Focus 580; Status of Illinois Prisons

It is so important that people who tune in every day to day. Maybe it's to focus 580 to the afternoon magazine to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED to MORNING EDITION. If it's important to you to be able to turn on the radio and have the programming there then you need to do your part and it's really very simple. You need to be a financial supporter of the station to do that. You can give us a call at 2 4 4 9 4 5 5. Someone will take the call a volunteer who has given up some of their morning to talk talk with you. It'll take maybe two three minutes you get some basic information and then you will come away with a good feeling that comes with knowing that you are a financial supporter of the station if it's time for you to renew your membership. Maybe you'll do that if you have been listening for a while who knows how long and you have not been a supporter in the past well now is the time for you to sign on to 4 4 9 4 5 5 it's very important that we hear from as many people as we possibly can to help keep wy I love radio strong and keep the programs that are important to you

here on this station. Well having said that again will say this is Focus 580 our morning talk program. My name is David Enge. Glad to have you with us this morning in the first hour of the show. Today we'll be talking about the status of Illinois prisons and we will have here as our guest joining us on the telephone someone who has followed and been involved in corrections issues for quite a long time. His name is James Cole Dron Jr. He recently joined the faculty of Governor State University as an academic program coordinator in the criminal justice department. He is also to concluding his sixth term or rather a term as the sixth president of the John Howard Association in Chicago. That's a nonprofit organization. It's been around now for 100 years that is interested in monitoring and improving the conditions of confinement in prisons and jails and before joining John Howard. Mr. Goldman served in several capacities at the U of Chicago including director of the Center for Research in law and justice. He is joining us

this morning by telephone and of course as always questions are welcome here on the program and we welcome people into the conversation. All you need to do to join us is make a call and no one will expect you to pledge it's a different kind of deal entirely. So if you want to call in here to the program it's the same as always 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 at any point here in the conversation you're certainly welcome to call. Dark cauldron. Hello good morning. Thanks for talking with us today. That's my pleasure. Me appreciate it. Can you tell us today in the state of Illinois in all of the various correctional institutions how many people there are. There are approximately forty four thousand four hundred adults and sixteen hundred juveniles and in my correctional facilities right now and over time what's the trend been in terms of the numbers up down the same make over the past five or seven years my

impression is that it's been fairly stable. It may have increased a percentage point or two but it's also at one point maybe going down a percentage point so it has really been growing at a rapid pace overall. And that's one of the things that I think people find surprising is that when they look at some of the statistics that we've seen. Reflecting the fact that over the past few years both violent and property crimes. This is actually over the past decade I think have fallen. And yet the prison population in some places it it grows maybe here it might be up a tiny bit down a tiny bit but fairly stable so it seems like it doesn't. The the numbers of people who are in prison now doesn't seem to be tied to the the actual rate of crime that's being committed. Yeah I think there's been a point in I guess an important point to make about how the criminal justice system works here. Because from the point at

which an individual commits a crime to the point at which they end up incarcerated in a correctional facility there are many many different stages and opportunities for diversion or alternative kinds of punishment so a great number of people end up on probation. Or they may become institutionalized for a short period and go on parole when then from parole go into some kind of treatment but there are a lot of things that happen from the point of an arrest to the point of an entry to a correctional facility and so we really shouldn't expect there to be a direct correspondence between trends in offices and crimes and trends in the prison population. There should be some connection but not a direct one. Well couple of things here we might talk about. One is the subject of diversion that he has alternatives to incarceration or the other thing that we might talk about is recidivism both of these things though connect to a real problem and that

is as the prison population gets bigger a larger piece of the state budget has to go into maintaining that. And you may get to the point where existing facilities are enough so then you say you know we have to build more prisons and rehab. We have done all of those things. Let's do let's maybe talk for a bit about recidivism and that's that means those people who having been in prison once in jail once released then end up committing crime again and going back. How how do our rates look and how do they look as compared with other states. OK Ken make an important distinction here but yes it's important that we make a distinction between prisons and jail. Yes I assume as I said that I thought well I'm being kind of sloppy in my. No no I'm sure they're Yeah I'm doing about the prison experience. You know when people are convicted of a crime and they end up with a sentence of incarceration for a year or more. So my son goes to jail obviously they're there mostly in a holding situation while waiting for trial. OK. About 85 percent of people who are in jails

