new York – According to a report recently released by the New York–based Vera Institute of Justice, entitled the “Price of Jails”, the Hampden County correctional system has reduced its inmate population by 30 percent since 2008, resulting in an annual savings of 13.1 million dollars, as compared to what the annual budget would be if the inmate count had not been reduced. The inmate count is 624 less on a daily basis than it was in 2008. The three-year rate of return to jail by those who have been released, or “recidivism”, has been reduced at the Hampden County Correctional Center by 27 prcent since 2001. Sheriff Michael J. Ashe, Jr. credits this reduction of inmates and resultant cost saving to the “broad and deep effort that the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department staff makes to challenge those in its custody to pick up the tools and directions to build a law-abiding life.”
?Specifically, the Hampden County Correctional Center has a policy whereby those in its custody should spend 40 hours per week in productive activities such as work within the institution or programs that prepare them to be law-abiding citizens.
The Sheriff’s Department has also developed a three month long re-entry continuum of gradual, supervised, supported community re-entry by offenders and has partnered with 300 community non-profits to assist in its offender re-entry effort.
In the “Day Reporting” program, begun by Sheriff Ashe in 1987, offenders at the end of their sentence are allowed to live at home, monitored by GPS and Day Reporting staff. They adhere to a strict daily schedule of community programs and work, report in daily, and are subject to urine and breathalyzer substance use screening tests. The cost to supervise an offender in Day Reporting is considerably less than the cost of 24/7 incarceration in a correctional facility. “Most importantly” the Sheriff says, “this program has been safe, because participants are carefully selected and very closely monitored and supervised.”
?Ashe went on to say that although Day Reporting is at the end of the continuum of community re-entry by offenders, “re-entry begins on day one of incarceration.”
