrections that they contract for, solely for Federal
prisoners, and those are both under one contract in ward 1.
Beyond that, I would respond quickly to Ms. Norton's
suggestion about a work group task force, whatever, in the
District, by indicating that there has been some work going on,
as was mentioned through the interagency detention work group,
but I think on a more permanent basis, possibly the appropriate
place to deal with this is in the Criminal Justice Coordinating
Council, which is now being reactivated, rejuvenated hopefully,
will take the form of having an active agency staff in the near
future. In fact, at a recent meeting, we did discuss this issue
and did have a discussion of making this a focus of the
Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, making that one of the
priorities of the group. With that, I conclude my remarks and
be pleased to answer questions.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Mr. Clark.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Clark follows:]
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Mrs. Morella. Dr. Sawyer, welcome.
Are you the first woman to be the Director of the Bureau of
Prisons?
Ms. Sawyer. Yes, I am. I've been Director since 1992.
Mrs. Morella. Since 1992. I remember, way back with James
Bennett.
Ms. Sawyer. That's been quite a while, yes. Good morning,
Madam Chairman and Congressman Norton, I too appreciate the
opportunity to participate in this hearing. The need to provide
programs and treatment of offenders to successfully reintegrate
into the community is a critical aspect of the Bureau of
Prisons mission. As has been stated many times this morning,
our communities are directly impacted by the success or failure
of these efforts.
The Bureau of Prisons is currently responsible for managing
more than 150,000 inmates in 100 institutions scattered all
around the country. Pursuant to the Revitalization Act, we are
transferring D.C. code offenders into our facilities and today
we have 5,835 D.C. Superior Court inmates in our custody, and
we will absorb the remaining approximately 2,000 into our
custody by the end of 2001. In addition, we have 1,170 D.C.
offenders from the U.S. District Court also.
In the Bureau, released planning begins on the day that
inmates arrive in our institutions. As such, we provide a
variety of programs to prepare these inmates for an ultimate
successful reintegration into society. Our programs stress the
development work skills to enhance employability. The Bureau
requires all of our inmates to work unless those with medical
problems who cannot work. And approximately 25 percent of the
Bureau's medically able sentenced inmates work in Federal
prison industries. Research has demonstrated that inmates who
work in prison industries or complete vocational training are
24 percent less likely to recidivate than those who do not and
are 14 percent more likely to be employed following release
from prison.
The Bureau requires that inmates who do not have a verified
12th grade education must participate in our literacy programs
for a minimum of 240 hours or until they complete their GED.
The Bureau also offers drug education and residential drug
treatment programs to all inmates who have a treatment need.
Research on our residential drug treatment program reveals that
3 years after release from custody inmates who complete our
residential drug program are significantly less likely to be
rearrested or to use drugs.
The Bureau also offers a variety of other programs directed
toward enhancing personal responsibility. All Bureau facilities
have parenting programs that provide inmates with opportunities
to learn more about their children, child development and
family skills. Our women's facilities operate intensive
programs that focus on helping women who have histories of
chronic abuse by addressing their victimization and enabling
positive change.
Finally, near the end of their sentence, inmates take part
in the release preparation program, which includes developing
resumes, job seeking, job retention skills and presentations
from community organizations and mock job fairs. The Bureau of
Prisons' goal is to place inmates in halfway houses for the
final portion of their terms of imprisonment.
Halfway houses, as has been stated, provide important
opportunities for inmates to find a job, place to live, save
some money, continue their drug treatment where necessary, and
strengthen family and community ties. All of these factors
contribute to the lower rate of recidivism and higher rate of
employment among--that is found in research studies among
offenders who do release from halfway houses compared to those
who release without the benefit of halfway houses.
The halfway house programs contribute to public safety. The
length of placement varies. It's up to 6 months, depending upon
the offenders' needs. The national average for our Bureau of
Prisons inmates is a placement in halfway house for 3 to 4
months, which we believe is a good number.
In the District of Columbia, however, because of the lack
of availability of bed space, the offenders releasing there
receive less than 60 days in a halfway house placement
currently. As a result of the transfer to the Bureau of Prisons
of the D.C. felons, we desperately need more halfway house
beds. We do not operate any of our own halfway houses. They are
all contracted out by providers. Prior to the awarding of a
contract, the Bureau inspects the proposed sites. We conduct
background checks on the staff and we carefully monitor any of
these contracts once awarded.
Our efforts to secure halfway house contracts in D.C. have
met substantial resistance. Recently, we had to cancel one
procurement and limit our use of beds at another site. We
currently have several open requests for procurement of
additional halfway house beds that are outstanding, but based
on the community reaction thus far, we are not optimistic that
we're going to be able to secure any of those beds. The lack of
halfway house beds not on disadvantages the offender, it
disadvantages the community and the citizens because of an
inmate's releasing into community the difficulties frustrations
and failures that they face, including the potential return to
criminality is going to be very frustrating for them and impact
the community.
I appreciate you holding this hearing today to bring this
important issue to the focus. The reality is that many of the
residents and leaders who oppose siting halfway houses in their
ward will be neighbors to these offenders who are returning
directly from prison without the benefit of the halfway house
program right into their communities. And so I'll be pleased to
answer any questions that you might have.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Dr. Sawyer.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Sawyer follows:]
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Mrs. Morella. And now I'm pleased to recognize Police Chief
Charles Ramsey. I know you're very busy, Chief, and I
appreciate you being here.
Chief Ramsey. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Congresswoman
Norton, members of the subcommittee staff, I appreciate the
opportunity to present this brief statement concerning the
Metropolitan Police Department's role in building an effective
offender reentry system that serves our parolees while
protecting District of Columbia neighborhoods.
The public safety challenges posed by prisoners release to
the community have always been formidable. Over the years,
studies have consistently shown that up to two-thirds of
released prisoners are rearrested within 3 years, and 4 in 10
are returned to prison or jail. As Deputy Mayor Kellems and
other witnesses have pointed out, meeting these challenges
requires the ideas and information and resources of more than
one agency. To effectively manage offenders released back to
the community, our criminal justice agencies must work together
while the structure of the District's criminal justice system
with a combination of local and Federal agencies adds an extra
layer of complexity to this task, we are working hard and
effectively to forge the type of partnerships that are critical
to our success.
That spirit of partnership is exemplified by the joint
offender supervision program under way between the Metropolitan
Police Department and the Court Services and Offender
Supervision Agency [CSOSA]. This program known as the MPD CSOSA
partnership was started on a pilot basis almost 3 years ago in
police service area 704 in the 7th police district.
Approximately 1 year later, the pilot program was expanded
to an additional 11 PSAs, and based on our success in these
areas, we've begun the process of expanding the program to
every police district and every PSA in the District of
Columbia.
The MPD CSOSA partnership is designed to reduce recidivism
by providing more consistent and intense of supervision of
offenders released from prison back to the community. The
program goals are to ensure that parolees follow their
conditions of release, that they are taking advantage of the
reentry opportunities available to them, and that they are not
engaging in further criminal activity.
Basically, the program has three components. First, the
sharing of information between CSOSA and the Metropolitan
Police Department; second, home visits of releasees by CSOSA an
and MPD personnel; and third, orientation sessions in which
parolees and probationers learn about the program. And the
resources information sharing is absolutely critical to the
effective offender supervision. As the criminal justice
officials who are out on the street 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, our PSA officers must have access to information about
parolees released back to the communities our officers patrol,
not just who they are and where they live, but also what
specific conditions of release they're required to follow.
This information is essential from a prevention standpoint.
A central element of our policing for prevention community
policing strategy is for our officers to get to know the
individuals in their PSAs, including those who have committed
crimes in the past.
This information is also critical from an investigative
standpoint. When crimes do occur, we need up to date
information on who the recent parolees are, where they live and
what their criminal histories are. Under our partnership
program, CSOSA will be making this type of information
available to our PSA teams. Through increased automation, our
agencies will continue to work at streamlining the process and
making the information more timely and complete. But the
foundation of trust and cooperation has been established. The
second program component involves Metropolitan police officers
and CSOSA community supervision officers following up with
individual parolees and probationers in their homes what we
call accountability tours.