are awaiting trial and the other 15 percent are therefore serving its terms of a year or less. So we should also remember that while the prison population hasn't grown tremendously in the past several years. So it. It's been filled that way over capacity for you know the better part of a decade or more. So we are overcrowded. We are crowded in all of our correctional facilities and I think there's a real dilemma here and that policy wise we tend to over utilize incarceration for punishment and rehabilitation purposes. But at the same time the recidivism rate is now by the state's own calculations over 50 percent. So we have strong evidence that incarceration is not rehabilitating but we continue to utilize it. Well let me pick up on that. We are not raising it in general way a lot of things but let me pick up on that point because I think that it's an important overall question and that has to do with our

commitment to the idea of rehabilitation. And whether in fact we I think there are some people who might be prepared to argue that at least as far as adults are concerned that we have given up on the idea and that we may be headed in that direction when it comes to juveniles. I wonder what you think about that. Well. I'm going to give you something of a political answer there's strong evidence both ways. And I'll tell you you know my perspective on that. I think the Illinois Department of Corrections has actually made an attempt and a bonafide strong attempt to change some of the ways that they do business so they stem this ever increasing rate of recidivism. So we know that about over a year ago now they opened a correctional Sheridan Correctional Center as a dedicated drug treatment facility. So on any given day there are there are probably eight or nine hundred individuals with severe drug problems who are in treatment every day and it's run

as the John Howard Association has recommended as a therapeutic drug treatment facility. And that seems to be showing some success if you know they're tracking recidivism out of Sheridan and is tracking pretty low. It's still you know too early to tell in the long run how successful it's going to be but the initial findings are encouraging and so they have that program and they have another drug treatment program down at the Western facility and now they're opening or they're kind of reshaping one of the juvenile facilities. The Illinois use Center in pure Marquette as a youth dedicate. Drug treatment facility. So they are doing some things that make sense that the John Howard Association and others believe are represent sincere efforts to curb this rising recidivism rate. On the other hand we know today that probably there are

probably close to 50 percent or more down. And there they are teaching positions. The school positions in the district are in the DSE school district. So they're not providing all the educational opportunities we would hope they would provide. And so then that's the other side of the coin. And when you know when the budget crisis hits the first things to go are the educational vocational and other country recreational programs that we believe are important to to rehabilitation. You know that gets at this important way of getting at that question of recidivism is what are you doing for those individuals during the time that they're incarcerated. That can try to improve their chances of being successful when they get out. Being able to manage their lives get a job all those sorts of things that would keep them out of prison for me I think. Make and defend other points in the new picture that this will help illuminate some of the things that we're talking about here.

Over the past three to five years the number of youth incarcerated and the owner or Department of Corrections has dropped dramatically. He used to be upwards of 20 600 now it's today it's 60 to about 600. And one of the reasons for that we feel very confident about is that the Cook County Juvenile Court has implemented a host of diversionary programs aimed at reducing youth youth incarceration and that downward trend from Cook County has held up for several years now. So we are building a body of evidence here in Illinois especially from Cook County that shows that carefully run well managed diversion programs can keep you out of prison and cost the state less money. Now I've also heard from the Department of Corrections that. You know to the best of their ability to calculated the youth recidivism rate is about 47 percent. And we know that they they do not count delayed

youth who become adults and end up going back into the adult system. So the 47 percent rate that they provide us just counts youth who are released from youth facilities and come back to youth facilities. It doesn't count youth that are released from youth facilities and go into adult facilities. So they're the youth recidivism rate is probably higher than the adult recidivism rate. And I again I just point out the fact that if the recidivism rate is so high we know that incarceration you know in secure facilities is not the best way to rehabilitate people you know. We continue to use it for the majority of folks you know even in the face of evidence that we don't have to. I came across some statistics that I thought were really really struck me as being serious and something that perhaps people don't think about. It may indeed be that people think about the issue of substance abuse for people who are in correctional facilities and the fact that that's that's a problem for them coming in. And that's something that we

