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for those committed for diagnosis and evaluation under Section 5010 (e), but does so fairly rarely, largely because the Board is aware that the present caseload of the probation services in the District is high and the level of supervision is therefore not as high as it might wish.

The use of parole is also rising in the District. The number of initial hearings, for example, averaged 26 a month in calendar 1970, and for the first four months of 1971, averaged approximately 50 a month, nearly double. The Board is expanding its capabilities to analyze and evaluate recommendations by the Department of Corrections, and its clerical staff, so that it can handle more hearings. Numbers on parole are increasing steadily.

There is, finally, the development of improved parole supervision by the Department of Corrections, providing far more supervision than was the case earlier. The Department has developed differential caseloads to provide more intensive supervision of high risk cases, including for example those who are known narcotic addicts, and is using, under contract to a voluntary organization operated by ex-offenders, ex-offenders as parole officers. This is an experimental program operating under research conditions of control and evaluation and funded by a research grant from LEAA.

The record of the District government in the development of alternatives to incarceration is a good one. At the same time, it is important that while we explore other possibilities, we keep in mind the need to provide a high level of security for the people of the community, and to avoid those uses of alternatives which either prove to be too costly in dollars, or in recidivism, or in lowered levels of public safety, for the benefits they bring.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPANSION OF ALTERNATIVES AND THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED

The Opportunities

We have not as yet completed a full analysis and evaluation of all the alternatives to incarceration, and of the opportunities they offer us, along with the problems they present. We are still engaged in an effort to collect both historical data on our own use of alternatives to incarceration and their success, along with comparative data from other cities with similar populations and similar crime problems. These data will make it possible for us to put our problems in some better perspective. All of this material will be presented in the final report.

We are aware, however, that many other opportunities exist for the expanded use of alternatives to incarceration. At the same time, we were not charged merely with the development of recommendations for expansion of alternatives, but with the analysis and evaluation of these alternatives and their prospects of success or failure. All alternatives involve greater risk of recidivism and greater risk, therefore, to the safety of the public in the short run. There has to be a strong case, therefore for the expansion of existing alternatives or the development of new ones that the benefits in the long run, in reduced recidivism through improved adjustment to life in the community, are greater than the costs in the short run. That is an extraordinarily hard case to make. Very little in the way of decent evaluation of program success over a sufficiently long period of time has been undertaken here or anywhere in the nation.

The results from Project Crossroads indicate that its clientele had a very low recidivism rate, and great cost savings. Over a 28-month period, charges against 467 of 825 young offenders in the program were dismissed. A fifteenmonth study of recidivism showed 22 per cent in the program were rearrested, while 46 per cent in a control group with similar characteristics were rearrested, a highly favorable outcome. The cost per enrollee was $500, far less than it would have been had they been incarcerated, where daily costs are now running close to $17 per day per man. We must be able to show results like these with any conditional release program or we cannot recommend its continued expansion. Nevertheless, the Crossroads resu'ts do suggest, as a study of the program indicates, that alternative approaches to the traditional judicial and correctional processes can be effective.' The evaluation of that

1 John F. Holahan, "A Benefit-Cost Analysis of Proiect Crossroads." December, 1970. National Committee for Children and Youth, Washington, D.C., p. 66.

projects suggests also that one needs to be cautious in generalizing from any single study, or any single project. It may be the case that the employment approach taken by Crossroads is the right approach for certain offenders, but not for others in a different age bracket or who have committed other crimes. It may be that some other mix of program components is necessary for success elsewhere. It also needs to be kept in mind that an employment emphasis, which is the emphasis of most of the District's alternatives to incarceration, to some extent shifts, as the Crossroads evaluation suggests, the costs of rehabilitation to the community, both in the form of increased risk that the public will not be as safe in the short run as it would if no releases were permitted, and in the form of added costs for employers in the community.

