Three years ago, criminal justice officials worried that changes in state law requiring low-level felons to serve their time in local jails and programs instead of state prisons might strain local resources.
It may be too soon to determine the overall impact locally, but a statewide assessment recently released by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute outlines the strengths and challenges seen since the legislation took effect on July 1, 2014.
Linda Brady, Monroe County’s chief probation officer, said she will be better able to evaluate the effects on the county after compiling data for the department’s 2017 annual report early next year.
“It’s hard to know what to attribute changes to since we have no baseline data for comparison,” she said. “We will know more when we see what the recent numbers look like.”
The justice institute’s report gathered and analyzed data from the Indiana Department of Correction, local courts, probation departments and county jails. It also includes front-line perspectives from mental health and addictions experts working with people caught in the criminal justice system.
The 174-page report confirms some concerns expressed when lawmakers debated the legislation’s content goals during the 2013 legislative session. Among them:
• While the law was expected to greatly decrease the number of state prison inmates, maximum-security prisons remain full, and populations at medium-security state facilities have gone down only slightly since 2015.
• Recidivism has remained steady despite the shift to local programs for some offenders, with 37 percent of felons returning to a state prison within three years of being released.