need to address. And this actually comes from some figures I believe that come from the John Howard Association and that is that up to 20 percent of incarcerated individuals and I believe here we're talking about the United States have a major psychiatric disorder there and according this this John Howard folks estimated that Illinois correctional facilities routinely house more individuals with severe mental health problems than all of the state's mental hospitals combine and Cook County Department of Corrections routinely houses over fifteen hundred inmates under some form of treatment for mental health problems that makes it the second largest correctional psychiatric facility in the nation. Department of Corrections estimate between 40 and 50 percent of incoming inmates have either mental health or substance abuse problems or both. That's a tremendous tremendous problem. And that's a low estimate. It's a tremendous problem. Yeah here's. You know one of the dilemmas that we have in corrections and I really want to point this out as well.

The people who run the correctional system have very little to say about who comes in their front door except for the parole you know violation rate. And what you have I think in the instance of the drug offenders coming into corrections and the people with mental health problems coming into corrections are essentially an unspoken public policy to use the correctional system as a dumping ground for people that they either don't have the will or don't have they. They feel they don't have the means to to solve those problems. It it's a terrible problem because the prisons in jails are being filled up with people who don't need to be there because other parts of our social institutions don't know how to handle them. We talked just a moment ago about the efforts to address substance abuse problems. How are we doing in terms of addressing other kinds of mental health issues that people coming into prisons might have.

Well I think it's a it's a similar story to the drug issue. They are there are probably in the Department of Corrections maybe twenty four hundred three thousand beds available for people with mental health problems. And like you know two or three times that many people who present those problems. So they probably do a decent job with the resources that they have. But they just don't have enough. And you know from the John Howard Association's perspective the answer is to not build more mental health capacity within the Illinois Department of Corrections. You know the resolution of the problem is to build more mental health capacity in our communities so we stop people from going in in the first place. Well that gets a very tough problem for this sort of issue but you know when you because certainly the kinds of resources available to a range of individuals who might need some mental health service is a problem. It's almost a problem no matter who you are you know.

Yeah I guess you know when I think about the cost part of all this. It baffles me that politicians and decision makers and the people who fashioned these budgets cannot take a longer term view of this and not really understand that spending money to build mental health and drug treatment capacity in Illinois communities today will save two or three times the amount that they spend in years to come. It would reduce our reliance on corrections almost immediately and in the long run it would reduce the flow of people into the correctional system by very significant amounts. People have very short perspective. They have two three you know at most maybe a for your perspective in terms of wanting to see the impact. And I think that this I think people who are interested in corrections who are interested in mental health this would be very quick to

argue to point out the fact that to maintain a person in prison it's expensive it actually costs a lot of money and that if you could think about what sort of services you could provide to that person in a different setting you could actually end up saving money. But somehow that doesn't it's it seems really hard to make that case when you when you're talking with legislators I guess it seems hard to make that argument. People are afraid and I think they they worry about crime and fear of crime. And when they hear people talk about these things you know do I believe the vision they have in their mind is. You know some crazy psycho person being you know really released free of a correctional facility with no safeguards and that's clearly not what happened it's clearly not what does happen but it's people there's a there's a great fear out there and I think there's a real lack of vision and a lack of understanding that I think most people even people who work in the system.

They don't have a clear vision for themselves about how community based treatment can work. They don't understand they haven't seen it in action they haven't learned enough about it to where they can even feel remotely comfortable making a decision like that. There's evidence all over the country that it does work. And as I said A. I think I said before it works when programs are well thought out and well managed and evaluated well. But there's a lot of evidence. We're talking this morning in this part of focus 580 with James Cole dren He is currently the president of the John Howard Association. This isn't a nonprofit organization has been around for a century now that's interested in promoting fair and effective prisons and jails and fair and effective sentencing and also monitoring correctional facilities and programs here in the state of Illinois to provide information on what goes on inside the prisons. He also is on the

faculty of Governors State University s academic program coordinator in the criminal justice department and he will talk with us here for a little while longer we need to just take a very small moment here out of the conversation here. Dr. Coburn if you would mind just because this is one of those times during the year that we try to remind people just how important their financial support of this station is it's a public radio station and one of the great things as far as I'm concerned about doing this job here is that we don't have commercials and that all through the year. I get the opportunity to sit here and talk with a variety of people have long an interrupted conversations and we can really get into into the subjects we discuss in depth. That is a great thing. And then also of course we tell people who are listening that you can call in to one of the reasons that that's possible is that people like those who are listening right now are at least we hope are supporters of the station. They help pay the bills to keep the station here on the air so that's what we're asking for right now. If you're not a supporter a financial

