Current Criminal Justice Policies in Utah,
2018 Annual Report

Executive Summary

HB 348 made substantial changes to practices and procedures in Utah’s criminal justice system. Our current policies are built around several key objectives, including prioritizing prisons for serious and violent offenders; implementing and expanding broad reentry planning and treatment services while ensuring oversight and accountability. This third annual report provides several measures that show we are making progress in pursuit of these objectives while noting where challenges have arisen. Specifically, the key take-aways at year three are as follow.

• The percent of the prison population that is non-violent remains lower through our current criminal justice policies. Policies that reduced prison length of stay and lowered certain low level drug penalties have reduced the percent of the prison population that is non-violent from 41 to 33 percent.

• Offenders on parole are continuing to cycle through the system. High failure rates on parole demonstrate a need for additional support for this high risk population and to further evaluate its long-term impact on our criminal justice system.

• More justice involved individuals are accessing substance use treatment through Utah’s public behavioral system. Utah’s capacity to treat offenders with an underlying substance use problem increased by nearly 13 percent in fiscal year 2018. While this increase is encouraging, more than half of offenders entering the criminal justice system remains in need.

• Better understanding how practices adhere to policy intent is critical for the system to sustain its initial successes. Fidelity as it relates to the implementation process takes time and needs continuing support and resource allocation. Specifically, ensuring that agency staff continues to be trained in evidence-based approaches while being exposed to performance evaluations is central for maintaining early accomplishments.

Overall, findings demonstrate a need for increased support for community supervision practices and a continuing need to expand treatment services for offenders in need. Utah should continue to investment in treatment services to better meet the need of our criminal justice population.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our partner agencies for their ongoing efforts in sharing their data and for their willingness to collaborate on the writing of these reports.

Document Interactivity

This document offers some interactive features. Hovering over figures 1-7 allows the reader to see the details of a particular data point. The reader may also quickly navigate to and from different sections/sub-sections by clicking on the moving table of content, located on the left hand-side of this document.

Introduction & Background

While experiencing a faster than average population growth, Utah’s prison population increased by 18 percent between 2004 and 2013. With the system anticipating an additional 37 percent growth by 2034, the 2015 reform package, HB 348, focused on slowing such trajectory through a myriad of targeted evidence informed policies.¹ Broadly speaking, Utah’s current criminal justice policies made changes to prison length of stay, supervision practices, reduced penalties of lower level drug offenses, and increased funding for the public behavioral health system.² Indeed, the evidence informed policy objectives were to:

1. Focus prison beds on serious and violent offenders
2. Strengthen supervision practices
3. Improve and expand re-entry and treatment services
4. Match resources to offenders’ needs
5. Support local corrections systems, &
6. Ensure oversight and accountability

This report provides an update on measures meant to inform on the progress of Utah’s criminal justice reform bill, HB 348. Specifically, we provide updates on trends relating to the prison and supervision populations; risk and needs screening process; and the area of treatment through fiscal year 2018. We further examine one-year outcomes for offenders on parole while concluding with a brief discussion around national crime rates.

Policy Objective 1, Use of Prison

Focus prison beds on serious and violent offenders, expand alternatives to incarceration, while averting future criminal justice associated costs

Summary of policies

Current criminal justice policies support reserving prison beds for serious and violent offenders.³ This objective was reinforced by policies including, the earned time credits program; changes to criminal history scoring; ceilings on probation and parole violator prison length of stay; and a reduction in penalties for certain low-level drug offenders. As discussed in-length in previous reports, this drastically decreased the percent of drug possession only cases filed as felonies. The bill also restricted the use of drug free zone enhancements to better target their original intent. Two years after implementation of the law, the use of these enhancements had decreased by more than 90 percent.

Non-violent offenders

Figure 1 illustrates the percent of Utah’s prison population that is non-violent.⁴ As seen in the figure, the share of non-violent offenders declined from 41 to 33 percent between fiscal years 2014 and 2018, a percentage reduction of 18 percent. During the same time period, inmates whose most severe offense was a drug possession only offense declined from five to two percent (seen in figure 2). The impact of these numbers is further magnified by the decline in the overall prison population, which reduced from 7,065 to 6,446 inmates between fiscal years 2014 and 2018. This shows that those convicted of nonviolent crimes are spending less time in prison, or accessing alternatives to prison.