The formula which ought to be applied to every program involving use of alternatives to incarceration is one very similar to the one used in the Crossroads evaluation. We want to estimate the economic cost of crimes, and of the services of the police, the courts, probation, and corrections services. These then need to be compared with an estimate of the benefits received from programs, including the reduced resource costs resulting from diversion of cases from the criminal justice system, the increased earnings or productivity due to job development and placement, and to higher employment rates, and finally, the reduced criminal justice system costs due to reduction in recidivism. The cost of the research involved in applying this approach is beyond our capabilities at this time. Nevertheless, it is essential that this kind of research be done. We have not been funded to do enough of it thus far.

In the absence of an immediate ability to undertake this kind of research, and in view of the need for an early determination as to whether existing or proposed alternatives to incarceration will afford some relief from the need to construct new correctional facilities, we have done the best we could with the data we have found to be available. We have identified a number of areas where there are opportunities for further use of alternatives to incarceration, and we have identified some problems related to them. We have concentrated thus far on those alternatives which are within the authority of the executive branch of District government, and therefore have little at this time to say about sentencing, probation, or bail, since these are all court prerogatives. A brief discussion of each of the areas in which we see opportunities follows: (1) Decriminalization-There is a possibility that it would be well to reduce penalties for certain crimes, and to eliminate others altogether.

The police are already spending less and less time on matters involving homosexuals.

The reduction of penalties for possession and use of marijuana is under consideration.

There is wide recognition that the laws against prostitution are not producing satisfactory results, in that the incarceration of prostitutes for short periods of time does not seem to lead to reduction in prostitution.

In the narcotics area, there is under consideration the proposal that narcotics addicts, if arrested only for use and not for other crimes, should be treated like alcoholics under the Easter decision: that is, they should be regarded in the law as sick persons, and committed civilly in lieu of prosecution to a rehabilitation facility. We do not now have legislation which permits that. In the area of intra-family offenses, it is clear already that the new process provided by the Court Reform Act is a great improvement over the previous arrangement for handling these cases. We still lack sufficient resources, either in the court or in the community, however, to handle the needed counseling services if this alternative is to be fully expanded.

(2) Release after arrest and prior to trial-The use of citations can be expanded in selected cases, and is expanding now. Of 16,963 misdemeanor arrests in calendar 1970, some 3,180 were not authorized for various reasons to be given a citation. Another 6,729 were not offered citations, and of these approximately 4,000 posted collateral or bond, and 2,700 were confined. Approximately 7,000 were offered the opportunity to receive citations, but only 564 were issued. The policy of the Metropolitan Police Department is to encourage use of citations except in warrant cases. The Department of Corrections also wants to encourage use of citations, especially in situations where demonstrators wish to be jailed only to prove some political or other point, thereby needlessly occupying space in the jail and using up District resources. It is a limited alternative to incarceration, but one that can be safely expanded.

The District government could encourage more effective use of bail, especially personal recognizance, if there were more third party custody capability in the community which would involve guarantee of appearance and in the meantime some supervision and some assistance in finding and keeping employment. This would mean continued expansion of the Offender Rehabilitation Program, of projects like Crossroads for pre-trial diversions of selected first offenders, and of programs like Bonabond and community centers operated by Corrections for certain bailees.

The District government cou'd encourage better use of its narcotics treatment program in connection with bail, involving, as is the case now, urinalysis as a condition of bail and treatment as a condition of bail, for selected offenders, especially those not arrested for other offenses than use of narcotics. (3) Sentencing alternatives-While this is an area for the court and the individual judges to make their decisions about how to sentence, it is also clearly the case that there are some options open here.

More probation could be used. The court received authority and funds in 1970 to employ another 40 probation officers, but has not hired them as yet. The effect of added probation staff would clearly tend to improve the quality of supervision, and the number of cases in which a high quality pre-sentence investigation and report would be comp'eted. A high quality probation office might lead judges to increase use of probation.