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toll free line go to anywhere that you can hear us and that is eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We were talking a little bit ago about the need for mental health services in prisons and perhaps we might talk a little bit about other kinds of health services and that's again one of the things that you have to do. You have to take care of the health of your inmates and that also can be very expensive and I think that's an area where also. If not here in Illinois across the country there have been questions raised about the various states and whether or not they're doing a good enough job caring for the health of their inmates how are we doing. Well I think we could do better and tell you why. We receive at the John Howard Association pretty close to a thousand phone calls and letters every year from incarcerated individuals and or their family members and friends asking us to intervene and help on behalf of those who are

incarcerated. Easily 25 percent of those calls and letters have to do with medical issues. Treatment that inmates are seeking and are not getting or don't feel is adequate Dura they feel they're being ignored. It happens at the jail level and at the state prison level. And we're concerned about it. We went to the legislature this year with a group of our partners and collaborators with a proposal to create a medical ombudsman program for the state of Illinois. And the reason we think that is needed is that a lot of the medical care is contracted out it's privatized in Illinois. And it makes it doubly difficult for a watchdog group like the John Howard association to actually determine what is happening at any point. Pic of a person a silty or with any particular incarcerated individual and with the the new health insurance and information laws that's also made it difficult. But just by the fact that the largest category of

complaint that we get has to do with medical issues and the fact that we visit correctional facilities all over the state with citizen volunteers who render their own independent assessments of what's going on. Medical issues are a big problem in this state and I would probably guess most states when you touch on something that I think a lot of people's minds is a one issue and that is the fact that in an effort to control costs in many places they have contracted out medical services essentially that they have privatized them deprive them and in an effort to control costs. A medical contractor will actually deny certain types of treatments if they don't think it's life threatening or if it's serious even if it means I'm leaving someone in a condition of chronic and severe pain. Has that happened in the state of Illinois. Yeah. Yes. Can you give an example.

I've spoken with a gentleman who have diagnosed hernias who are not operated on because it's not life threatening. They're just simply in pain every moment of every day. It doesn't happen a lot I'm not saying that this is you know there's thousands of inmates who are in this situation but it does happen. What you know I see and I'm sure that any time that you talk about race questions about concerns about conditions in prisons there will be there there will be compassionate people who will say well that's definitely a problem we ought to do something about it and there will be also those people who say it's prison. Yeah. It's not supposed to be comfortable. And if they're suffering in pain Well you know that's what they have coming for what it what it was that they did. You know we have this idea that it's supposed to be punitive. How is it when you haven't and I'm sure that you have talked to people like that over time and I wonder how you respond to that kind of mindset that says well you know so they're uncomfortable so they're in pain it's not a nice place to be it's prison where no why

should it be a nice place. Well punishment can take various forms. When somebody is incarcerated in the state of Illinois for their you know for their being convicted of a criminal act I would argue that the fact of deprivation and isolation is the key focus of the punishment for however that length of time is. But the purpose of punishment is not to inflict additional physical pain upon people who were not experiencing that pain when they went in in the first place. So that that comes close to torture and that's against you know every constitution every bill of human rights that we know off. We have a couple of callers here I'd like to bring them into the conversation we'll start with someone listening this morning in Danville. That's our toll free line line for Hello. Yeah. Good morning. Thank you for taking the call Mr. Holder and I go got a couple of comments and questions. First of all how many nonviolent drug offenders have that

