Poplar Bluff’s Community Supervision Center is one of six in the state, and local officials are concerned it has “morphed” into a half-way house.
“It was sold to our community leaders at the time it was created that it would not be used as a half-way house,” Butler County Prosecuting Attorney Kacey Proctor said.
While the facility can be “useful in helping to provide essential services to those that are on probation … to keep them from failing probation and being sent to the Department of Corrections, it has morphed into a facility that is also acting as a halfway house,” Proctor said. “They’re bringing people back from the Department of Corrections and housing them there in this facility.”
The original strategy behind the CSC was to give “field staff a better tool” to work with in regard to technical violation clients, who reside in the community.
It was an effort for them to become, and stay, productive taxpaying citizens, according to reports in the Daily American Republic in 2007. Construction on the facility began in the fall of 2007.
Examples of technical probation violators given at that time were those who failed to report as directed, moved without notifying their supervising officer or refused to gain employment.
The “whole goal” of the centers is “people, who are on probation or parole, who are at risk of being revoked for various reasons, … to succeed on probation or parole, so they don’t end up back in prison,” said Karen Pojmann, communications director for the Missouri Department of Corrections,
Pojmann said it is common to think of a defendant as an individual, but that person’s life effects others.
A lot of those on probation or parole have children, she said.
Revocations for “technical violations effects employment; they could lose their jobs,” Pojmann said. “If they have children, the children have no parent.”
CSC re-purposed
“The biggest issue is it had morphed into a halfway house … where people come out of the Department of Corrections, as well as it’s original intended purpose, at least what we were told was the purpose,” Proctor said. “Outside of that, the CSC is actually a useful tool for those on probation.”
As part of the Justice Re-Investment Initiative, the state’s community supervision centers have transitioned to the CSC re-purpose model. This is part of the MDOC’s efforts to help offenders succeed on probation or parole, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections’ website.
The change in the community supervision centers, Pojmann said, is an increase in processes and services that help reduce criminal behaviors.
“The new model is designed to provide programming that helps address clients’ issues and prevent new crimes and revocations to prison,” Pojmann said.
In the past, she said, the CSCs were “sort of used as halfway houses, but that is not the goal that we have for the programs. It’s not just a place to house someone.
“We implemented programming in all of our community supervision centers that is designed to help people get on their feet, to get whatever treatment that they need,” including mental health and substance abuse treatment.
The programming, she said, also focuses on helping clients develop the job skills they may need to help them in their job search and help to get a home plan together so they can reunite with their families.
“All of those processes are really important to reentering the community” and to prevent incarceration, Pojmann said.
The four-phase model reportedly targets high-risk clients who need intensive programming in several areas and who are at risk of revocation.
The model focuses on incentives and sanctions as clients complete each of the four phases, with the referring Probation & Parole officers supervising the client while he or she is a CSC resident.
In June, the population of the six CSCs was 124, 76% of whom were at risk of revocation within 120 days prior to CSC admission.
MDOC reports 47% had successful exits, 42% had failed exits and another 11% had “no fault”exits.