Big changes coming to Lancaster County Community Corrections — including new name

Jeff Kilpatrick, the department's director, said the changes are aimed at better rehabilitating those in the criminal justice system, saving taxpayer money and decreasing public confusion.

At a mid-May hearing on his budget for the next fiscal year and during an interview with the Journal Star, Kilpatrick pinpointed the beginning of July as the hoped-for start date for several of the improvements.

Public safety assessment

Kilpatrick, who moved to Lincoln from Florida and became the department's director in the summer of 2023, said since he arrived he has been trying to implement a tool to determine whether someone should remain in jail after their arrest and before their trial.

Reasons for such a tool are that keeping people in jail is costly, and evidence-based tools that inform pretrial release decisions produce better outcomes than standard bond schedules alone. Bond schedules outline different dollar amounts for different crimes.

"Jurisdictions are being sued throughout the country for not using a validated tool and keeping people detained just because they can't post a money bond," Kilpatrick added. "All the best pretrial practices say you should be using a validated tool."

Community Corrections' in-the-works tool — called its public safety assessment tool, or PSA — will give defendants scores and recommend a level of pretrial supervision, such as a GPS monitor or being required to check in once a month with a pretrial officer.

Kilpatrick said the PSA, going live hopefully around July 1, will become another tool in judges' toolkits, which already include common sense.

Common sense is still needed because, for example, a person who commits murder but has lived in Lincoln their entire life and has no criminal history will likely score low on the PSA.

"But the judge is not just going to release (a murderer) on their own recognizance," Kilpatrick said. "It doesn't take away the judicial discretion."

Kilpatrick said his department has been doing practice PSAs, is transitioning to a new information management system and wants to have the system working smoothly before adding the PSA to it.

The PSA does not require an interview with a defendant at the jail, but it does require Community Corrections staff to come into work at 5:45 a.m. and run criminal histories on people set for 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. arraignments.

PSAs will get sent out to the city attorney's office, the county attorney's office, the public defender's office and judges.

"Basically you have three scores on the PSA: the likelihood that you'll come back to court, the likelihood that you would be arrested on a new law violation while this case is pending, and then, if you were arrested, the likelihood it would be a violent charge," Kilpatrick said.

In other words, the PSA identifies people that can be released from jail and people that should be detained.

Kilpatrick said he hopes the PSA system will result in more pretrial defendants out of jail, creating a larger pool of people that can take advantage of Community Corrections' various rehabilitation programs.

Text reminders

Integrated with the PSA system will be a new text court date reminder system, aimed at reducing the county's 37% failure-to-appear rate, Kilpatrick said.

Kilpatrick said the national average is 12% and he hopes the text reminder system will reduce the county's rate to 4%-5%.

While the county already sends out court notices in the mail, the new system will text defendants seven days, 48 hours and 24 hours ahead of their court date.

Kilpatrick said data from across the country shows that it costs system stakeholders — like the court, law enforcement and the jail — about $1,500 on average each time someone fails to appear in court.

"Most people don't miss court intentionally," Kilpatrick said. "For most people, when they get arrested, it's a very traumatic, significant experience, and they don't remember things."

Transitional housing

Often, Kilpatrick's department cannot get people out of jail and into Community Corrections programming unless they have suitable housing.

Some people that end up in jail for domestic violence need to find new housing because they are ordered by a judge to not return to their home because their significant other lives there. Others that end up in jail didn't have jobs and homes, or lose their jobs and housing after going to jail.

Kilpatrick said, historically, his department has had a contract with sober houses to provide transitional housing. He said he ended that contract earlier this year because he was unhappy with the conditions of a home the department was using that had 12 beds.

But Community Corrections has plans to gain access to 29 transitional beds this summer at a facility run by Lincoln mental healthcare provider Integrated Behavioral Health Services.

Unlike the sober home, the facility will be staffed 24 hours a day. Kilpatrick said the beds will cost $500 a month — reasonable compared with $92 per day, a rate that the state of Nebraska pays for its transitional housing.

Kilpatrick said he doesn't think people should spend more than 90 days in transitional housing.

"The idea is to get them out of jail, help them get a job, get identification, transportation, insurance, whatever else they may need and housing set up," he said.

During his budget hearing, Kilpatrick told the County Board he could use as many as 50 beds after Commissioner Sean Flowerday asked Kilpatrick how many he could make use of if resources weren't limited.

Rebranding

Kilpatrick said his department is rebranding because the public often confuses Community Corrections with County Corrections, which is the jail.

He added it doesn't help that the state prison system runs a center in Lincoln called the Community Corrections Center.

Kilpatrick said he thought a consensus was reached on a new name, but it was too similar to something else existing in the community and he had to go back to the drawing board.

Kilpatrick's department will have a public open house after it rebrands.