GREEN BAY - Prisoners at Green Bay Correctional Institution are learning about financial literacy.
Education is a big part of the state corrections department's re-entry program at GBCI.
Deputy Warden Sarah Cooper says the program is designed to help inmates cope with life after prison.
"There's a lot of different things that we try to teach, and meet core competencies, so that when they do go back to society, they have some skills to succeed," said Cooper.
Cooper added if an inmate can succeed on the streets without going back to a life of crime, everybody wins.
"There's less victims, there's less incarceration, it costs less money and we want the inmates to go out into the community and succeed," said Cooper.
Circles of Support, a Goodwill Industries program, has a similar mission aimed at reducing repeat crimes, also known as recidivism.
Through group meetings and individual sessions, "Circles" helps recently released prisoners transition from incarceration to the community.
"They may come out without a state ID where they can't get a job, they can't do anything without that. So we'll drive them to the DMV and get that taken care of, and we'll just meet them where they're at," said regional director Anne Strauch.
Strauch said statistics show the program, which is funded in part by the Department of Corrections, is on the right track.
"Right now, I just figured out the statistics for 3/4 of the year and we're at 98.5%. So 1.5% have been revoked and back into prison, which is pretty good," Strauch said.
Are the various re-entry efforts in Wisconsin working? According to a new Department of Corrections report , the answer is yes. It shows the rate at which prisoners are committing new crimes after their release from prison is on a downward trend.
"As long as that rate keeps coming down, I think that's a positive sign for safety in Wisconsin," said Department of Corrections secretary Gary Hamblin.
The report tracked nearly the recidivism rates of 125 thousand offenders over a period of 20 years. It looked at people released from prison who re-offend within a three year period.
Recidivism is defined in the study as a new offense resulting in a conviction and sentence to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
Analyzing follow-up periods of one, two, and three years, the report shows the three-year follow-up recidivism rate decreased by 28.5% from 1993 to 2007.
That means an offender released in 1993 was nearly 1 1/2 times more likely to recidivate within three years than in 2007.
"That's a tribute to the folks in the Department of Corrections who have engaged a lot of their time and energies on re-entry efforts, preparing offenders to re-enter the community, with the education, the job skills, the other types of support they need to succeed," Hamblin said.
While the report data looks encouraging, Kathy Johnson can attest to the challenges of not re-offending. In 2001, she was incarcerated for a year after her fifth drunken driving offense. She said once she got out, things tended to deteriorate.
"Because I started to feel like I was not an ex-offender, that I was just like everybody else, and why can't I just do this and have a couple of drinks and different things," Johnson said.
Then, less than three years after Johnson was released, she was picked up and put back behind bars again for drunken driving. This time she served three years.
"I didn't think I was going to get caught. I think I was just going to breeze through it. The agent I had was pretty easy going and I figured I had bluffed my way through all these other things I can just bluff my way through that too," said Johnson.
After her release, Johnson got back on her feet with the help of Circles of Support, and today runs her own consignment shop inside Appleton's City Center Plaza.
She said re-entry programs in prisons weren't available when she was incarcerated, but added the fact they are now is very important.
"Just tossing people out and putting them in a motel or letting their family fend for them is not making a difference," Johnson said.
Hamblin said the department's next step is to start looking at individual programs and determine which ones are having the greatest impact on the recidivism rate. That's where resources will go.
"The challenge for us is to go back in now and say was it the educational program that helped him succeed? Or was it the job skills that they had? Or was it the alcohol treatment that they received? Which one of those things helped them succeed so that's going to be the harder part, I think, to determine which programs are most successful," said Hamblin.
As far as whether the recidivism rate will continue to drop, DOC officials said it may not go down as sharply in the future as things like various specialty courts, such as OWI and Drug Treatment Courts, gain a foothold in Wisconsin.
They added, over time, the people coming to prison will be the hard core criminals, and they are going to present
Education is a big part of the state corrections department's re-entry program at GBCI.
Deputy Warden Sarah Cooper says the program is designed to help inmates cope with life after prison.
