Judge says camp's closing means more will go to prison
By Bobbi Mlynar (Contact)
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The Fifth Judicial District has not welcomed the Department of Correction’s decision to close the Labette Correctional Conservation Camp at Oswego on July 1.
The department earlier had announced that its women’s camp would close on Jan. 1, but the announcement about the men’s camp came as a surprise.
“We had no advance notice of the closing of the men’s facility until we read it in the newspaper, in the press release,” said the district’s Chief Judge Merlin Wheeler.
Use of the Labette camp in sentencings was mandated by the state legislature in a variety of situations for offenders who fell within the camp’s criteria.
“Most notably, before we could consider revoking anyone’s probation and sending them to prison, we had to consider the suitability of two intermediate options,” Wheeler said. “One was placement at the Labette camp; the other was the community intermediate sanctions center.
“So, as a practical matter, the Labette Conservation Camp really became the last alternative we had prior to sending someone to prison.”
The camp has been used often by Judge Jeffry J. Larson in dealing with people ordered to Drug Court, Wheeler said, and for other offenders who, after the courts had exhausted other available sanctions, still may not have needed to go to prison.
“Obviously, now we’ve lost that,” Wheeler said.
Late last month, a total of nine offenders were going through Labette.
The camp has been a viable option not only because of the state mandates, but also because of the overall progress made by many of the inmates.
“We have had remarkable success with both the men’s and women’s programs there,” Wheeler said.
Labette allowed the courts to have individuals supervised in a structured setting, with discipline and education and limited substance-abuse treatment all within the same confines.
The closing of Labette also places the courts in an awkward position, since state statute requires the judges to consider Labette or a comparable institution for certain offenders.
Johnson and Sedgwick counties receive Community Corrections funds to operate their own residential lockdown facilities that are roughly comparable to Labette, Wheeler said, but they are not expected to be able to house inmates from outside counties.
“Realistically, they are so full up with their own probationers that there just isn’t bed space available to us,” he explained.
Lack of funds prohibit the Fifth Judicial District from operating its own camp and, Wheeler said, that likely would be the case even if other judicial districts went together to form their own consortium to operate a camp.
“Basically, what we have to engage in is the legal fiction that we’ve considered (Labette) as an option, but it’s not available to us. Then from that point, the decision becomes, OK, do you put up with whatever problem they’ve had on probation supervision, or do you send them to prison?” Wheeler said. “ ... The net result probably is going to be that we are going to be sending some people” to prison.
He emphasized that sending someone to prison is “never pleasurable either for the judge or the person going.” The goals of prison are not the same goals as those at the correctional camp and, he noted, there’s always a possibility that prison would not be effective at rehabilitation.
The goal of the Labette camp was slanted more toward producing a good citizen.
“Prison has some goals other than just pure rehabilitation, whereas the Labette camp was primarily focused on giving back to the community and being able to demonstrate that you’re capable of living in it,” Wheeler said. “And, they had the opportunity to work on some limited substance abuse treatments as well, all in one setting, and that just generally isn’t an option that’s available to us.”
Judges do have the option of a 60-day jail sanction, but that uses local rather than state financing and, again, could be too costly and not effective.
“We really need a continuum of programs available to use to find a right fit for all of our people before you get to prison,” said Fifth District court administrator Ruth Wheeler, who had considerable experience with Labette when she was chief court services officer for the Fourth Judicial District. “I think it’s probably devastating to take that out of the programs we have available.”
The judge concurred.
“We’re going to miss the program,” Judge Wheeler said. “We’ve never made an indiscriminate use of it. We very carefully screen who we’re putting through the program . ...
“Taking that option away is going to make it a lot more difficult for us to avoid sending some people to prison.”
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