Protecting Inmates and Safeguarding Communities by filling in gaps and building capacity of the Kansas Department of Corrections.

The Protecting Inmates and Safeguarding Communities Discretionary Grant Program was created as a result of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (the Act), Public Law 108-79. The goal of the Act is to eradicate sexual assaults in all of the correctional facilities in this country, be they federal, state, or local in nature. Nevertheless, the statutory focus for this grant program is state and local correctional facilities. This program is divided into two parts: (1) Protecting Inmates and (2) Safeguarding Communities. The Protecting Inmates part focuses on providing funding to state and local agencies for the costs of personnel, training, technical assistance, and data collection in the areas of prevention, investigation, prosecution, and treatment of victims of inmate on inmate sexual assault in a correctional facility. The Safeguarding Communities component of the program focuses on assisting the states in developing and implementing strategies when making release decisions for sexual aggressors without compromising public safety and addressing the needs of the victims after release.

The Kansas Department of Corrections believes that protecting inmates is most effectively accomplished through direct and continuous observation of inmate activity. The KDCs goal will be to enhance inmate and community safety by implementing the following measures: 1)increase current surveillance capability through the installation of Closed Circuit TV that serves as a deterrent to unlawful, inappropriate behavior and as an investigative and prosecutorial tool; 2) reduce inmate on inmate violence and improve the overall safety for both staff and inmates through the installation of a wireless Radio Frequency Identification tracking system in the maximum security area of the correctional facility; 3)establish a policy team that will review current procedures for responding to sexual assault victims and make recommendations for improvement to those policies and/or develop new policies; 4)increase access to transitional planning services for high risk, violent offenders releasing directly to communities from administrative segregation units in the El Dorado Correctional Facility; 5)increase prosecution of sexual assault by training investigators to properly investigate sexual assaults, collect and preserve forensic evidence, and by working with prosecutors to establish procedures for prosecuting individuals who are guilty of sexual assault; and, 6)reduce parole revocations of high risk, violent inmates by creating specialized parole caseload for violent offenders in the Wichita parole area.

CA/NCF