For decades, the basic approach to community supervision in
our country has been to require the parolees to initiate
regular contacts with their parole officers, usually in person
or over the telephone. With this partnership program, we're
changing the whole dynamic of this process. Now for selected
parolees, it is police officers and CSOSA members who initiate
the contact through joint visits to the parolees homes. These
visits allow us to observe parolees in their environment and to
more closely monitor their reentry progress, or lack thereof.
There type of direct hands on monitoring is particularly
important for releasees with known substance abuse problems who
may be under specific conditions to avoid alcohol, drugs or
individuals known to traffic in illegal drugs. And these home
visits also sends a very powerful message to both the
individual parolees and to the community that we take our
supervision responsibilities seriously and are committed to
protecting the community by keeping a close eye on parolees.
The third program component, orientation sessions for
releasees are important from a systemic prevention perspective.
At these sessions, the parolees and probationers have their
photos taken and they learn about the MPD CSOSA partnership and
the enhanced supervision it involves. As importantly the
parolees and probationers learn about the resources available
to support their successful reintegration into the community
from education to job training, employment services to
substance abuse assistance, to name a few. Getting these
individuals off to a good start, providing them with the tools
they need and the incentives to use them is vitally important.
I should point out that our department is working with our
Federal partners on similar intensive supervision program for
defendants at the beginning of the criminal justice process,
those that have been released to the community pending trial.
That program is called CORE, or Conditions of Release
Enforcement Program. Working with the U.S. attorneys officer
and pretrial services agency officers in selected PSAs have
been using CORE to aggressively enforce conditions of pretrial
release, and to do so quickly effectively and without the
bureaucracy that has characterized pretrial enforcement in the
past.
Now CORE is being expanded district-wide as well.
Basically, the program allows our officers when they observe
defendants who violate their conditions of release to
immediately arrest those violators upon finding probable cause
of a violation. This is a significant reform that is, once
again, sending a strong message to pretrial defendants in the
communities where they live.
As you've heard today, there are many aspects to building a
comprehensive and effective reentry system for offenders
released from prison back to our communities. Law enforcement
is just one component of that system, but a critical component
nonetheless, in monitoring individual parolees, assisting them
in assessing prevention resources, and working to put our
communities--to protect our communities.
But law enforcement cannot achieve this goal on our own.
That's why we're establishing a partnership program that we
have, such as the one I've just outlined here today. Thank you
very much for giving me the opportunity to speak here this
morning. I'll be glad to answer any questions.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Chief Ramsey.
[The prepared statement of Chief Ramsey follows:]
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Mrs. Morella. Now I'm pleased to recognize Chairman Reilly.
Mr. Reilly. Good morning, or good afternoon now, Chairman
Morella and Congresswoman Norton, members of the panel and
staff. I am indeed privileged for the opportunity to testify
about the critical problems faced by the U.S. Parole Commission
with regard to the use and availability of halfway houses in
the District of Columbia. Beginning in 1998, when the paroling
authority of the District of Columbia Board of Parole was
transferred to the Commission pursuant to the Revitalization
Act of 1997, we understood that many reforms would be needed in
the management and usage of halfway houses in the District. Yet
the commission was reasonably confident that with Federal money
and resources the District of Columbia halfway house system
could be gradually brought into line with Federal standards
with regard to prisoners being prepared for release on parole.
Unfortunately, this has not yet been achieved. The present
shortage of halfway house bed space significantly impedes the
ability of the Commission and our justice system partners,
including the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency to
operate an effective parole system for the District.
Let me first describe a few vital functions and dual role
that halfway houses have served in the Federal correctional
parole system. First, prior to the date of their release,
halfway houses provide prisoners with the controlled transition
into society. This is critical to their future success on
parole or supervised release. It has been determined that stays
in halfway houses are beneficial for virtually all prisoners
preparing for release, particularly in improving their
employment prospects. Prisoners who truly must spend a period
of time in a halfway house before going on parole are those who
lack a suitable residence and/or employment, and those who need
a structured setting to accustom them to the need for
compliance with conditions of parole. The Commission strongly
believes, based upon both experience and documented research,
that an appropriate prerelease halfway house stay significantly
reduces the risk of recidivism that would otherwise result from
sending prisoners into a community unprepared.
Second, halfway houses serve as an alternative sanction to
revocation of parole. This type of alternative sanction,
oftentimes called halfway back, is justified in the case of
parolees who violate the conditions of parole but not in a way
so serious as to require sending them back to the institution.
Temporary placement in a halfway house or residential
sanction center can be an effective alternative to revocation
of parole. These functions were not being served by halfway
houses in the District of Columbia when the Commission began to
assume its Revitalization Act responsibilities.
Since then the Commission and its partner agencies have re-
established the use of halfway houses for the prerelease
transition process. But widespread delays in halfway house
placements have persisted. Even though the transfer of the
District's remaining prisoner population to the Bureau of
Prisons will be completed over the next few months, we are
facing a shortage of halfway house bed spaces that are
allocated for the Bureau of Prison's use.
I have been advised that the Bureau has only 203 halfway
house beds available for all commitments for which is
responsible in three facilities. At this time, only 79 of these
beds are occupied by prisoners with parole dates. Yet there
soon will be approximately 130 to 150 prisoners being released
each month from Federal facilities to begin parole or mandatory
released supervision in the District of Columbia.
Let me address how the current shortfall is affecting the
Commission's operations and our ability to help reduce
recidivism rates in the District. The first consequence of the
halfway house bed space shortage is that the Commission has to
cease its former practice of routinely delaying parole dates
until prisoners could be transferred to their assigned halfway
houses.
The Commission formally retarded parole dates at the
request of the Department of Corrections so as to ensure that
all paroled prisoners would be released through a halfway
house. The policy of releasing paroled prisoners through a
halfway house was a subject of memorandum of understanding
between the Commission, the Department of Corrections, and the
trustees and initiated to facilitate the release planning
process carried out by CSOSA.
However, this practice, combined with other problems, had
the unintended consequence of building up a major backlog of
several hundred prisoners with delayed parole dates. The second
consequence of the halfway house shortage is the Commission and
CSOSA will continue to be unduly restricted in their ability to
manage parolee population and reduce recidivism, promote public
safety and ultimately engender the confidence security and
goodwill of the community.
At present, the Commission issues an average of 63 District
of Columbia parole violation warrants per month and returns to
prison by revoking parole of over 700 parolees per year. In the
majority of low level violation indications, we ask CSOSA to
place the parolee in its graduated sanctions program or to
continue working with the parolee in the hope of successful
behavior modification. For this program to work, we need to
have a residential sanctions facility or additional halfway
house capacity. If the commission cannot place these parolees
in halfway houses, for example, to sanction persistent
technical violators, revocation of parole for such violators
becomes more or less inevitable because their violation
behaviors frequently turn more serious as time goes on.
The bottom line is that a successful parole or supervised
release system requires this basic tool to reduce recidivism. A
temporary return to halfway house is necessary for many
offenders in order to avoid a return to crime.
In conclusion, I would emphasize that opening more new
halfway houses or residential sanction center facilities in the
District of Columbia is ultimately the only solution to the
problem. Otherwise, Federal and District of Columbia courts and
agencies will continue to compete for the use of too few beds
and spaces to go around. Failure to provide additional bed
spaces means that prisoners who gain parole or mandatory
release will be going into the community but without a service
that keeps them under surveillance and gives them the services
they need to maximize their chances of success. Failure
increases the likelihood that parole offenders will return to
crime in the communities where they were released or where they
returned. And that is what we are all trying to prevent.
I thank you, Madam Chairman, for the opportunity to appear
before the committee today and will look forward to answering
any questions you might have.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Chairman Reilly.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Reilly follows:]
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Mrs. Morella. And now I'll turn to Jasper E. Ormond, the
interim director of Court Services and Offender Supervision
Agency [CSOSA].
Mr. Ormond. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Morella and
Congresswoman Norton. I appreciate the opportunity to appear
before you on behalf of the Court Services and the Offender
Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia to discuss the
opportunities and challenges of offender reentry into in the
District of Columbia. Much attention today has been given to
the role of halfway houses and reentry programming and the need
to expand halfway house capacity in the District. While halfway
houses are indeed a critical element of an effective reentry
system, I would like to concentrate my remarks on the system as
a whole. We note that most of the offenders returning to the
District are undereducated and underskilled. They have the
history of drug abuse and the need for treatment or after-care
programming that begun in treatment is very, very critical.
