New National Statistics on Corrections Populations

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released two bulletins that examine the numbers of prisoners and individuals under probation or parole supervision in the nation for 2008 and report on related trends—including an overall increase in the number of individuals being released from federal and state prisons.

The bulletins were posted on the National Reentry Resource Center website, which is a new place to find information about reentry.

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Fixing the Information Mismatch in Juvenile Justice

Check out this article on the Change.org Criminal Justice Blog about the need for better communication in the juvenile justice system. To be clear, the views expressed are those of the author alone and do not represent any position of Rethinking Reentry.

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New! National Reentry Resource Center Website

The Council of State Governments, in partnership with the Urban Institute, the Association of State Correctional Administrators, the American Probation and Parole Association, and a national advisory board; has just launched a great new reentry resource. Established under the Second Chance Act, the National Reentry Resource Center disseminates information about reentry issues and promotes best practices in the field.

Their goals:

• Provide a one-stop, interactive source of current, user-friendly reentry information.
• Identify, document, and promote evidence-based practices.
• Deliver individualized, targeted technical assistance to the Second Chance Act grantees.
• Advance the reentry field through training, distance learning, and knowledge development.

Why this is helping for you:

The site lists funding opportunities, has a searchable database of program examples, offers research on a number of different topics related to reentry, and provides information about how to start your own reentry initiative. Importantly, there is a set of resources just for people who are returning from prison, many of them created by partners of the Upper Manhattan Reentry Task Force.

Check it out!

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Another Offspring of the Marriage Between Crime Data and the iPhone

"Warning: Stay alert. Do not get hurt."

That's what the iPhone said to me, in a very masculine voice, when I tried out the new application "Are You Safe? Sacramento." I had typed in an address recommended to me -- I don't live in Sacramento, otherwise the phone would have used GPS to identify my current location -- and discovered that, in that immediate vicinity, my "personal defcon" threat level was 2 (or orange, which is high), and that there had been 4 homicides, 27 assaults, 4 robberies, and 19 car thefts in this immediate vicinity in 2008. Additionally, I learned that a car had been stolen "about 0 ft. from here, on 05-22-2008. It occurred at 17:15, according to the record. If you are parking your vehicle you might want to think about finding a garage. You might be able to glean more context by examining the offense description: 10851(A)VC TAKE VEH W/O OWNER."

This, fine readers, is what is available to you if you live in Sacramento, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Milwaukee, or Indianapolis; you own an iPhone; and you are willing to pay $0.99. It is the union of publicly available crime data, GPS mapping, fancy application graphics (behold, the "threat meter"), and the long-standing human obsession with personal safety.

Its uses, according to the application makers, include:

• "Visiting and unfamiliar with the city?"
• "Debating whether to walk or take a cab?"
• "Headed to an area you haven't been to before?"
• "Not sure if you should park your car on the street?"

For outsiders to a neighborhood, it might be a helpful tool (likely, the people who have lived in the neighborhood for a while don't need a "threat meter" to tell them what crimes have been happening in the area recently). And to be fair, there's good reason to have as much data about any place as you can -- I wonder, however, whether there is an element of hysteria in this kind of thing. If this kind of technology takes root broadly, is it yet another way of stigmatizing neighborhoods that indeed have serious public safety concerns? Perhaps this application could be balanced with information about local block associations or dates for the next precinct community council meeting.

What are your thoughts about this kind of technology? Please comment!

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CrimeReports.com

We learned about a new website, CrimeReports.com, that aggregates crime reports from across the country and allows you to search for them in any locality. The idea is that local law enforcement agencies feed their data (likely also available on their own websites) to this site, allowing for open-source national sharing of crime data.

Although the site is still getting some agencies on board -- New York City, for example, has no crime data, although it is available on the NYPD website -- it seems like a great way to build knowledge, bring criminal justice agencies on board with Web 2.0 technologies, and create open-source sharing about crime patterns in places across the U.S.

