An initial summary and analysis of the recently awarded FY 14 awards was prepared and submitted to BJA. in anticipation of coaches' initial outreach to these sites.
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• Compile an initial summary of FY 14 grant awards.
• Conduct and summarize an analysis of FY 14 awardees' key project components, jurisdictional strengths and challenges, and potential gaps in PREA policy, program or practice and opportunities to maximize cost-effective technical assistance.
Conducted initial outreach to all FY 14 sites to set up phone calls to conduct a needs assessment of sites' TTA needs.
Some calls have been completed, others are in the scheduling process. Once completed, aggregate needs and site specific needs will be assessed and a plan to meet these TTA needs developed. This needs assessment is the initial step in providing coaching support to the FYA 14 grantees.
PRC TTA coaching staff initiated outreach via e-mail correspondence to this grant site's designated point of contact to coordinate and schedule a conference call. A call has been scheduled for April 10 2015 with the Sullivan County team for the purpose of identifying their training and technical assistance needs and determining how the PRC can best support this site's implementation of their grant. During this call, the PRC TA coaches will review the key program aspects of the grant and ask clarifying questions about site-specific priorities and implementation challenges. This needs assessment process will help the PRC TTA coaching staff to better understand the range of proposed activities and to identify core technical assistance needs shared across multiple sites. This process will also inform the development of a TTA plan for the BJA FY '14 PREA demonstration grant sites. The PRC TTA coaches will also describe the range of materials and support available to the agency.
Scheduled and held call with the Kansas representatives to introduce them to their designated PRC coach while providing quarterly outreach to the site for the purpose of check-in and progress monitoring. KD coordinated call to hand off site to Peg who is the designed PRC coach.
Kansas has Interviews this week for the PREA Specialist position. There were 30 applicants and they are interviewing 17 (10 internal staff; external community folks were social workers in the Mental Health field, (juvenile), one Ga. juvenile officer) They will narrow the applicants and complete secondary interviews. Representatives on the panel will include juvenile staff as this position will work closely with the juvenile division. The goal is to have this position filled by mid-November. Testing of the screening tools with the IT staff is ongoing; the software program will also include incident review forms, PREA checklists etc. to serve as a data base for officers. Each facility has 4-5 staff testing the system. IT staff are checking on firewalls and browsers at each site before going live. Weekly updates are sent out by IT folks to the field. Communication between IT and PREA field staff is excellent. Joint training with community providers has been challenging due to scheduling problems. Lisa indicated that they will apply for TA regarding collaboration between community providers, the Department of Corrections and Juvenile Division. The focus will include community provider access to prisons, MOU’s, and finding common ground. December quarterly meeting is set up.
The Kansas Department of Corrections PREA Specialist is hired and begins 11/23/15. The screening tool for victimization and abuse for juveniles is in the process of automation; the adult screening tool is being piloted at several sites with appropriate facility staff reporting to IT on what's working and glitches. This expanded TOADS system will eventually generate data reports. Lansing Correctional Facility mock audit is in November.
Ms. Copeland is developing a Strategic Planning session for the PREA central office staff; it was recommended that once the Plan is developed to enhance the goals with additional stakeholders and a presentation to the Deputy Director. Recommended that someone from Research begin assisting with data correlations and objectives for reports. Dr. Hardyman is working with the female facility to develop a gender responsive classification system for women. Their PREA risk assessment guides are vague according to implementation staff; some questions are gathering repetitive information; some incidents for female offenders are not being captured; they screen male inmates for gender non conforming, but not females. There are other attributes that can be reviewed. PRC staff recommended potential use of Dr. Hardyman to assist with an instrument review or special additional TTA could be provided.
On December 22, 2015 the PREA Grant Coach, Peg Ritchie, conducted a quarterly phone call with Kansas Department of Corrections staff to discuss updates on the Goals and Objectives for their grant. The main focus of their grant is the funding for two personnel positons and consultation/contract support. The primary contraction is an Application Developer III. The Application Developer position has recently turned over and a new person is now being updated on the focus and purpose of PREA and is continuing the work of the web based data integration for PREA. When the web based risk assessment tool is automated they can begin evaluating and validating their instrument. Dr. Hardeman is working on the development of a female offender PREA risk assessment. Five of their nine objectives have been completed. Note that two objectives are part of the same outcome (5 of 8 completed). The audit for the Lansing Correctional Facility is scheduled for March first, 2016. Four of twelve facilities have been audited (Juvenile) and two of the twelve contractors have been abolished. They will request re-purposing of most of the $72,000. O0 slated for those audits.
Our next meeting will be in March, 2016.
