TERRE HAUTE — For Lora Mundell, getting arrested in January 2009 may have been the best thing that ever happened to her.
“It was my eye-opener,” the 44-year-old Terre Haute native said recently. “It was just time to be done with it.”
By “it” Mundell means a lifestyle of substance abuse that she has moved beyond — with the help of intensive outpatient recovery, life skills classes, a steady job, and Vigo County Community Corrections.
Community based corrections is a criminal sentencing option that not every Indiana county has. But as state lawmakers look at changing sentencing laws in order to ease prison overcrowding, the task of housing lower-level offenders may be left to local communities.
A recent report analyzing crime and prison population in Indiana revealed that state laws do not result in sentences that are proportionate to the severity of the crime. Among the report’s findings are that Indiana’s violent crime rate has declined during the past 10 years, but the overall arrest rate increased, boosting prison population 41 percent since 2000. Of those admitted to prison in 2009, 66 percent spent less than one year behind bars, according to prison statistics.
Vigo County first started its community corrections program in the 1990s, and about seven years ago built a facility near the courthouse to house the programs of work release, electronic monitoring and community service.
Community corrections director Bill Watson told the Tribune-Star that many of the people who enter the work release program do well with the structured environment that the program offers. The offenders can usually find jobs with temporary employment agencies, fast food restaurants, or some of the area factories.
There are employers who are reluctant to hire people on work release, Watson said, because some offenders have lengthy criminal records. And, there are employers who do not want the public to know they hire folks on work release.
“But these are people who will show up to work,” Watson said of work release employees. “They will work overtime.”
Many also have more than one job, because aside from a doctor’s appointment or a court date, going to work is about the only reason that an offender gets to leave the building. It is no picnic to be on work release, Watson notes of the public misconception that offenders get to lounge around watching television in their down time.
Aside from earning money to pay for their housing, food and laundry, the offenders live together in dorms with rows of bunk beds as the furnishings. They must also attend classes, such as life skills, decision making, anger management, or drug and alcohol education. They must do their own laundry and wash down their bunks at least once each week.
Incarceration creates a lot of stress, whether the lock up is in the county jail, a state or federal prison, or community corrections. Those stresses can be social, racial, religious, or even between the people who work a night shift and those who work a day shift.
“We tell them to buy ear plugs and a sleeping mask,” Watson said of offenders who complain about the noise or rowdiness of living with others who work different shifts.
“A lot of them do very well with the structure,” Watson said. “They have a lot of trouble being out and making their own decisions, however. It’s decision making, and we are constantly on them about decision making.”
The people in the work release program — both men and women — are monitored closely, Watson said.
They have a procedure to get in and out of the facility, located at First and Ohio streets, and they have a work schedule that is closely monitored by the case managers and correctional officers. Every time a person re-enters the building, they are alcohol-tested. They can also be randomly drug-tested at any time.
“We want them to be successful,” Watson said, explaining that the testing is not an attempt to catch a person doing wrong, but an incentive to stay clean and sober.
Watson was a probation officer for 11 years before becoming director of community corrections. He sometimes sees people in the current program who he saw years ago as a probation officer.
But, he has learned that if a person can stay out of trouble for two or three years, then the chances of seeing that person again in the justice system start to decline.
Another side of community corrections is the electronic monitoring program, where offenders must wear an ankle bracelet and remain inside their house to stay in contact with a device that sends a signal back to the community corrections control room.
Those on electronic monitoring are allowed to leave their homes for work, doctor and court appointments, and for medical emergencies. But while they have the benefit of sleeping in their own beds at home, they have a restriction on their freedoms that can add stress to their lives.
They also have to pay for the cost of the electronic monitoring. That cost is a $234 start-up fee, plus a weekly monitoring fee of $66.50 as well as the cost of a standard telephone line.
For sex offenders who must have the more advanced GPS monitoring, which pinpoints their location on a map visible to correctional officers, the cost is $105 per week with a $300 start-up cost.
The cost for work-release is $91 per week, plus the cost of meals, either purchased through the commissary program or from the county jail for $2 per meal.
While work release is the least costly for the offenders, it is also the path taken less often.
Work release has a capacity of 135 offenders, but is seldom full, Watson said. The electronic monitoring programs, however, are often at capacity, which is determined by the availability of 130 ankle bracelets.
On a recent day inside the control room of the community corrections facility, correctional officer and supervisor Rita Dodd explained to visitors how the electronic monitoring system keeps track of participants. If a person is scheduled to leave their home at 7 a.m. to go to work, an alarm will appear on a computer monitor if the person leaves even one minute early.
Correctional officers can call an offender at any time, and the person is held accountable for his or her location at all times.
