Crime, Punishment and, Habilitation

Habilitation is not a common word association with criminal justice anywhere, much less Clatsop County. We are familiar with the term rehabilitation which implies that a person had, at one time, the life skills necessary to conduct a lawful life and has strayed from those principals leading them into trouble. To rehabilitate is to bring that person back into the fold. Sorry for the obvious lesson in semantics but necessary to establish as the basis for this post.

I had a lengthy but fruitful discussion today with community corrections director Cora Lane at the new Clatsop County Transition center over at the north coast penal colony (business park).
We talked about exactly what she is trying to accomplish there. She told me that there is no question that a small percentage of the felons serving time in the county really need to be separated from the rest of us in a prison environment. She also said that for the rest there is some hope of teaching them how to live straight. The purpose of the center is to teach a high level of responsibility to those who are inmates there. This means they enter treatment, behavior modification. They must seek and hold a job. They must pay $25.00 a day to stay there and they must pay any court ordered costs including reparation. When the inmate is paid that check goes to the center to pay all those costs. Some she says have jobs that pay fairly well, but the norm is part time minimum wage.

The "habilitation" part comes in teaching simple life skills that most of us take for granted. How to handle money and have respect for paying a debt. How to eat properly, bathe, do laundry..etc. Yes, it's just that basic. Critics have said that this should be free. They ask "Where is the "transition" in Transition Center if inmates can't put aside cash they earn to get that fresh start?" Let me tell you that the the center isn't a shelter. It's not about sleeping on a cot until someone brings you dinner and then watching television all night. It's much tougher than that by design.

The center itself is not plush. It is simple. It is a facility designed to be monitored, but there are
no bars. There is a large day room. There is very nice kitchen. there are three dorms. Two for men and one for women. There is a central, open control area with monitors. When I was there
today I was told the center was populated by 17 inmates. I saw three. The rest were out working or taking classes. The center tracks work and class schedules so they know where each
inmate is at any given time. Failure to return on time is a major infraction that can land that
inmate back in a cell. Inmates are responsible to do their own laundry and keep their spaces clean. but kitchen services are contracted out. The place was absolutely clean.

The other side of the facility houses community corrections which includes parole and probation and space for the rehab..or Hab programs to operate.

The question here is why are there only 17 inmates in a facility designed to hold 30? Good question. Even eliminating prisoners being held on misdemeanors because this center is intended
for those who commit felony crimes, why would we be releasing felons through the jail matrix system when they might have been transferred to the Transition Center instead? At least there is some level of supervision involved and responsibility demanded. At the very least community corrections could be making use of the electronic monitoring devices they have sitting on the shelf. Are we holding felony inmates to run the jail as trustees in the kitchen and laundry who may be eligible for the transition center? What would the jail population be like if we were not
doing this?

Where is the communication between the Sheriff and the Community Corrections Director? is there any to speak of?

Not long after my tour I got a call from Sheriff Bergin who had heard about the tour and wanted to be available to respond to anything I might have learned there. He asked to be a guest on KAST Coastwatch. I was eager to have him on and offered him
a choice of days to be on the show. We arranged for this Friday. It's a "maybe' that he will be on the air, but I certainly hope he can make it. He told me that the supervisory authority for
inmates is shared between himself and Cora Lane. He told me that in light of the recent trouble at the Transition Center involving a part time employee and a party there resulting in her being fired and a NIC review of transition center procedures that he says he has yet to see, He has serious concerns about sending inmates under his authority to the center since he would have responsibility if anything bad were to happen. the Sheriff told me that he and the Community Corrections Director had been working for months on an agreement between the two of them over how supervisor authority would be shared. I don't understand why this would take months but hopefully the Sheriff will go into some detail if he can make the show on Friday.

It was an interesting day and certainly educational.