It is possible that more narcotics addicts could be put on probation, if there were intensified probation supervision and narcotics treatment programs designed for probationers. The intensified supervision is not presently available. It is possible that the Youth Corrections Act, if used even more often than at present, would give the District government greater flexibility than it now has with minimum sentences of greater length. Under the Youth Corrections Act, there is a maximum but not a minimum. This would, of course, have to be accompanied by adequate staffing of a program of the highest quality to justify its expansion, since early release must be a function of completion of a treatment program which gives the best assurance possible of success in the community. The Waters case, decided last fall, is one of the sources of pressure on the Department of Corrections, since that decision held that for youthful offenders-between the ages of 18 and 22-the presumption must be in favor of use of the Youth Act and cause would have to be shown for not using it in the case of youthful offenders.

(4) Post-sentencing-The major possibilities, of course, are the expansion of community correctional centers and the expansion of parole, as well as more rapid work by the Department of Corrections to complete the 5010 (e) diagnostic and evaluative reports in less than 60 days.

Expansion of community correctional centers is now planned, pending of course careful examination of the performance and effectiveness of those now in existence. A capacity of 900 by the end of 1972 may be needed.

Parole is increasing steadily, and perhaps as rapidly as is desirable, again pending evaluation. The Board of Parole expects to make more use of the opportunity afforded it under the law to apply for the reduction of minimum sentences.

It might be desirable to experiment with what are called halfway back houses, in which probation and parole violators could be placed, instead of returning all of them to the institution. This would add flexibility and might lead to more willingness to correct violations than exists at present, when the only alternative in the case of violations is a return to the institution itself.

The Problems

As we consider these alternatives to incarceration, it is essential that the problems involved in their expansion be kept in mind. These problems center on the failure of a proportion of those on conditional release to observe the conditions of the release. At present, there are some 1,100 or more on personal recognizance who fail to show up for trial when they were to be there. There are a considerable number of those on probation, personal recognizance, parole, pre-trial work release, and in community correctional centers who are rearrested while on conditional release. There are a considerable number in community correctional centers of various kinds who abscond. The costs in additional crime must, therefore, in the short run be considerable. The com

munity concern over the safety of the streets is bound to be high under these circumstances.

For all of these reasons, we are being cautious in our appraisal of these various alternatives to incarceration. It is difficult to judge whether we have an extraordinary amount of violation of the conditions of release. There do not appear to be standards in this area. We do not know what an acceptably low absconder rate is, nor do we have enough information on experience here or elsewhere to say whether our failure rate on probation and parole is too high or normal or very low. It is similarly difficult to determine whether we are reducing recidivism through community corrections centers, and especially difficult to know whether we are achieving better results that way than through direct release to the community on eligibility for parole or at expiration of term of imprisonment.

Still another problem which has not been fully resolved is that the inefficiencies which remain in the criminal justice system-the failure to communicate within and among agencies, the failure to be ready, the failure of some key person to appear at trial, the loss or misplacing of records-all provide for an alternative to incarceration for many. Inefficiency means that many cases are dropped-either not prosecuted or dismissed by the court-and that therefore many defendants do not come to trial and that many cases are not disposed of on the merits. The number of these is quite high, as any big city prosecutor will confirm. The naive defendant, the one who does not know how to manipulate the system by obtaining continuances, for example, is the one who is prosecuted all too frequently, and the clever manipulator all too frequently creates his own alternative to incarceration. Greater efficiency would require much greater resources, especially for prosecutors and courts. If greater efficiency were achieved, it would certainly mean a greater demand for correctional programs to handle increased numbers of convicted persons.

With present programs, we are aware that we are taking more risks in the short run than we used to take. And we are therefore aware that if we are to take more risks, we must have two things: (1) far better information about performance of persons on conditional release and (2) improved security to assure the community that the risks taken will not be completely at the cost of community and public safety.

ACTIONS TAKEN ALREADY AS A RESULT OF THE PAST TEN MONTHS' FOCUS ON ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION

Better Information

As it became evident last fall that better information for purposes of evaluating program performance in the area of alternatives to incarceration was essential, the following steps were taken :

The OSR (Offender Status Register), which is a computerized program operated by the Metropolitan Police Department and all participating agencies, including the court, Bail Agency, probation office, Department of Corrections, Corporation Counsel, and U.S. Attorney. The police use the computer program for making inquiries about whether a person who is arrested is on conditional release. The prosecutors use the information in deciding on the kind of case they will make.