Kansas Department of Corrections
March 9, 2016
Quarterly Coaching Update
Attendees: Elizabeth Copeland, State PREA Coordinator and Peg Ritchie, PRC Coach
On March 9, 2015 the PREA Grant Coach, Peg Ritchie, conducted a quarterly phone call with Kansas Department of Corrections staff to discuss updates on the Goals and Objectives for their grant. The main focus of their grant is the funding for two personnel positons and consultation/contract support. The primary contraction is an Application Developer III. The Application Developer position has turned over a second time and a new person hired within the last two weeks is now transitioning into the position and being updated on the focus and purpose of PREA and the transition to a web based application. When the web based risk assessment tool is automated they can begin evaluating and validating their instrument. Dr. Hardeman is working on the development of a female offender PREA risk assessment. Eight of their nine objectives have been completed (88%). The audit for the Lansing Correctional Facility was completed last week. Four of twelve facilities have been audited (Juvenile) and two of the twelve contractors have been abolished. They will request re-purposing of most of the $72,000. O0 slated for those audits.
Additional Information
Information Technology: The PREA Risk Assessment checklist is being tested. The Sexual Assault Review Form is automated and the PREA Compliance Managers have access to review the information. The IT folks continue testing the overall Internal Classification factors on the adult side and can tracking trends and report on progress from the field to the IT Department. Ms. Copland indicated need to meet with her supervisor to as for assistance to ascertain the reason that the Juvenile version of the Classification form is not uploading and the juvenile names are not uploaded into the system. She is not sure if this is an employee issue or system issue. Today she has a meeting with Supervisor in IT to understand why the juvenile names are not being uploaded as a first step. The BETA testing is being held up because of this issue.
One IT programmer consultant, under another BJA DEMONSTRATION Grant is working on the Classification system as a whole and, collaborating with the Application Developer for this grant.
Community Based Provider Updates
The MOU with the Kansas Coalition Sexual Assault and Domestic violence is complete. The Coalition is assisting with problem solving relating to local Centers and the DOC facilities as needed. The DOC and Coalition have regular meetings to identify barriers and gaps. Lisa attends these Committee meetings for issue resolution. The Women’s facility originally had difficult with community providers at one point, but the MOU finally got signed within three weeks with the assistance from the statewide Coalition.
Staff positions funded by the grant: PREA Specialist was hired in November of 2015. The Application Developer (Travis) left and went to another state agency in November of 2015. He had developed the shell and foundation for the pilot and it was being tested in the field. Once he left, the new Developer hired mid-February could not continue in her position as her VISA was going to expire and she did not have a sponsor to extend her. The positions is again filled and progress moves forward.
Funding: re-purpose of monies in the grant
This process has been frustrating. They did submit a re-purpose request (GAN) for $ 6,000.00. They did not need an Auditor for a Michigan audit as the Auditor became part of the consortium. They have requested the $6000.00 be used for out of state travel for the auditor in the consortium. The BJA program contact has been friendly and responsive, however this process has been extended with additional 2 months of requests for more details. (i.e. Breakdown of expenses by year, month, and the methods of how they arrived at the total costs). This process has been difficult. Their previous changes were not that detailed and they didn’t have any problems. The process for internal Fiscal approval gets lengthy. They simply want a final answer from BJA of approval, denial or revise. Lisa says the problem could be her own lack of knowledge (re-submitted again last week).
Risk Tool/Screening Instrument Web Meeting Feedback:
Due to family health problem, Lisa did not attend the recent web meeting; she is reviewing the power points and will send me feedback.
What is working well? What are challenges?
There is a smooth progression toward finale objectives. The biggest challenge is assuring that the Juvenile names are uploaded for Beta testing. The money allocated for funding audits of the Youth Center funds won’t be needed, therefore, $42,000.00 will be requested for repurposing. The Grant end date is 9/2016 so in July Kansas DOC will request an extension. They may need to request a change scope. These are the primary focus areas for the next three months.
The coach shared information on the new details of the Governor’s Assurance process and next year’s Auditor training. Lisa was certified as an Auditor for Adults; may try for juvenile also!! She is auditing for the consortium and the peer feedback process was good.
Wisconsin Department of Corrections
June 15, 2016
Quarterly Coaching Update
Attendees: Christine Preston, State PREA Director, Leigha Weber, PREA Program and Policy Analyst, and Peg Ritchie, PRC Coach
On June 15, 2016 the PREA Coach, Peg Ritchie, conducted a quarterly conference call with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections staff to discuss updates on the Goals and Objectives for their grant. The main focus of the grant is to develop a comprehensive approach to PREA implementation including the development of a PREA database which will include their Risk Assessment Instrument. They have designed and are piloting a gender responsive risk assessments for males and females and plan to validate the instruments.