44000. Are there. I would say a rough estimate is nonviolent drug offenders. I think a safe estimate would be about 20 percent. So that's a that's like 8000. OK. Even if that was a high estimate it could be six to seven. Thousand which is three correctional facilities because we've seen you know a lot of different numbers through the years that range from you know anywhere from like the 20 percent you just gave to you know 70 percent 60 percent and so forth. The other thing to you had mentioned something about the easy short term. I think one of the reasons why is that even the short term view is so easily contrived is because it plays well in the media. You know if you know somebody commits a crime within a few months you see them convicted you see in going to jail everybody thinks oh it's been taken care of. And of course also

tell me if I'm wrong that the penal system has is in the process of creating some of the most powerful unions in the world which are going to always be there to protect their interests. Yeah yeah I think it's actually. It's very election oriented and that is a term of office it's anywhere from three to six years depending on which office you're talking about. And even our most intelligent and well-meaning government representatives elected representatives really have a hard time looking beyond the next vote. Well we have an entire judiciary system that's based on quotas. Yeah. If the code is a based judiciary where you know you don't ever have anybody running on hey I got 50 people off you know 10 murders often three rapists this time you know that's how many people I was able to put up with a LONG AS number of years. So that again also you know as a leverage to that the other thing too it's really kind of intriguing for him over here in Danville internet forum and I found that the people that are the most supportive of harsher

penalties and longer prison sentences and so forth are the most fundamental people you know they believe in spanking children and you know from the concept of spare the rod spoil the child. And you know the American Taliban that we see of developing in this country is is going to push that agenda even further I think. Well other comments. Dark gold. Well I would yeah I'm not sure I know that you know all the statistics about who does and does not support punishment and capital punishment but it's I think what he says makes some sense here. Well and one final note here is I think it also is part of the reason why we have such apathy right now towards the torture that our government has been doing of prisoners in Afghanistan Guantanamo Bay and so forth. They look at it as well they did. They were really bad people. So it really doesn't matter what we do to them because they need the punishment. Yeah I think you know people do tend to think that way.

I think there's an aspect of our culture that is very revenge oriented and that supports the notion of not just you know isolation and deprivation but additional punishments you know as needed because there needs to be some vengeance here. Let me add that all the information that we have heard that the large bulk of information that we have and this is been you know pretty consistently researched and reported over the past 20 25 years shows that punishment approaches alone do very little to correct problems. So. It's just it's still is it kind of boggles my mind that people will rest on that notion even when we know that it won't do any social good to take that approach and torture rarely is resulting in good intelligence also right. Absolutely. All right well thank you for that.

Thanks for your call let's go to Belgium here in a nearby us. Adam one. Hello. You know you're going to all your friends talking long about the prison problem and seems to me the problem as you have pointed out seems to be drug related. So therefore the problem really comes down to are pretty much antiquated and totally wrong way of handling the drug problems. You know we have discussed on this program before Mr. Ijaz other guest that Europeans of Handel's a problem completely different and it works much much better. Now I'm not saying don't for drug dealers in jail but you've got a lot of people who are involved in drugs and commit other crimes that pushes them into the system and when we can easily do it through a pharmaceutical situation and through a situation where we deal in more reasonable ways of dealing with people who have these problems much more humane way. This this this this problem we have is just

multiplying every day because you never ever hear of plant prison closing. Always talk of a kid bigger and bigger. We have made ourselves a nation full of scofflaws. When it comes down to that marijuana usage and and some of these things some minor offenses that end up in prison people straight into the system that is as you say inhumane at best. I think it's important to point out that for the past several decades there has been a fair amount of research on drug use in the United States of America. A lot of it has been at the at the high school level. But self-reported rates of drug use do not vary much across blacks and whites or you know whites and people of color. Yet our incarceration rates in our drug incarceration rates are vastly higher for people of color than they are for whites. That is a fact. I think it's also true I had the opportunity was quite a long time ago but I did do some research in the Netherlands on corrections a long

time ago but I did notice while I was there that this this notion of vengeance is not strong in the European culture like it is in American culture and when you're in a courtroom in Europe you're much more likely to have a judge and a prosecutor and a defense counsel and an offender that are all of the same skin color and I really do think that makes a big difference. I can I can agree with you anymore because if you look at if you look at our prisons there. Much much much over there quite common in the black race. There's no one to replace every agreement you know. And yeah I would like to point out that actually in the state of Illinois there are I think 10 10 pilot projects that are underway right now addressing the problem of disproportionate minority confinement and there's a sincere effort being made in Cook County as well as some of the southern suburbs down to Peoria.

