The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

By saying that recidivism means ex-offenders who have been found guilty of a new offense or who have failed to abide by terms of their probation or parole, the county Prison Board has effectively lowered the recidivism rate from an estimated 60 percent or more to 25 percent.

Under the definition, recidivism, which refers to the likelihood of an inmate re-offending, now excludes people being held at the prison for technical violations of their parole until hearings are held.

Before the Prison Board adopted the definition last June, said Warden Vincent Guarini, the local recidivism rate was an estimate based on the number of people who left the prison and came back, regardless of whether they had been adjudicated.

"We ran our in-and-out-the-doors against everybody else's," he said.

There is no standard definition of recidivism nationally or statewide. One author refers to differing measures as a "fruit salad concept."

Justice & Mercy, the statewide prison reform group based in Lancaster, has some reservations about the county's decision.

"There is a large percentage of technical parole violators in Lancaster Prison, and leaving them out of the definition will make the prison look like it's doing better," said Jean Bickmire, Justice & Mercy's administrative director.

"However, parole violators do increase the prison population and contribute to overcrowded conditions affecting available room for rehabilitation and classification, and increasing the burden of medical and mental health care."

County officials and the re-entry management organization (see related story, ....) have been working on more concrete solutions to overcrowding and recidivism at the prison.

One approach that may help, now in the planning stages, would cut the average time for a hearing on a technical parole violation to 10 days, from the current three to four weeks.

"Recidivism is not very good at measuring anything except 'Did the guy walk back through the door?' " Guarini said.

Taking measurements
In defining recidivism, Guarini said, the key question is "What do we want to measure?"

The county decided the measurement should be of "those that come back to our jail ... with an objective finding" of guilt or noncompliance with parole terms. "A technical violator is not an objective finding."

County jails like Lancaster's house not only people who have been sentenced to up to five years in prison, but those being held before trial and those arrested for violating conditions of their probation or parole. Estimates are that 60 percent of the people in the county prison are parole violators.

Technical violations involve breaking the rules of parole, such as failing a drug test or missing an appointment with a parole officer.

That population cycles in and out, but Guarini said calling that recidivism "doesn't really tell you if the guy did something."

The definition adopted in June 2006 says recidivism occurs when "any individual who has been convicted and sentenced and later released from incarceration is subsequently incarcerated having been found guilty of a new
offense(s) and/or failure to successfully complete the terms of a previous sentence of probation, or a sentence for which they had been paroled."

A subsequent study of the prison population determined that using the definition, the recidivism rate since 2000 is 25 percent.

The Re-Entry Management Council, representing more than 50 organizations working with ex-offenders in the county, has adopted a similar definition, with the addition of a three-year time limit.

That definition is similar to what the state Department of Corrections uses; Guarini noted it's far easier for the state to measure recidivism because all the inmates in state prisons have been sentenced.

Justice & Mercy's Bickmire pointed out that "county jails hold people for trial, more parole violators and county and state-sentenced inmates, making the definition hard to compare between county and state prisons to reflect accuracy." She said recidivism rates ought to be standardized.

Guarini said that if someone picked up for a technical parole violation is found guilty of the violation by a judge and returned to serve the rest of his sentence, "he'll be counted" in the recidivism rate.

One of the model county prisons in Pennsylvania is in Pike County, where Deputy Warden Bob McLaughlin said the recidivism rate is 10 percent.

"Our definition of recidivism is the very broadest definition you could consider," McLaughlin said. "If anyone leaves this facility, and comes back in, he is a recidivist. We don't play syntax games, or technical parole violations don't count ‹ we count everyone."

The only exceptions are immigration and U.S. Marshal cases, he said.

McLaughlin disputed critics who say Pike County's figures are flawed.

"Don Smarto ... a nationally known reintegration specialist, stated in March of 2007 that he has been in this business for 30 years, has been in over 1,100 prisons in 11 countries, and he has never seen an operation like ours," McLaughlin said.

"... We are operating a model that can save this nation billions of dollars in the long run."

New approaches

While it might not affect the recidivism rate, the county is working on a faster way to move technical parole violators through the courts.

Mark Wilson, director of the Adult Probation and Parole office, said the "fast track" program has been approved by President Judge Louis J. Farina for planning, with the hope of starting the process in January.

The new system involves drawing a distinction between rule violations that endanger another person or the public, and those that don't.

People arrested for violating their parole go to jail until a hearing is held. Wilson said it now takes three to four weeks for a hearing. Often, the violators are released from jail after the hearing.

In the new program, rulebreaking that doesn't involve a public safety risk, called a noncompliance violation, would be up for review as part of the three-day-a-week bench warrant hearing schedule, meaning decisions on whether the violation warrants jail time could be made in an average of 10 days.

Bickmire commended the parole office "for taking the initiative to quicken hearings for technical parole offenders who are incarcerated to 10 days versus an average of 30 to 45 days previously."

Guarini said the fast-track program could help crowding at the jail.

"If you can cut that length of stay down, you reduce your prison population," he said.

Wilson said the parole office also is hoping to institute a negotiated outcome for technical violators, similar to negotiated guilty pleas. Such an approach would speed parole hearings.

As part of their efforts to deal with crowding, county officials have considered the possibility of a "day reporting center" where parole violators would have to check in periodically, to keep as many out of prison as possible.

"We believe that parolees should be treated as much as possible in the community in which they live along with their families," Bickmire said. "They have to learn to live productive, crime-free lives within society. Segregating them with other, harder criminals is not a deterrent and, in fact, erodes any progress that they may have made on parole."

In March, the Prison Board heard a presentation by Behavioral Interventions Inc. on day reporting centers, which the company said cuts recidivism and overcrowding and saves an estimated $10 to $40 a day per offender in operating costs.

"Society must consider correction alternatives for nonviolent offenders, especially where appropriate treatment for substance abuse or mental illness, combined with employment, education and housing opportunities, can benefit the offender, our community and the taxpayer," county Commissioner Molly Henderson said.

Guarini said the efforts are beginning to pay off for the prison: Instead of taking one step forward and two steps back on prison crowding, "we're making maybe one and a half forward and one backward.

"We're making progress."
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