HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana could reduce its spending on jails and prisons if detention facilities and treatment programs focused their services on those most likely to re-offend while others could be supervised by an increased number of probation and parole officers, researchers said.
The primary driver of costs and growth in the state’s criminal justice system is past offenders committing new crimes or people being returned to custody for violating terms of their probation or parole, the Council of State Governments Justice Center found.
The Justice Center, which began its review of Montana’s criminal justice system last November, is presenting its recommendations to the Legislature’s Commission on Sentencing during its two-day meeting that started Wednesday. The commission will review the recommendations and determine which ones it would like to see the state implement.
Montana’s prison population is at capacity and is projected to increase due to an increase in drug-related arrests and offenders violating the terms of their probation or parole, the Justice Center found.
There are a lot of pressures on the criminal justice system, and they’re all interrelated, policy analyst Karen Chung said. “The package of policy options is working toward addressing each of those pressure points,” from jails and prisons to alternative facilities and parole.
Montana should develop a risk/needs assessment tool to help determine a person’s risk of re-offending. That, combined with clinical judgment, could help make decisions on pretrial release conditions, eligibility for deferred prosecution or problem-solving courts like drug courts, and whether someone should be released on probation or parole, the council said.
The Justice Center recommends the state hire more probation and parole officers to supervise those who are determined to be at a lower risk to reoffend and that those officers be allowed to reduce supervision time for those who have been in steady compliance.
The Justice Center suggested Montana’s Board of Probation and Parole should have three paid members, instead of seven volunteer members, who would have more time for training, more availability and develop more expertise. It recommends the board rely on evaluations by prison staff in determining whether someone is eligible for parole and under what conditions, rather than adding their own conditions at a parole hearing.
“One of the things that we’re trying to stress is the Corrections folks are the true professionals on treatment, and what they think is needed is what the parole board should look to, rather than trumping a Corrections judgment and piling on additional conditions,” said Carl Reynolds, the senior legal and policy adviser for the council’s Montana team.
There shouldn’t be a big lag time between when an offender is eligible for parole and having a parole decision made, Reynolds said. That gap tripled to 26 months between 2000 and 2013, the Justice Center said. The state also should help inmates find post-prison housing, which is often a roadblock to their release, the Justice Center said.
Inmates who are approaching parole eligibility, and who Corrections officials are recommending for parole, should be given priority for placement in prison treatment programs and then sent to prerelease centers from which they could be paroled, the council said. An offender’s stay at a prerelease center should be limited to three months and the centers should receive incentives to increase the intensity of their counseling and treatment programs, the analysts recommend.
Montana has a law that allows probation officers to detain someone who has violated their probation for up to 72 hours, but when the jails are full, probation officers are limited in handing down what would be a “swift, certain response” to violations, Reynold said. The state should take advantage of that “swift, certain response,” rather than returning people to prison for technical violations.
The council also recommends expanding eligibility for crime victim compensation benefits.