I believe down in the St. Louis several areas of the state where they're making a concerted effort to turn that problem around and the other thing to point out here is the fact that there is such an amount of money being spent on this drug war quota. This seems to be totally failing and there's there's so much money spent on both sides and it's amazing because I think there's a situation here where people realize that as long as we keep the drug laws the way they are we're going to keep funding prisons the way we are because we want to keep going more and more keep around and make more money and there seems to be must be somebody making money off this. Oh yeah. For them to be one to make sure all the print all the police have the most strongest weapons which means the crooks are going to get a stronger weapon and then you know it just keeps going on and on escalating more and more it's just such a stupid way to handle a very very complex problem but the way we're dealing with it is a total detriment. Thank you very much sir for your conversation. You know thanks for the call.

Let me address something I want to make sure that I ask you about that has been corrections related that has been in the news in the last 10 days or so and that was in late April there was a financial review of the state's prison system and it found that something over two million dollars was spent last year to maintain two prisons that don't have any inmates and never have. The Thompson Correctional Center in northwestern Illinois and the LRU center in Rushville. Not a lot was made of this. Some legislators particularly those who are in the area who who view that as a potential economic development for their area complained and said others just simply said well it doesn't really make any sense we spent all this money to build these two facilities and now we're spending this money to maintain them to maintain the utilities and to have some people there and to maintain the telephone system and everything that takes to run the place. Except that there are no there's no one there. How did that come about and does it indeed make sense

that these two places are empty we built them and we're spending all this money to keep them up even though they've never House in the in me. Well I don't know if I can have a direct answer to all that I will just say from the perspective again of the John Howard Association. I'd rather be spending two million dollars to keep empty prisons open than 70 million dollars to fill them up. That's number one. I do believe and this is more a belief than a statement of actual fact. But over the last 10 or 15 years or so as you know there was a construction boom that hit the country also hit Illinois and I believe that several prison construction decisions were made more on political grounds than on goods you know strategic planning. So the fact that. These institutions exist they exist because of the will of our legislature or you know whatever the power structure happens to be in the legislature at the time.

This was the you know the people's choice through their legislators to build these places. The fact that they're currently not being used and then and that we're spending several million dollars to keep them open doesn't disturb me so much because if if we didn't spend the 2 million dollars or whatever we're spending then they would simply crumble and be absolutely useless. Maybe at some point we can sell them off to somebody and use it for something different I don't know. But it's it's a shame that they were built. The fact that they are built and are empty is I still think at the base of a political issue there are people who would rather fill that prison up than have a an older prison. Maybe one of the ones that's down south or state Phil or whatever they would like those prisons emptied in these prisons is filled up simply because they see money coming their way. Not because they think it will do one ounce to prevent recidivism in the state of Illinois so these decisions are all being made for the wrong reasons.

Well let's talk with another caller we have someone here in Crystal Lake on our toll free line line for Hello. It ended Tamsin Governor Thompson. They increased the penalties for drug use very severely into foreign markets or east which would put people in jail and are still doing it I believe that. Just use a little bit of marijuana which is not the same as being a drug dealer of course and I don't think that that astonished should have been so increased and putting so many more people in jail and it might be that it's a cost. Politicians may have cut it less and they did it one time and being tough on crime Galan political victories like the attorney general. Brian I forgot the christening. He convicted Stanek who is in excess of some murder which they later found was around 30. But it does wind it heard it when times were tough and crime

and also a private business. When a tribe which is Asian and many Christian because they made money they skim off some money that way. CANIM ascent services and things like that and out sourcing like mental health care. Please a private business and absolutely they reduce the needs of prisoners and I think it was partly that the private companies like privatization of prisons for it is kind of like a school today when privatized they want to see if they can skim off the more money being scarcer and the deaf ears of course. People sometimes are forced into crime like. And human. And in California Gary Webb wrote the S.. Then they can just use. Yeah I think they manage to find it and make a run.

