General Meeting
Tuesday July 25, 2006
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Minnesota Department of Corrections—Central Office
Attendance
Lee Buckley (Gov’s Office) Bill Guelker (DOC)
Bob Johnson (Anoka) Dennis Avery (Hennepin)
Kelley Heifort (DOC Jeri Boisvert (DPS)
LuAnne Buck (RS Eden) Farris Bell (DOC)
Tim Lanz (DOC) Kathy Sweeney (DEED)
Chris Crutchfield (Ramsey) Gary Johnson (DOC)
Dan Storkamp (DOC) Reggie Worlds (VA)
Gary Johnson began the meeting at 9:10 a.m., by welcoming all to the meeting. Introductions were made.
Andy McMahon, from the Corporation for Supportive Housing introduced himself and explained the new reentry initiative CSH is implementing. This initiative is called Returning Home Initiative. It will focus on the large metro areas of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Additional efforts will be made in Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey and Rhode Island. One of the premises is to engage correctional institutions in discussions about the advantages of supportive housing for offenders. Many offenders are among the ranks of the homeless, have disproportionate mental health and chemical dependency issues. They are in need of more than just housing. They require supportive housing to ensure they receive the help they need to overcome these personal barriers to successful reentry.
Reentry Team Updates
Gary Johnson indicated that the DOC Reentry Team will be reporting on a monthly basis to the Commissioner, her Deputy Commissioners and Assistant Commissioner. She is very committed to the MCORP effort and offender reentry in this state and has been appointed as the Responsible Authority for this initiative.
Gary also updated the committee on the latest information about the National Governors Association Policy Academy application made by the Governor. NGA has received more applications than they expected and have found that the application process has become very competitive. For these reasons they have decided to bring in an outside evaluation team to recommend which states get accepted. They have also gone back to their funding source and proposed that additional states beyond the original four be considered. This has delayed the application process and they hope to make some announcements about the process in early August. The Reentry Team has spent much of the month of June networking with agencies and community groups about the work of MCORP, in order to get the word out.
Kelley Heifort gave and update on Transitions programming in the institutions. Highlights include:
· DMV equipment will be arriving at all facilities very soon.
· Pre-release classes have been moved back to six months before release, which has proven to be beneficial to the offenders.
· A new computer program called “Life Skills” will have its first test run at MCF- Shakopee.
· Transition Coordinators are thinking about changing job fairs from a yearly to a monthly event, in order to reach more offenders than in the past.
On July 28th, Gary Johnson, Tim Lanz, and Kelley Heifort will be visiting Prairie Correctional Facility to aid the education director there in providing transitions material to the Minnesota offender population housed there.
3) Farris Bell gave an update on what she has been doing in the three pilot project communities:
· Farris will be attending meetings/trainings in Hennepin and Ramsey counties.
· She attended the Council on Crime and Justice’s conference, “Call to Justice” which looked at racial disparity with the intent of engaging communities and corrections professional in addressing this issue.
· She informed the committee that the DOC would be putting out an RFP whose purpose is to provide mentoring to children of incarcerated offenders. This is a $250,000 contract for non-profit agencies to provide this service.
· Farris has taken over the chair of the Transition Coalition. Her first task is to increase size and focus of the Coalition’s work.
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MCORP Governance Structure Discussion
The MCORP Governance Structure chart and Project Planning Worksheets were handed out. Gary asked the committee to consider these documents for editing and/or approval. Discussion was extensive and many on the committee felt that it did not accurately reflect the governance of the committee. Dan Storkamp facilitated a review of the chart that produced a new configuration that the committee agreed better reflected how MCORP will operate.
The Steering Committee will become the decision making body for MCORP and the DOC Reentry program. While the DOC will focus on improving reentry programming in the institutions, the three pilot programs will each create advisory groups in their own localities, but will communicate with each other through an implementation sub-committee. They will vet any recommendations for reentry programming through the MCORP Steering Committee for decisions.
Bill Guelker raised the issue of involving field supervision staff in this process. This was seen as a critical component since the success of reentry will hinge on the support and buy-in given by agents. Bill suggested that there be a separate subcommittee called supervision. After considerable discussion it was decided that supervision would be a specific issue that will be addressed at the county level in each pilot county, so that their suggestions could be brought forward to the Steering Committee for consideration.
Bob Johnson raised the issue of broadening the scope of reentry to include those offenders housed in county jails and to consider reentry courts among other reentry ideas. It was the Committee’s consensus that decisions as to scope of the pilot project had already been made and most would not be comfortable in broadening the project at this time.
Dan Storkamp will rework the Governance Structure Chart to reflect the decisions made by the Steering Committee at today’s meeting. Dan also asked that the committee members take the three Project Planning Worksheets and review them to show where their agencies fit into the work responsibility structure. He asked that each of us determine if the 32 work items are all inclusive or if there should be additions. Each member should review the Partners worksheet and consider if anyone is missing. The same should be done with the Stakeholders worksheet. Each member should review the work responsibilities and check off on their “column” where their agency has responsibilities. Once everyone has submitted their edits, Dan’s unit will compile the data and prepare updated worksheets for the Steering Committee.
With this discussion closed, the meeting was adjourned.
The next MCORP Steering Committee meeting will be held on the fourth Tuesday of August. That will be August 22, 2006, for 9:00 to noon, in the Pung 2-3 conference rooms at Central Office.