“Falletta Conducts ‘Pines of Rome'”
Omaha, NE—Omaha Symphony welcomes guest conductor Maestra JoAnn Falletta, and guest violinist, Blake Pouliot, for a performance this weekend in homage to Rome. Maestra Falletta, the only female conductor of a top 40 orchestra, will lead the orchestra in the works of Berlioz and Respighi.
Road to Omaha – Oral Roberts Golden Eagles
Omaha, NE – On today’s episode of “Road to Omaha,” KVNO’s Brandon McDermott spoke with Oral Roberts head coach Ryan Folmar.
Prison alternatives being considered in Nebraska
January 17th, 2014
Omaha, NE – Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha chairs the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, which handles legislation on crime and punishment. And as Nebraska’s prisons pass 150 percent of capacity, it’s where Ashford hopes to head off the need to build another prison – by doing a better job dealing with inmates.
[audio:https://kvnonews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/prison_alternatives.mp3]
“The better job we do at dealing with offenders as far as making them better able to be productive, the prison population will stabilize and moderate over time,”Ashford said. “That’s the case in almost every state in the country that has done what is now sort of called ‘Justice Reinvestment.’”
Justice Reinvestment is a strategy promoted by the Council of State Governments, a nonpartisan group that says its mission is to promote excellence in state government. CSG’s Robert Coombs said the idea is not to solve prison overcrowding simply by letting people go.
“Justice Reinvestment is not going to result in the release of thousands or tens of thousands of people from prisons out onto the streets. Rather, what it’s meant to do is to determine where you public safety system can give you the best bang for your buck,” Coombs said.
Coombs said when prisoners are released is a crucial time for trying to head off their return.
“Many states have found that there are good opportunities to reevaluate what you do with people who are coming out of jails and prisons… to make sure that they get drug treatment, education, other types of programs so they’re going to make sure they reduce their recidivism,” Coombs said.
Ashford agrees what happens to people when they get out is key to keeping them out.
“We’re not simply going to send an offender out on the street looking for work. We’re going to have hopefully a laundry list of potential employers within the state who would be willing to hire ex-offenders, that sort of thing,” Ashford said. “If someone is working, if someone is reuniting with their families, if someone has adequate housing, they’re much less likely to go out and commit another crime.”
To accomplish that, Ashford has introduced a bill to eliminate inmates “jamming out†– that is, being released from prison without supervision.
“No inmate should be released without having a supervised release plan,” he said. “Right now about 46 percent jam out. They have a greater chance of reoffending than those who are in the parole system.”
Ashford’s also introducing a bill to increase programs available to inmates. In a recent report, State Ombudsman Marshall Lux said only about 13 percent of Nebraska prisoners have access to programs that focus on substance abuse, anger management, violence reduction and sex offenses.
“I think that there’s a great need for more programming and more mental health resources in our state’s correctional system,” Lux said.
Lux issued a report on prison mental health, using as an example the treatment of Nikko Jenkins, accused of killing four people in Omaha after being released from prison last summer. That drew this response when Gov. Dave Heineman was asked about it:
“Marshall Lux can try and blame someone else for these murders. But Nikko Jenkins is the person who killed four Nebraskans,” Heineman said. “Marshall Lux may want to be soft on crime and care more about the criminals than the victims and their families, but I don’t.”
Heineman wants to toughen Nebraska’s “good time†law to make inmates earn reductions in their sentences. But Nicole Porter of the Sentencing Project, which advocates for alternatives to incarceration, cautions against making policy based on crimes like those Jenkins is accused of.
“The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world… and yet anecdotal incidents like you just described continue to happen. So if lawmakers and laypeople are interested in improving public safety we hope they understand there are other ways to do that not just based on emotion,” Porter said.
Rogers co-authored a paper last year criticizing justice reinvestment efforts in other states for not going far enough. The report said those efforts have helped stabilize prison populations and budgets, but risk of institutionalizing mass incarceration at current levels. Coombs, of the Council of State governments, says the criticism is not surprising.
“One of the things that’s really special about justice reinvestment is that it‘s capturing energy in many of these states that bridges partisan divides. In every state that we work in there are oftentimes people on the right that say justice reinvestment doesn’t go far enough and isn’t tough on crime enough, and you have people on the left saying that it’s too tough on crime and it’s not taking into account some of these liberal ideas of what you can do with public safety. And I think that’s a really good indicator that this is hitting the right wavelength,” Coombs said.
Whether or not Nebraskans agree that it’s the right approach will be determined as the Legislature considers proposals this year.
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