that many cases are dropped, either not prosecuted or dismissed by the court and, 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 all too frequently prosecuted successfully and the clever manipulator all too frequently creates his own alternative to incarceration. Greater efficiency would, of course, require must 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. We are, therefore, aware that if we are to take these 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 totally at the cost of the community and its safety. We have done several things already as a result of the past 10 months' focus on alternatives to incarceration. I would like just briefly to mention a few of these.

First, the offender status register, which is a computerized program operated by the Metropolitan Police Department and involving a variety of participating agencies, is being used to make inquiries about whether a person who is arrested is on conditional release. That register lists all persons on conditional release. The offender status register is now the basis for another computer program just being developed, 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. And, by the way, that information is not presently available on a regular basis. 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. All of these will be carried over a number of months. This report is 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. This proposed report has received in general the endorsement of Judge Harold Greene, Chief Judge of the Superior Court, and all executive branch agencies are cooperating. The first report should be available in another 6 weeks or so.

The Board of Parole is to be funded with LEAA money to develop a capability and the tools to predict who will be more likely to succeed on parole and in this area we are borrowing from LEAA Institute Research being done now by Prof. Lesley Wilkins, a criminologist at the State University of New York in Albany. Judge Greene has agreed, furthermore, 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.

In the area of improved security, a variety of steps have also been taken to assure added security to the community as the number of those on conditional release increases. It may be necessary to take still further steps in this area in the future. A major violators unit was established in the Metropolitan Police Department which makes use of the offender status register to keep track of those it regards as potential sources of future criminal activity. The U.S. attorney has set up a corresponding major violators unit. 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 pending now an application for an expanded warrant squad and there is an expectation that it will be approved. It is essential in the judgment of our group on alternatives to incarceration, to continue the effort and to experiment with new ways of rehabilitation in the community and elsewhere. As Chief Justice Burger said in his speech to the New York Bar Association in February 1970:

Prosecutors could win every prosecution, convict every defendant, and imprison every guilty person, and society would still fail. To put a person behind walls and not change him is to win a battle and lose the war.

Rehabilitation, in our judgment, is the goal, and if the way to achieve rehabilitation is to expand the alternatives to incarceration, and it may well be, then that is the way we will recommend when our report is final in some 6 weeks, that the District go.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator STEVENSON. Thank you, Mr. Ewing, for a very comprehensive and helpful statement. It seems that since rehabilitation is the goal, the way to achieve rehabilitation is going to have to be the alternatives to incarceration, since we don't have any choice through existing or additional capacities in our crowded custodial institutions. Are there estimates of a need of custodial care so we know where we are going?

Mr. EWING. That is quite true, Mr. Chairman, at the same time we recognize that there will be a need, in the short run at least, to provide some temporary facilities for certain offenders that cannot be released immediately into the community. If our projections are correct and we are expected to have some 1,300 additional persons committed to the Department of Corrections in the next year, a good many of them adult felons, we cannot release them all immediately.

Senator STEVENSON. Where are you going to put them?

Mr. EWING. Well, we have plans in the works to provide some temporary facilities within the present facilities at Lorton. Those would have to be in the form of temporary buildings, perhaps trailers, etc. It is a highly undesirable alternative and if there is a way for us to act quickly to expand these other alternatives we would much prefer that. It is a very difficult situation.

Senator STEVENSON. Could you assign priority to the needs of the criminal justice system within the District of Columbia?

Mr. EWING. Well, Mr. Chairman, I think it is quite clear to us at this juncture that the major need is in the area of corrections clearly. We have dealt, I think, quite satisfactorily with our need for additional police. While, the judgment is not entirely ours to make, we have dealt also quite satisfactorily with the needs of the courts. We believe that in the area of correctional policies, where resources are badly needed to permit us to cope with the influx of new persons bound to be committed to the department as a result of new resources elsewhere and, therefore, we are, for example using a fairly large share of our LEAA block grant for correctional purposes. Within the correctional area we recognize we must expand the community correctional centers and we would like to see an expansion of probation so that within correction I think those two are chief priority.

Senator STEVENSON. We will have a chance to discuss probation more with Judge Greene. It is my understanding that there are chances to expand probation. Can you tell us more concerning this?

Mr. EWING. Yes, sir. There was authorized by the Congress in December of 1970, in the first supplemental to the fiscal 1971 budget, an expansion of probation which involved the addition of 40-plus new probation officers. We regard that as highly desirable and we still think there could be further expansion.

Senator STEVENSON. We mentioned bail and the desirability of improving on it, and upon facilities and supervision, and releasing them on their own recognizance. You did not mention bail agencies. Do you have anything

Mr. EWING. Well, I think our concern about bail in general is the same as the courts. There are a large number of persons released on personal recognizance, as I said, who do not show up for trial. It apparently is running anywhere from 7 to 12 to 15 percent of those released.

Senator STEVENSON. It is pretty hard to determine those figures, isn't it.

Mr. EWING. Yes; it is very difficult.

Senator STEVENSON. They may not come in until the following day, and show up in the wrong courtroom. You have a problem there then.

Mr. EWING. Yes; that is true, and they say that because we have. We are holding court at present in six different places and because there has been recently a great many shifts in the locations of the various court services facilities it is difficult to find your way around the system and people get lost. I am sure that is true in some cases. So it is hard to know, as you say, just how many showed up that were in the wrong place or got bad directions or some other thing happened to them along the way. At the same time it does occur to us that there is a very great need, as I indicated, for additional community resources which could be used for thirdparty custody. There are some that are used in this fashion now and we think that that ought to be expanded very greatly. The bail agency itself also has authority under the new Court Reform Act to provide much more in the way of counseling and other supportive social services but does not, as I understand it, currently have the resources or the staff to actually provide those services.

