CLARION, Pa. (EYT) — Catherine Holt, a member of the League of Women Voters of Clarion County and a statewide committee, recently led a discussion and presentation at the Main Street Center relating to “Alternatives to Incarceration.”
(Photo: Speakers at the Clarion County League of Women Voters event included Skip Laird, Mark Aaron, Jayne Smail, and Christine Holt.)
“The League is a non-partisan organization,” said Holt. “We don’t support candidates or oppose them, but we do take positions on issues. We don’t have a position on criminal justice right now. Last spring there was a proposal to develop a position on that, so we’ve been working on this for six to eight months now.”
Information collected at the Clarion LWV meeting will be offered to the statewide committee.
Clarion County District Attorney Mark Aaron and Clarion County Manager of Adult and Juvenile Probation Jayne Smail offered a local view, and Skip Laird, a teacher of criminal justice at Corry High School, offered some national statistics and trends regarding mass incarceration and drug policy.
Aaron offered an off-the-cuff estimate that drugs are driving about 90 percent of all criminal cases in Clarion County when theft for money to purchase drugs and DUIs are included in the figures.
“Under President Clinton there was bi-partisan support across the nation for harsher, stiffer penalties for crime in general,” said Laird, Holt’s brother-in-law. “In our Commonwealth in 1996 with the Fisher Bill, we saw much more harsher penalties for juveniles. One of the unintended consequences of these types of bills was mass incarceration. The United States leads the world in the number of incarceration with 22 million people currently in the national’s prisons and jails.”
Early releases of prisoners are the latest topic on a national level, according to Laird. The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it would release approximately 6,000 federal prisoners who had an average 10 1/2 years’ sentence. The DOJ is saying they are non-violent offenders, and it is an effort to decrease the skyrocketing amount of people incarcerated over the next 20 years.
“The federal release is not really affecting us locally,” said Aaron. “The federal prisons tend to have more people in there for white-collar crime, bank fraud, embezzlement, and things like that. Those aren’t the kind of people in the Clarion County Jail.”
Holt questioned that approximately 90 percent of offenders sent to state prison eventually return to the community, citing 2007-2011 PADOC projections that for Clarion County 75 will return in 2015, 81 in 2016, 87 in 2017.
“What as a community can we do to help ensure that these people become productive taxpayers instead of a danger to our residents and a drag on our economy?” asked Holt.
“There’s always going to be turnover, and people coming back to the county,” said Aaron. “Once they go to the Pennsylvania Department of Correction, they are their responsibility. We don’t have any control or ability to influence what the PADOC does. They are responsible to have a reasonable reintegration program for people transitioning back into the community. They put them though half-way houses, they put them through drug treatment processes, but at our level, the local level, we have no control over that.”
Smail added that the State does not release any prisoners until they have gone through any required programs based on classifications. Upon release, a state agent supervises them, but they don’t come back to the county for supervision.
Explaining the Office of Adult and Juvenile Probation, Smail said she has been director since 2001 and has a deputy director and seven adult probation officers and four juvenile probation officers. The unit has approximately 1,100 adult offenders on caseload. About 250 to 300 of those are for payments because offenders are put on payments for court fines, costs, restitution, and any other kind of fees, so they are able to pay. If they do not pay, they are brought to a specialty court and offered an opportunity to expand why they are behind. Offenders can be sent back to jail for non-payment because it is considered contempt of court.
The seven officers are arranged by the category of offense and include: drug probation, domestic abuse, simple assault probation officer, an ARD officer (for first-time offenders and there is no jail time) with about 144 on caseload, two DUI officers (one handles the work release program at the jail and all electronic monitoring for house arrests and one that handles the fines and costs court), and a treatment court probation officer.
Clarion County operates a variety of volunteer specialty courts to provide help for offenders who want it.
“We want to stay away from people coming to the court just to stay out of jail because these offenders are level three or four on the sentencing matrix, probably someone with a felony in their background,” said Smail. “They have to admit they have an issue or problem, and they have to want help.”
“District Judge Amy Turk presides over the weekly court session, and the panel is made up of the assistant DA, public defender, probation officer, the drug and alcohol case manager, a forensic liaison with mental health, and a counselor from Arc Manor, and myself. We determine if we can really help them and then make a recommendation to the judge, and he will make the specialty court a condition of their sentence. They can go directly to their level of care, and if it’s inpatient, as soon as they are released, they will be on an electronic monitor from six to 12 months. That amount of time is what they would be doing at the Clarion County Jail, but they are doing it at home.”
Because of a 2007 grant, offenders admitted to the program do not have to pay for the monitor, and that is something that cannot be offered to first-time offenders.
“It’s a hard program, and right now at the Clarion County Jail, we have offenders that have chosen to do jail time instead of the program because it isn’t easy. They have to come to court once a week; they have to go to at least two AA meetings a week, a case manger meeting, and counseling. They are busy. My probation officer has to have 2-3 contacts a week with them with two to three drug tests. This isn’t anything that is easy.”
Since starting 2007, 64 individuals have been through the program, and there is a 52 percent completion rate.
“It’s expected that they’re going to relapse, and most of them do,” continued Smail. “At that point, we would reassess and look at your treatment, a different level of drug testing, or whatever we can do. You can’t expect an addict to stop use or succeed in life without a relapse. Unfortunately, within that 52 percent, we also had a recidivism rate of about 30.”
Aaron feels Drug Court is a good thing, but thinks lower level offenders could benefit more.
“I’ve told the people handing out the grant money for these programs that we shouldn’t be waiting until these people are at the level III for offenses to put them through a drug court program,” said Aaron. “It doesn’t take a genius to come to Central Drug Court every Tuesday and see who are up-and-coming young drug offenders are. These kids are not writing 10 bad checks because they flunked math. They are not stealing everybody’s debit card; they are not rushing out Wal-Mart stores with TVs just because they like to steal TVs. It’s all for drug money. If you could get these kids into treatment court before they commit a felony, wouldn’t that be a great idea? But there’s no money for it. The state will not fund it, and there’s been individuals testifying before legislature that it needs to be done. I would rather put a kid with five bad checks into treatment court and let the treatment court try to help that kid not have a felony than have to wait until he does.”
The capacity of the Clarion County Jail is 124, and as of two weeks ago, it hit 127.
