Issuu

Smart justice is in county’s future

BY DENNY BARNEY Policymakers

across the nation are re-examining criminal justice, searching for a more effective— and cost effective—way to improve what has been a revolving door of crime, incarceration, recidivism and despair.

I was pleased to hear the Town of Gilbert and City of Chandler opened a united holding facility last December. Having their officers drive misdemeanor suspects down to the county intake facility to then turn around and transport them back to court in Chandler or Gilbert the next day didn’t make sense. Prisoners who need to be held for more than 24 hours are still booked in one of our county jails, but having the shortterm holding facility keeps police officers in their community and reduces costs to citizens. This innovative solution by public safety employees is to be commended.

and our taxpayers will be much smaller. We recently completed a six-month evaluation of “Thinking for a Change” (T4C), a 25-lesson plan, developed by the National Institute of Corrections, designed to change the patterns of thinking that get these repeat offenders into so much trouble. The theory is simple. The way you think leads to the way you act. Actions become behavior. If you change the thinking, you change the behavior. We are using T4C in our jails and for our probationers. But we are targeting high risk, repeat offenders. Why? They are the most likely to reoffend and commit more crimes. Improve their behavior, you make a larger dent in crime. Simple.

Our study found that T4C participants are significantly less likely to recidivate in a six-month time frame. And those

Efforts are being made among city and county law enforcement agencies to introduce programs that will reduce recidivism among offenders by changing patterns of behavior.

So, too, is the reform effort underway in Maricopa County. Public safety comprises more than 50 percent of the county’s budget, about $1 billion in all. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, superior court, adult and juvenile probation, the county attorney, public defender and Correctional Health are each heavily invested. Our departments, along with our county Justice System Planning and Information (JSPI) group, have partnered with Mercy Maricopa Integrated Care and several nonprofit providers on several promising research and evidence-based initiatives.

I am a stickler for data. I want to know how many individuals are in our jails on an average day (7,900). And what is the average length of stay (27.8 days). And how much does it cost to book an inmate ($286). And what it costs to keep an inmate in jail each day ($85.49).

If we can reduce recidivism among the higher-risk offenders, turn them toward more productive lives, then our communities will be that much safer, our jails and prisons less overcrowded. And the overall burden on the county budget

who do reoffend, take longer to return to jail than non-participants who also recidivate. T4C participants also have fewer jail disciplinary incidents. Researchers estimate that just in the first wave of T4C participants, some 423 jail bed days have been saved.

Other interesting initiatives include the use of “Peer Navigators” to assist recently released seriously mentally ill inmates get acclimated back in their communities and connect with health services. Preliminary evaluations show greatly reduced recidivism among the mentally ill who received a referral to this program. Other programs include promising new policies in classifying inmates inside the jail system, which could reduce jail incidents and focus programming to the higher risk inmates. The results are tentative but clearly positive. We’re headed in the right direction.

Denny Barney is a Gilbert resident and a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

DENNY BARNEY. Submitted photo

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SOUND OFF was transcribed from our Sound Off line during the past month. Sound Off is a monthly editorial feature of Gilbert Sun News. We encourage you to participate. As long as it's not profane or libelous we will print it in our next issue. Calls are limited to one minute. Please leave your name only if you'd like it printed. Come on, get it off your chest!

Oh stop complaining, restless public. Baseball is where you go to rest your mind and body after too much agitation from basketball and football. Wise up. Baseball is fun and good for you.

(Man’s voice) I live in Gilbert and I think it is an important statement to make that I love pie. (Woman’s voice) He really, really loves it.

I was very pleased to see your announcement about the plastic bag collection. I live in Sunland Village East, which is kind of difficult, because we are in Mesa, but we are in the Gilbert school district. At my neighborhood market, I talked with one of the clerks and they have a big bin to collect plastic bags. They’re not picked up there. They’re just thrown in the trash. They must just fill up the bin and truck them out to the back and throw them in the trash can. It’s better off not to have a bin, or tell people to go to another store.

