Priority Area 1: Engage and educate Kansas stakeholders on Justice Reinvestment policies and legislation to promote oversight and sustainability.
Update: in March 2022, CSG Justice Center staff conducted a site visit and continued ongoing video meetings to educate and coordinate with stakeholders to advance the policies recommended by the Kansas Criminal Justice Reform Commission. These meetings included dialogue about creating opportunities for more specialty courts to respond to people with addiction, incentivizing good behavior and recovery by allowing people to be removed from the public drug registry, and reducing barriers to success on community supervision by eliminating concurrent supervision.
CSG Justice Center staff met in person with state leaders and agency management including the chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court and key members of the House and Senate, the Kansas Department of Corrections, the Prisoner Review Board, and the Kansas Sentencing Commission. The meetings helped ensure that state leaders understood policy recommendations, aided in building consensus and support, and identified potential allies to assist with maintaining momentum to make progress.
In addition to the efforts on the ground, CSG Justice Center staff met with Andy Hanson (Director of Education, Office of Judicial Administration) to discuss OJA’s judicial training efforts and how they can be leveraged to educate judges about KCJRC recommendations and corresponding administrative changes. Hanson shared that there are many initiatives going on in the state for training and highlighted the statewide judicial conference in October, at which CSG Justice Center staff hope to present. Throughout the month, CSG Justice Center staff met with various judges to discuss the KCJRC’s recommendations and received input on implementing changes administratively and the best ways to reach judges statewide. The goal of these meetings, which CSG Justice Center staff will continue in April, is to connect with judges in various districts to hear their thoughts on conditions of supervision and dual supervision.
CSG Justice Center staff met with the chairman of the Prisoner Review Board (PRB) Jonathan Ogletree to discuss the agency’s implementation of administrative and legislative recommendations of the KCJRC. The meeting focused on conditions of supervision and his support for the change. Chairman Ogletree expressed his understanding of the difficulties from having so many conditions imposed and his desire to help implement the change in his role within the PRB. He hopes to work with judges and called it a “worthwhile effort.” CSG Justice Center staff also engaged Stephanie Springer (President, Kansas Association of Court Services Officers) to discuss the efforts put forth by the Commission related to community supervision and to discuss how to speak with chief court services officers and court services officers (CSOs) about the changes. Springer shared that there are a lot of differing opinions in the state; everyone supports some areas and people are hesitant about others. CSG Justice Center staff also inquired whether there is an opportunity to provide webinars, which she encouraged. As CSG Justice Center staff move forward, we will target engagement of CSOs to help facilitate buy-in.
Priority Area 2: Assist Kansas with monitoring progress, collecting data, and tracking outcomes associated with JRI policies.
Update: In March, CSG Justice Center staff met with Amy Raymond (Chief of Trial Court Services, Office of Judicial Administration—OJA) and Spence Koehn (Court Officer Specialist, Office of Judicial Administration) to discuss spending items for the subaward. OJA will consider adding the option for trainings on sanctions and incentives for Court Services officers.
CSG Justice Center staff also asked OJA to consider other funding areas such as equipment and data system upgrades. While there are no pressing equipment needs, OJA will consider updates that they can make to their new system so it can incorporate sanctions and incentive areas. If the subaward funding can support data system upgrades, it can help track the progress and outcomes of the implementation of new KCJRC recommendations from 2021.
CSG Justice Center staff connected with Scott Schultz (Executive Director, Kansas Sentencing Commission) and John Grube (Director of Research, Kansas Sentencing Commission) to discuss data monitoring efforts in the state and the Sentencing Commission’s subaward application for data system upgrades. CSG Justice Center staff are collaborating with the Sentencing Commission to identify data monitoring metrics and understand the reporting capabilities of Kansas criminal justice agencies.
Priority Area 3: Improve the community supervision system by creating efficiencies, consistency, coordination, and collaboration between OJA, KDOC, and Community Corrections entities.
Update: In March 2022, CSG Justice Center staff met separately with OJA leaders Amy Raymond (Chief of Trial Court Services) and Spence Koehn (Court Officer Specialist), KDOC Deputy Secretary Hope Cooper, and Chairman Jonathan Ogletree (Prisoner Review Board) to discuss implementation priorities. CSG Justice Center staff sought to identify how they viewed the tasks outlined from the KCJRC and determine their willingness to participate in an interagency collaborative workgroup.
