Kanasas Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholz has changed the way his state does corrections. In 2005, Werholz began a campaign to convince local legislators that the state needed to focus on rehabilitating convicted felons rather than simply locking them up. Werholz wanted his parole officers to behave more like social workers, not just reacting to parole violations but providing the kind of support for the formerly incarcerated that would prevent violations in the first place.
His reforms have altered the very nature of the parole officer/parolee relationship in Kansas, reduced the number of parolees who abscond or are reconvicted, and are expected to save the state $80 million over the next five years. Ultimately, Werholz wants to drive down recidivism, the rate at which convicted felons are imprisoned again within six years of release.
"What do you do with these folks?" Werholz says. "They're coming out; there's nothing you can do about that, so you might as well have them come out the best way possible, which is that they don't hurt us anymore."
Werholz's reforms are representative of a nationwide shift in corrections policy toward rehabilitation and re-entry. Last year, President George W. Bush signed the Second Chance Act, which expanded services and assistance for the formerly incarcerated. States like New York have been shifting toward an emphasis on re-entry, rehabilitation, and alternatives to incarceration for years. Kansas' success is all the more remarkable because unlike New York, Kansas is a relatively conservative state that lacks the kind of grass-roots agitation for reform present in the Empire State. But a nationwide shift isn't indicative of a newfound moral obligation toward the formerly incarcerated or even an increased emphasis on public safety. According to Nancy Lavigne of the Urban Institute, it's all about money.
"Americans are as punitive as they can afford to be," Lavigne says. "What we're witnessing right now is this new focus on rehabilitation because it's the only way to reduce prison populations, and it's the only thing that makes sense, in order to keep budgets in line."
The "lock 'em up and throw away the key" strategy for corrections is more expensive than it used to be. The Pew Center on the States issued a report in early March that found one in 31 Americans, or 7.3 million people, are in some phase of the corrections process, including parole or probation. Spending on corrections has grown 300 percent in the last two decades, outpaced only by Medicare. Corrections spending costs taxpayers over $60 billion a year.
Convincing Kansas legislators that more focus on rehabilitation was vital to public safety was politically difficult for Werholz. For years, politicians who emphasized rehabilitation over imprisonment have been painted as "soft on crime." One high-profile crime committed by a parole absconder participating in a re-entry program can sink the whole venture. With this in mind, Werholz urged the Kansas legislature to judge the planned reforms on objective measurements rather than potentially high-profile individual failures.
Fortunately, Werholz had support in high places. At a conference for Kansas legislators in 2005, both Republican Sen. Sam Brownback and Democratic then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius voiced support for shifting the state's priorities toward rehabilitation and reducing recidivism. Nationally, the recidivism rate is around 60 percent.
"I want to see recidivism cut in half in the next five years," Brownback said. "And I want to see it start in Kansas."
Brownback's statement provided Werholz with the kind of political support he needed to see his agenda through. "When [Brownback] made that statement, with the governor making the same statement in her address, it ceased to be a partisan political issue in this state," Werholz says.
Werholz's approach has paid dividends. In 2006, the Justice Center, a think tank focused on correctional and criminal-justice issues found that probation and parole violations accounted for 65 percent of prison admissions in Kansas. In the past three years, Kansas has reduced its parole revocation rate by 48 percent. Kansas went from having around 700 parole absconders a month to less than 200.
"I'd describe it as more a coach motivator kind of relationship, Werholz says. "Parole officers may in the end have to use their enforcement powers. But that's not the first option that we go to [now]."
The Justice Center concluded that by reforming its parole system, restoring earned time credits for nonviolent offenders with good behavior, instituting a 60-day credit program for inmates who complete educational, vocational, and substance-treatment programs, Kansas was projected to save $80 million in state spending over the next five years.
Still, the reforms haven't been in place long enough to measure whether or not the recidivism has been effectively reduced. But with the prison population booming, and troubled economic times forcing budget cuts across the board, many states have begun to look at re-entry as a place to reduce costs, and Kansas' success could make it a model for other cash-strapped states.
In New York, for example, Gov. David Paterson's budget proposal cuts prison space more than re-entry services because the state has had success in reducing the prison population to a point where the extra space is no longer needed.
"We didn't decide to close prisons to save money," says Brian Fischer, commissioner of the New York State Department of Correctional Services. "We have excess capacity, and we're going to cut down on our costs by closing prisons. The lack of money isn't the reason to close; it's the lack of need."
Not all of the ideas states have come up with to cut costs have been good ones. In Georgia, Republican state legislators proposed a bill that would make inmates liable for all their health-care costs relating to medication. Public-health advocates opposed the bill on the grounds that it could cause a public-health disaster, given that inmates might not seek out treatment to avoid being charged.
"[The bill] didn't have an exception for people with chronic illnesses; we're talking about diabetics, people with pretty serious conditions," says Sara Totonchi, public-policy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights. "If their treatment was contingent on whether or not they could pay, they would choose not to or be unable to seek medical attention. Which is a dangerous scenario to create in a prison."
The bill was changed to apply only to nonessential medications like cold or headache medicine. The savings are also now negligible and would save the Georgia Department of Corrections about $1.8 million a year, a small amount considering the $226 million Georgia spends on health care for inmates.
Although the budget process is ongoing, the success of Kansas' policy shift has helped Werholz convince the Kansas legislature to cut prison space before cutting into re-entry or other services. Out of the $14 million that has to be cut from the corrections budget in Kansas for fiscal year 2010, nearly $4 million will be saved from cutting prison beds instead of re-entry facilities. Werholz says the remaining cuts threaten the gains that have been made.
"My concern is that we'll start to see our revocation rates rise again and more rapid increases in the prison population," Werholz says. "It hasn't happened yet, but I'm fearful it will."