They have an average of 9.2 prior arrests and 4.5 prior
convictions. One in five has a prior violent offense, while 78
percent are single and over half report that they have
children. Over 40 percent have nowhere stable to go after they
leave prison. Often they have lost contact with family and
friends. And I think that statistic underscores a critical need
for halfway house transition that 40 percent basically have no
place to go.
Our first priority in discussing reentry is public safety.
We intend to reduce recidivism and prevent crime, and we have
set a target as a 50 percent reduction in crime over the next 5
years, but our strategy must include the related priority of
addressing offenders needs and providing meaningful
opportunities and support. Our total current parole caseload is
5,132, which includes 3,342 offenders on active supervision
status. The average period of parole supervision is 5 years. We
believe that over this period, the offender can make an
important journey by adhering to the external controls of
supervision, the offender learns to exercise internal control
over his or her behavior. By practicing accountability to
others, the offender learns accountability to self.
We believe that close supervision and attention to
individual needs are critical to the parolee's success in
establishing a drug and crime-free life. To that end, we have a
caseload in almost every police service area in the District.
We are bringing our officers and our services to offenders
where they live. It is critical to our strategy that our
officers work in the field, not in centralized downtown
offices. By the end of this fiscal year, we will have six field
officers, each of which is strategically located in an area
with a high concentration of ex-offenders.
CSOSA has established a three-phase reentry structure. The
initial transition phase occurs in the halfway house and
involves risk and needs assessment, relapse planning and
intensive drug testing. Fourteen of our community supervision
officers work with halfway house residents in our transitional
intervention program, the TIPs program. The TIPs program is a
result of collaboration among CSOSA, the D.C. Department of
Corrections, the Bureau of Prisons, the Corrections Trustee and
the U.S. Parole Commission. It represents an important
evolution in the way we are thinking about reentry.
This phase lasts 30 to 90 days, depending on the issues
facing the offender. During this time, the offender learns what
will be expected of him or her during community supervision,
what resources are available to help and what sanctions will be
imposed for noncompliance. We also begin intensive drug
testing. If the offender does not reside in halfway houses
prior to release, the assessment and case planning function
occurs during the early stages of supervision.
During the second phase reintegration, the offender works
intensively with his or her CSO to put in place the basic
structures of a responsible lifestyle: a stable residence,
employment, and positive relationships. This reintegration
phase lasts a minimum of 6 months and usually longer.
One of our major budget initiatives for fiscal year 2002, a
Reentry and Sanctions Center, will be critical to both the
transition phase and reintegration phase. The center will
provide residential placements for both the initial assessment
that is so critical to reentry planning and the residential
sanctions that are critical to preventing recidivism. The
Reentry and Sanctions Center will also supplement halfway house
capacity by providing the space for both pre-parole and
sanctions placement.
We are putting in place the services offenders need during
this phase. We have developed 27 agreements with public and
nonprofit agencies for community service. Building on the
success of our initial learning lab at St. Luke's Center, we
are establishing a network of labs to provide literacy training
and unemployment assistance. We are also working with a
coalition of churches and nonprofit organizations to develop
job opportunities.
The stress of reintegration can contribute to a relapse of
substance abuse, which must be addressed through treatment. Our
substance abuse treatment system includes 10 local providers,
who will serve more than 1,200 probationers and parolees this
year. Treatment includes both residential and outpatient
programs, and all of our treatment is tied to supervision and
sanctions.
We believe that offenders must be held accountable for
their behavior. To that end, we have developed a system of
graduated sanctions for noncompliance. These sanctions range
from increased drug testing to placement and treatment in
anticriminality sanctions group, to residential placements up
to 90 days. This residential sanctions program halfway back
removes the offender from circumstances influencing his or her
noncompliant behavior.
The final phase is relapse prevention and restitution.
During the remainder of his or her term of supervision, the ex-
offender maintains and enhances a drug and crime-free
lifestyle. CSOSA has made significant progress in developing
the kinds of partnerships that lead to a successful reentry
program. We have established successful collaborations with the
Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Parole Commission. We are
particularly proud of our wide-ranging partnerships with the
Metropolitan Police Department, which unites community
supervision officers and community policing in a joint
supervision activity. We believe these partnerships contribute
significantly to public safety.
We intend to have an active partnership in every police
service area by the end of 2001. Already more than 3,000
metropolitan police officers have been trained in the
partnership philosophy. We can achieve positive outcomes. We
have already seen promising results, a 70 percent decrease in
parolee rearrests since May 1998 and a 50 percent drop in drug
testing--positive drug testing among offenders who have
received treatment. We have increased drug testing by 600
percent in the last 3 years and we believe that increased
monitoring is influencing the drug use among offenders.
These early indicators give us confidence that our goal of
50 percent reduction in recidivism among the violent and drug
offenders we supervise can be reached by 2005. We believe that
the most effective way to meet the reentry challenge is through
collaboration. We must work together to build both government
and community support for halfway houses.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today,
and I will be open to answering any questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ormond follows:]
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Mrs. Morella. Great. Thank you, Director Ormond. And now I
recognize deputy director, James Anthony, D.C. Department of
Corrections. Thank you, Mr. Anthony.
Mr. Anthony. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Morella, and
Congresswoman Norton. Members of the subcommittee and staff, I
am pleased to be here to testify on behalf of the D.C.
Department of Corrections. Director Washington is unavailable
to present testimony today due to a previous commitment out of
the city.
Historically the Department of Corrections has operated a
post-conviction work release program for inmates sentenced and
held in our custody since November 1966. The establishment of
the program was set forth as a result of the Work Release Act
of 1964. The intent of the legislation was to provide the
citizens of the District of Columbia with a sense of security
regarding return of inmates who had been incarcerated for an
extended period of time, while at the same time affording the
inmate an opportunity to slowly reintegrate into the community.
Historically, in order to address the needs of the inmate
population, the Department established and implemented programs
designed to assist the inmate in reintegration and
rehabilitation into the community. These programs consist of
and include unemployment assistance, job counseling, substance
abuse counseling and intervention, academic tutoring, GED
preparation, basic life skills, stress management, HIV/AIDS
awareness and social services networking and assistance.
Traditionally, our halfway houses have been used to
facilitate and transition sentenced inmates who have served a
significant portion of their sentences and have been granted
parole or some form of conditional release. In recent years,
the court has increased its utilization of halfway houses as a
form of pretrial detention.
Since the enactment of the Work Release Act of 1964, the
Department of Corrections has successfully operated and managed
a work release program for the District of Columbia, and the
Department has established a state-of-the-art inmate
information management system recently, which allows the
Department to more effectively provide for the care and the
custody of the inmate population.
Additionally, the Department has developed a District-wide
escape monitoring system, which utilizes advancement and
technology that provides its criminal justice partners with
accurate and timely data related to inmate status.
We have also established a work program utilizing halfway
house program participants, who on a daily basis works in
coordination with several District of Columbia agencies to
provide manpower assistance for building, grounds and
maintenance services.
With the enhancement of the National Capital Revitalization
and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997, the statutory
mandate of the Department of Corrections will change, and the
Department shall no longer house in its halfway houses
sentenced felons. Statutorily, the Department will only have
responsibility for the detention and transition of sentenced
misdemeanants and pretrial defendants. The responsibility for
transitioning the sentenced felon population will be
transferred, as you know, to the Federal Government.
The Department of Corrections currently operates one
halfway house, and it contracts with four independent vendors
to house court-ordered commitments and sentenced felons. The
Department of Corrections has a total bed space capacity of 557
at this time; 290 are used to treat pre-trial defendants, 210
for sentenced felons, and 57 for females.
As a result of the closure of the Lorton Correctional
Complex, the Department will continue to utilize the
independent contract beds in order to meet the anticipated
population needs. These beds will provide the central detention
facility with additional bed space should the Department
experience an increase in inmate population that will cause the
agency to exceed the court-ordered ceiling capacity of 1,674
beds at the central detention facility.
