In rounding up support for a pioneering prison program, State Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, relays a telling story from a speaking engagement before a group of law enforcement officers. Ortman asked the officers to raise their hands if they'd arrested the same offender twice. Chuckles ensued as a bunch of arms shot up in the air. Then she asked how many had arrested the same offender five times. The arms stayed up. More than five times? Again, arms stayed up.
The point of Ortman's story is that this all-too-common scenario demands solutions. "We don't want them to come back out and do the same things over and over again," Ortman said. "We need to get smarter about the resources we use to approach the problem and use them to help offenders come out stronger and better suited to the challenges of being a resident and a citizen of the state of Minnesota."
A bill championed by Ortman and state Sen. Linda Higgins, DFL-Minneapolis, is just the type of innovative policy needed to start attacking this problem. The legislation deals with a pilot program begun in 2005 that allows certain low-risk nonviolent drug-possession offenders a chance at early, conditional release after serving at least half their sentence and then undergoing chemical-dependency treatment in prison. Offenders are then more intensively supervised afterward.
The bill would make permanent the conditional release program, which is slated to expire in June. It would also expand eligibility for some additional offenders: those convicted for sale of a controlled substance, for a nonviolent drug offense, or a crime committed as a result of a controlled-substance addiction. For example, someone convicted of check forgery, who engaged in the crime to support a drug habit, could now be considered for the program. There is intensive screening before offenders are admitted to the program. But expanding eligibility holds promise as a way to target treatment for a group of inmates who could benefit substantially from it. In the pilot program, only one of the 49 offenders who completed it violated the rules of the conditional release. It also could potentially save the state money by reducing prison stays.
The bill is not without controversy. State Corrections Commissioner Joan Fabian issued a statement on Friday opposing it. Fabian said the majority of those currently in Minnesota prisons are not low-level offenders with an addiction problem. "Early release of them is not appropriate and places our communities at risk," she said. However, Gov. Tim Pawlenty has proposed returning county-housed short-term offenders into the state inmate mix. That group includes many who could benefit from the program.
A task force that included prosecutors, judges, corrections officials, law enforcement officers and defense attorneys recently reviewed the program and unanimously voted to expand it. Group members agreed it was better to have an offender serve a few months less time in prison, with treatment and intensively supervised release, than be simply released later with no treatment. Anoka County Attorney Robert Johnson, a thoughtful and widely respected prosecutor, also expressed support Friday for expanding the program.
Opponents of the bill portray it as soft on crime. That's a mistake. This bill more accurately is smart on crime -- an innovative strategy that attacks the root causes of why people wind up in prison.
