State Senator Andy Berke of Chattanooga got the Senate to agree Thursday with a bill that sets up a pilot program to create a re-entry plan for people being released from prison.
Last year the state Department of Correction released more than sixty-five hundred prisoners. And it checked in almost five thousand who re-offended, broke their parole, or fouled up on while serving sentences in their communities.
Berke says his bill gives those inmates a better chance.
“There’s an ‘exit plan’ so that every prisoner will have a plan as to what they’re going to do when they leave the doors, and the second thing that it’s going to do is make sure that when people have problems after they’ve left, that the Probation and Parole has the authority to deal with that.”
Under Berke’s plan, parole officers would act more like social workers or case managers and less like jailers.
If the bill passes both houses, the program would begin in just three counties that are not spelled out in the proposal.
WEB EXTRA
Berke says the new program is based on evidence, rather than good intentions.
“We’ve used the best methods that we’ve seen from other states in terms of testing and planning, and the other thing that we’ve done is, we’ve got all the agencies working together, so that instead of everybody having a different role, we are all working together to ensure that recidivism is as low as possible.”
The bill is SB 104 Berke / HB 610 Stewart
In the House the bill has passed the scrutiny of the House State & Local Government Committee and is due to be heard in the House Budget Subcommittee Wednesday [May 20].
The fiscal note with the bill shows that the plan would be developed in three counties, with only three state employees to be added.
The Department of Correction posts a “statistical abstract” on the Web:
Click to access 2008%20Statabs.pdf
Figures for releases and admissions are summed up on page 33.
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