The Providence Journal
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A legislative package that would change how the state’s probation system operates passed a significant milepost Thursday when the state Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously endorsed six bills and sent them on to the full Senate.
Corresponding legislation is still pending in the House.
The six bills, four of which were amended before being endorsed, were the product of a 10-month effort by the Council of State Governments, based in Lexington, Kentucky, and the state’s Justice Reinvestment Working Group, a 27-member panel created by Governor Raimondo to study the state’s probation system and recommend changes.
Rhode Island is in the top two or three states for the number of people on probation or parole per 100,000 residents. Last year, it had about 24,000 people on probation, almost eight times the number in the Adult Correctional Institutions. And the system is skewed racially, with 13 out of every 100 black adults in prison or on probation, compared to two out of every 100 white adults.
The working group’s final report said Rhode Island’s probation system was “in crisis.” The state, it said, overused probation, didn’t track the people in it and overloaded the Adult Correctional Institutions by making it too easy to send probationers back. With the annual cost of imprisoning someone ranging from $54,000 to $83,000 a year, the group said the state could save millions by improving the system.
The bills would require more extensive screening of suspects and probationers to cull dangerous defendants and develop specific programs for those who are not. Among the methods the package would use is empowering the Superior Court to create a diversion program for defendants who are found to need treatment and not incarceration, expand the use of medical parole, reduce from 20 to six years the maximum sentence for some felony assault convictions and institute degrees of larceny that could be punished by fines or sentences of 3, 6, or 10 years.
Others would increase the burden of proof needed to send someone back to prison for a probation violation and make it easier for probation sentences to be converted to suspend sentences. The Department of Corrections would be ordered to track the effects of the legislation and conduct new training for its probation officers.
Around 16 percent of inmates at the ACI have mental health issues. Michael J. McCaffrey, the committee’s chairman, said the diversion program could get many of them treatment, making them lesser risks to reoffend and thus save the state the cost of re-imprisoning them.
Besides the General Assembly, the state Supreme Court is currently considering it own new rules regarding probation sentences.
Raimondo said the changes are intended to get released inmates the help they need to not reoffend by getting multiple state agencies as well as the courts each dealing with the probationers rather than just the Corrections Department.
- She said that multi-branch effort was a result of the working group approach. Giving the panel a disparate membership — it included prosecutors, defense lawyers, police officers, judges, legislators and social justice groups — wasn’t only to provide insights for the panel’s research. She said the wide-ranging membership also helped create a broader consensus that would improve the final product’s chances of passage.
“If you have collaboration,” she said, “you have more buy-in.”
Major changes of probation legislation approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee:
— Senate Bill 2933 would let the Superior Court set up a diversion program to channel qualified defendants with drug or mental health problems into treatment and therapy rather than prison.
— Senate Bill 2934 expands the use of medical parole from inmates with a prognosis of six months to live to those with 18 months and allows it for incapacitated inmates. Requires proposed future criminal justice legislation to include a correctional impact statement and mandates the Corrections Department to track the effects of the new legislation.
— Senate Bill 2935 reduces maximum sentences from 20 years to six years for felonies that don’t involve serious bodily injury, but keeps assaults with a firearm regardless of injury in the 20-year-maximum category.
— Senate Bill 2936 establishes a batterers program, requires more detailed risk assessments for those applying for parole and probation, requires the Corrections Department work with the Health Department on developing programs as well as establishes new methods probation officers must be trained to use.
— Senate Bill 2937 provides more money for the state’s victim restitution fund.
— Senate Bill 2938 raises the standard of proof the state must meet to have a probationer sent back to prison on a violation, lists specific standards with which a person on probation must comply.
Copyright 2016 The Providence Journal