Dubois County prepares to handle potential influx of felons
As state legislators nearly unanimously veered away from Governor Mike Pence’s proposed prison increase and instead invested in programs to reduce recidivism, Dubois County Community Corrections is projecting up to a 39 percent increase in participants of the work release program.
The majority of that increase will likely come from nearby counties that don’t have stand-alone community corrections facilities like Dubois County.
House Bill 1006 removed funding for the construction and addition of prisons as requested in Pence’s budget and allocated it for community corrections programs. Along with this, effective January 1, 2016, felons convicted of level 6 felonies — the lowest felony level — will not be handled by the Indiana Department of Corrections any longer. This places the burden of dealing with felons in the countys’ hands.
According to Jenny Fuhs, interim director of the Dubois County Community Corrections, Dubois County already attempts to work with their low level felons through community corrections. Over the past three years, the courts have sent an average of 14 low level felons to the Department of Corrections rather than keeping them in the local system.
Adding those 14 annual admissions into community corrections doesn’t seem too impactful. Since the average participant’s sentence is a little over 80 days, this would equate to an additional three participants a day in a facility that averages 70 participants and has capacity for 102 participants.
However, Dubois County has one of the only stand-alone community corrections programs in Southern Indiana. According to Fuhs, she expects the surrounding counties to begin to request admissions of their own low level felons into the Dubois County work release program.
“We are in the center of a doughnut,” Fuhs explained. “Because we are in that center and these other counties don’t have stand-alone facilities, when they are looking at sending their felons to prison for acts that they feel are severe enough to deserve prison time, they will have to find the highest security option locally.”
But Fuhs says some county jails are already busting at the seams which will force them to place the felons in a work release program. “If they can’t put them in a work release facility, then they will be placing felons on home detention which may not match up the appropriate level of risk with supervision.”
These counties could potentially look to send those felons to Dubois County Community Corrections.
The county corrections facility already works with these counties with participants with ties to Dubois County through work or family but she anticipates requests for admission into the Dubois County program from Martin, Perry, Spencer, Daviess, Warrick, Orange, Pike and Crawford counties will increase.
Fuhs examined the 2012 D-felony admissions reported by those counties — the most recent data she had access to — and determined this could increase the amount of level 6 felony admissions by 27 per day; a 39 percent increase in the community corrections work release population. With an estimated 97 participants incarcerated in the facility, it would nearly be at full capacity of 102 beds.
The other side of this is that the 102 beds are split between areas for men and areas for women. According to Fuhs, women are typically a lower percentage of participants in the program but she only has so many beds for men. Considering that men are the larger percentage of participants in the program, she could run out of capacity for male offenders quicker than female offenders.
“This would likely create a waiting list,” she said.
House Bill 1006, authored by Rep. Greg Steuerwald, R-Avon, will provide funding to help local communities absorb the influx of low-level offenders. Legislators set aside $30 million to fund community corrections programs for the first year and $50 million for the second year. No money will go to increase the size of prisons.
Fuhs reported to the Community Corrections Board that the Department of Corrections (DOC) had asked her to provide a projected budget increase to handle the influx of participants in 2017. The DOC provides community corrections funding through an annual grant; in 2015, Dubois County Community Corrections will receive about $556,000.
Fuhs projected that with the estimated increase in participants and need for new corrections officers and case managers, they would need an additional $8.335 million $778,000 from DOC to increase the state-funded portion of the budget to $1.335 million annually. Plus, the impact of the new participants would likely bleed over into the county jail, courts, and drug programs as well.
The new admissions will still pay the fees associated with the work release program and those are estimated to increase to about $467,000 annually with the additional participation.
Fuhs does have some discretion when choosing to accept admissions from other counties. She reviews their criminal histories and past behavior before deciding to accept them to the county facility.
An important factor in the successful remediation of the participants is community support. By housing the participants in a facility close to their home or work, they have support outside of the program to help them succeed. “We look at their connections to Dubois County. Are they working in Dubois County? Do they have family here,” she said.
Some counties are already looking at solutions for the projected increase in felons that have to be housed locally. But, these counties will likely have to build facilities to house the participants and until then, Dubois County is the only stand-alone facility in the region.
“Over the past week we have had six transfer requests,” Fuhs said. “Usually, we receive one every three weeks.”
We originally wrote that community corrections projected the budget would need to increase to $8.335 million; this was a misprint. The budget would need to increase to $1.335 million. The story has been corrected.
