Senate Bill 123 Kansas Kansas' Research Paper

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In contrast, in some dominions, officers liked the pre- sentence valuation for all criminals, quarrelling that community corrections should eventually start determining entry into SB 123. Officers had made the notation that the ability of community corrections to either weeds out unentitled criminals or non-users, for those beseeching down to just possession.

Counselors likewise noted that, while a lot of offenders can plead down to possession in order so that they can start gaining an SB 123 sentence, the valuation would distract such offenders from expensive drug treatment; as the counselors had already noted, if the ASI or SASSI valuations produced a low score, counselors were then allowed to start sending criminals to Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, or other fewer expensive programs. Though all of these methods may eventually weed criminals deprived of present substance abuse difficulties out of expensive drug treatment, it still outcomes in the state unnecessarily paying for some assessments for ineligible offenders. With that said, it clear that there is a lot of frustration among the officers that are a part of the program and believe that is not as affective because there is an overload of offenders to deal with.

The Pros and Cons of the Program

One of the pros concerning the program is the imbalance between supervision and treatment interventions. It has been mentioned that the community corrections officers and counselors in that are in the Western part of the state labeled a practice that could be possibly camouflaged by some of the inequality that is going on between the supervision and treatment interventions -- the utilization of detention to guarantee treatment. Officers that are in a lot of these counties have stated that they were making utilization of detention as a way to hold SB 123 criminals while expecting some space in a drug treatment curriculum. Community corrections officers in most of the counties are approved by the court to keep lawbreakers for up to 70 days as part of community corrections ruling; officers have mentioned that this helps with SB 123 offenders (Smith). For instance, officers were stating that if a lawbreaker is wanted in-patient treatment but no space was presented, the offender was normally placed in jail to make sure they stayed clean until an in-patient bed opened. Counselors established this method, noting that clients were normally sent to jail wait for a bed in an in-patient type of program; counselors were finding out that this was really working well because offenders were then clean before beginning their treatment. On the whole, counselors usually supposed jail was a positive part of the treatment procedure. These insights were limited to counselors and officers. Western counties, where specific modalities of therapy are rare and bed space is very restricted. However, as the research shows, even though this design may be common, it is not transforming into an inconsistent use of supervision involvements by Western regions.

Some of the cons were the issues with of the evaluation measures. Despite the fact the system itself adapted very well to the increase in demand for valuations that were going on throughout the study era, community corrections officers and drug treatment counselors observed several difficulties with the assessment methods. The main argument that is among officers and counselors had been revolving around issues that were being encountered when guiding assessments pre-sentence. These difficulties fell into three central groups: logistical complications, correctness problems, and impartiality problems. A lot of the officers were arguing that doing valuations pre-sentence modeled logistical problems, observing that it was very problematic to arrange calculations for persons who were not yet formally under community corrections supervision; officers observed that there was not any way to force individuals to experience the valuation pre-sentence. Other officers were contending that doing assessment pre-sentence was missed money for the reason that a lot of offenders who were ineligible for SB 123 were, however, evaluated. From the time when the assessments were done previous to the pre-sentence report, community corrections officers are specified that they regularly showed an assessment of a criminal and individual discovered out later that the lawbreaker had a former illegal history that made her or him unentitled for SB 123. Officers contended that, therefore, a lot of money was being consumed for measuring people who did not succeed for the program.

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Other cons noted were that the Counselors had been observing other logistical difficulties with the communication of assessment scores that are between community corrections regions and providers, when the valuation was led by one provider and treatment was eventually delivered by another provider. Counselors started to maintain that, when treatment began, providers most of the time did not have the assessment scores, due mostly to the premature delivery of valuation scores with the offender (Malcolm). Rendering to counselors, other state organizations are having a lot of paperwork, for instance assessment scores, travel with the client; so the valuation leaves from supplier to supplier. Nevertheless, SB 123 necessitates community alterations to make a referral that is being based on a valuation that is being done by another supplier; therefore, the assessment is going from supplier to community corrections to supplier. Counselors were keeping their stance that maintained that some community corrections regions did not send valuation scores in an appropriate manner, demanding suppliers to recreate the valuations prior to beginning the treatment -- valuations for which the state will not repay. Therefore, according to officers and counselors, valuations in many circumstances were either piloted for criminals who were eventually unentitled for SB 123 or were piloted by suppliers but eventually not used by succeeding suppliers because of premature delivery.

As a result of these issues, officers contended that the pre-sentence assessment could possibly not be a correct pointer of the actual drug abuse and treatment requirements. Officers went on to mentioned that they really supposed that judges did not use the valuations in setting sentences in any case, irrespective of the score; somewhat, officers supposed that judges simply just sentenced offenders to SB 123 devoid of using the assessment to set circumstances of supervision or to set early treatment modalities (Johnson). While this emotion was typically being held across districts, in other counties, officers had been stating stated that they have made references at sentencing that were based on the assessment. Extra investigation would be necessary to regulate whether initial treatment modality were matching the assessment score that was created at pre-sentencing.

Improvement of the Program

According to the evaluation, there are many concerns that would need to be addressed in improving the program. One of these improvements is the protections issues that the counselors are having (Amos). Counselors confirmed this perception, disagreeing that SB 123 criminals had more protections that were against withdrawal than other lawbreakers and that SB 123 itself appeared to have no official consequences for violations of treatment or supervision; however, while officers have been placing fault with judges in not withdrawing such criminals, counselors discovered liability with community corrections officers who, counselors supposed, functioned as if they could not eliminate criminals from therapy. In order for this program to improve, many believe that there needs to be better help and communication from the judges and the community. There are too many students in the program with not enough staff. Many believe that to improve things would mean to either hire more staff or lessen the amount of criminals. Also to improve the program, counselors believe that there needs to be harsher consequences for criminals that are breaking the violations.

Conclusion

It is clear that there is some underlying sense of distrust that is going on among some counselors and officers across the state regarding the program in Kansas. Many of them believe that is not effective and that it is just a waste of government spending. On the other hand, some believe that it does have some advantages and that it is making some differences among some of the offenders. Finally, some treatment suppliers emphasized significant difficulties in their interaction with particular community corrections agencies -- mostly connected to the client recommendation procedure and treatment choices. While these application tests did not seem to be extensive across the state, they may turn into becoming a significant threat to the long-term efficiency of SB 123.

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