I would say for this discussion that there are no differences, but we do not have specific programs specifically targeted for the female inmate population, which this would be consistent with all of corrections, not just within the federal system, but i would definitely take your question back to have discussions internally with the bureau to include my colleagues and if theres something that is being done or if you are aware of something specifically for the female inmate population relative to the cbt programs we provide. My understanding, as a general proposistion, women are in prison for drug crimes and not Violent Crimes. That is a very different profile than a dangerous felon in our system. I would ask that you take into consideration those kinds of factors as well as i think there may be some programs that will better enable women to reintegrate when they are released and would work for men. I believe that there are some states who recognize those kinds of factors and plan their programs in a way that reflects that kind of understanding. I think it is very important because as more and more women, who tend to still be the caregivers for their families, are incarcerated, that has a lot of ramifications to their families, their children, reentry, all of that. And i have recently put together a Wardens Advisory Group to look at what we have done historically and focus on those types of concerns your youre raising to make sure that if there are any a best practices were things we are moving in that direction to ensure that there is a balance on both sides. So the female inmates within our care are receiving appropriate attention and care relative to the issues you have raised. Because my oppressor and is generally there have been fewer programs for women and the prison system, and i understand your responsibilities on the federal side. Thank you very much. Thank you, senator. Thank you, mr. Samuels. We appreciate you being here today. We appreciate your support for a joint legislative executive efforts Going Forward that the bruner of our prisons will continue to show. We would continue to call on you for information and on your staff expertise and we look forward to that relationship as we proceed. Youre excused from the committee. We thank you for your testimony, and i will call up the second panel. I welcome our panel. Professor delisi is from iowa. The Ranking Member represents iowa and has asked that the professor testifies first so they can hear their constituents testimony first. We will go out of the usual and order and begin with the professor. Let me first ask of the witnesses and to affirm the testimony given before the committee will be the whole truth . Thank you, and please be seated. The professor is a professor and coordinator of criminal justice studies with the center for the study of violence at iowa state university. He is the editor in chief of a journal and has received a fellow award from the capital of the academy of criminal , and would yous like to make any further recognition of the professor . You said it all, but i do say welcome to you. Please proceed and then we go to the director and down the line. Thank you for this opportunity. Although reducing the costs of the o. P. Is important, the policy recommendations neglect the antisociology of criminal defenders and recidivism that would result from a large scale release. The majority of the testimony attests to the antisociology behavior risks noted by the model federal prisoner with estimates of additional crimes that could result from the policy recommendations. The report posits the notion drug offenders are somewhat innocuous and their behavior is limited to drug sales and use. Criminal offenders and all criminal offenders tend to be versatile in their offending behaviors. A person sentenced for drug crimes is also likely that property crimes, Violent Crimes, nuisance crimes, traffic violations, and assorted violations in the criminal justice system. A discussion of drug offenders should also be understood that next week they are likely to the property offenders. Recent Research Using a variety of samples indicated that drug use is one of the prime drivers of overall criminal activity. Analytic Research Indicates drug offenders offending rates is three or four times of those who do not have drug problems, and their behavior goes far beyond drug offending. Regarding safety, current law permits judges to wait mandatory minimums agencies for person with no criminal history. The policy is adequate to avoid inadequate confinement of low risk offenders. The entire paradigm demonstrate s continuity and antisocial behavior from childhood to adulthood. 25 of the offenders are gang members. Prison is an important interruption of their criminal careers, but the preponderance of offenders will continue to commit offenses upon release. Releasing these types of offenders could likely produce more crime. Research has shown a one prisoner reduction in the population is associated with a 15. 1 index crime increase per year. Releasing 1 of the Current Population would result in approximately 32,850 additional crimes. An independent study by other researchers arrived at the estimate that one prisoner reduction increases crime by 17 offenses per year. Thus to use the same example, releasing one percent of the Current Population would result in 37,230 additional offenses. The safety valve one recognition of the urban Institute Proposal to release 2000 offenders based on these estimates would produce a range of 30,000 to 34,000 additional index crimes. In terms of safety valve , the proposal 2 runs the creation to apply beyond drug offenders with minimal criminal histories, armed career criminals, and Identity Theft offenders. The release of these matters could the disastrous to Public Safety. Regarding expanded incentivize programming estimates, using the same data, proposal to potentially release 36,000 