This completes my prepared testimony, and my staff and I
are here and available to answer any other questions you may
have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Anthony follows:]
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Mrs. Morella. Thank you very much, Mr. Anthony. I think
what I would like to do is to just get--again, get an
opportunity to get some statistics with regard to the number of
halfway houses that exist for women and men. And are they
together? Do you have some halfway houses where you have women
who are there with men, or are they separate? The length of
time that they stay there, the average, I mean, I'm hearing
like 60 days probably the average, but I want to get that kind
of validated. And then if you know something about what the
recidivism rate is, whether maybe Mr. Clark, maybe Dr. Sawyer
would help.
Mr. Clark. Do I understand the question was related first
of all to female offenders?
Mrs. Morella. No. Actually, but I'm including that now,
too.
Mr. Clark. OK.
Mrs. Morella. But I wonder, are they separate?
Mr. Clark. Yes.
Mrs. Morella. I know they are fewer, many----
Mr. Clark. Yes. In fact, I think the point should be made
that in the District on the good news side, there is no
shortage of halfway house facilities or beds for the females
who are returning. There are----
Mrs. Morella. May you not need them in the future.
Mr. Clark. Pardon me?
Mrs. Morella. May you not need the additional space in the
future.
Mr. Clark. That would be wonderful. There are two
facilities, a somewhat larger one in Northeast, I think on G
Street, and a smaller one in the DuPont Circle area on 19th
Street, which are both operated by the same company, Reynolds
and Associates. I think there is a total capacity of around 90
to 100 beds between the two of them, and that vendor contracts
at those sites both with the Bureau of Prisons and the
Department of Corrections. And there are no facilities that are
shared by men and women.
Mrs. Morella. Tell me about the recidivism rate. I mean, I
hear that two-thirds of those that are released into the
community with maybe the shortened stay at halfway houses
return as recidivists?
Mr. Clark. I'm not the right person to speak on that.
Mrs. Morella. Perhaps Dr. Sawyer.
Ms. Sawyer. I can address that for our Federal inmates.
Roughly 40 percent of our inmates recidivate in the first 3
years, which means 60 percent of those inmates stay on the
streets after 3 years. Now, when I say recidivate, we define
that very broadly. That includes those who violate supervision,
those who violate parole. They don't need to have committed a
new offense. They don't even need to have gone back to prison,
necessarily, but it means they have violated some element of
their supervision or committed a new crime. And that is for
Federal inmates that are releasing back into the community.
Mrs. Morella. There must be somebody, though, that knows
what the recidivism rate is in the District of Columbia.
Ms. Sawyer. Mr. Anthony or Jasper?
Mr. Ormond. Madam Chair, we are first taking a very close
look at how we are defining recidivism. First we looked at
convictions. This year we are establishing a baseline for what
we're truly calling recidivism, and I would be somewhat
reluctant about putting a number out now. By September 30th of
this year, we should have a good sense of what the true number
is, because it also includes convictions, as well as violations
for technical violations.
Hopefully if the graduated sanctions and the drug treatment
and the other Halfway Back options are being as effective as
the preliminary results indicate, we should see a significant
decrease in the number of technical violations. So convictions
will be the variable that we really focus on, but, again,
September 30th, October, we will be in a much better position
to intelligently answer that question, and I would be reluctant
to just give a number at this point.
Mrs. Morella. When you do answer them by September 30th,
what will it include? I know you have categories, so we----
Mr. Ormond. It will include people that were convicted for
new crimes, because rearrest is not always a good indicator,
because people are often no--in addition to convictions for new
crime, violations that will result for a return back to prison,
those would be the two major criteria that we will use, yeah.
Mrs. Morella. I'm surprised you don't have it in categories
at this point.
Mr. Ormond. I'm sorry?
Mrs. Morella. I'm surprised you don't have it categorized
at this point, since it's really critical to what we're talking
about, halfway houses----
Mr. Ormond. Those are the two categories, convictions and
violations that will lead back to incarceration, but we're
continuing to gather the data at this point, yes.
Mrs. Morella. And you will get----
Mr. Ormond. Yes, we will get it. Yes, we will, yes.
Mrs. Morella. Another question I have has to do with
whether or not health assessments have been done on the
released prisoners that are on parole. For instance, I am
particularly interested in the incidence of tuberculosis and
HIV and AIDS, those that, you know, come about perhaps through
drugs. And I wonder how you monitor and address those needs.
Again, I'm looking at everyone, so that whoever wants to
answer, feels qualified to offer a point, will do that. Dr.
Sawyer.
Ms. Sawyer. Yes, I can speak very specifically to--again,
on Federal inmates and the existence of the infectious diseases
of the inmates that are in our custody. Roughly 1 percent, and
that has been pretty much a standing average for the last
several years in the Bureau of Prisons; 1 percent of our
inmates are HIV positive.
Now, our understanding--and I'd defer to Mr. Anthony, but
our understanding and the data we've gotten thus far on the
inmates coming into our system from the D.C. Department of
Corrections is that their HIV rate runs closer to 8 percent. So
since this is a large city and since cities tend to have a
larger preponderance of infectious diseases and our inmates
come from across the country, you would expect that to be
somewhat different, but the best numbers we've gotten thus far
from the inmates coming into our system as we prepare for their
medical needs is 8 percent incidence from the D.C. population.
In terms of tuberculosis, the numbers are much lower. Our
rate in the Federal prison system is roughly 6.4 per 100,000.
The D.C. rate in the whole District of Columbia, not just the
inmates, is 13.5 per 100,000. So that would certainly suggest
that the incidence among the inmate population is going to be
higher also.
The average population--I'm sorry. That was--the 6.4 is the
average population in the country; 2.5 is the average
population per 100,000 for Federal Bureau of Prisons inmates.
So our population is 2.5 per 100,000. The U.S. population is
6.4 per 100,000. The District of Columbia is 13.5. Mr. Anthony
may have that specifically for his offender population.
Mrs. Morella. Mr. Anthony.
Mr. Anthony. Mrs. Morella, I do not have the exact figures
regarding that information today, but I will get that for you.
Mrs. Morella. You're right, because, see, I'm also
interested in how you monitor it. Do you send them out with
multiple drug resistant strains of TB or HIV and AIDS, or how
do you monitor them, and what kind of an assessment?
Mr. Anthony. All inmates entering our system go through
medical examinations, and so forth, and at that point in time,
in terms of intake, they are assessed for their needs, and it's
determined at that time. And if they are found to be infected
in terms of TB, then they are separated from the general
population, and so forth, until such time that they're treated
and stabilized before they're allowed to enter the population.
Mrs. Morella. Can you get those statistics to us also?
Mr. Anthony. Yes, I will.
Mrs. Morella. And I would include sexually transmitted
diseases in that category.
Mr. Anthony. All right.
Mrs. Morella. Great. Great. Thank you, my time has expired.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. First, let me
address a question to Ms. Sawyer. As of December 31st, will the
entire responsibility, including each and every inmate now in
Lorton, be in the hands of the Bureau of Prisons?
Ms. Sawyer. Yes, it will. In fact it may be before December
31st. We've set a target for ourselves of November 1st to try
to get the vast majority, and there may be a few stragglers
after November 1st, but we thought we'd give ourselves a window
there to assure that we have them all in our system before
December 31st.
Ms. Norton. Well, first of all, may I commend BOP for the
way in which they have moved on time. It was a little slow up
there at one point, but I must say that every time that there
was a problem, BOP was able to get ahold of it very
efficiently. And here you're going to come in ahead of time
with each and every inmate from Lorton being in the Federal
system on time by December 31st and the closure of Lorton as of
that date; is that true?
Ms. Sawyer. Absolutely. Thank you very much.
Ms. Norton. Now, that will--of course, ever since the
passage of the Revitalization Act in August 1997, you have had
full financial responsibility for inmates at Lorton for all of
our prisoners, and that has been an extraordinary relief for
the District of Columbia, of course. And we wouldn't be out of
insolvency today if the Federal Government had not relieved us
of the revitalization agency responsibilities.
But as I understand it, even after assuming full
responsibility for each and every inmate and full financial
responsibility, the District of Columbia will be paying for
inmates held in the District of Columbia solely for the
convenience of Federal prosecutors or Federal--yes, Federal
prosecutors. That's who would have to, I think, ask, or Federal
courts.