If you click on the "Analytics" tab at the upper right, you'll be able to see exactly which localities provide data and even generate charts for various crime entities. The displays are dynamic so that you can break down "theft," for example, into more precise categories of crime. This is definitely a win for community-based organizations in need of crime data for grant-writing purposes as well.

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"Outbreaks Near Me"

You may have noticed that we're a little obsessed with technology, and especially the iPhone, at Rethinking Reentry.

It was hard to pass, therefore, on this story about a new iPhone application, called "Outbreaks Near Me." With all the hysteria about H1N1 (Swine Flu), this app provides users with a way of tracking outbreaks of the disease near them. Users can even upload "outbreak reports" with pictures and descriptions.

Creators at Children's Hospital Boston and the MIT Media Lab admit that the current version isn't able to weed out fake reports from real ones, but say that the tool has real potential if it is adopted among a wide swath of the population.

The thing we're pondering, of course, is whether this kind of application could have other uses, particularly in problem-solving justice. Putting aside the issue of access to technology for the moment (we are well aware that most reentrants don't have the means to acquire and maintain an expensive iPhone), of what use could this technology be in criminal justice circles?

• What if employers could post jobs to the application (a "jobs outbreak!") and reentrants could find open positions and (more importantly) find employers friendly to people with criminal records?
• What if parole officers could post their own reviews of local service providers for their colleagues to see? Or share information about a recent spate of relapses in a certain neighborhood for other law enforcement officials to be aware of?
• What if service providers could get real time information about reentrants who are new to the neighborhood (hmmm, we'd have to make sure this is legal ...) so that they could better target them for services and support?
• What if reentrants could post reviews of stores, service providers, faith institutions, or other community stakeholders who helped them out (a "good will outbreak!") and would be willing to help others returning to the community?

Any of these ideas would make the process of return certainly more efficient, and with the possibility of pictures and video, perhaps enriching for the technology consumer.

As always, if you have any ideas, we'd love to hear about them! How might this technology be useful in your criminal justice pursuits?

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Looking at the Hyper-Local

One of the most amazing aspects of reentry in Upper Manhattan is how locally specific it is. There are extremely high concentrations of people returning to very small local areas in Harlem -- and this is generally the nature of criminal justice problems in urban areas.

Looking at the broader global context, Swedish public health professor and doctor Hans Rosling has put together a fascinating dataset displaying this same pattern in development. Arguing against the traditional perspective that there are "developed" and then "developing" nations, Rosling uses his data to describe extreme variations among so-called "developing nations." [See also his website to see more displays of world development data compellingly presented.]

The video below -- humorous and dynamic -- shows a presentation he gave through TED at the US Department of State this summer. His visual displays of development over time speak very clearly to the idea that all global phenomena have very specific local manifestations. An interesting idea to ponder in Upper Manhattan as well.

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Interview with Carl Wicklund, Executive Director of APPA

Carl Wicklund is the Executive Director of the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA). We sat down for this interview on Tuesday, August 11, 2009, at the National Forum on Criminal Justice & Public Safety. Mr. Wicklund was part of an earlier panel I attended at the Forum on Corrections Information Sharing. I wanted to probe the issue of law enforcement collaboration with probation/parole.

What is the best way to encourage local police-parole/probation collaboration?

I think that one of the premises that [must] be understood and appreciated for any of these partnerships between law enforcement and probation/parole to work is the fact that both groups have as their primary goal public safety. Now, law enforcement tends to be focused more on short-term public safety, where probation/parole has a dual purpose of both short-term public safety and long-term public safety, which ultimately means changing the behavior of that person on probation or parole. Where I’ve seen it really work, they come together and develop a joint mission that doesn’t degrade the strength of their own individual missions. There is some acceptance and understanding of the roles that both groups have and they look for commonalities, and obviously the main commonality is public safety. How they go about that can be very different -- there can be some meshing of that, but they have to be careful not to mesh it to a degree where you start getting mission-bleed. One of my concerns is that, in a lot of places where partnerships between law enforcement and probation and parole have occurred, probation and parole start seeing that balance of monitoring and behavior change getting out of balance, and they start seeing themselves [more] as law enforcement. It’s an easy trap to fall into because the compliance aspect for probation and parole is much more concrete than behavior change, which is a more difficult challenge. People tend to go towards that which is easier to define. A good partnership keeps people focused on what their primary roles are in order to meet that partnership’s overall goal.

