The state of North Dakota and its two largest counties will be working with a federal planning grant to help reduce the rate of repeat offenders.
Prairie Public’s Dave Thompson has the story.
“We actually do very well compared with the national average,” said Karianne Wolfer, the director of correctional practices for the state Department of Corrections. She works on programs to help make sure offenders don’t come back after they serve their time. “Nationally, about six or seven out of ten will return. In our state, between three and four in ten will return, once released.”
Wolfer says the department has started a number of programs that work to keep inmates from coming back.
“The number one reason that offenders don’t change is that they fail to change their thinking," said Wolfer. "So what we do is we actually assess our offenders when they come in to see how likely it is that they will come back. And we target the offenders that are most likely to come back. We look at what needs typically lead them to coming back – whether it’s substance abuse, their criminal thinking, how they choose their peers, their friends, their support groups. And we target interventions to fit those needs.”
Another thing Corrections does is train staff in what Wolfer calls “motivational interviewing.”
“A judge can tell an offender, ‘Don’t commit those crimes anymore.’ But until he decides he’s ready to change, he won’t. So we attend to a person’s internal motivation for change. And then we offer programs that aren’t about them sitting around in a circle, talking about how bad life has been. But it’s about them actually developing skills – social skills, problem-solving skills, cognitive restructuring skills to change their thinking. And then we ask to practice those skills at a high dosage, and reinforce them when we catch them doing the right thing.”
Wolfer says the goal is – while the inmate is there in prison, make that time meaningful.
“The truth is, sending offenders to prison typically makes them worse," said Wolfer. "If you have a kid, and he’s hanging out with Bobby down the street, you don’t want him to hang out with Bobby because he’s a bad influence. Well, when you send someone to prison , who are they around? Criminals. And they typically become better criminals. So we’ve really learned that what we do while they’re with us matters.”
Wolfer says the state – along with Cass and Burleigh Counties – received a 100-thousand dollar planning grant, so that the two counties can offer similar programs. She says they will then be competing for a three million dollar, 3 year grant to implement and evaluate those county-based programs.
“The whole hope is that we get the bigger grant< said Burleigh County Sheriff Pat Heinert. “And then put together a program for inmates, so if they’re in jail for more than a couple of weeks or a couple of months, we can get them so cognitive skills training, that will be paid for through the programming.”
Heinert says there are a number of people behind bars in Burleigh County that are – as he put it – a little illiterate.
“They need some help finding a job, never completed a resume, never balanced a checkbook properly, just some basic good life skills is what I’m hoping for, that we can develop and help someone along the road," said Heinert. "I put it along the same lines that one of our old counselors told me years ago, is that ‘it took me 17 times to get sober, so never give up on me.’”
The state and the counties should find out later this year whether they will get the bigger grant.