Figure 1. The percent of the prison population that is non-violent

Figure 2. Percent drug possession only offense

Prison length of stay

Figure 3 compares the average prison length of stay for non-violent offenders and parole/probation violators before and after the implementation of HB 348. As seen, the average length of stay decreased across all these offense types. Specifically, parole violators experienced a percentage reduction in length of stay of 35 percent (6 months down to 4 months), probation violators 39 percent (12 months down to 7 months), drug possession only offense 35 percent (13 months down to 8 months), and property offense 26 percent (16 months down to 12 months). Reductions in parole and probation violator prison length of stay are a direct result of policies that placed graduated ceilings on the length of time an offender could spend incarcerated following a revocation from either probation or parole. It should be noted that these ceilings only apply to technical revocations, which do not involve a criminal act. Reductions in length of stay for drug possession only and property offenders is likely in part, attributed to changes in criminal history scoring, which reduced the average recommended prison stay.⁵

Figure 3. Prison length of stay for non-violent offenders and parole/probation violators

Although the above findings align with current policy intent, in fiscal year 2018, Utah’s prison population exceeded its post-reform projections. Figure 4 shows the prison population by month between July 2013 and June 2018. As seen, while remaining below pre-reform levels, the population increased from a low of around 6,200 inmates in January of 2017 to 6,500 in June of 2018. As discussed in previous reports, increases in the prison population occur when the number of admissions to prison exceeds the number of releases. When examining these admissions by offense type, the main changes have been seen in person, property, and drug possession only offenses. Specifically, person offenses increased from 17 to 20 percent of all admissions between pre- and post-reform periods, while drug possession only offenses declined from 12 to 8 percent. This decline is attributed to penalty reductions in drug possession only offenses, which was reduced from a felony 3 to a Class Misdemeanor A for the first two convictions. It may be noted that property related offenses increased from 31 to 34 percent of all admissions between fiscal years 2017 and 2018.

Figure 4. Utah’s prison population by month

In recent years, the growth in the prison population has been caused by increases in parole and probation revocations. Revocations, or returns to prison currently constitute well over two-thirds of all prison admissions. The following section provides a discussion around trends in the parole and probation populations while noting post-reform outcomes for offenders on parole.

Policy Objective 2, Improve Outcomes

Strengthen community supervision practices to hold offenders accountable, while improving outcomes for offenders on probation and parole

Summary of policies

This next section speaks to policies aimed to strengthen practices for offenders on probation and parole. Reform policies emphasized the need to front-load resources and to supervise offenders according to their risk level. These objectives were supported by introducing earned compliance credits and by hiring transitional agents, who lend support to parolees before and after prison release. In addition, Adult Probation and Parole (AP&P) developed and implemented the Response & Incentive Matrix to enhance supervision performance and reduce discrepancies in responses across regions.

Probation population

Figures 5 and 6 shows the overall probation population and probationers being supervised for a Class A Misdemeanor only. While the growth rate in the overall probation population has been similar before and after the implementation of current policies, the number (and share) of Class A misdemeanants has increased. The is in part, related to the penalty changes in drug possession only crimes, which as previously mentioned, reduced these offenses from a felony 3 to a Class A misdemeanor for the first two convictions, and a direct result of AP&P focusing their resources on supervising offenders that are high risk to reoffend.⁶ Between fiscal year 2014 and 2018, the percent of probationers that were high or intensive risk to re-offend increased from 39 to 55 percent. Such an increase implies that the state is directing its supervision resources to offenders who present the highest risk of failure, for whom evidence-based sanctions and incentives help foster behavioral change.⁷

Figure 5. The overall probation population

Figure 6. The number of Class A probationers supervised by Adult Probation and Parole

Parole population

Figure 7 shows the parole population between fiscal years 2014 and 2018. While the number of parolees was increasing prior to the reform, its growth rate increased in fiscal year 2018. Specifically, this rate increased from an annual average of 3 to 6 percent. This is, in part, driven by policy decisions that have increased the proportion of inmates who are released on parole rather than serving their full sentence in prison.

