by: ACLU of WV Last week, I reported on a judiciary subcommittee meeting where officials within West Virginia's Corrections and Criminal Justice Bureaucracy claimed, among other things, that West Virginia had no settled process for evaluating prisoners' risk before possibly releasing them back into society. The proposed lack of such an assessment tool was positioned as a contributor to the state's overcrowding problem. After all, one cannot reasonably let convicted inmates out for parole/probation/work release without a assessing whether they are fit, and or likely to stay out of trouble once released. Well, after talking with a couple of folks who have worked very close to this situation for a long time, it has been pointed out to me that the state does have risk assessment/evaluation mechanisms. In fact, it seems as if these mechanisms, which certain officials maintain don't exist in West Virginia, have been in place since the mid 1980's. The more I think about it, the more one half of this makes sense (more on the other half in a minute.) Unless Department of Corrections officials have been using Ouija boards for the last two decades, all prisoners granted parole or work release would have to undergo some form of risk assessment. Could you imagine the state's liability if they were letting people out without thoroughly evaluating them beforehand? Now for the other half, the one that doesn't make much sense. This revelation poses some very interesting questions with respect to the overcrowding debate. Why would state officials claim that West Virginia has little infrastructure in place to evaluate the risk of potential parolees or candidates for work release when it looks as if they have had said programs in place for over two decades? It would be one thing if state officials had used their time in front of the state legislature to offer a critique of the current system. Let's say they got up and said "Our current system that we have been using for the last 20+ years needs to be updated and/or adjusted." However, that is not what happened. State officials clearly insinuated that West Virginia is lacking a comprehensive system to evaluate the potential risk of inmates up for early release. Why? |
