New Program Will Screen Felons State Attempts To Steer Most Dangerous Into Treatment

The state Corrections Department will start using a new tool to spot high-risk offenders and watch them more carefully.

The department is trying to steer the most dangerous felons into treatment programs and intense supervision. Officials want to prevent them from committing more crimes.

The analysis tool should help determine which felons need the greatest supervision so the agency can use its resources more effectively, Corrections Secretary Joseph Lehman said.

“We have to supervise more offenders with the same amount of resources,” said Kevin Mauss, the manager for the new program. “We need to make better decisions.”

There are now more than 13,000 people in prison in Washington. Almost 20,000 are on active, face-to-face supervision in the community, Mauss said.

The “Level of Service Inventory Revised” program, developed in Canada in 1979, scores an offender on 54 different items. It’s used in a number of states, Canada and Britain.

The program screens offenders on four factors of criminality: the history of antisocial behavior; the presence of antisocial or criminally inclined friends and associates; attitudes, values and beliefs that support criminal behavior; and personality traits such as impulsiveness, anger, hostility or substance addiction.

Each offender will be slotted into one of five different risk categories. A high-risk offender will score between 41 and 54. These offenders are 77 percent likely to reoffend, Mauss said.

An offender who scores between zero and 13 will have a low risk of reoffending - about 12 percent.

“What does that tell you?” Mauss said. “Where do we want to spend the money?”

Maureen O’Keefe, a researcher for the Colorado Department of Corrections, said a three-year study she did confirmed that repeat offenders have significantly higher scores.

The test “is the best measure out there,” she said.

About 700 corrections workers still must be trained to give the tests. Early next year, community corrections officers will start giving tests to the offenders who are under supervision in the community.

In Spokane, more than 1,300 felons already on the street will get screened.

The program will eventually move into work-release programs and behind bars, to institutions such as Airway Heights Corrections Center, where more than 2,000 inmates are housed.

The state will pay $12,000 a year at first to use the tests. But in the future, when more tests are used, that cost could go up.

The state plans to give out as many as 50,000 tests a year when the program is up and running.

The state has paid millions of dollars in several high-profile lawsuits that alleged negligent supervision of criminals.

Convicted felon Robert Ballarin is one of those cases.

Ballarin pleaded guilty to attempted rape in 1991 and was released from jail after one year. Violating the terms of his release, Ballarin stalked his victim, Marja Van Wijk of Enumclaw, a woman he had once dated.

Van Wijk told police she believed Ballarin wanted to kill her, but Van Wijk said the authorities “wouldn’t listen.”

In 1993, Ballarin shot Van Wijk, paralyzing her. She sued, charging the state Department of Corrections with negligence, and the state settled the case Tuesday by agreeing to pay her $1.9 million.

In addition to this week’s settlement, the state paid $6.3 million in 1994 to a family whose teenage daughter was killed by a felon after he was paroled. In 1993, the state paid $120,000 to settle another negligence claim.

All of these cases followed a 1992 Supreme Court decision that placed a much greater burden on corrections officers to supervise felons released from custody.

In Spokane, the department hasn’t paid out any money to settle lawsuits over inadequate supervision - yet.

But Barbara Bell has sued the department for ignoring warning signs with Byron Scherf, sentenced to life in prison in 1981 for kidnapping a woman, raping her, dousing her with gasoline and lighting her on fire.

Scherf was released in 1993. He raped Bell two years later. She wants the state to reform the way it deals with sex offenders.