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76–341 PDF 2001

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

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(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

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia,

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

——— ———

——— ———

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

(III)

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

(1)

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

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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.

3

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:]

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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.

7

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.

8

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 lawabiding 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:]

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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

13

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 measVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:56 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76341.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
14

ure 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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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.

21

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 enVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:56 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76341.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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hancing 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

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and community-based halfway house setting, and a period of community supervision.

In response to the growth in prisoner releases, the Federal Gov- ernment 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

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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 movVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:56 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76341.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing 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,

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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 communitybased 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

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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

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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

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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.

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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 adminisVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:56 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00071 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76341.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tration 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

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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

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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

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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.

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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 shortterm 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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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 postconviction 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.

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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 callVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:56 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00148 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76341.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing 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.

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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

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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?

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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——

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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.

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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 fourtime 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.

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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

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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

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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——

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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 acVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:56 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00158 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76341.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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countability 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

156

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

157

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

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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.

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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

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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.]

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