By Jordan Fouts
The Elkhart Truth, Ind.
GOSHEN, Ind. — After unexpectedly losing over $200,000 in state funding, the sheriff’s office hopes to keep two caseworkers who are responsible for jail programs meant to reduce recidivism.
The Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office abruptly lost around $230,000 it was receiving from the Indiana Department of Corrections to pay for intensive case managers who help with a range of jail programs. Chief Deputy Sean Holmes informed the Elkhart County Council about losing the grant during budget hearings last week.
“The DOC canceled our program grants. They canceled everybody’s. The IDOC apparently doesn’t think jail programs is a good program. I think it is,” he said. “We’d like to find ways to keep this program going, because in my opinion, it’s very good for the community.”
The department didn’t learn that the IDOC had cut the grant until shortly before presenting its budget to county officials, according to Capt. Mike Culp with the sheriff’s office.
“Usually, we would be aware of that and be able to make some arrangements and figure some things out prior to the budget process. So we were not anticipating that,” he said. “I believe every sheriff’s office that had the programs, they all were reduced to zero dollars available.”
The county had received the Community Corrections and Justice Reinvestment Grant since 2016, according to Culp. He said it paid for two case managers, and the department now has to find replacement funding if it wants to keep them.
“We have two case managers and a programs director. The sheriff’s office fully funds that program director’s position,” he said. “The sheriff has been working with the council and commissioners to find a solution ... so that we can keep the programs in place in our facility. Because it does a lot – we talk about reducing recidivism, we talk about providing people with skills and tools, coping mechanisms, etc., so that when they do leave the facility, they’re better prepared to get back into society and be successful and not come back. That’s really the goal.”
Culp said there’s a waitlist for program participants, and that applicants are evaluated on their disciplinary history and type or level of offense. Participants were enrolled in more than 1,200 classes last year, which addressed areas such as anger management, domestic violence, job readiness, victim impact and relapse prevention.
Outside organizations also teach a number of classes. Those include high school diploma or equivalency testing by The Crossing, financial education from Horizon Education Alliance and LaCasa and parenting by Jail Ministries of Elkhart County.
County council members expressed surprise at the sudden loss of funding.
“These are programs to help the prisoners reform themselves, and the state canceled those two people,” council President Tom Stump said. “Well that’s just interesting to me, because we’ve been talking about that and how to reduce recidivism. That would seem like a way to do it, but now the state’s canceling the funds for that.”
Holmes said studies have shown the effectiveness of the jail programs, such as one conducted by Notre Dame that looked at participants between 2019 and 2021.
“We had Notre Dame help us with our study on recidivism, and it shows with different programs and demographics and how it works, that it is helping,” he said. “What I don’t understand is, these people come in, the majority of them probably making bad choices or bad education, and this helps.”
He said they’d like to keep the two caseworkers on staff despite a repeated catchphrase by council members: “When the grant goes away, the position goes away.” Holmes said keeping offenders out of jail saves the county the high cost of incarceration.
More than just cost savings, he said the anti-recidivism programs have an impact on inmates’ lives.
“I get what we say about grant-funded positions, but this is a good thing for the community and it does help people. Not everybody, but if it helps 10 people – I’m just throwing that out there – that’s a savings, because they don’t come back to jail. Because it’s expensive to have somebody in that facility,” Holmes said. “I believe in it and I hope we can have a conversation about it and try to figure something out. They’re going back out into the community, so if we can provide them with some skills that help them be productive, then we should be doing that.”
“Ready or not, they go back to the community,” Councilman Randy Yohn said.
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