recidivism – test

From my inbox to yours!

Dear Colleague:

From its inception, Community Oriented Correctional Health Services (COCHS) has viewed connectivity not only as a way to link justice-involved people to services but also as a way to link people in the criminal justice and health care sectors to information.

COCHS CIO Ben Butler is an expert on the myriad issues involved in creating information connectivity between criminal justice and health care. With the rise of big data come new opportunities for magnifying the power of information technology. In a new issue paper, Predictive Analytics in Criminal Justice and Health Care: Three Case Studies, Ben examines how health care providers are working with criminal justice providers to use predictive analytics for reducing incarceration, improving health, and maintaining public safety. Although this work is still in its early stages, the kinds of initiatives discussed in Ben’s paper will no doubt someday be the norm.

Meanwhile, Health Affairs, the nation’s leading health policy journal, recently published Ben’s letter suggesting that jails offer an interesting opportunity to test the efficacy of health information exchange (HIE) for improving the health of a very vulnerable population.

As you know, COCHS has widely disseminated the message that significant numbers of people in jail are there because of untreated behavioral health problems. When these problems continue to go untreated in jail, they can lead to behavior that causes inmates to wind up in solitary confinement, where conditions are even more detrimental to mental health issues.

Last week, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote an important concurring opinion for Davis v. Ayala, in which he noted the “human toll wrought by extended terms of isolation” and the inadequacy of current judicial mechanisms for determining the role of solitary confinement in inmate sentencing. Citing COCHS collaborator Dr. Homer Venters, Justice Kennedy wrote that recent research detailing the psychological toll of confinement on inmates challenges us to re-examine the way we view punishment.

With his concurrence, Justice Kennedy has opened the door for the Supreme Court to examine the conditions of confinement and the effects of these conditions on inmates’ mental health. Justice Kennedy foresees a time when the judiciary will “determine whether workable alternative systems for long-term confinement exist, and, if so, whether a correctional system should be required to adopt them.”

With your help, we have brought these alternative systems closer to becoming a reality.

Steven Rosenberg

President, COCHS

Congratulations to Kings County Probation!

CA Attorney General Recognizes Kings County Probation Department for Juvenile Reentry Efforts

California Attorney General Kamala Harris (pictured left) recently awarded the Kings County (CA) Probation Department with a Recidivism Reduction Certificate of Commendation for its work with youth. The department, which is in the process of developing a comprehensive reentry strategic plan aimed at reducing recidivism for youth committed to the county juvenile detention center, received a Second Chance Act Juvenile Reentry Systems Reform planning grant through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in 2014.

“Stepping Up” aims to keep mentally ill out of our jails

A Crisis in Our Jails

People with mental illnesses need proper treatment, not jail sentences.

New Papers Highlight ACA’s Impacts on Correctional Health Care System

Letter from the president of COCHS cochs

Dear Colleague,

With the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, Community Oriented Correctional Health Services (COCHS) recognized the potentially huge implications of parity and Medicaid expansion for the criminal justice system. We have published several papers on these issues, all of which are available on our website at: www.cochs.org.

But the ACA is having other, less widely recognized impacts as well, most notably by driving the creation of consumer-driven health care systems within correctional settings, as well as the establishment of payment arrangements based on value instead of volume.

Two new papers from COCHS address these developments in depth:

Consumer Rights Come to Jail: How the Affordable Care Changes the Rights of Individuals Pending Disposition, by COCHS General Counsel Daniel J. Mistak, describes how the ACA endows individuals pending disposition with new consumer rights — and the implications of those rights.

Development of a Performance-Based RFP for Correctional Health Care Services in Vermont, by COCHS Research Associate Ben Watts, is a case study of how a state correctional health care system created a new performance-based contractual model in alignment with state and federal health reforms.

I think you will find both these reports very informative. I encourage you to read them and share them with your colleagues.

Best wishes,

Steven Rosenberg

President, COCHS

Reducing Recidivism: States Deliver Results

In Reducing Recidivism: States Deliver Results, the National Reentry Resource Center (NRRC) highlights eight states that have achieved reductions in statewide recidivism in recent years: Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. The report focuses on statewide recidivism data for adults released in 2007 and 2010 with a three-year follow-up period, offering a current snapshot of criminal justice outcomes in these states. The report also features examples of recidivism-reduction strategies and programs that the states have undertaken in this timeframe, as well as additional data on the state’s criminal justice populations through 2013.