inmates over the next 10 years will produce an estimated 540,000 to 612,000 new index crimes. The report contains no mention of the various conditions relating to criminal propensity of federal offenders. Y isprevalence of psychopath h one of the most pernicious conditions and one of the most robust predictors of recidivism. The release would includes the release of hundreds of thousands of clinically psychopathic offenders. Another important construct is sexual sadism. Even after decades of confinement, offenders who are sexually sadistic pose a significant risk to the community as exemplified by a current inmate who was sentenced to death in 2003 after serving approximately 1 4 century for prior convictions. These conditions are not limited to homicide offenders and sex offenders, but found in offenders convicted of other crimes. We were trying to keep our testimony to five minutes per witness. If you could sum up. A final point and i have some questions in the testimony your testimony will be in the record. Leahyan lee he stated the problem is one that congress created. I would also add that corollary benefit of that legislation was the reduction of crime by increased use of confinement. Thank you very much, professor. Let me now introduce john wetzel, the director of corrections of the state of pennsylvania, but the nomenclature is different in its own name. He is the secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of corrections. He oversees all functions relating to the Pennsylvania Department of corrections operations, budgeting, personnel, and training. He began his corrections career in 1989 at an officer at a county correctional facility. He served as an officer, treatment counselor, supervisor, Training Academy director, and as warden of the Franklin County jail. He is a member of the American Correctional Association and the American Jail Association and a past president of the Pennsylvania County Corrections Association and had very nice things to say as we said hello at the beginning. Please proceed. Thank you very much, thanks for the opportunity to talk about pennsylvania and the experience we have had in addressing many of the same problems you all face in the federal system. Specifically, when governor tom corbett was elected, he was the attorney general. Before that he was a federal prosecutor. He has a unique perspective. He has had a firsthand view of the corrections system, and what he saw the 24 years before we took over was an average growth of 1500 inmates a month. We took over nearly three years ago, we have 51,000 inmates, and that was a consistent growth over republican and democratic administrations. The one charge he gave me when we took over was not to reduce population, not to reduce spending, although both of those things are a priority. The main priority was to improve outcomes and improve our Correction System and take the give that we need to get a better return on our investment for what we are spending in corrections. How do we do that . We applied for and received grants to go to the justices reinvestment process, and went through a process that was aide that was data driven. The governor was a hard sell. It takes the perspective of many folks on the panel in that we are very concerned, the bottom line for us is always going to be crime rate and Public Safety. So the process had to be data driven. We gather data through this process, and the most important part of this process is that it was a process that was participatory, the head stakeholders as part of the group that looked at the policy options. We looked at what the drivers were, and identify policy options looking nationally and internationally at policy options that seemed to work for other jurisdictions. We build consensus, a key part of the process, where we had the aclu and the conservative ink conservative think tankers sitting there having discussions and coming to agreement on how we can Better Outcomes. Some of the focus needs to be on what the root cause of the crime is. It is easy in this field to paint with broad brushes and say we do not want to open the back door and let a bunch of people run out because that will have a negative effect on Public Safety. What we agree with is what we want out of the justices is when somebody becomes criminally involved, and they come out the back end of our system, what we want them to be is less likely to become criminally involved again. We can all agree with that. Theres enough research out there that tells us that when we make good decisions from the front end of the system who needs to be incarcerated, and more specifically what the root cause of the crime is, so violent offenders among murderers, rapists are different, and we cannot paint with the same brush as someone who the root cause of the crime is addiction. It does not matter how long we lock an addict up. We got policy options that were legislative, and in six months, that passed unanimously in the house and senate, which was miraculous in pennsylvania, and we came up with policy options. What those options resulted in was under our 2 1 2 years we have average a decline of 70 inmates a year out of 51,000. You look at a consistent inmate growth per year, eliminated that. We have been able to close a couple of prisons and get more people into programming, and that has been the key. Our policy options started at the front end, identified groups who were not appropriate ever come to a state prison. Then we looked at funding risk based sentencing, so the commission in pennsylvania is building a sentencing tool so the judge has risk information, not just a presentence investigation, but risk what is the risk for this offender, and that factored into the sentencing. We looked within the department of corrections, which had areas that were not doing good. Waiting lists for programs, how can we better deliver programs, and part of that was making sure we are only