STATEMENT BY Paul A. Quander, Jr., Director, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia BEFORE THE United States Senate Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on the District of Columbia March 12, 2003

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today in support of the Fiscal Year 2004 budget request of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia, or CSOSA. As you know, CSOSA includes the Pretrial Services Agency (PSA), which provides supervision for pretrial defendants. Convicted offenders released into the community on probation, parole, or supervised release are supervised by the Community Supervision Program (CSP). 

Today marks my first appearance before you as CSOSA’s appointed Director. In my first six months with the Agency, I have come to appreciate both the complexity of what we are trying to accomplish and the level of support we have received from Congress as we build our capabilities. We greatly appreciate the increased resources we have received since the Revitalization Act was passed in 1997. Our FY 2004 request reflects our desire to continue using those resources effectively and strategically to fully implement the initiatives we have previously presented to you.

At any given time, CSP supervises approximately 15,000 offenders; PSA supervises or monitors approximately 8,000 defendants. To CSOSA, these individuals present the dual challenges of community corrections: reducing risk to public safety while, at the same time, helping thousands of our city’s residents to turn their lives around through drug treatment, educational services, and job placement. We believe these challenges complement each other; we strive not only to hold offenders and defendants accountable for their actions, but to provide opportunities that assist them in developing a different, more successful way of life. 

While more than 85 percent of arrests in the District of Columbia did not involve offenders under our supervision, our highest priority must be to close the “revolving door” that leads too many people through repeated incarcerations and periods of supervision. To achieve that priority, CSOSA allocates resources to four strategic objectives, or Critical Success Factors: Risk and Needs Assessment, Close Supervision, Treatment and Support Services, and Partnerships. Slightly less than one quarter of our budget is allocated to Risk and Needs Assessment, about one quarter to Treatment activities, and half to our front line Close Supervision activities. Partnership activities receive 5 percent of funding. We believe that success in these four areas will enable us to achieve our mission of public safety and service to criminal justice decision makers. 

In the six years since CSOSA’s establishment as a trusteeship, and the three years since certification as an independent federal agency, we have achieved significant progress toward realizing these objectives. Our milestone achievements include the following: 

• Both the Community Supervision Program and the Pretrial Services Agency have implemented automated case management systems that will greatly improve data quality and officer effectiveness.
• We have implemented comprehensive risk assessment for offenders and are now expanding our case planning protocol to include uniform needs assessment.
• With FY 2003 and FY 2004 resources, we expect to meet our target caseload of 50 general supervision offenders per officer.
• We have opened six field units to locate our officers in areas of the city with high concentrations of offenders, including our newest office at 25 K Street. A seventh field location at 800 North Capitol Street will come on line in the next few months.
• Since FY 2000, we have increased by 116 percent the number of offenders drug tested every month.
• We have placed over 3,500 defendants and offenders in contract treatment in FY 2002.
• We are particularly pleased that our partnership activities have expanded to include the city’s faith institutions. Our multi-denominational Faith Community Partnership embraces more than 25 member institutions, and our volunteer mentor program has matched more than 80 returning offenders with individuals who are committed to helping them stay out of prison.
• We continue to explore ways to partner with the Metropolitan Police Department so that offenders are known to the police and our Community Supervision Officers are a visible public safety presence in the city’s Police Service Areas. We are particularly proud of joint supervision by MPD and CSOSA officers who together make visits to offenders at their homes and workplaces. These “accountability tours” demonstrate to the community, the offender, and the offender’s significant others that the police and CSOSA are collaborating to enforce supervision and prevent criminal activity.
• We are also exploring ways in which offender and defendant accountability can be enforced through technology, such as using Global Positioning System-based electronic monitoring, to maintain ongoing knowledge of the offender’s location in order to improve the enforcement of stay-away orders.

For FY 2004, CSOSA requests direct budget authority of $166,525,000 and 1,357 FTE. Of this amount, $103,904,000 is for the Community Supervision Program; $37,411,000 is for the Pretrial Services Agency, and $25,210,000 is for the Public Defender Service. The District of Columbia Public Defender Service transmits its budget request with CSOSA’s. The Director of PDS, Ronald Sullivan, will present it in a separate statement.

CSOSA’s FY 2004 budget request represents an 8 percent increase over FY 2003 funding. Most of that increase is attributable to Adjustments to Base that will enable the Community Supervision Program to fully fund Community Supervision Officer positions to be filled in FY 2003. These positions are essential to achieving our target caseload ratio.

The Community Supervision Program increase also includes funding to expand our Close Supervision capabilities. In FY 2002, CSOSA received $13 million and an authorization for 89 positions to expand the Assessment and Orientation Center into a full Reentry and Sanctions Center. Located at Karrick Hall on the grounds of D.C. General Hospital, the Assessment and Orientation Center provides a residential placement for high-risk defendants and offenders with extensive criminal histories and severe substance abuse problems. The program has proven very effective in increasing the likelihood that these individuals will go on to complete supervision successfully. Among offenders who complete the program, rearrests decreased by 74 percent in the year following treatment. Since its inception, almost 900 defendants and offenders have successfully completed the program.

The Reentry and Sanctions Center will increase the availability of this successful program for the offenders most likely to commit new crimes. We believe that through strategic intervention with this high-risk population, we can achieve a significant decrease in recidivism. The Reentry and Sanctions Center will also increase CSOSA’s capacity to implement intermediate sanctions for offenders and defendants who abuse drugs while under supervision, and for whom less intensive options might not be effective. Meaningful intermediate sanctions and increased availability of sanction-based treatment are among our most potent weapons in the fight to reduce recidivism. 

In September 2002, CSOSA signed a ten-year lease with the District of Columbia for the continued use of Karrick Hall. Although renovation work has been delayed pending approvals required by the District government, we request $3,104,000 to expand the Reentry and Sanctions Center to operate one additional unit, for a total of 40 beds. We will also continue to request funding for the program from the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area initiative, which has provided $1.3 million per year.

The Pretrial Services Agency also has one new initiative focusing on enhanced supervision. Since the D.C. Department of Corrections’ closure of Community Correctional Center #4 in 2002, more high-risk defendants are being released to the community and must be monitored by Pretrial Service Officers. The impact of this has been considerable. Officers must devote more time to every aspect of these cases and must increase the number of face-to-face contacts with these defendants. This increased contact is difficult to maintain with caseloads at their current levels. To mitigate the stress this has placed on the General Supervision staff, the Pretrial Services Agency requests $224,000 to provide vendor management of the agency’s electronic monitoring program. 

We at CSOSA are proud of our progress as a federal agency. We believe that our program model, which applies national best practices to the unique needs of the District of Columbia, will improve the safety of our city and increase the resources available to the offenders and defendants who live here. As we mature as an Agency, I have every confidence that we will be able to present an impressive record of accomplishments. I believe our success will make CSOSA a national leader in the field of community supervision and a unique model for other jurisdictions. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.


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