Ms. Sawyer. Inmates in that status would really be the
responsibility of the U.S. Marshals Service. It really is not a
Bureau of Prisons involvement there. So I am not really
equipped to address that. I'm not sure. Mr. Clark might be. But
those become Marshals' inmates when they're in that status.
Ms. Norton. Well, I'm interested in the fact that they will
remain District of Columbia financial responsibility and doing
something about it.
Mr. Clark. Yes. This has been a thorny issue for several
years, and we've had discussions about it. Again, the model
that was adopted in the Revitalization Act and in the MOU that
led up to it is the model of local versus State responsibility,
and the idea was that the Federal Government in this instance
would take over the responsibility that is similar to States
around the country. And typically in States around the country,
prisoners who are being held locally for the convenience of the
court are our local responsibility until they are sentenced,
finished with their time at court and are sent to the State
prison.
So in my estimation, and I've spent a lot of time on this,
the District is not disadvantaged vis-a-vis other
jurisdictions, local jurisdictions around the country in this
regard.
Ms. Norton. Well, our information was that the Federal
Government pays States for housing prisoners held for their
convenience.
Mr. Clark. If they're being held for the Federal court,
they are, but not if they're being held, in this instance, for
the local court, for the Superior Court. So here locally, the
prisoners who are being held for the District Court are the
responsibility of the U.S. Marshals, who reimburse the District
I think $8 or $9 million a year. Those who are being held for
Superior Court, similar to Cook County Court, let's say, are a
local responsibility as they are in Cook County, even though in
this case the U.S. Attorney's Office takes the role of the
local prosecutor.
Ms. Norton. All right. Let me go on then to Mr. Jasper.
Actually, I think this really has to do with not only Mr.--I
think this has to do with BOP and the Department of
Corrections. I'm trying to figure out what happens as of
December 31st with the jurisdiction that the Department of
Corrections now has over halfway houses. Am I right in assuming
that as of December 31st, all the responsibility for pretrial
and for supervision of those coming back into the community
lies entirely with the Federal Government as well? And if so,
that leaves open the question, what happens to these facilities
that the Department of Corrections has? It has one itself. And
then of course it has five, according to your prior testimony
here, which it shares with the BOP. And then there are two that
are entirely BOP. Who has control over those facilities as of
December 31st?
Don't everybody speak at once.
Mr. Clark. I'd be glad to speak to that.
Mr. Anthony. At the moment, the Department of Corrections
has the contractual authority for those facilities at this
point in time.
Ms. Norton. Now, you all will be using--I take it you
contract them out. That's all you do with them, and you pay for
it, insofar as it involves District of Columbia inmates or
pretrial----
Mr. Anthony. That would be the case after December 31st.
Ms. Norton. Now, will you be needing all of your space?
Mr. Anthony. We believe we will need all of our space at
that time.
Ms. Norton. Yes, Ms. Sawyer.
Ms. Sawyer. So they will retain all the pretrial
responsibilities for which they use halfway houses. They will
also retain the misdemeanant responsibilities for which they
use halfway houses. So the only thing we actually are picking
up in terms of the halfway house responsibility are the
releasing inmates, the ones who have been sentenced, they're in
our custody for felonies, not misdemeanants, and are going to
be releasing from us. Those will be going back into halfway
houses.
Ms. Norton. Well, they share--the reason I'm asking about
their need is it's interesting to note that they now share five
facilities.
Ms. Sawyer. It's not exactly a sharing. What it is is a
contractor, for example, Hope Village, if I could use that one,
they have X number of beds. We have contracted for the use of
110 of those, but the D.C. Department of Corrections has
contracted for a larger number, an additional number. So it's
one facility----
Ms. Norton. I see, but explain to me who supervises that
facility which has two jurisdictions in it. Who is responsible
for that facility? Is this where Mr. Jasper comes in or----
Ms. Sawyer. No. We're responsible for the----
Ms. Norton. I mean, Mr. Ormond comes in. I'm sorry.
Ms. Sawyer. We're responsible for those inmates that are in
our custody, the Federal inmates releasing through that
facility. We're responsible for monitoring that facility in the
relationship to those inmates, and the D.C. Department of
Corrections would be responsible for monitoring that
institution's functions in response to their inmates. So we
both do. We basically both monitor the facility.
Mr. Anthony. With Hope Village, we have a contract there
for 170 beds, and we're responsible for monitoring that
aspect--that contract is separate and apart from the Federal
Government.
Ms. Norton. Are these folks all mixed in together? Are they
separated out?
Mr. Anthony. Yes, ma'am. They're in separate housing.
Ms. Norton. They're in separate housing. So the BOP is in
one--I see. Do they have different standards? Are there
different ways of operation?
Ms. Sawyer. There's going to be some variations, because we
write our statement of work, and we have our priorities and our
requirements we place on them that might be a little bit
different. I think in general, there would be a very similar
operation, but I'm not sure I could say identically, because
our statement of work----
Ms. Norton. I wish--I would very much like--do y'all talk
to one another about----
Ms. Sawyer. Absolutely.
Ms. Norton [continuing]. Internal operations?
Ms. Sawyer. Absolutely.
Ms. Norton. Would you provide to the chairman, to this
committee, a summary----
Ms. Sawyer. Sure.
Ms. Norton [continuing]. Of how each of the facilities
operates, what the criteria, what the guidelines of each
facility and how each facility relate to one another? I just
want to make sure that as we take over completely in the
Federal--the Lorton inmates, that we don't somehow develop
trouble up ahead because we didn't foresee what having two
different jurisdictions in the same contracted space might give
us. And there may be no trouble here, but we'd just like to--
we'd like to see how you operate and how you relate to one
another.
Ms. Sawyer. We'll certainly do that.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Ormond, what are you--are you releasing----
Mr. Ormond. I'm sorry?
Ms. Norton. Are inmates offenders who were coming out, are
any of them being released directly into the community for lack
of halfway space right now?
Mr. Ormond. Yes. The initial numbers we have roughly--
probably less than a third of the population is being released
directly into the community.
Ms. Norton. So two-thirds are going to halfway houses
still?
Mr. Ormond. About 70 percent currently are going to halfway
houses, yes.
Ms. Norton. How do you determine--or do you have a choice
between who gets to go--who goes to a halfway house and who
gets turned out into the community without any--first of all,
let me be clear. If somebody doesn't go to a halfway house but
they would have if there were space, are some of your services
available or required of that person released into the
community? Doesn't go to a halfway house. You don't have space,
but he's out into the community. Do you have any responsibility
for that offender who now has had to go straight to the
community without any of your services or any of the halfway
house requirements?
Mr. Ormond. Yes. We still have supervision responsibility
for that individual.
Ms. Norton. How do you exercise that responsibility? Much
of your responsibility--much of what you do is effective,
because--let me give an example. In the first several weeks,
that's virtually a lockdown, isn't it----
Mr. Ormond. Yes, it is.
Ms. Norton [continuing]. When they first come out. So those
folks aren't even going back and forth in the community to
commit any crimes at all. They're locked up for all intents and
purposes?
Mr. Ormond. That's correct.
Ms. Norton. So that's part of the reason that you've been
so successful?
Mr. Ormond. Yes.
Ms. Norton. What do you do--are you releasing into the
community people who are the least serious of the people coming
out, or do they have to just get releases to come out, and if
there's a bed available, you get to go in it; if it's not
available but you are a four-time recidivist, you get to go
free? How is that done?
Mr. Ormond. We are meeting with the Bureau of Prisons and
the U.S. Parole Commission. Our attempt is to categorize
offenders and only release those people directly to the
community, and our supervision officers are responsible for
making those assessments, that are minimal risk. That is not
the ideal approach, but at this point in time, we do have to
categorize based upon risk to a community, yes.
Ms. Norton. Madam Chairman, my time is up. I have other
questions, but I'll----
Mrs. Morella. What an enormous undertaking when you think
about what we're discussing, halfway houses, whether or not
people go directly into the community, whether they have an
opportunity to spend 60 days in a halfway house, or whether it
is 120, which would be probably what's ideal. Going through my
mind is the whole problem of how do they find housing? We know
what the job situation is and what the housing situation is in
the District of Columbia, how difficult it is to find adequate
housing that you can afford. How do they find a job? I mean, is
there a--do you have the counselors that truly help them within
that very short period of time that they are in a halfway
house, if they are, that's going to help them? They have had
some skills--as I look at some of the programs that Bureau of
Prisons offers, ideally they've had some literacy skills, with
a GED as the ultimate area or the advancement, but some
literacy skills that I hope are required before they leave. But
some of them have problems with regard to mental illness, drug-
related illnesses, all kinds of health problems.
