No Resources for Prison Alternatives

The state of New Hampshire has roughly 25-hundred inmates in all the state’s prisons. Corrections Commissioner Phil Stanley:

Alternative 1a:
I would say that we are crowded now. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say extremely overcrowded. The Concord prison is at maximum capacity.

Stanley says the Berlin prison is just as full.

At the women’s prison in Goffstown prison, more than 105 inmates live in a building made for between 60 and 70. Stanley says Goffstown is definitely overcrowded.

Alternative 1b
We have crowded women into every available space. We lack programming space; we do not have sufficient programs for female inmates, and we need to increase the programming, and therefore the staffing, at the women’s prison.

The correctional officers’ union reckons there are 20 guard jobs unfilled. Commissioner Stanley:

Alternative1c
We have barely enough staff to provide supervision and treatment for offenders.

The commissioner says New Hampshire faces a very tough choice: Either build new prisons – for $14-million-dollars – or develop alternative sentencing programs.

Alternative1:
The projection that we have is that we’ll move from 25-hundred inmates to about 3-thousand inmates by the year 2010.

In light of these numbers, the Legislature tucked a provision into this year’s budget. Lawmakers ordered the prisons to spend 3-point-4 million dollars on alternative sentencing programs.

The law specified two programs for non-violent offenders. One was at-home confinement using monitoring bracelets. The other is called the Academy, an education and monitoring program in the community.

But Stanley said those local programs just aren’t available – or adequate.

Alternative2
There needs to be support once they get back into the community. It’s a continual process of reinforcement for that treatment. So if we don’t have the resources in the community – and by and large we don’t have the resources – then there’s a very good chance that we’ll see recidivism and failure when the inmate is out of supervision.

Many legislative leaders think Stanley is right. Kingston Republican David Welch chairs the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee:

Alternative3
I think that under the cuts that he had to take in that budget, it doesn’t make sense to sacrifice security within the prison for an alternative sentencing program.

The budget-cut recommendation emerged from studies conducted by the nonpartisan New Hampshire Institute for Public Policy Studies.
The researchers pointed out that more than one out of four offenders – 27 per cent – return to prison because they violated probation and parole.

More offenders get sent back to prison for those violations than for any other reason.
Alternative sentencing plans are based on the proposition that some non-violent lawbreakers can be rehabilitated through treatment programs without needing to be behind bars at the same time.

Rick Minard is co-executive director of the institute.
Alternative 4
They stay in their jobs. They stay at work, making money, paying taxes. But they also have to go to frequent meetings, life-skills training, substance abuse counseling, anger management classes. They have to report to their local police departments, perhaps once a day, take frequent drug tests – twice a week – so they’re on a very short leash. But they’re home and they’re working, and they’re supervised closely.

Such a program is good for the state’s budget. The bill is well over 25-thousand dollars a year to keep some one behind bars. A community program costs 2-thousand a year.
While some Superior Court judges use the Academy extensively, others essentially ignore it in sentencing.

Another drawback is what some legislative leaders and outside observers see as weak management in the Corrections Department and the Field Services Division, which must oversee all alternative programs.

Representative Welch says the department frequently provides legislative committees with conflicting or inaccurate figures.

Alternative 5
They’re suffering from inattention by the Legislature, I would say, over the years, much as the Department of Corrections has suffered from not getting enough attention. Let’s compare it to the car that no longer runs well, that needs to be tuned up from time to time, and it hasn’t had any maintenance over the years, and quite frankly we think there’s more maintenance that has to be done before we can start taking long trips with it.

The Legislature is conducting its own investigation into alternative sentencing. One report is expected next month. However, insiders say the investigators will ask for more time to study instead of choosing solutions.

And because Stanley has resigned, effective at the end of October, lawmakers, guards and inmates will have to start again with a new commissioner.

For N-H-P-R News, this is John Milne