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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 12:22 am
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Results for residential facilities
1 results foundAuthor: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Audit Division Title: Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Management of Inmate Placements in Residential Reentry Centers and Home Confinement Summary: The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) provides a variety of reentry programming to help incarcerated inmates successfully transition back into society. As part of its release preparation, BOP has the authority to place inmates in residential reentry centers (RRC), also known as halfway houses, and/or home confinement while serving the remainder of their sentences. BOP may determine that an inmate should not be placed into either an RRC or home confinement because, for example, the inmate poses a significant threat to the community. An inmate placed in an RRC and/or home confinement remains in BOP custody. RRCs provide a supervised environment that support inmates in finding employment and housing, completing necessary programming such as drug abuse treatment, participating in counseling, and strengthening ties to family and friends. Home confinement provides similar opportunities, but is used for inmates BOP believes do not need the structure provided by RRCs. Inmates placed in home confinement are monitored and are required to remain at home when not working or participating in release programing and other approved activities. Pursuant to the Second Chance Act of 2007, all federal inmates are eligible for RRC and home confinement placement. However, BOP's placement decisions are supposed to be driven by an individual assessment weighing an inmate's need for reentry services against the risk to the community. Inmates can be placed in RRCs for up to 12 months but can only spend a maximum of 6 months, or 10 percent of the term of imprisonment, whichever is shorter, in home confinement. In fiscal year 2015, the BOP spent $360 million on RRC and home confinement costs and, as of September 2016, BOP reported having 181 RRCs operated by 103 different contractors. The Office of the Inspector General assessed BOP’s RRC and home confinement programs, including its placement policy and practices, program capacity planning and management, and strategic planning and performance management. The audit covers inmates released from BOP custody from October 2013 through April 2016, either directly from BOP institutions, RRCs, or home confinement. Based on our analysis, we found that 94,252 inmates released from BOP custody during the scope of our audit were eligible for placement in an RRC and/or home confinement. BOP placed 79 percent of these eligible inmates into RRCs and/or home confinement - 75 percent were initially placed in RRCs and only 4 percent went directly into home confinement. The remaining 21 percent were released directly from a BOP institution. Our audit found that BOP's RRC and home confinement placement policies and guidance, which are designed to identify individual inmate risks and needs while simultaneously weighing these against the safety of the community and available resources, appear reasonable. In our judgment, the inmate's security level at the time of placement is the best indicator of inmate risk and need for transitional services because it incorporates key recidivism risk factors, as well the inmate's behavior during incarceration. As a result, we analyzed BOP’s RRC and home confinement placement practices based on the exit security level of inmates released from BOP custody during the scope of our audit. Our analysis determined that, contrary to BOP policy, BOP guidance, and relevant research, BOP's RRC and home confinement placement decisions are not based on inmate risk for recidivism or need for transitional services. Rather, we found that BOP is placing the great majority of eligible inmates into RRCs regardless of inmate risk for recidivism or need for transitional services, unless the inmate is deemed not suitable for such placement because the inmate poses a significant threat to the community. As a result, low-risk, low-need inmates are far more likely to be placed in RRCs than high-risk, high-need inmates. Specifically, we found that of the 94,252 inmates released between October 2013 and April 23, 2016, 90 percent of minimum security and 75 percent of low security inmates are placed in RRCs and/or home confinement. However, only 58 percent of high security level inmates were transitioned into the community through RRCs, while 42 percent were released into the community directly from a BOP institution. We recognize this may be a result of the fact that many of the high security inmates were considered a public safety risk. Nonetheless, at the time they would be placed in an RRC, on average these inmates are within 4 months of being released into the community upon completion of their sentence. Thus BOP must weigh the immediate risk of placing high-risk inmates in RRCs against the risk of releasing them back into society directly from BOP institutions without transitional reentry programming. It also appears that BOP is underutilizing direct home confinement placement as an alternative to RRC placement for transitioning low-risk, low-need inmates back into society. This underutilization of direct home confinement placement was evident when we reviewed data on placement of minimum and low security inmates and found that BOP placed only 6 percent of even those lower risk inmates directly into home confinement, despite BOP policy and guidance stating that direct home confinement placement is the preferred placement for low-risk, low-need inmates. This is particularly concerning given that BOP guidance, as well as the research cited in the guidance, indicates that low-risk inmates do not benefit from and may in fact be harmed by RRC placement because, among other things, of their exposure to high-risk offenders in those facilities. Moreover, the underutilization of direct home confinement for low-risk, low need inmates results in fewer RRC resources being available for high-risk, high-need inmates since the RRC inmate population is already at or in excess of BOP’s contracted capacity. In addition, this practice may also further strain high security BOP institutions that are already well above capacity. We found that, from October 2013 through March 2016, the RRC population has remained at about 101 percent of contracted capacity, while the home confinement population averaged nearly 159 percent of contracted monitoring capacity, despite BOP’s apparent underutilization of it as an alternative to RRC placement. The home confinement capacity issues resulted, at least in part, from BOP’s policy to aggressively pursue transitioning inmates from RRCs to home confinement as soon as possible in an effort to increase RRC capacity. This reduces the capacity for direct home confinement placements and, additionally, may result in inmates being transitioned from RRCs to home confinement too early, as evidenced by the fact that 17 percent of inmates were placed back into RRCs for violating home confinement program rules. We also found that BOP lacks adequate performance measures to evaluate the success of its RRC and home confinement programming. Although BOP has RRC and home confinement placement targets, these targets do not measure the effectiveness of RRC and home confinement programs. Additionally, the placement targets – 85 percent from minimum, 75 percent from low, 70 percent from medium, and 65 percent from high security level institutions – appear to encourage institutions to maximize the number of inmates placed in RRCs or home confinement, regardless of transitional need. In fact, the issues we identified with BOP’s current placement practices may be driven, in part, by its RRC and home confinement placement targets. The success of BOP’s RRC and home confinement programs relies on the quality of programming provided by its RRC contractors, all of whom also provide services to and monitor inmates in home confinement. However, we found that BOP’s policy for monitoring its RRC contractors focuses on assessing compliance with the contractual Statements of Work, rather than assessing the quality of services provided by the RRC contractors. Specifically, we did not identify any requirement that RRC contractors or BOP collect, retain, and report any statistics pertaining to RRC or home confinement program performance or success or failure rates. If these measures were available, BOP could then incorporate these figures into its strategic planning, which might assist it in assessing its programs and RRC contractors based on measurable qualitative achievements as opposed to simply trying to meet numerical quotas. Our report makes five recommendations to improve BOP’s management of inmate placements in RRCs and home confinement. Details: Washington, DC: Office of the Inspector General, 2016. 56p. Source: Internet Resource: Audit Division 17-01: Accessed December 21, 2016 at: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/a1701.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/a1701.pdf Shelf Number: 147774 Keywords: Federal Bureau of PrisonsHalfway HousesHome ConfinementOffender ManagementPrisoner ReentryResidential Facilities |