Are there examples of strategies that encourage a balance between monitoring and behavior change?

I’m fond to saying that there is not best practice, there are really best people who are committed, dedicated, and skilled at what they do and they don’t lose sight of their long-term goals. It is very personality-driven, but I think that [a] strategy that is so important to any effective partnership between different units of government or different units of the justice system is what I call "horizontal diffusion," as opposed to vertical diffusion. I think that a lot of partnerships occur from a top-down push, where you have top leadership saying, "we are going to do this" and they push it down. The people that are mid-management or line staff ask “what do we give up to do this? You are just giving us more to do [, but] you are not relieving us of anything.” Instead, we should be looking at who are the leaders at all levels of an organization and working with them at the same time, coming at it horizontally, embedding it in the practices. When things are pushed from the top down you get a passive-aggressive resistance from people at other levels of an organization because they haven’t been part of it.

Don’t you always have to start at the top to get buy-in and approval?

No, I don’t think you have to start at the top. I think you have to have the top involved. Again, I’m talking horizontal diffusion; I’m not talking vertical where it’s from the top to the bottom. If you look at what happened with Boston Nightlight, how did that start? That started with a probation officer and a police officer talking, and saying “we have to work together,” and they pushed it in their respective agencies. They were not CEO’s, but they were leaders [in] what they were doing. My point is that there are leaders at all levels of an organization, and I don’t think that we always do a very good job looking at who are the champions within those mid-management positions, who are the champions in the line staff, and getting them involved. Find out who are the people that can make this actually work at different levels of the organization. Engage them, empower them to take this and run with it. Maybe you only have a pilot attempt originally or a certain neighborhood [to start], but let them go with it and let it diffuse through the system that way, rather having someone push it down like a food press.

Are there models for this?

So much is dependent on the individual or individuals involved. I think there are models in a sense that there are some principles that you need to keep in mind: you have to have a joint respect for each other missions, you have to look for the commonality in those missions, you have to have the blessing of the cops, you have to look at the workload and take that workload and devise it in a way that allows the people that are actually on the streets doing this stuff to focus on it. Doesn’t mean that you eliminate all of the other stuff, but you have to give some relief that way. There are models in good management, you can look at innovation. Look at 3M. They have crazy meetings where they sit around and throw out these ridiculous ideas and some of the best things that ever occurred come out of it. There are models that way, but I think ultimately what it looks like becomes very personal. If you and I develop a partnership ultimately for that partnership to work we have to get along. If there is any distrust between you and I that partnership is not going to work. So maybe you and I start a partnership, but people in your organization and people in my organization have some distrust. Then it is incumbent on me to deal and diffuse some of that distrust in my organization and you to diffuse some of that distrust in your organization. We help people in our respected organizations understand and appreciate the role that the other organization plays and the strengths and shortcomings that they may have. We have this joint mission that is not a threat to our turf or your turf.

How should information-sharing between probation/parole and law enforcement work in the reentry context?

I think that especially in this day and age people want to get all the information they can and then they will determine what is useful to them and what is not. The reality of that is that they will get overwhelmed. Just think of your email: do you want all the emails you are getting? But are you willing to put stops in place deterring some? Ultimately, when you talk about sharing information between different agencies within the justice system you really have to sit down and develop a business case for what is needed. Qhat does law enforcement and corrections really need? Not what do they want, what is going to help you do your job better. What is the interesting information that they have? I think that you have to build that business case. The kind of information that law enforcement needs is going to be different than the kind of information that probation and parole needs.