In a way, Dodd and the others monitoring the 89 people on home detention and the 13 people on GPS monitoring have a “Big Brother” view of the people they watch, though Dodd said she feels more like a “big sister.” But, those people on the program also require that kind of supervision.
She pointed out the status of one offender on work release who was serving a sentence due to an alcohol-related crime. That offender was able to continue to work at the job he had prior to his arrest, and could still make his child-support payments, while paying for his own incarceration. He had not gotten into any trouble since his arrest, and was staying sober.
“You see a lot of success stories,” Dodd said. “That’s when you feel good about the job.”
A similar success story is Lora Mundell.
Currently a resident in the community corrections work release program, Mundell leaves daily to go to work, complies with her court sentence, and is working on her General Equivalency Diploma.
“I’ve not had any write-ups. All I do is go to work,” she said matter-of-factly while talking about her experiences in community corrections. Mundell spent four months in the Vigo County jail before she completed three months in rehabilitation through Recovery Associates. She entered the work release program in September, and will be finished with that portion of her sentence in March.
“It’s helped me with my sobriety,” Mundell said of the program’s structure. “It gives you a whole different outlook on life from where I’ve come from.”
Like all those assigned to the work release program, and unlike inmates housed in the county jail, Mundell pays for her lodging and food during her incarceration. Should she lose her job and become unable to pay for the program, she would be returned to jail. Any violations of work release rules, such as testing positive on a drug screen or going missing without permission, would also result in her return to jail.
So the incentive exists to maintain steady employment, stay sober and avoid trouble.
That may sound easy, but for folks who battle addictions, or have responsibility issues, it can be a huge challenge.
The people who enter the work release program have been evaluated and found acceptable for the program as an alternative to jail or prison time. They must be non-violent offenders, and they must be willing to work.
Mundell said she hopes to become an addictions counselor after she is released from community corrections.
“I’ve been there, done that, and I know,” Mundell said of the troubles people can get themselves into with drugs and alcohol.
Having that kind of future plan is one goal of the classes, programs and services of community corrections
“She’s set some serious goals that she wants to attain,” case manager Cindy Winkle said of Mundell.
Instructor Ben Blank is a licensed teacher who provides daytime and evening classes for the offenders at the facility.
One of the biggest challenges he gives to the participants is to read every day. Many of them need to improve their reading skills, and once that happens, they will have an easier time filling out job applications and writing resumes to help them in future job searches.
Watson said the community corrections program definitely has its benefits to the community, since it is rehabilitative more than punitive in its function. He has been in talks recently with the county court officials, prosecutor and public defenders offices about utilizing the programming there more, rather than leaving offenders sitting in jail or sending them off to prison.
Community corrections is self-sustaining, receiving no county tax dollars. Its funding comes from the state, and from the user fees of its offenders. As such, it is a tax-dollar-saver for the state, since the cost of incarcerating a person in prison for one day costs $65, or about $23,725 per year.
Not all people in the county jail are appropriate for the work-release or electronic monitoring programs, Watson is quick to point out. But many of those who now go to the Department of Correction are also appropriate for community corrections.
Vigo Superior Court Judge David Bolk agrees. For those offenders who are appropriate, the state’s prison overcrowding situation has made community corrections a more popular sentencing option.
“The judges, and prosecutors and public defenders have been meeting with Bill [Watson] in the last 30 days,” Bolk said Friday, “and I think there will be a more concerted effort to use the work release program more often when it is appropriate.”
He also said that for those people who can get a job, pre-trial detention on work release is possible.
Bolk serves on the Indiana Judicial Conference Board of Directors, which has been supporting the change in state sentencing laws. If proposed legislation in the Statehouse does require more use of community corrections, he said the county may be limited in the number of class-D felons that can be sent to the DOC. The sentencing range for a class-D felon is 6 to 36 months in prison. Vigo County can no longer send misdemeanants to the DOC, because of the availability of community corrections.
Watson said it is his hope that the work-release program is more consistently utilized in sentencing, because it is a money-saver for the county.
In 2007, community corrections saved the county $289,000. In 2008, that amount dropped to $215,000 because the use of work release fluctuated. In 2009, that number dropped to $211,000. But in 2010, when the county jail was over capacity, the utilization jumped back up and the county saved $241,000 using work-release rather than warehousing people in the jail.
The DOC pays 36 percent of the community corrections budget, Watson said, while 2 percent comes from the community transition program which moves offenders from a state prison into the local program before they are released back into general society. The other 62 percent of the budget comes from the user fees of the offenders.
“Not everyone is a candidate for community based corrections,” Watson repeated. “The reality is, some need to go to prison.”
But another reality is that very few offenders spend their entire lives in prison.
Most, even some violent offenders, will be released back into society at some point.
“So we would rather have someone come back from the DOC who has had programming through community corrections,” Watson said.