By Kay Fate
Post-Bulletin
ROCHESTER, MN — “You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”
It’s a sentiment Robyn Wood sees every day on her desk, as well as a principle she lives every day.
She’s the director of the intensive supervised release program for Olmsted County Corrections, and she has seen her share of people who are down. She sees what begets success and what doesn’t. So does Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem. Wood and Ostrem see what can help a person turn the corner to a better life or turn back to prison.
Wood and two others each have a caseload of 15 convicted felons who have been identified as high-risk, violent or sexual offenders, meriting closer probation. Their offenses range from homicide to sexual assault, robbery or aggravated assault, or serious offenses compounded by prior convictions for violent or predatory crimes.
Other probation officers in the department have as many as 40 cases.
The intensive supervised release program – as its name implies – is designed to keep a much closer eye on men and women who have been released from prison. Typically, it’s the ISR probation officer who picks the offender up on the day he’s released.
For the first four months, the offender and probation officer meet a minimum of four times per week; the next four months, a minimum of twice per week.
Making decisions
Almost everything the offender does must first meet the approval of the probation officer, from housing to jobs to the time they spend at meetings and classes.
“We don’t restrict them,” Wood said, “but we do a lot of approval of who they’re getting rides from, who they’re living with, who they’re working with.
“The list of rules is two pages long, with specific conditions,” she said of the standard ISR paperwork. Of course, “these are people who struggle with rules and authority – that’s why they’re in this predicament – but they know they put themselves there.”
The rigid structure requires compassion – or at least a sense of reality.
“You hear the (criminal) charge, and that’s who you think that person is,” she said. “It’s a mistake they’ve made, but it doesn’t define them. They’re a brother, a son, a father. There’s so much more to them. They can make changes in their lives; if they’re ready, we’re here to help them with that.
“We try to help them not recreate the storm” that first sent them to prison, Wood explained. “We try to get them into programming that will address their issues: sexual offenses, drugs, violence.”
Providing resources
The probation officers go to the program with the offenders. Wood sits in on a healthy relationships class every week with 18 offenders – not all on her caseload.
She and her co-workers are there not only to monitor, but to provide resources. Typical offerings include classes on parenting, budgeting, education, public health – all voluntary, but highly encouraged. Community resources such as the Salvation Army and Channel One Food Shelf are used “all the time,” Wood said.
The two biggest obstacles to overcome, all the experts agree, are housing and employment.
“They usually have very limited connections with appropriate resources,” Wood said of the people who come out of prison. The men on intensive supervised release go first to a transitional housing area, which holds up to eight men.
While there are employers in the area who are willing to hire convicted felons – and in fact, the federal government offers grant money to those who do hire them – it’s often a hard sell. Thanks to a change in state law, felons no longer have to admit to their criminal past on job applications, but how do you explain away a three-year gap in employment? Or a nine-year gap?
Jobs help success
There are no statistics, Wood said, but finding work “would increase the chances greatly” that the offender will stay out of trouble.
“When they’re working, they’re not tempted to earn money in illegal ways, or have to borrow money,” she said. “They feel better about themselves, they’re busy, they’re contributing to society. You see it in them emotionally; their mental health and attitude improve.”
It’s an end to the cycle of helplessness and hopelessness, Wood said, when the offenders can start paying for housing, paying fines, paying restitution, paying back child support.
Learning a trade
Every correctional facility has employment on some level, and each has a specialty: In Faribault, the woodworking program is highly praised.
But not every prisoner is offered the opportunity to learn a skill – something Ostrem would like to see change.
“I wish the DOC had the ability to provide some more significant skills,” he said. “There’s a certain amount of training, a certain amount of vocations, but they don’t have the money to provide the highly-skilled training at all prisons.”
The tax incentives and grant money for employers help with employment on the outside, Ostrem said, “but we’ve got so many people out looking for work. All other things being equal, if you’ve got a choice, who are you going to pick? It’s a no-brainer. They’re probably not going to hire a felon.”
St. Cloud has an excellent masonry program, Ostrem said, but again, not enough money to provide it to everyone who wants to learn.
“If there could be some robust vocational training (in prisons), that’d be so helpful,” he said. “Once (offenders) start making a little bit of money, they can get housing, they can start paying their taxes. They don’t need to revert to some of their roots.”
The trades – plumbing, carpentry, electrical, HVAC, masonry – all have a bright future locally, Ostrem said.
“You think of DMC and all the construction that’s supposedly going to be going on, but that takes training and experience,” he said, which offenders just aren’t getting now.
“I’ve talked to the commissioner of the DOC; I know the programs they have are good,” Ostrem said. “The problem is, they just don’t have enough money. They’re probably never going to have enough money.”
Funding priorities
It comes down to priorities, as it always does.
“Do we provide educational support, chemical dependency and domestic abuse support, counseling? Or do we provide vocational training? Sex offender programming can’t be cut, so maybe that means we don’t have as many masonry programs,” he said. “I appreciate that there have been some restrictions placed on what they can and can’t do; I think (the DOC) made the right choices.”
Even so, Ostrem said, there still has to be support for the released offenders, something that’s a hard sell to the public.
“We convict these people of crimes and they deserve to be sanctioned,” he said. “I get that. If they’re beating people up, they’re shooting people, they’re selling drugs, they belong behind the razor wire. They got what they deserved, and the public wants to know why they should care about them.
“I get that,” he repeated, “until the day they walk out from behind that razor wire, and now we’ve got to deal with them again. Had we given them some resources while they’re in there, maybe we wouldn’t have to.”
That’s what Wood wants – and she knows success after prison is possible.
“I had a female offender show up with her college degree and her business card,” she said. “A guy gets a full-time job; another says school’s going well; another got his driver’s license; somebody reunited with their family. It’s success; it just depends on how I measure it.”