VERA Selects five Corrections Departments for initiative aimed at reducing the use of solitary confinement.

Mar 24 2015

NEW YORK – The Vera Institute of Justice announced today that it has selected five state and local corrections departments to participate in its Safe Alternatives to Segregation (SAS) initiative aimed at reducing their use of solitary confinement and other forms of segregated prisoner housing. The state corrections departments in Nebraska, Oregon, and North Carolina, and local departments in New York City and Middlesex County, New Jersey were chosen after a competitive bidding process.

The purpose of segregated housing is to isolate inmates deemed threats to the safety and security of facilities. But over the past three decades, departments of corrections have increasingly used it to punish disruptive but nonviolent behavior, protect vulnerable inmates, or temporarily house inmates awaiting the completion of a facility transfer. Individuals are held in segregation for days, years, and in some instances, decades.

A growing body of evidence suggests that segregation is counterproductive to facility and public safety. According to

NY Times Op Ed piece, My Night in Solitary, click the inmate to read.

one report, nearly every study of segregation’s effects conducted over the past 150 years has concluded that subjecting an individual to more than 10 days of involuntary segregation negatively impacts his or her emotional, cognitive, social, and physical well-being. Segregation is also expensive, as isolated housing can cost tens of thousands of dollars more per inmate than general population housing. READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE

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.

Reducing Recidivism, State Reports

Fox News attacks a provision of the (ACA) allowing inmates to access Medicaid

Fox News attacked a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that allows certain inmates to be enrolled in Medicaid as “ridiculous and unfair to every taxpayer.” But according to health care and correctional experts, increasing access to health services reduces both the costs associated with incarceration and decreases inmates’ chances of being incarcerated again.