Figure 7. The parole population

As the system begins to evaluate outcomes for offenders on probation and parole, it should be noted that fully implementing new policies takes time. Furthermore, sound evaluation studies should adjust for changes that are occurring in the offender population through time in order to properly understand expectations in performance. Keeping this in mind, a summary of findings that relate to a 2018 study examining one-year parole outcomes is provided below.

1-year parole revocation outcomes

Background

As previously mentioned, increasing success rates for offenders serving time in the community is a central policy objective of HB 348. In starting to understand outcomes under our current policies, the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice conducted an analysis evaluating one-year outcomes for offenders on parole. In the state of Utah, a revocation to prison from parole can occur in two instances, (1) if the offender failed to comply with their supervision conditions and (2) if the offender was convicted of a new crime while on parole. It should be emphasized that changes in revocation rates through time may not speak to changes in offender behavior, or public safety but rather the nature and enforcement of criminal justice policies and practices.

Study Findings

The study⁸ explored whether (1) there was a difference in the rate parolees were returned to prison due to a technical violation pre- and post-reform and (2) if there was a difference in such rate when examining new convictions. By adjusting for changes in the parole population through time, overall findings concluded that;

• parolees were more likely to be returned to prison on a technical violation post-reform; however, the effect appeared to be driven by high risk parolees who had failed on parole at least once before

• when examining new convictions on parole, the study found no difference in outcomes between the first pre-reform group in comparison to the first post-reform group, however a difference was seen in the second post-reform group

  • this difference was driven by increases in non-violent convictions that were, primarily made up of drug possession only offenses.

Overall, study findings warrant a closer look at the causes behind revocations, how well supervision practices adhere to policy intent, and current enforcement practices. It further highlights the need to examine their nuances through other social trends, including the nation-wide Opioid epidemic. It should be noted that agency directors and experts are actively working towards finding solutions to these higher than expected rates of prison returns. In the following section we explore aggregate substance use and mental health treatment needs and the system’s capacity to provide such needs.

Policy Objectives 3-5, Expand Treatment Services

Improve and expand re-entry and treatment services to better meet our populations’ needs

Summary of policies

Increasing capacity and quality of treatment for offenders with underlying substance use and mental health disorders continues to lie at the forefront of criminal justice reform. These needs which often correlate, are significantly higher among the offender population than the general population. To better understand the prevalence of these needs in Utah, HB 348 supported the creation of a statewide risk and needs screening process implemented in December of 2015. Additionally, increased funding was given to the Department of Substance Abuse and Mental Health. Annual funding started at $4.5 million dollars, with an additional $6 million being awarded in fiscal year 2018. These monies were awarded with the intent to increase both capacity and quality of treatment.

Risk and needs screening process

The screenings process produces an indicator score for those in need of a substance use and/or mental health treatment referral, and categorizes offenders into low, moderate, or high risk to reoffend. Screening offenders for their risk and needs is considered an evidence-based practice and further aids in:

• making appropriate referrals for full assessments
• guiding jail housing decisions
• assigning supervision levels; &
• understanding Utah’s treatment gap

With approximately 90,000 screenings being completed since its implementation, screening results indicate the following;

• half of Utah’s arrestees are in need of a substance use referral
• 40 percent is in need of a mental health referral
• close to one third screen positive for a possible co-occurring disorder; &
• 70 percent of offenders were screened as being moderate to high risk to reoffend

When examining these needs by gender, these screenings show that females are more likely than males to be in need of substance use and mental health referrals, a finding that is consistent with national literature. Specifically, 55 percent of females were in need of a substance use referral while 47 percent were in need of a mental health referral. In comparison, 49 and 36 percent of males were in need of those same services, respectively. Since an underlying mental health disorder exaggerates the risk to re-offend if paired with a criminogenic risk factor, such a finding highlights the need for the system to enhance the availability of services to meet female specific needs.⁹

Treatment capacity & needs

The number of justice involved treated for an underlying substance use disorder experienced a substantial increase in fiscal year 2018. Specifically, this number increased from an average pre-reform level of just below 11,000 to the system treating 12,842 unique individuals in fiscal year 2018. While such an increase is encouraging, a significant treatment gap persists among this population. In fiscal year 2018, an estimated 15,080 justice involved individuals were in need of substance use services above what was provided through our public behavioral system (seen in figure 8).¹⁰ Indeed, these numbers show that less than 46 percent of individuals with substance use treatment needs were able to access such services. In context to the nation-wide opioid epidemic, the need to increase access to effective treatment is urgent both as a matter of public health and to decrease strain on law enforcement resources.

