Priority Area 1: Engage and educate Kansas stakeholders on Justice Reinvestment policies and legislation to promote oversight and sustainability.
Update: No update in July.
Priority Area 2: Assist Kansas with monitoring progress, collecting data, and tracking outcomes associated with JRI policies.
Update: In July, the KSSC’s subaward request for $276,000 was approved by BJA, and KSSC began working with Domo Inc. to upgrade their Electronic Journal Entry system. The journal entries will serve as a data collection tool and will revolutionize how sentencing and probation revocation data for felonies are captured and processed in the state.
The KDOC, Prisoner Review Board (PRB), and the Office of Judicial Administration (OJA) also submitted their second Category 2 subaward application to support further IT system upgrades. The KDOC requested $90,000 to improve the effectiveness of and support upgrades to their Athena data system. The PRB requested $37,280 to spend on equipment upgrades for members, such as laptops, phones, and a virtual conferencing monitor. OJA requested $91,000 to support upgrades to Tyler Supervision, a case management software system. Subaward funding will help ensure that sentencing, plea, and criminal history data are displayed in the system simply and accurately, which will benefit both the OJA user and the receiving agency. With this second application, Kansas has requested a total of $494,280 in subaward funding to build their capacity to implement and track the outcomes of JRI policy and practice changes.
In continuation of data monitoring work, CSG Justice Center staff met with Kira Johnson (SB 123 Director, KSSC) to discuss data measures to understand the impacts of SB 123 (2021) substance use treatment diversion. There are significant gaps in data collection for this program, and KSSC plans to collaborate with DOC to try to address them. CSG Justice Center staff will track this work to understand the impact of SB 123 in the future.
Priority Area 3: Improve the community supervision system by creating efficiencies, consistency, coordination, and collaboration between OJA, KDOC, and Community Corrections entities.
Update: In July, CSG Justice Center staff, with support from the Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP), continued to facilitate collaborative community supervision implementation meetings. Stakeholders from KDOC, OJA, the PRB, and Community Corrections, as well as Chief Court Services officers, worked together to prioritize legislative and administrative supervision changes stemming from KCJRC recommendations and legislation. This month, the implementation group focused on establishing “primary” and “secondary” supervision responsibility for situations where a person has an active supervision case in more than one jurisdiction.
Additionally, the work group began discussing the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) process between OJA and KDOC, as required by SB 408. This MOU is required to codify the process of streamlining jurisdictions for concurrent supervision cases. The supervision agencies are trying to execute the MOU by October 2022.
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 July, CSG Justice Center staff worked with CEPP and the Chair of the PRB to determine a training plan for the PRB in decision-making best practices. Topics for this series of training will include early discharge of parole cases, clemency decision-making, and issues regarding revocations. CEPP will continue to work with the PRB to set specific dates for the trainings, which will take place this fall
Priority Area 5: Engage with KDOC and KDADS to improve reentry and behavioral health services for people in the criminal justice system.
Update: On July 7 and 12, Policy Research Associates (PRA) and CSG Justice Center staff built on June’s Sequential Intercept Mapping (SIM) activities by facilitating an action planning meeting for the Western Region SIM summit. Leaning on the general priorities identified during the larger June 15 meeting, the various agencies sought to tailor action steps to identify priority areas based on specific locations within the region. As a result of these meetings, resources will be directed to specific counties. For example, certain counties will stagger their request for behavioral health support so as not to overwhelm the system and better ensure that varied services are available. Additionally, due to the success of the Western Region SIM summit, KDADS is looking to fund additional SIM summits for the remaining regions of the state to continue building on the momentum and successes happening within the behavioral health system.
New Insights:
Representative Stephen Owens (Co-chair Joint Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice) is up for re-election in November 2022 and will be running unopposed. Representative Owens is the legislative champion for JRI in Kansas, and this provides an opportunity for outstanding JRI policies to be re-introduced during the 2023 legislative session.
Press Clips:
Governor Laura Kelly Celebrates the Launch of the 988 Mental Health Lifeline in Kansas
District Attorney Suzanne Valdez Pledges to Visit Kansas Correctional Facilities
Mental Health Services Expanding into Jails Across Kansas
Kansas corrections system grapples with 22.6 percent vacancy rate among uniformed prison staff
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