Analysis Area 1: Analyze crime trends, including recent increases in of violent crime, to help the state understand the impacts of these trends on the criminal justice system, and maintain recent changes that make more effective use of corrections resources, including prison space.
Update: In October, the Kansas Criminal Justice Reform Commission and its subcommittees continued to meet to discuss diversion opportunities, inequities in the criminal justice system, and how race intersects with the work of the Commission. To aid the subcommittees in their work, CSG Justice Center staff continued to share a verbal accounting of the responses received during focus groups with co-responder programs and law enforcement agencies and shared resources on the best practice for collecting, analyzing, and responding to law enforcement stop data so that Kansas may begin to understand the impact of police initiated stops on communities. Additionally, CSG Justice Center staff discussed how to best tailor recommendations to complement the work of the Governor’s Commission on Racial Equity and Justice, which discusses a wide range of social factors that impact racial equity and justice.
Analysis Area 2: Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of community supervision to understand the causes of recidivism and technical violations that result in jail and prison admissions and strengthen community supervision by expanding resources to improve supervision success rates.
Update: In October, CSG Justice Center staff attended supervision-related subcommittee meetings to assist the subcommittees in crafting strong recommendations that address inconsistent practices across supervision agencies in the state; created formal administrative policy for the transfer of supervision between agencies to increase consistency across the state; and drafted a new set of standard conditions of supervision that reduces the standard conditions that would be required by statute, simplifies the language used, and removes conditions that should be applied as special conditions based on assessed needs.
Analysis Area 3: Assess the state’s response to people in the criminal justice system with behavioral health needs and identify opportunities for decreasing recidivism by helping people succeed upon release to the community.
Update: In October CSG Justice Center staff worked with the Commission and its subcommittees to pursue pre-filing diversion as well as strong recommendations for increased support for co-responder programs—the second year in a row the Commission has considered these recommendations for these types of programs. Additionally, the Kansas Stepping Up Technical Assistance (TA) Center pursued a conversation with Policy Research Associates (PRA) to gauge their ability to provide a large-scale Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) training for Kansas counties, meeting a major recommendation of the 2020 Commission.
Analysis Area 4: Assess the state’s current reentry efforts for expanding paths to successful employment, in part by increasing post-secondary education opportunities for incarcerated people and ensuring housing support after release, including for those who have mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, and other special needs.
Update: There is no update to provide from October.
Other Updates:
• The Commission concluded the majority of their work at the end of October. The Commission will meet in mid-November to vote on the recommendations that will comprise the final report.
• Criminal justice reform advocate and Justice Reinvestment Initiative champion Representative Russell Jennings passed away on October 27 after a hard-fought battle against cancer.
Press Clips:
https://lawrencekstimes.com/2021/10/17/dual-supervision/
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