Figure 8. Utah’s treatment gap - Substance use

Table 1 shows the annual number of admissions to substance use treatment by level.¹¹ As seen, the number of individuals being admitted to residential treatment increased by 38 percent while admissions to outpatient and intensive outpatient treatment have remained relatively unchanged. Furthermore, admissions to detox experienced an increase of more than 30 percent. The increase in residential services was predominately concentrated in Salt Lake County.

Table 1 Admissions to substance use treatment by level: Annual averages fy14-18

Level of service	Prior policies	Current policies	% change
Residential	964	1,328	38%
Intensive Outpatient	3,108	3,224	4%
Outpatient	8,155	8,222	1%
Detox	841	1,126	34%

While continuing to increase treatment capacity remains an important goal of current policies, understanding to the extent that practices adhere to policy intent carries equal weight. In this last section, we explore the area of system-wide oversight and accountability.

Policy Objective 6, Ensure Oversight

Ensure oversight and accountability, while providing ongoing support for implementation processes

Implementation oversight

System-wide implementation takes time and requires adequate resources and oversight. The Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice has provided implementation oversight through its implementation task force that has representation from a diverse audience, including both public and private stakeholders. With implementation now in its third year, better understanding fidelity as it relates to the implementation process lies at the forefront of being able to understand specific policy effectiveness. Components of implementation include for example, proper staff selection, training practices, recording sessions, direct observation, supervision sessions, and fidelity monitoring tools.

To better understand the critical role of fidelity, figure 9 illustrates the way implementation science may be viewed as a moderating variable having a direct impact on the strength of the relationship between reform policies and the desired outcomes of such policies. As conveyed in the figure, the impact of a policy change may not come into complete fruition until practices fully follow policy intent.

Figure 9. Relationship between implementation science
and policy effectiveness

National crime rates

The relationship between general crime rates, incarceration and other social phenomena remains complex, with year to year comparisons of these rates offering little insight on actual changes in public safety trends.¹² While keeping this in mind, here we provide a brief discussion around the most recent crime data as obtained from the uniform crime reporting system. Figure 10 illustrates the percentage change in property crime rates per 100,000 residents between 2016 and 2017 for the nation’s contiguous 48 states. As seen, Utah’s property crime rate declined between 2016 and 2017 and at a 6.5 percentage decline surpassed the national average decline of 3.6 percent.

Figure 10. Utah’s property crime rates declined more than the national average between 2016 and 2017.

Figure 11 illustrates the nation’s violent crime rate per 100,000 residents. As seen in the figure, Utah’s violent crime rate which measured at 239 per 100,000 residents remains lower than the national average of 394 per 100,000 residents. Similar to trends in property crime rates, Utah’s violent crime rate declined above the national percentage reduction of 0.9 percent between 2016 and 2017. These percentages are further presented in table 2.

Figure 11. Utah’s violent crime rate per 100,000 residents continued to remain below the national average in 2017.

Table 2. Violent and property crime rates per 100,000 residents 2016-17

Region	Property 2016	Property 2017	Violent 2016	Violent 2017	Property % change	Violent % change
Utah	2,975	2,780	243	239	-6.5%	-1.8%
National average	2,452	2,362	398	394	-3.6%	-0.9%

Conclusion

Utah’s current criminal justice policies focuses on reserving prison beds for serious and violent offenders, expanding evidence-based treatment services, while improving outcomes. This third annual report provided further insight on how well the system is meeting these objectives while noting where challenges have arisen. Specifically, at year three of implementation, Utah continues to incarcerate a reduced number of non-violent offenders while increasing capacity of substance use treatment for offenders in need. While these findings are encouraging, high failure rates on parole continues to pose a challenge for the system and the state’s ability to control long-term criminal justice associated costs.

