The Tri-County Regional Corrections Board held their monthly meeting this week at the Northwest Regional Corrections Center (NWRCC) to review the proposed contract for beds with Mahnomen County.
Executive Director Andrew Larson told the board he attended the Mahnomen County Board meeting last month and believes they would like to expand their contract with the NWRCC. “If I had been able to provide them with a contract at that meeting, I believe they would’ve moved forward with the process,” said Larson. However, the contract must wait to be finalized until the Clay County contract expires, which will happen when the new Clay County Justice Center opens. The Clay County Facility is expected to open on October 22.
Larson went over language in the contract with board members, which includes a January 2019 start to the new contract. The contract will be presented to Mahnomen County and hopefully be signed soon. A typical procedure for an inter-county contract of services will have the contract go through the Mahnomen County Attorney’s Office before being presented to the County Board for approval.
Polk County also recently received a Recidivism Reduction Grant from the Department of Justice. The grant will provide Polk County with $299,000 over two years for programs. “Recidivism deals with better-equipping offenders being reintegrated back into the community whether after serving a period of incarceration at a county jail or prison,” explained Andrew Larson, Executive Director for the NWRCC. “What our grant effort has focused on is expanded program offering for chemical dependency, mental health, and cognitive behavioral interventions”
The board voted to sign the agreement with the Department of Justice and a memorandum of understanding with the Northwest Mental Health Center which will be crucial for the release planning efforts for the grant. It will provide a care coordinator that work out of the jail working with the offenders to get treatment set up, establishing housing and identifying needs that could be a roadblock for the offender’s reintegration back into the community.
The final focus of the grant will have a significant impact on the probation department dealing specifically with female offenders. While female offenders are considered a minority offender group, Polk County routinely has one of the highest rates of female incarceration at the state prison in Shakopee.
“The pathway into the criminal justice system is very different for many female offenders and the response to managing them needs to them needs to be different as well,” said Larson. “This will give us a good opportunity to try some different things, evaluate some different risk assessments, some different supervision methodologies and hopefully we’ll be able to make a significant impact with that population.”