What do we do? What should we be doing? How do you handle
all of these problems? The magnitude is great, an even just the
basic bottom line of do they have a house and a job and access
to health?
Mr. Ormond. And I would just like to say that period of
time in the halfway house is absolutely critical for us,
because that is the time that we make the assessment of what
their housing situation is, what their employment skills are,
what the family reintegration looks like, the mental health
issues, the other health issues. So that period is absolutely
critical. And at that point we make our recommendation back to
the U.S. Parole Commission, and their transition in the
community is determined by their level of functioning along
those critical elements that you mentioned. It also gives us an
opportunity to assess the resources that's available,
particularly the health, the mental health and substance abuse
resources, to make sure that match takes place prior to going
into the community.
The sex offenders, again, very critical, because we do not
allow the sex offenders to move into the community until those
treatment resources are in place. If we began to circumvent the
halfway houses, now we have sex offenders moving into the
community without us absolutely being sure that those resources
are in place.
Mrs. Morella. Incidentally, we do appreciate what CSOSA has
been doing, too, so as I mentioned in my opening statement,
there have been some improvements that we have seen.
Mr. Reilly, would you like to comment?
Mr. Reilly. I'd like to just comment, Madam Chair, that
last weekend I had an opportunity, because I was very
interested in what was available in this community, and CURE
sponsored a fair downtown here, and I spent 3 hours on my
Saturday with two of our staff from the Parole Commission and
was really amazed at the resources that were available at that
particular meeting.
Councilwoman Patterson was also in attendance. It was an
opportunity for me, and I wanted to familiarize myself with
just what was here in the District to help these folks.
But it also I think--and I think Mr. Ormond commented on it
earlier. There is a great need for the coalitions in this
community of churches and other interested groups to come
together and offer the hand that needs to be offered.
I mentioned this to Cardinal McCarrick the other evening at
a dinner from the standpoint of the Catholic Church, but all
churches to get together and help, because the District is
unique in every situation in terms of this whole system that
has been created now, and it seems to me imperative that we all
bring together those resources.
I intend and have already had a call from Mr. Reynolds, who
runs some of the halfway houses, to begin visiting this next
week, those halfway houses, because I want to familiarize
myself with just exactly what they are, where they are and what
people think of them. I think that's imperative for us at the
Parole Commission, because we put people in these facilities
and we want to know that indeed putting them there is going to
be an advantage and a benefit to them. So we're trying to
become aware ourselves by getting very intimately and
personally involved in this, but I do think it's a community
effort on behalf of everybody to pull together with these
various groups and the resources that I learned were available.
Mrs. Morella. Good. The community is a big stakeholder, and
as we said with the first panel, coordination, cooperation,
community hearings, meetings, including the nongovernmental
organizations and the religious groups that are there, a safety
net is really very important.
Chief Ramsey, what is the status of the community justice
partnership, CSOSA's community supervision offices to work
closely with the police officers to monitor probationers and
the parolees in the District? I know that was established, I
understand the end of 1998, between the police department and
CSOSA, but how does the initiative work? How many police
officers are assigned to that program?
Chief Ramsey. Well, it works very, very well. Commander
Winston Robinson is in the audience from the 7th District and
that's where we actually started the program. It was a pilot in
7-D on BSA-704 and in a year's time, they experienced a 39
percent reduction in crime.
Now, whether or not that entire 39 percent reduction in
crime was due to this program or not, but it was the largest
decrease in the entire city, and I strongly believe that a lot
of what we did had something to do with that, because for the
first time officers had information they needed around the
people that were in that status. We worked very closely with
CSOSA. We made home visits. It sent a very strong message to
the individuals that, you know, we take supervision very, very
seriously. If officers saw someone violating their parole, they
were able to take some sort of action, and it has certainly
made a difference. About half of our PSAs now--we have 83 PSAs
in the city--46 of them have partnerships.
It is not a dedicated group of officers, but what it is are
officers that have been trained, that understand this, and that
work along with CSOSA to make these visits. Oftentimes it could
be members of a focus mission team. It could be members
directly from the PSA that do it.
On the other hand--and let me just say that by the end of
this year, we hope to have all 83 PSAs with some form of
partnership. Obviously we have more parolees concentrated in
some areas of our city than others, but we do want to expand
that training to all of our members.
On the other side, we have the core program, which is when
we work with pretrial and the U.S. attorney's office and
knowing conditions of release, again, it is very valuable for
officers to know if there is a stay-away order, individuals
that they come in contact quite frequently were able to enforce
that. And, I mean, it is a great partnership that we have.
Obviously it needs to be expanded so it can cover a whole city,
but I think in just a brief period of time it has already
demonstrated that it makes a huge difference.
Mrs. Morella. You feel you currently have the resources but
you'd like to expand it?
Chief Ramsey. Yes, ma'am. We definitely want to expand it,
and I think it's worth anything that I put into it from an
extra resource standpoint, because it does have an impact
directly on crime in our communities.
Mrs. Morella. And where there's a concentration of released
prisoners in a single geographic area, what actions does the
Metropolitan Police Department take to monitor crime levels? Do
you have an increased number of police who are there? Do you
use community police on bicycles or, you know----
Chief Ramsey. Well, there's a couple things we do. One
thing we started doing was to track our crime data by PSA. So
we've taken--we've got baseline data that we have, for an
example with 704--PSA-704, we use 1997 as a baseline for that.
So in 1998 we had a pretty big comparison to see the
differences in crime rates and so forth, so we track it by PSA
and we try to integrate the information that we have around the
number of parolees and some PSAs have a very, very large number
of parolees living in that given area. We have some that have
virtually none, I mean, for all practical purposes they have
none. But we do try to focus on that very, very carefully.
I think--I'm a big proponent of the halfway houses, because
when I came here, I didn't really understand their function,
but the longer I'm here, the more I can see that that structure
that people have when they come from a structured environment,
it just helps them make that transition. When they're put
immediately out into the community, they don't have that
support mechanism and supervision, we can only supervise so
closely, and after that, I think the environment can take over
and the pull that people feel from that environment can
oftentimes turn them back toward criminal activity. And if we
aren't able to keep pace with the growing number of people
leaving our penitentiary systems, then we're going to have a
system that is going to be driven not by people at minimal
risk, but you're going to see that start to move up to a more
moderate risk or unfortunately maybe even high risk, if they
can't keep pace, because at some point in time, you can only
put so many people in a system, and after that you've got to
make an adjustment, and that adjustment is going to be on the
assessment and people that we don't want to put out on the
street directly, they're going to be forced to do it.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Chief Ramsey.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Perhaps Ms. Sawyer
can make me understand this. Several times from different
testimony we've heard this notion that there are more returning
from the District than before, and I didn't quite understand
that, because I thought under the probation system you had to
serve most of your time, and then you came out through the
system of release. Whereas there used to be a parole system
where I thought you could get out earlier.
Why is it that we're having such a large number of inmates
or offenders returning in such large clumps now?
Ms. Sawyer. I don't think the number returning has actually
changed. It is the number returning needing halfway houses,
because as was noted earlier, the D.C. Department of
Corrections has kind of stopped using halfway houses or reduced
it dramatically for release cases, and the Bureau of Prisons,
plus the Department of Corrections and CSOSA have all embraced
this idea that returning through halfway houses is very
important and it does impact recidivism rates and it has
obviously been doing that here in the District once the halfway
houses are back in use again. So it's really the number has
increased of inmates needing halfway house separation.
Ms. Norton. It's very important to say, because the
impression is left when one reads the newspaper that all of a
sudden these are the kinds of things we have to watch out,
because people get terrified beyond anything that is necessary.
People are being told that there is a whole slew of prisoners
coming out and it's something very different and they're going
to blame BOP for it. I couldn't understand what in the world
people were talking about. Now I understand. Thank you. It's
very important.
Did you have something to say, Mr. Clark, on that?