And we're we're getting really short on time and you've raised some really good points and I want to give the guests an opportunity to respond and I don't know if you want to particular particular things you'd like to respond to one thing that I'd do it did want to ask you about I'm glad the caller raised it was generally about the idea of privatization and prison set something that we have read a lot about and I'm not exactly sure to what extent that has happened in the in the state of Illinois. I believe that there are other there are other states where they indeed they have done that they have turned some prisons over to private companies for them to run and I'm not I don't think that we have done that. Instead allowable under Illinois law. OK you have a correctional facility run by a private enterprise. So I don't know the legal history of that I'm sure that's something that was introduced by the collective bargaining units. You know some time ago so it's not possible in Illinois to privatized an entire prison but there is this outsourcing problem. I believe she's right and we did touch on that a little bit when we talked about mental health issues to the extent that they outsource. Contracts sometimes to the lowest bidder.

We think that some other problems are created they require some monitoring and some oversight. I think in terms of the drug penalty issue I would make two points. I think the entire country is going through a I believe a healthy reexamination of these policies. There's been several federal court cases probably some of the listeners are familiar with that are challenging the federal guidelines the sentencing guidelines and may result in some changes there and the spillover effect of that is I think a number of states are reexamining these one two three strike laws these zero tolerance policies. So and I think that's healthy I think it will result in some changes. I also want to just make another point. We when I talk to the people at the Illinois Department of Corrections about the people who are coming in and about the level of the drug offender problem there they are quick to point out to me that by and large when somebody ends

up in the Illinois Department of Corrections sentenced for a drug conviction. They have been through probably several different drug arrests and convictions that resulted in probation before they came to the Illinois Department of Corrections. So I think we need to be a little careful here I would like some better information published about that about how many people come in. How many have drug histories how many have drug and violent crime histories What are the actual numbers that we're talking about here because at some point it becomes more a matter of debate and a matter of fact and we we need better information about this. Well that maybe brings us around to something that we touched on in the first part of the conversation that I'd like to have you talk a little bit more about and that is alternatives to incarceration. It's something that again because of all of the problems that we've talked about the problem of prison overcrowding the problem of just the fact that to maintain people in prison cost so much money. There are a lot of places where they're asking

this question Is there something that we can do other than send the person to prison. And that way maybe that's better for them and maybe also we save some money. Well you know I'll just share a couple observations I've made over the past several years just from my perspective as a researcher and someone who has been obviously involved in a lot of debates and discussions about this. I firmly believe and I firmly believe that the evidence will support this that. Alternatives to incarceration can reduce recidivism and reduce crime in communities so it's not it's not a tradeoff with public safety. But here's what as a general point I think to the extent that you can create community based programs that number one provide good structure for offenders who need it and that provide multi dimensional approaches to addressing crime problems. You will

have success. So a community based program that simply does one thing whether it's night basketball or mentoring or tutoring or. You know any number of things if it's has a very narrow focus it will not do as well as a program that has a multi dimensional focus so if you're treating offenders in the community and you're addressing education and skill training issues and you're addressing family issues and you're addressing mental health issues the more things that you can address in combination the better off you'll be and the lower your risk citizen will be. And the trick in all this is to have a good continuum of programs and services available that provide the right amount and the right type of structure that you need to keep people focused on rehabilitation and keep them out of whatever behaviors they were engaging in before they got in trouble.

And I just as a general observation I have seen that when good programs provide good structure and they're well thought out and they're multi-dimensional they will do a better job than incarceration. Well they are I'm sorry to say we'll have to we'll have to leave it for this time around. I'm sure we'll get back to some of these issues again in the future. Our guest is James a cold when he is on the faculty of Governor State University as an academic program coordinator in the Crimean. Justice Department he's also the president of the John Howard Association in Chicago interested in promoting fair and effective prisons and jails. And if you're interested in finding out more about the activities of the John Howard association and you have internet access you can go to their Web site which is John Howard or Archie and you can find out more about it and Dr. cauldron thank you very much for talking with us. My pleasure thank you very much. The broadcast today made possible by a grant from Strawberry Fields in downtown Urbana Strawberry Fields catering department offers box lunches for professional meetings or casual lunchtime gatherings there are

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And of course our updates on the markets and all of our market information is made possible with your support at 2 1 7 2 4 4 9 4 5 5. Good morning I'm Jay Pierce on the Chicago Board of Trade. May we did 314 is down for July at three twenty three and a quarter down two and three quarters make or.