"There's a lot of different things that we try to teach, and meet core competencies, so that when they do go back to society, they have some skills to succeed," said Cooper.
Cooper added if an inmate can succeed on the streets without going back to a life of crime, everybody wins.
"There's less victims, there's less incarceration, it costs less money and we want the inmates to go out into the community and succeed," said Cooper.
Circles of Support, a Goodwill Industries program, has a similar mission aimed at reducing repeat crimes, also known as recidivism.
Through group meetings and individual sessions, "Circles" helps recently released prisoners transition from incarceration to the community.
"They may come out without a state ID where they can't get a job, they can't do anything without that. So we'll drive them to the DMV and get that taken care of, and we'll just meet them where they're at," said regional director Anne Strauch.
Strauch said statistics show the program, which is funded in part by the Department of Corrections, is on the right track.
"Right now, I just figured out the statistics for 3/4 of the year and we're at 98.5%. So 1.5% have been revoked and back into prison, which is pretty good," Strauch said.
Are the various re-entry efforts in Wisconsin working? According to a new Department of Corrections report , the answer is yes. It shows the rate at which prisoners are committing new crimes after their release from prison is on a downward trend.
"As long as that rate keeps coming down, I think that's a positive sign for safety in Wisconsin," said Department of Corrections secretary Gary Hamblin.
The report tracked nearly the recidivism rates of 125 thousand offenders over a period of 20 years. It looked at people released from prison who re-offend within a three year period.
Recidivism is defined in the study as a new offense resulting in a conviction and sentence to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
Analyzing follow-up periods of one, two, and three years, the report shows the three-year follow-up recidivism rate decreased by 28.5% from 1993 to 2007.
That means an offender released in 1993 was nearly 1 1/2 times more likely to recidivate within three years than in 2007.
"That's a tribute to the folks in the Department of Corrections who have engaged a lot of their time and energies on re-entry efforts, preparing offenders to re-enter the community, with the education, the job skills, the other types of support they need to succeed," Hamblin said.
While the report data looks encouraging, Kathy Johnson can attest to the challenges of not re-offending. In 2001, she was incarcerated for a year after her fifth drunken driving offense. She said once she got out, things tended to deteriorate.
"Because I started to feel like I was not an ex-offender, that I was just like everybody else, and why can't I just do this and have a couple of drinks and different things," Johnson said.
Then, less than three years after Johnson was released, she was picked up and put back behind bars again for drunken driving. This time she served three years.
"I didn't think I was going to get caught. I think I was just going to breeze through it. The agent I had was pretty easy going and I figured I had bluffed my way through all these other things I can just bluff my way through that too," said Johnson.
After her release, Johnson got back on her feet with the help of Circles of Support, and today runs her own consignment shop inside Appleton's City Center Plaza.
She said re-entry programs in prisons weren't available when she was incarcerated, but added the fact they are now is very important.
"Just tossing people out and putting them in a motel or letting their family fend for them is not making a difference," Johnson said.
Hamblin said the department's next step is to start looking at individual programs and determine which ones are having the greatest impact on the recidivism rate. That's where resources will go.
"The challenge for us is to go back in now and say was it the educational program that helped him succeed? Or was it the job skills that they had? Or was it the alcohol treatment that they received? Which one of those things helped them succeed so that's going to be the harder part, I think, to determine which programs are most successful," said Hamblin.
As far as whether the recidivism rate will continue to drop, DOC officials said it may not go down as sharply in the future as things like various specialty courts, such as OWI and Drug Treatment Courts, gain a foothold in Wisconsin.
They added, over time, the people coming to prison will be the hard core criminals, and they are going to present
DOC is defining recidivism as only going back to prison for committing new crimes. They are leaving out the many people who go back due to rule violations and calling that reincarceration. Reporting "recidivim" data defined this way is extremely biased.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, any reporting that is done by the entity that stands the most to gain for a high rate will always be skewed and very biased.
ReplyDeleteThen again I have never agreed with any professional body that is in a position to police itself. For absolute power corrupts absolutely.