Mr. Clark. Only to put this in somewhat of a historical
context, over the course of the last 10 years, the number of
offenders incarcerated in the District has steadily gone down.
About 10 years ago, it was around 12,000. Today it is about
10,600--or 10,100. That's encompassing all of the pretrial
cases and all those in the Department of Corrections and all
those in the Bureau of Prisons, but essentially the pretrial
and sentenced felon population combined has continually gone
down. So in the same vein----
Ms. Norton. If anything, there are fewer people coming out
than before, fewer people with greater supervision and more
services. The numbers here are very important to get straight
in the public's mind.
Mr. Ormond made a very important point in answer to a very
important question that the Chair asked about recidivism. This
is another--a piece of information that's out there that is
really wrong. The word ``recidivism'' covers a multitude
literally of sins, from the sin of not reporting in to your
halfway house, to the extent of committing a crime. It is a
total disservice to all we're trying to do in the community to
lump them in the same categories that might be for the
convenience of somebody, but the press won't do you a favor
with it. They will report out this is the recidivism rate,
because that's what they've heard from you, and I understand,
Mr. Ormond, why you were reluctant to just come out with some
number off the top of your head. You indicated to Mrs. Morella
that by September or October you would have a workable system.
If so, you will be one of the few systems that does have a
workable system of reporting so that the public will have a
real sense of what will happen. Can I ask that when you get
that, can you offer those statistics to the Chair in the fall,
as you said you would have them?
Mr. Ormond. Yes.
Ms. Norton. You now said--you said, Mr. Ormond, that you
are able to keep people for only something under 60 days now in
a halfway house. Was that your testimony earlier?
Mr. Ormond. I think Dr. Hawk made that statement.
Ms. Norton. OK. Less than 60 days. What was it when--let's
look at the chart for a moment. That chart is what made me a
believer and what I think would make reasonable people in the
community understand that they have a lot more to gain than to
lose if we have a fair share plan of halfway houses, because
there's no question, if you look at that chart at the beginning
date of CSOSA jurisdiction and where it was 2 years later, that
something dramatic happened to crime. And it's--I'd like to
focus on that. Can you tell me how long you were able to keep
people in the kind of state-of-the-art supervision that was
your goal at the beginning when those numbers were very--I'm
sorry--near the end of that period when those numbers had come
way down and whether you are keeping people in there for the
same number of days now, or whether you are cutting the days in
order to get more people into the system in the first place?
Mr. Ormond. The days are being cut. I think up to around
June or July 2000, we basically had the system as we had
initially agreed it to be, that each person would transition
into the halfway houses. There were a lot of meetings and there
were a lot of discussions about reducing the days. We were
very, very reluctant to do that, but we were in a position.
Either we retired a lot of people in prison or we began to
reduce the days so everyone would get an opportunity for
transition. But that is not the idea. But I think Dr. Hawk, who
has more experience with this, will basically say particularly
for the substance abusers we need the entire 120 days because
the assessments, the multiple needs that they present really
require time to put resources in place, but also to create an
accountability system that they are also clear that we are
serious about community order and accountability.
Ms. Norton. And you say that takes at least 120 days, and
now you're already down to 60 days. And I understand why, but
we already cut the time in half, virtually, in order to keep
from just putting people out into the community, some with some
and some with none.
Ms. Sawyer. The less than 60 days was an average that I
indicated that is the current average placement, and that
varies, because we place----
Ms. Norton. Well, everything is always an average. You
can't do anything better than----
Ms. Sawyer. My only point is it varies based upon the need
of the inmate. So someone who has a drug treatment history, has
completed the drug program, needs to have the longer period of
time out there for supervision, would get more on the high end,
the 120 or so. Someone who has far lesser need maybe has a
relatively good plan but needs a little bit of time, make it 30
days. So it varies----
Ms. Norton. That's good to have that kind of calibration.
What you do, of course, if you're talking--when you're talking
substance abuse, you're talking about almost every inmate that
comes out of prison. Is there any treatment that's done before
you get out of prison so maybe some of it's done and Mr. Ormond
won't have--will only have a kind of mopping up job to be done,
because while you had them in there for 10 years you took care
of it?
Ms. Sawyer. Absolutely. I referenced in my opening comments
that we have residential drug treatment available for every
inmate who has a drug treatment need and who will volunteer for
treatment, and right now we're hitting 92 percent of those who
have a drug treatment need, which is roughly a third of our
total population. The percentage may be a little higher than
that for the D.C. inmates coming in.
We're actually required to do that by statute now. Congress
requires us and they therefore give us the funds necessary to
ensure that we have a 9-month residential drug treatment
program in place for every inmate that we can get into that
program. But the transition piece into the community is
critical. We used to do drug treatment years ago. We do it
early on in their sentence and then think they were cured and
then we would release them a few years later into the
community. And once they're back to the old temptations and the
old frustrations, they fall back into drugs. So what we've done
now is moved our treatment program toward the end of the
sentence. You don't get involved in the residential drug
treatment until the last year or two of your sentence, and the
6-month transition piece through the halfway house into the
community where we link them to a drug treatment provider in
the community, that match is similar to the program we're
running in the institution so that they're aided through that
transition when those temptations are much more available to
them in the community, and that's a critical part of our
program.
Ms. Norton. Let me get straight the ones that have to come
out, perhaps the risk assessment has been done and they come
out. Now, those folks have to do the same--have to come in to
do the same--get the same treatment and get the same services
to transition that they would get if they were in a halfway
house. People in the community, you've done the risk
assessment, those with the least risk are the ones--I
understand the triage involved here. Those that are the least
risk are the ones you've had to say, you can go into the
community because we have no halfway house. I'm trying to find
now what services are available to that group.
Mr. Ormond. We provide the comprehensive supervision. We
also have treatment services for that population. But, again,
the challenge is often the risk is based upon criminality.
Addiction is such an interesting animal, if you will, because
given the best interventions that takes place in the Bureau of
Prisons, once these men and women come back into the community,
the whole cycle of addiction can very easily kick in. That is
why we really need--we try very hard in the Bureau of Prisons
policy basically to say that for those substance abusers that
are going through that 9-month program, that they go through at
least 120 days of halfway house transition, because the science
tells us that's very critical.
So, again, we provide interventions if they do not go to
the halfway house, but it's not the ideal way to deal with the
population.
Ms. Norton. And I see you're making another important
distinction, because the risk assessment has to be based on
criminality, but the greater risk may be----
Mr. Ormond. The addiction.
Ms. Norton. Addiction--vulnerability to addiction. So we
really do have a problem here.
This leads me to the Halfway Back notion, which I like a
lot. Instead of, you know, saying you've got a minor or even
something more important as a violation and back you go to the
pen, excuse me, there is a Halfway Back house. I'd like--
apparently with graduated sanctions?
Mr. Ormond. Yes.
Ms. Norton. I'd like to know how effective that is in
decreasing recidivism, what I think the average person out here
in the public would call recidivism; namely, the need to be
reincarcerated?
Mr. Ormond. We have found it to be very effective. The
people that have gone through those interventions, they--
positive tests have been reduced by 50 percent. It's been very
dramatic, and, again, we are using positive drug tests, and
we're testing people very rigorously to see if they are
continuing to use drugs. It's also a significant cost
avoidance, because now the U.S. Parole Commission does not have
to get involved. The Bureau of Prisons will not have to bring
these people back into the prison. The D.C. jail will not have
to intake them, because we are able to manage them with
violations prior to actual convictions and other addresses----
Ms. Norton. Wait a minute. Is there enough room for people
to go to the Halfway Back houses?
Mr. Ormond. There is not enough room at this point, because
often we have to use the same vendors that are providing
halfway houses. Now, we are in a position now to expand it to
100 additional beds with a reentry facility at Karrick Hall.
The President put moneys in the budget to do the capital
development. This program has shown an 85 percent improvement
in the results over the last 4 years. It's rigorously evaluated
through the University of Maryland. However, that is also being
impacted by the D.C. Commission and our inabilities to expand
services in that census tract near D.C. General Hospital. So, I
mean, we have various resources and initiatives, but a lot of
it is being impacted at this point, and it is currently in our
2002 budget submissions that we can expand the capacity for
Halfway Back.