putting people in the programs. In the back end of our system we put a lot of focus on. The community criticisms, we put Community Corrections system, we put 110 million in it. We saw 95 of those programs were not effective. We restructured the programs and we decided to put a performance measure on the contract, so the contractors are paid based on their ability to impact recidivism. This process was a good process, and at the same time, our crime rate went down. The crime rate in pennsylvania continues to go down. Thank you. That is a terrific story. Thank you very much. The next witness is representative john tilley, who represents the eighth district of kentucky in the kentucky general assembly. He has served in that assembly since january 2007, and he is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee where he has been the chair since 2009. In that role he worked with other state leaders to form a bipartisan, multibranch task force with the goal of enhancing Public Safety, controlling correction costs, and decreasing recidivism. He is currently the vice chair of the National Conference of state legislatures committee on justice and the judiciary. He was a prosecutor, prior to turning the legislature, serving for six years as christian countys assistant attorney, and were delighted hes here today. Thank you. Please proceed. Thank you. We had a similar story as pennsylvanias. I can say with confidence as well as a former prosecutor, members, that we can have it all , in one sense. We can have better Public Safety at less cost with less crime and less recidivism. I will tell you it was no honor when the future will trust in their project made us the poster child for prison growth in 2008. They released a report called one in 100, which did for the which stood for the proposition that one in 100 adults in this country were behind bars. In kentucky that rate was one in 92. As an aside, in the country, there are one in 31 adults under some form of correctional control. It is a stunningly high. I think it should hit all of us. In the decade ending doesnt think about the growth rate was almost quadrupled the national average. We were at 45 of the rest of the country. To put that even in greater context, let me tell you that we comprise up to 5 of the worlds population, but we house 25 of the worlds visitors. Worlds prisoners. Kentucky was the epicenter of prison growth for the country. Did all that translate come all that record spending and record incarceration translate into better Public Safety, less crime, less recidivism . In kentucky, it did not. All that spending amounted to very little. Recidivism remained above the national average. Our crime rate had always been relatively flat. The crime rate has been dropping for some time, but we only enjoyed about 1 3 of that job. Of that drop. We were about 6 of the previous decade. The rest of the country was 19 . We remained flat as well, and our sister state to the south, tennessee, their crime rate up again, we are one of the safer states in the country and now they remain one of the more high crime states and their prison growth is exploding. In response we have formed a multibranch Bipartisan Task force, a small task force, seven members. We received support from the business community, the retail federation, and the Kentucky Chamber of commerce. We received support from all manner of stakeholders in this effort. What we found was this that our prison growth rate was being driven not by crime, but by the number of arrests, in court cases, drug offenses, rising incarceration rates for technical parole violators, and a low level offenders were driving this population. In kentucky they were far more likely to go to prison than any state. We found that to be a 57 to 41 number there. In a bipartisan way, a bill passed in the house and in the senate. The goal is better Public Safety, less cost, getting smarter on crime. I do not have time to tell you about that, but let me tell you and i want to stick to my time, focus our most extensive prison beds on the most serious offenders, find alternatives for the nonviolent drug offenders, which we done, and use those savings to expand treatment opportunities and supervision opportunities for a number of our lowlevel offenders who are driving that population. We have strengthened probation and parole. We have seen a stunning result from pretrial alone with not having to detain so many low level misdemeanors. It has increased our Public Safety rate. They show up to court at a greater rate even though they are not being housed. Counties are saving millions. We have modernized our drug code which is been a focus today from a number of voices. We have deferred prosecution, a possibility which must be prosecutor approved for low level drug offenses. These are prosecutordriven things. Not one felony has been reclassified to a misdemeanor in our negotiations to come up with a way to approach this. We reinvested the savings which have been in the millions into increased drug treatment. I will get to how much we have in that in a minute. Let me tell you we have achieved remarkable results. We now have fewer prisoners at lower cost. One benchmark, a few months ago, we were at 3500 less out of a total of 20,000. We were supposed to be 24,000. As the secretary said, we are below that average him and about 3500 fewer. We have less recidivism for the first time in a decade. We have dropped five percentage points. We have a 500 increase in drug abuse capacity, drug treatment capacity. Chairman, member of the committee, we have a lot of work ahead of us. We invite you to learn more. Thank you very much. I appreciate your being here, and it is a remarkable success story. Our next witness is nancy levine, the director of the Justice Policy center at the urban institute where she oversees a portfolio of projects related to crime and Public Safety. Prior, she was the founding director of the