0 - National Criminal Justice Reference Service
0 - National Criminal Justice Reference Service
0 - National Criminal Justice Reference Service
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an inmate gets closer to hisher minimum release date, he/she should receive a higher priority for<br />
AOD placement, especially since completion of AOD treatment can be a major factor influencing<br />
parole application decisions. For the five TC programs, minimum time remaining to minimum<br />
release date was listed at 15 months for Cresson, 9 months for Waymart, and 6 months for<br />
Huntingdon. For Graterford, eligibility criteria required “sufficient time to complete treatment.”<br />
No written policy statement was found for Houtzdale.<br />
i<br />
This finding suggests that many inmates in drug treatment programs had already been<br />
denied parole at least once. Data inspections suggested that some inmates may have “rolled over”<br />
&om one sentence to another (e.g., consecutive sentences for different convictions). As a result,<br />
they may have been assigned a new inmate number, but their old minimum release date remained<br />
attached to their old inmate number in the DOC database. Other inmates may have been released<br />
0<br />
on parole and returned to prison for technical violations, without having a new minimum release<br />
date entered. As a result, the minimum release date of record is not necessarily a reliable indicator<br />
of TC eligibility, in spite of DOC policies specifLing its use. With the assistance of DOC<br />
personnel, we were able to make numerous corrections based upon case-by-case searches of the<br />
DOC database, but this was an extremely inefficient and time-consuming task.<br />
Thus, a substantial number of inmates in our sample that we expected to be released by the<br />
end of June 2001 had in fact not yet been released. DOC drug abuse treatment specialists (DATS)<br />
at each institution utilize diverse criteria when making AOD program placement decisions. This<br />
does not mean that minimum release dates are not considered, but they receive far less priority<br />
(on average) than we had expected based on previous process evaluation research and stated<br />
program admission guidelines (Welsh, 2000a; 2000b). Further policy review and/or program<br />
Education programs. For example, Outpatient standards allow considerable discretion in<br />
138<br />
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of <strong>Justice</strong>. This report has not<br />
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)<br />
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of <strong>Justice</strong>.
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