Ms. Norton. So you--the President has put in his budget
funds to allow--now, this is a residential--this is a
residential facility?
Mr. Ormond. Residential Half Back, yes.
Ms. Norton. So your Half Back, you're back incarcerated
because you can't--you have to get more treatment without going
back and forth to the community?
Mr. Ormond. Exactly.
Ms. Norton. And you are--you have 100-bed facility funding
if you can find a residential facility in the District of
Columbia?
Mr. Ormond. Yes. We actually have been in a facility on the
grounds at D.C. General Hospital. We want to expand that
facility to accommodate----
Ms. Norton. By 100 beds?
Mr. Ormond. To 100 beds, yes.
Ms. Norton. How many beds now?
Mr. Ormond. Twenty-one beds now.
Ms. Norton. And you need 100 beds in order to take care of
all the folks that----
Mr. Ormond. That would probably allow us to take care of
about 80 percent of the need.
Mr. Ormond. And do they now just go back to prison? What do
you do since you don't have the beds?
Mr. Ormond. We have the contracts but many of those
people--that's why that whole recidivism question is
interesting. A lot of those people are going back to jail now,
because we do not have the option, because the judges often
want them to be taken off the community for public safety
reasons. But, again, that facility is being impacted by the
current D.C. Commission and our inabilities to do any further
improvements in that census tract.
Ms. Norton. Well, you know, if those folks have to go back
to prison because of violations which otherwise would not allow
that, we may be back to the situation we have with the Parole
Board.
Mr. Reilly, I don't know if you were on the Commission at
the time, but I woke up one morning and this is how I found it
out. I may ask that--I may hope that none of us find out things
like this through the Washington Post, where we found out
through the Washington Post that there were people waiting to
be released by the Parole Commission and were ready to be
released, but because of the volume of cases, there was nothing
you could do, because you had to be very careful in allowing
people to get out of prison.
So here you might have somebody for months, ready to be
released, unable to get out, not because of anything he did. In
fact, he's prepared himself for release. He's got his head on
straight about never coming back here, and he is told, I'm
sorry. There's paperwork at the Parole--it's a paperwork
problem at the Parole Commission.
I was so astounded, I called the Deputy Attorney General,
Mr. Clark, had Mr. Clark bring in everybody, the Parole--
everybody that had anything to do with inmates. We set up this
working group, and I must say this is another success story,
because they--working with you, the--and only through the
halfway house breakthrough, this terrible situation where
somebody gets his anger back because the bureaucracy is keeping
him in there, not his own conduct, that breakthrough took
place.
What I have to ask you, Mr. Reilly, is are we in any danger
that we will have a backlog of people who BOP is ready to
release but you can't release because of paperwork
difficulties? Are we in any danger of going back to that
recidivism?
Mr. Reilly. Thank you, Congresswoman Norton. I think we've
all obviously joined together in trying to develop some
strategies and to address and plan in advance for the future.
Obviously with what's going to occur--and we all know that--we
are working together to try to avoid just what you've outlined
here a moment ago, and much of what happened with the Parole
Commission--and I don't want to go back and regress. I want to
progress and go forward--was a result of a lot of things that
occurred, but I'm not going to get into those today at this
hearing.
Ms. Norton. We know there were a lot of agencies involved.
Mr. Reilly. There were a lot of things involved.
Ms. Norton. Well, it certainly wasn't just the Parole
Commission.
Mr. Reilly. You're right.
Ms. Norton. I'm quite aware of the role of the Department
of Corrections. That's why everybody was in the room and
everybody had a hand I'm sure in straightening it out. But I
just want to make sure that--because I don't know if your
budget has been increased. I don't know if the problems that
led to that are now under control, and that's really what I'm
asking.
Mr. Reilly. Well, I'm happy to report that the budget at
least from the House of Representatives has been approved by
the--or at least the markup and so on has been approved by the
House committee, and it will have a very positive effect on the
Parole Commission's ability to fulfill its mission and
obligation.
Obviously there are a lot of things that resulted in our
not being prepared when that transition took place in the first
place, and I intend to see that corrected. It was totally
unacceptable to me, and I am correcting it. And I'm hopeful
that we can avert and avoid what has happened in the past.
There is always the danger, obviously, of something falling
apart, because if we don't all work together in concert--and we
obviously could have a real crisis develop again--but in view
of the great partnership that is existing and that I've seen, I
think we can avoid that and that we can--if we can get the
halfway house placements, and some of those things will help
and assist us in placing those offenders who don't belong in an
institution, it obviously will lessen the burden on all of us
and we hope we can return them then to society and back into
the community as productive citizens. I'm convinced we can do
that by working together.
Ms. Norton. Can I ask one question of Mr. Clark, please.
Mr. Clark, you said that there was no shortage of beds for
females. I'd like to know why, and I'd like to know whether
some of those beds can be used for males in the halfway houses.
Mr. Clark. I'm not sure why there's no shortage. It just
seems that neighborhoods seem to be more willing to accept the
female halfway houses. In fact, the large one in Northeast, the
larger one, which I believe has maybe 60 or 70 beds, recently
had a charter school come in and move in right next door, right
across the alley from them voluntarily, and they have a nice
partnership going right now. So it just seems----
Ms. Norton. It's just great to hear that kind of testimony.
That is the rarest kind of testimony. Go ahead. I'm sorry.
Mr. Clark. Well, that was my----
Ms. Norton. Well, I mean, are there excess--you can't put
women in with men. That I would not--with people coming out of
prison, I would not advise that, but I would ask whether or not
there is any possibility that some of the--some of the
facility--if there was--for example, if there were excess beds
in a number of different facilities for women, one might move
all the women into one or two facilities, and then you'd have a
place for men, if that could be done.
Mr. Clark. There are only--oh, excuse me.
Ms. Norton. Go ahead.
Mr. Clark. There are only two facilities, both run by the
same vendor, Reynolds and Associates, the one in Northeast, and
a small facility in Northwest around DuPont Circle. And
actually I asked the same question of the owner of that company
within the last couple of weeks, and he's very reluctant to
change the mission of either one of them.
Ms. Norton. The neighborhood might become upset if that
were to happen.
Finally, may I just say to you, Mr. Clark, that you
suggested that the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council might
be the best, I think functionally you're right, best group to
activate the notion that I spoke about of some kind of working
group, I called it emergency transition, and you said they
would--that the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council would be
the logical group. It would be, but you also indicate it is not
fully activated, isn't that right, the Criminal Justice
Coordinating Council is not fully activated to a point--that is
to say, it doesn't have its director, it doesn't have all that
we talked about in our last hearing yet, does it?
Mr. Clark. It does not have a staff at this point, but it's
been rejuvenated in terms of having regular meetings and
rejuvenating----
Ms. Norton. Mr. Clark, I want you to get together, since
you are the person we sent in correct the Parole Commission DOC
problem that we had where people were being held in jail and
not enough halfway space, would you get together with Ms.
Kellems--all I want to make sure doesn't happen is that we wait
for something to be staffed. What I had in mind and what I
asked you all to report back on was something that would be
staffed so that there would be pending a plan, a group of
experts from the relevant--staff experts from the relevant
agencies working on the problem that is upon us, which is you
got 500 beds and you got 2,500 people coming at you. We can't
wait until D.C. gets a plan in order to do that. And some
sections of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council or
whatever you and Ms. Kellems decide, I want you to get back to
us in 2 weeks about what it is you decided to do with respect
to that, since I heard two different ideas come forward.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Mrs. Morella. If there were any other questions, we'll
submit them to you in writing and ask for your response. It's
been a long hearing but I think it's been a very important one.
I think that we discussed a lot: Coordination, cooperation,
reporting back, making sure that we move ahead with what needs
to be done with regard to community safety and actually the
safety of those people going back into the community who have
been a part of our corrections system. So I want to thank all
of you, thank you in the second panel, John Clark, Dr. Sawyer,
Chief Ramsey, Chairman Reilly, Director Ormond and Deputy
Director Anthony. And I want to commend my staff, Russell
Smith, majority staff director, and Rob White, Matthew Batt,
Shelly Kim, Heea Vazirani-Fales; the minority side Jon Bouker
and Jean Gosa; and all of you for being here today too.
So the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia now
adjourns.
[Whereupon, at 1:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]