Marshall County Superior Court #2 Judge Dean Colvin recently inquired about the number of individuals who are successfully completing sentences imposed by the court through Community Corrections.
Director Ward Byers informed him that the success rate is currently 78 percent.
He noted that while it is lower than in past years, there is a reason for that and it’s related to how many individuals they’re dealing with.
He noted, “That success rate has gone down since the numbers have gone up. We are seeing a far different client than we saw a year and half or two years ago with changes to the sentencing.”
Byers stated, “Individuals that use to go to prison are coming to us. The jail is seeing an inmate that they’ve never seen before because of that sort of thing as well.”
It was mentioned that the change in sentencing was a result of House Bill 10-06 being passed. Judge Colvin shared that the intention of the bill was to reduce the state prison population by pushing a lot of the responsibility for lower-level felony cases out to the courts.
He indicated that the intended effect is not being realized.
The judge explained, “That modification has just had the opposite effect here in the State of Indiana.”
He continued, “In fact our prison population has increased by 18 percent and the person staying in the prison population, their stays in the prison are much longer now than they were before.”
Director Byers reiterated that while Community Corrections’ is seeing a smaller success rate it’s only because there are more clients so the number of violations has inevitably increased, driving the rate down.
He added the violations aren’t any more severe and noted that the vast majority are technical violations such as drug screen failures.