The OSR is now the basis for another computer program, to result in monthly reports on recidivism on all types of conditional release, by agency. It will eventually be possible to report total number released and total number rearrested by agency and type of release. It will also be possible to report recidivism in various ways; that is, by offense at earlier arrest and later arrest, by offense for which convicted earlier and offense for which convicted later. The figures can be used to make analyses of how many of those arrested for a specific offense in a specific month were on what kind of conditional release. Rates of rearrest will be developed for each agency and each type of release, and all of these will be carried over a number of months, until there is experience. This report, needed because of the absence of data now which permits us to make any generalizations about whether recidivism is high, low, increasing, decreasing, is higher for one kind of release than another, has received the full endorsement of Judge Harold Greene, Chief Judge of the Superior Court, and all executive branch agencies are cooperating. The first

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report shou'd be available in another six weeks or so. It should permit solid evaluation of performance of conditional release programs and give us a sounder basis for expanding or contracting alternatives to incarceration.

The Board of Parole is to be funded with LEAA money to develop a capability and the tools to predict who will succeed on parole and then to evaluate parole performance. This should begin in another month or so.

Judge Greene has agreed that it would be useful to have a good reporting system for probation services, to show how probation is being used, and how successful it is, by offense.

Improved Security

The following steps have been taken to assure added security to the community, as the number of those on conditional release increases. It may well be necessary to take still further steps in the future.

A major violators unit was established in the Metropolitan Police Department. It makes use of the Offender Status Register to keep track of those whom it regards as potential sources of future criminal activity. It uses other tools as well, of course. It also keeps a running count of how many of what types of conditional releases are arrested for what offenses each month, and reports that information to the Chief of Police. Those data have been reported in the press. They are not very useful data, as the police themselves are the first to admit. The regular monthly report should put those figures in context and should permit us to begin to say whether, for example, a 20 per cent abscond rate is too high, or even whether that is the real rate.

The U.S. Attorney has set up a corresponding major violators unit, which operates in close conjunction with that of the Metropolitan Police Department. The Department of Corrections has continued its Warrant Squad, which has taken the responsibility for apprehension of most of those who abscond from its community correctional centers, along with parole violators. There is an expectation that the Department's request for an expanded grant from the city's LEAA funds will be approved for a larger operation in the next year. Other steps may need to be taken, in both the information and the security

areas.

Everyone recognizes the need to rehabilitate those we convict of crime, if we are ever to break the vicious cycle of offense, conviction, incarceration, release, and rearrest. Prisons have not deterred crime, nor have they rehabilitated prisoners. As we move in the direction of experimentation with alternatives to incarceration, it is important that we do not blindly accept the proposition that because prisons do not work, probation, or community correctional centers, or some other alternative is certain to work. It is extremely difficult to achieve success in the form of rehabilitation and elimination of criminal patterns, as everyone who works with or in the criminal justice system knows. And yet it is essential to continue the effort and to experiment with new ways of rehabilitation in the community and elsewhere. As Chief Justice Burger declared in his speech to the New York Bar Association of February 13, 1970: "Prosecutors could win every prosecution, convict every defendant, and imprison every guilty person, and society would still fail. To put a person behind wal's and not change him is to win a battle and lose the war."

Rehabilitation is the goal, and if the way to achieve rehabilitation is to expand the alternatives to incarceration, then that is the way we will recommend that the District go.

Thank you.

Mr. EWING. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today, to discuss the problems and opportunities which face us in corrections. I am here today in my capacity as chairman of the Committee on Alternatives to Incarceration, a group appointed in March 1971 by the Deputy Mayor. The group is composed of executive branch agency representatives concerned with and responsible for alternatives to incarceration. These include besides my office, the Office of Budget and Executive Management, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Corporation Counsel, the Social Services Administration, the De

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