This is an area where we think the bail agency needs some

assistance.

Senator STEVENSON. As far as you know, the recurring problem is money?

Mr. EWING. Yes, sir; that is not the only problem. Competent people are needed, and money doesn't always buy competent people, but you can't buy any people without money.

Senator STEVENSON. Could you give us some comparative figures and costs of maintaining certain persons in jail as compared to community correctional centers?

Mr. EWING. Mr. Chairman, I don't have those figures with me. They vary quite considerably from city to city as well as within our own criminal justice system, but those figures certainly are available and could be furnished to you.

Senator STEVENSON. Could you get them?

Mr. EWING. Yes, sir; and I might add that there is

Senator STEVENSON. Will you furnish those figures to the committee?

Mr. EWING. We can find those and furnish them to you. (The material referred to follows.)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. STUART ADAMS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR PLANNING AND RESEARCH, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

COMPARISONS OF COST EFFECTIVENESS OF PRISONS, HALFWAY HOUSES AND PROBATION Current studies of cost benefits in corrections permit some tentative conclusions about the relative cost effectiveness of various elements in the correctional system. One study of several programs in California showed that benefitcost ratios tended to go up as corrections focused on community-based rather than institutional programs. Benefit-cost ratios tended to go up also as programs focused on increasingly younger age groups. The major inferences to be drawn from these studies is that the community will derive the most benefit from its correctional expenditures if it concentrates them heavily on community-based programs such as probation, halfway houses, pre-trial diversions, and other treatments that avert full-time incarceration in institutions of the traditional types.

The D.C. Department of Corrections has become aware in the past three or four years of the significance of cost-benefit studies and their findings for effective correctional management. Several studies have been carried out to develop basic knowledge for the Department. Research Report No. 6, The Cost of Correcting Youthful Offenders, was released in September 1968; Research Report No. 24, A Cost Analysis of the D.C. Work Release Program was released in June 1970; and Research Report No. 34, The Economics of Drug Addiction in the District of Columbia: A Model for Estimation of Costs and Benefits of Rehabilitation was released in November 1970.

Currently the Planning and Research Office is engaged in discussions with representatives of Brookings Institution about the feasibility of an across-theboard study of the correctional programs in the District to ascertain the cost effectiveness of each program. If this study is found to be feasible, it will set the stage for a more rational allocation of available resources to correctional programs.

No definitive data are available at the present time to tell us clearly the benefit-cost ratios of any of our programs. Fragmentary data are present on just two programs. The Department's work-release program as it was organized during 1968-69 was found to be only half as costly as institutionalization in the Correctional Complex, all costs and benefits considered (Research Report No. 24). This meant that it would be advantageous to the Department to expand its work release program and try to reduce its population in the Complex.

Since late 1969 the Department has reorganized its work-release program, basing it in community correctional centers (halfway houses) rather than in the D.C. Jail. The benefit-cost ratio of the new arrangement is not yet known. Soon after the development of the Department's narcotic treatment program and its expansion to become a District program, a study was done to obtain preliminary data on the benefit-cost ratios deriving from the new program as compared with the traditional law enforcement/imprisonment approach to narcotic control and rehabilitation. The new program was found to have a benefit-cost ratio of four-to-one at the end of one year in the life of a treated addict and a ratio of 13-to-1 at the end of eleven years. This suggests that the methadone maintenance plus supportive treatment is vastly preferable to the older methods of hand'ing narcotic addiction, both in percentage of "cures" and in the monies expended to obtain those cures and associated benefits related to employment capability, avoidance of crime loss, avoidance of police and prison costs, and so on.

In the absence of more definitive benefit-cost data on current correctional programs, it may be helpful to speculate on what the relevant ratios are for benefits and costs from a variety of programs. Estimates may be attempted from scattered data of various cost-effectiveness studies here in the District and also in the State of California.

If we assume a benefit-cost ratio of 1/1 for the traditional prison, what ratios might be hypothesized for several alternatives to prison? A suggested list follows:

It should be kept in mind that these are rough estimates, derived from unstandardized data in scattered programs. The data also apply only to oneyear results. Benefit-cost ratios sometimes increase with time as the consequences of treatment are allowed to work themselves out. Finally, it must be emphasized that the above ratios are in need of validation by further benefitcost studies.

Senator STEVENSON. Would you say at this point that it is less expensive than jail, or is it the other way around?

Mr. EWING. Well I think, generally speaking, it is less expensive per man.

Senator STEVENSON. In the community correction system?

Mr. EWING. In the community correctional centers. We have relatively short experience with community correctional centers here as is the case elsewhere. But generally speaking it is quite a bit less. Certainly you have far less investment, for example, in capital facilities. In terms of operating costs the differences are, I think, less great frequently, for example, in community correctional centers where much more is attempted in the way of counseling and therapy of various kinds and that seems to be relatively expensive results in a relatively high ratio of staff to inmates.

Senator STEVENSON. And you state too that these programs cost less per man than the facilities in community correctional centers or in the community institutions?

Mr. EWING. Yes; I think that is a fair statement.

Senator STEVENSON. When will we be able to get some comparative figures so that it would be possible to make an educated guess?