DOC recommends stretching $5 million to 41 counties

The Indiana Department of Correction, going against previous advice, has proposed spreading newly available state money around to several counties to help provide rehabilitation and treatment for the low-level offenders who will be coming to county jails.

The funding is part of the state’s criminal code revision intended to lower the population in Indiana prisons and reduce repeat offenses by individuals who commit minor crimes. Starting Jan. 1, 2016, low- and moderate-risk offenders will be kept in local jails, instead of going to the DOC, where the state believes they can better receive help with drug and alcohol problems as well as treatment for mental health issues.

For this first round of funding of $5 million, the DOC created a grant program. The department received 60 grant applications requesting a total of $17.4 million.

At its initial review of the applications, the Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council, which is overseeing the distribution of funds, advised the DOC to confine the $5 million to fully supporting a handful of programs. The council cautioned that spreading the money around would not give any county the amount of funding needed to move forward with any treatment and diversion programs.

However, at the reinvestment council meeting Oct. 13, the DOC proposed widely distributing the money. It suggested that programs in 41 counties be given some money while programs in 19 counties not receive any funding.

The DOC explained it wanted to ensure that small counties struggling to launch programs get some support rather than having all the money going to bigger counties that may already have programs up and running.

The reinvestment council did not identify which counties the DOC is recommending for funding.

On the advice of council chair Jane Seigel, the council delayed its approval of the recommendations. Seigel explained she wanted the council members to have time to review the information from the DOC and to have another opportunity to ask questions or make suggestions.

Although the amount of money available is relatively small, Seigel said the council has to be confident in its recommendation for distributing the first-round of funding.

“Because $5 million is still $5 million and it’s important that we put it to good use,” Seigel said.

The council is scheduled to meet Oct. 20 to make a final recommendation to the DOC on how to distribute the money. Then that recommendation will be sent to Bruce Lemmon, DOC commissioner, for final authorization.

Along with issuing the grant applications, the DOC also had to develop criteria for evaluating and scoring the requests. Primarily, the department looked for plans that had different agencies and departments within the county collaborating to help offenders. It looked at such things as the amount of collaboration, the readiness to start and the ability to increase capacity to handle an increase in Level 6 offenders.

Applications that requested grant money to provide pay raises or overtime pay to existing staff or to purchase luxury items like vehicles and office furniture were disqualified.

The process of reviewing and scoring the grant applications may be changed when the second round of funding becomes available next year.

“This is a new way of looking at how we’re helping community supervision out in the country,” Seigel said. “I doubt that it will be substantially different but I suspect there will be some changes.”

The council also discussed the collection of data. With the Legislature wanting the counties to measure whether the rehabilitation and treatment programs are reducing recidivism, the data is going to have to start being compiled as soon as the money rolls out.

Still, council members indicated that in order to measure a program’s effectiveness, a baseline is first going to have to be established. Also, success will have to be defined because with individuals struggling with drug abuse, a good outcome might be different at different stages of recovery.  

Seigel is confident the council can develop recommendations for counties to follow when collecting the data. She is not sure that can be done quickly.  

“It would be my hope, and I’m fairly confident the people (on the council) are committed to the same thing, that we improve outcomes,” she said. “So somebody is successful on probation but we want them to be successful in life as well. That is a whole different way of measuring but I think we can eventually get to that.”