UPDATES:
The Psychologist position has been re-designed into a Research Analyst position; the job description is approved and moving through their internal process. Thirteen (13) of the fifteen objectives have been met. Primary efforts continue to be related to the IT data integration and analysis. The other objective that has not been met is related to the development of curriculum for annual in-service training for PREA Compliance Managers.
Risk Assessment Implementation
They are still getting feedback from the facilities related to the implementation of their Risk Assessment. The feedback to date includes amending the Guide to make it more user friendly and increasing efficiency. The majority of staff implementing the risk assessment instrument are mental health and classification staff. The male intake facility will be hiring Limited Term Employees (LTE’s) to assist with the risk instrument. The LTE’s will be social workers and investigators in terms of background requirements. They did not develop formal training for staff that are administering the risk assessment. They developed a detailed “guide” on how to administer the risk assessment.
The data base is still in the design phase and they are building the model after their “Offender Complaint System.” A major issue is data storage. Examples include determine if there is enough storage for investigative files, interviews, videos, and tape recordings.
Currently they have over 40,000 risk assessment instrument in a paper format. These documents are housed at the office of the PREA Coordinator. Due to delays in getting the Risk Assessment digital and integrated into their IT system, Ms. Preston explained that the storage of the assessments is a huge issue. She also indicated that until recently the IT focus was for PREA incident tracking, investigation outcomes, retaliation monitoring etc. so the digitizing of the Risk Assessment is a more recent add on.
They have concerns about the Risk Instrument’s confidentiality; they do not want to place the assessments in the general inmate paper files because they could not control who has access to the general files. They have asked the Coach to request information from other PREA Coordinators nationally (list serve the PRC has) on how they are protecting the confidentiality of “paper” risk assessments. Open record laws are possible in Wisconsin according to their legal team and the risk assessment could be discoverable under the Freedom of Information Act.
We discussed some options for how they will digitize the paper Risk Assessments once the IT system is updated (hiring temporary staff to do the data entry or securing a software that would digitize the paper documents and transfer the documents into a digital format).
Budget
They will submit a GAN for the change in position title and description ( from a psychologist position to a data analyst position). They will also request the re-purposing of their travel funds. They will be requesting an extension for the investigative data base and analysis of the screening instrument in July. They do not anticipate the data base to be available for analysis until next spring (2017).
Other
We discussed the fifty (50) incidents that were reported in the BJA January-March, 2016 updated. Ms. Preston indicated that the numbers are similar to the past 3 years. She indicated that they include all types of incidents that are reported. These incidents can only be analyzed at this time as to type (sexual abuse or sexual harassment) and by institution and by outcome (substantiated, unfounded, and unsubstantiated). Ms. Preston will request a high level review of the data that they can assess and look for trends.
The Coach has referred several agencies to Wisconsin DOC for benchmarking with the Wisconsin PREA Risk Assessment.
Our next meeting will be in early August, 2016.
Kansas Department of Corrections
August 11, 2016
Quarterly Coaching Update
Attendees: Elizabeth Copeland, (Lisa) State PREA Coordinator and Peg Ritchie, PRC Coach
On August 11, 2016 the PREA Grant Coach, Peg Ritchie, conducted a quarterly phone call with Kansas Department of Corrections staff to discuss updates on the Goals and Objectives for their grant. The main focus of their grant is funding for three personnel positons (one PREA Compliance Manager for Lansing and a PREA support position for juveniles) and one consultation/contract support staff to assist with risk assessments and the automation of the instruments. When the web based risk assessment tool is automated they can begin evaluating and validating their instruments.
Updates:
Information Technology:
Ms. Copeland met with IT staff this morning. The juvenile names have been added to the new web based software, however they are not sure if the system is reliable so Beta testing continues. October 1, 2016 the new web based PREA system for adults and juveniles will go live across the state. It will be a one stop PREA everything software related to forms, risk assessments, reports, alerts, and real time data.
Ms. Copeland indicated that the GAN will request an extension until December, 2016 for the application developer contract (currently $83 thousand dollars available in funds). The funded PREA Compliant Manager in Lansing will be absorbed by the facility FTE’s. The GAN will also request that the PREA Specialist position for juvenile facilities be extended until 2017
Other:
Lisa indicated that last Friday she spoke at a statewide leadership conference for community providers. Ms. Copeland provided an update on PREA including issues related to victim advocates, confidentiality and MOU’s between facilities and advocate agencies.
Ms. Copeland will send me an email once she receives notice from BJA on acceptance or denial of the GAN.
The next quarterly update will be in November.
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