I gave some examples where law enforcements certainly would need or should have conditions of supervision because there are some nuisances to conditions of supervisions that tell you a lot about that person under supervision. For example, if you have a sex offender driving in a car with two little girls in the back and you [police officer] pulls him over for speeding. You [have] whatever the statute is in that state. [However,] there is nothing in there that says he has a condition of supervision not to have any contact [with minors] -- you don’t have that information. That’s an important thing for law enforcement to have. Or, if someone is a gang member and one of their [probation/parole] conditions is that they will not be displaying gang symbols [or] wear gang colors, etc. A law enforcement officer sees them standing on a corner doing just that. That’s not only important for law enforcements to know, it’s also important for probation or parole officer to know that the person is violating their conditions. I also gave the example of catching people doing things right because probation and parole have that dual role of ensuring that people are following their conditions of supervision, but also changing behavior. So if you are on my caseload as a probationer and you have a condition that you will not be out at certain hours or that you will be employed during certain times and a cop sees you working your job, I’d like you know that too. Then I do not have to do all these collateral contacts, and a cop can come up to you and say, “Hey I see that you are supposed to be working here and you are doing it. That’s cool. Way to go!” You get that kind of reinforcement of behavior and that informal social control that is so important for people to have in order to change. The formal social controls are important, but they are not the ones that typically change behavior, it’s the informal ones. In some smaller jurisdictions, you have people on a GPS tracking system and probation gets an alert that a person is in a exclusion zone [in other words, an area where they are not supposed to be]. You have a partnership with law enforcement, law enforcement is already over there patrolling, they can go look. There are so many false alerts with GPS that it is driving probation officers crazy because they have to respond to everything. If a probation officer goes inside someone’s house and is having a meeting with them and happens to see a letter from somebody that is an acquaintance and checks with law enforcement only to find out that that person is being investigated for some sort of drug trafficking, its very helpful for a law enforcement to know that person has been in contact [with your client].

Are joint police-probation/parole patrols a good approach to community supervision?

I think they can be great. I used to ask our officers to do ride-a-longs at least once a month with law enforcement. It was as much for them to have an appreciation for what law enforcement’s challenges where, what they were up to, what they were seeing, etc., as it was for law enforcements to [understand] the probation officers [perspective]. I know that a lot of places are doing that much more regularly than once a month, they are actually going out and doing home visits. I think that is great if people can stay true to their individual agency missions and at the same time have that joint mission too.

Posted by: Christopher Watler, Task Force Coordinator

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RR Contest: Reentry and the "Sixth Sense"

Technology geniuses at the MIT Media Lab have created a device they call the "Sixth Sense."

Put down your iPhones, your Kindles, and all other tech gadgets you think put you ahead of the curve. This tool is really something different. Watch the video.

It is a "wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information," according to Pranav Mistry, its creator.

That description doesn't really do justice to what this thing can do: it's worn on the body and combines a camera, projector, and wireless internet, with the ability to detect the motions or gestures made by the person wearing it. It can project onto any surface using the built-in projector and simultaneously get information from the web about the object being seen and project that information back on the object in appropriate manner. Essentially, it's nuts.

Here are some examples of what the Sixth Sense can do: pick up a book at the bookstore, place it in front of the camera, and immediately, the device scans the book title and projects back onto the book a complete review from Amazon.com.

Want to know what time it is? Hold up your arm, direct the camera at your wrist, draw the shape of a watch, and the projector projects the time onto your arm.

Want to take a picture of something, but don't have your camera with you? Hold up your fingers in the shape of a square box, and the device will recognize that motion as a signal to take a picture of what's inside the box. Then you can go home, project all of your pictures onto the wall and sort them out into categories.

Curious about the person standing in front of you? Direct the camera in their direction, the internet will pull up a list of tags associated with their name on the web, and the projector will project that information back onto the person.

Again, we urge you to watch the video.

OK, so the question we're posing is this: What does this mean for reentry and criminal justice? THAT is what we'd like to hear from you about. The best idea for how this tool could be applied to reduce recidivism and enhance public safety (judged completely subjectively by our own internal panel of people who write for this blog) will win its own blog feature. Have at it!

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