Chief of Trial Court Services Amy Raymond expressed her desire to connect directly with Deputy Secretary Hope Cooper to better understand their shared priorities and identify areas for collaboration. Chairman Jonathan Ogletree agreed to join the collaborative workgroup and provide any necessary support to help direct implementation. Hope Cooper also looks forward to the workgroup and continues to notify CSG Justice Center staff about state relationship dynamics to inform implementation planning.
Priority Area 4: Implement standardized general conditions of supervision and utilize a risk, need, responsivity (RNR) framework to select special conditions of supervision.
Update: In March 2022, Chairman Jonathan Ogletree expressed to CSG Justice Center staff his desire to direct subaward funding to support training. The areas Chairman Ogletree hopes to support with training can be completed with support from the Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP).
CEPP staff are currently supporting the Kansas DOC through the Innovations in Supervision grant, separately from JRI. They are also a JRI contractor. CSG Justice Center staff worked to extend CEPP’s contract so they can expand their work to help support Kansas’s Justice Reinvestment Initiative efforts.
Priority Area 5: Engage with KDOC and KDADS to improve reentry and behavioral health services for people in the criminal justice system.
Update: CSG Justice Center staff and KDADS have engaged with Policy Research Associates (PRA) to begin the planning for hosting a statewide Sequential Intercept Mapping (SIM) summit. KDADS is planning a parallel SIM Summit for intellectual and developmental disabilities, and CSG Justice Center and PRA staff worked to ensure the JRI SIM efforts are additive and coordinated with this separate summit. The SIM summit will provide recommendations and best practices on how the state can support and uplift services that help those living with a mental illness, substance use disorder, and co-occurring disorders.
New Insights:
• CSG Justice Center staff have found that there is an increasing level of distrust between Community Corrections and KDOC. Although KDOC and Community Corrections have worked well together in the past, the budgetary fight during the current legislative session has soured the relationship. Community Corrections agencies are advocating in the legislature for an increase in Community Corrections officer pay to match a pay raise Court Services officers received last year, but they are receiving significant pushback. Additionally, CSG Justice Center staff also have a sense that there is an unwillingness on the part of OJA to collaborate in creating a group to move forward some policies administratively. CSG Justice Center staff are watching all of this closely and strategizing to overcome these obstacles, as KDOC, Community Corrections agencies, and chief Court Services officers need to collaborate productively to forward JRI implementation goals.
• Representative Owens, Scott Schultz, and Jennifer Roth (Public Defender Association) are still working with CSG Justice Center staff to keep bills HB 2361 (Specialty Courts), HB 2515 (Drug Registry Relief), HB 2658, and HB 2654 (Eliminating Dual/Concurrent Supervision) moving. As of the end of the month, it looked likely that HB 2361 would be enacted, and the other bills were still viable.
• Both the KDOC and OJA are currently implementing new systemwide data and case management systems. OJA is implementing a system from Tyler Supervision and KDOC is implementing the Microsoft Athena system. These projects began in 2021 and will continue throughout 2023, and both are experiencing significant implementation challenges. OJA’s system is currently being piloted in three districts and its statewide rollout has been delayed. KDOC is dealing with significant glitches in the Athena system that also impact the PRB. CSG Justice Center staff are working with Kansas stakeholders to determine how the active implementation of new data systems may impact both data monitoring and subaward funding requests, as it may be difficult for them to pull data for monitoring while they are getting new systems up and running, and they have a long list of IT changes already in the works that may impact the desire to use subaward funding to improve JRI-related reporting.
Press Clips:
• New dashboard highlights mental health and criminal justice system collaborative
• Incarceration rates demographics in Kansas
• Congress sends over $11.5 million to Kansas law enforcement agencies
• Attorney general candidates Kobach, Mattivi and Warren hunt for votes, work to disarm rivals
• Tyler Technologies Completes First Phase of State of Kansas Supervision Implementation
• House GOP’s draft of new state budget spikes Kelly’s $460 million tax rebate
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