Background:
House Bill 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.
- 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.