In moving forward, better understanding the extent that practices are adhering to policy intent and the system’s capacity to fully implement reform policies remain critical for the system to sustain its initial successes. Furthermore, understanding findings and resource availability in relation to system-wide social trends, including the current opioid epidemic, remains an important avenue for the system to explore. CCJJ remains committed to closely monitoring and analyzing outcomes, and identifying opportunities for improvement.

References

Harner, H. M., & Riley, S. (2013). The Impact of Incarceration on Women’s Mental Health Responses from Women in a Maximum-Security Prison. Qualitative health research, 23(1), 26-42

Justice reinvestment report (2014). Utah commission on criminal and juvenile justice. Available here.

King, R. S., & Elderbroom, B. (2014). Improving recidivism as a performance measure. Washington, DC: Urban Institute

Martin, M. S., Colman, I., Simpson, A. I., & McKenzie, K. (2013). Mental health screening tools in correctional institutions: a systematic review. BMC psychiatry, 13(1), 275

Mignon, S. (2016). Health issues of incarcerated women in the United States. Ciencia & saude coletiva, 21, 2051-2060

Miles A. & Loughlin M. (2011). Models in the balance: evidence-based medicine versus evidence-informed individualized care. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 17, 531-536

Nystrom, S., Poulson, R., & Nguyen V. (2018). Examining parole revocation patterns. Commission on criminal and juvenile justice. Available here.

Peters, R. H., Wexler, H. K., & Lurigio, A. J. (2015). Co-occurring substance use and mental disorders in the criminal justice system: A new frontier of clinical practice and research

Solomon, A. L. (2008). Putting public safety first: 13 Strategies for successful supervision and reentry. The urban institute (policy brief)

Utah justice reinvestment initiative “JRI” 2017 annual report (2017). Utah commission on criminal and juvenile justice. Available here.

Endnotes

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1. The term evidence informed refers to the use of methods to systematically search, select, appraise, and summarize evidence, and then use that information in conjunction with clinical expertise and knowledge related to the patient or population to make decisions for an individual, group, setting, or policy.↩

2. See the 2014 Justice reinvestment report for an in-depth overview of these policies.↩

3. Research shows that longer prison sentences do not help improve public safety, especially for people convicted of nonviolent offenses.↩

4. Non-violent offenders are inmates whose most serious offense did not concern a murder, person, sex or weapon crime.↩

5. The offender’s criminal history score is one factor that determines the recommended sentence type and sentence length. Other factors include the offense type and offense severity as well as any mitigating and/or aggravating factors.↩

6. Risk level is determined by the LS:RNR risk assessment instrument which categorizes individuals into low, moderate, high and intensive risk to re-offend.↩

7. Current trends seen in the probation population may further be attributed to the introduction of compliance credits which gives offenders the opportunity to terminate their supervision early when engaging in good behaviors↩

8. For an in-depth overview of the study design and its findings, please visit this link.↩

9. An example of a promising practice targeted towards improving outcomes for females on supervision is Weber Human Services’ Women’s Improvement Network (WIN) program. The objective of WIN is to reduce substance use and re-offending by offering participants a broad spectrum of programming. While early, initial evaluation results indicated that females that went through WIN were significantly less likely to be re-arrested within 6-months after program completion in comparison to a matched control group.↩

10. The treatment gap was estimated by multiplying the percent in need by the number of unique persons arrested on a Class B misdemeanor or above in fiscal year 2018 subtracted by the actual unique count of clients served.↩

11. Admission numbers allow individuals to enter treatment multiple times and are hence expected to exceed the (unduplicated) number of individuals served. It this sense admissions to treatment indicates “activity” or up and down movement as a client start different levels of treatment.↩

12. It should be mentioned that states that have implemented reforms have done so by focusing on their specific system-wide priorities, with some states making no changes to for example, penalties to drug crimes. Hence a direct comparison of trends in crime rates and other outcomes between “reform” states and “non-reform” states is discouraged.↩