How sick. Those who defend a man who would behead another man, need to be returned to their country of origin of, “This-is-OK kind of war.” They should go home where they came from. If they were born here. They should be sent back to where their parents came from, if they can’t do any

better raising them to be Americans or Englishmen. Shame on all of them. Shame on the world who defend one who would decapitate another. God, the world is sure going to hell fast.

Wake up world. There’s only one solution to all your problems and it’s always been called birth control—even the animals know that. Maybe the people in “Fifty Shades of Grey” might start teaching the practice. How about that? Funny how things work out.

How sad. Some people will never stop spreading seeds of hate among the gardens of young minds.

Well, Joe, how will your deputies judge a marital abuse case after today? I guess there isn’t abuse if there isn’t a body. Run momma run.

What happened to America’s public common sense? Stop wasting tax money on college sports. Let it be self-supporting with fan and sponsored donations.

Talk about phonies protesting a song by ignorant students. What about hypocritical Congress backstabbing the black president they so openly hate? Get rid of those phonies

in Congress. Maybe America will have a chance.

When they say it takes a village to raise a baby, they really mean it. Ninety percent of the time, if you don’t have a good support system in place, your life will suck. Please trust me when I say to think not twice but 100 times before having kids.

In regard to Tea Party slandering, the three core principles of the Tea Party are lower taxes, smaller government and a lower national debt. These are all heroic pursuits. I’m a Tea Party member. I’m also in a mixed marriage. Only those easily misled took the bait.

How low will the men in justice court go to allow a predator to question the children he’s already hurt physically to damage them for the rest of their lives mentally? You call that justice? He needs to be tarred and feathered and hung and anything else we can think of. What a lowlife he is and so are all the others who want to see the show. How disgusting the American justice

court has become. It just makes you want to throw up.

I wanted to warn pet sitters that use a certain national pet sitting service company that there is a scammer targeting us to try and get our money! It starts with a text message from a “Mrs. Cole” from a 713 area code stating she has a friend named “Maria” moving to your town and to please email her to watch her pets. When you email her “friend” you can tell right away that it is a scam by the way she talks. It sounds like she’s from Nigeria. I played along just to mess with them and when I asked where the friend was moving to she avoided the question and then later asked me where I lived. When I said I lived in Seattle and asked where she was moving to, she stated “Seattle.” The scam was that her real estate agent was going to mail me her keys to her house and that her financial institution would be mailing me a check for $250 for the first week plus “extra” money to get her house ready. I told her I knew it was a scam and that I was reporting her. I just wanted to warn everyone out there to be careful!

BY IRENE MAHONEY-PAIGE

Federal and state education funding covers core curriculum. That means the State of Arizona and the federal government fund basic English, math and science. Communities bear the responsibility for most everything else. School districts depend on the community to “override” those basic funds with a budget increase. Override

funds have enabled our district to provide our students with advanced classes, fine and performing arts, music, foreign language and other elective classes. Our district is A-rated and our schools get A+ recognition. We are proud that our students develop skills to prepare them for a successful future.

Studies have consistently reported that Arizona is at the bottom of the list

nationally when it comes to student funding. Like other communities in Arizona, our district has had to rely on override funds in order to offer students the quality program offerings our community wants and deserves, as well as to provide our employees with competitive salaries.

The district’s override expires this year. The lack of an override in 2015-2016 will impact our teacher and staff salaries, advanced placement courses, arts and music, physical education and nutrition, school safety and class sizes. The tax increase to restore a budget override is estimated to be less than $139 annually per homeowner.

An investment in education is an investment in one’s home and community, whether or not one has school-aged children. Communities with excellent public schools attract well-educated and financially successful families. Those residents become more involved in the local community and ultimately local businesses and services benefit. Real estate in those areas becomes more attractive and in-demand, which increases property value.

The funds generated through an override have enabled our district to retain the highest quality personnel, offer many different outstanding and award-winning programs, and provide our students with many other valuable and exciting educational opportunities. If you have enjoyed Highland High’s Strolling Strings Orchestra, or been amazed by Campo Verde’s Project Lead the Way or biomedical programs, you have seen what our district has been able to offer with the support of its residents.

Irene Mahoney-Paige is the public information ofﬁcer for the Gilbert Public Schools.

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