Assignment 2: LASA 1: Centervale State Penitentiary's New Mutual Agreement Parole Program

The state of North Carolina has implemented the Mutual Agreement Parole Program (MAPP) since 1975 (North Carolina Department of Corrections, 2011).

Because its 2011 report indicates that approximately 10% of the inmates who started the program were terminated from the program, the Centervale State Penitentiary has decided to review North Carolina's MAPP model to determine how to ethically create its own model.

You are a consultant who has been hired by the Centervale State Penitentiary to research and build a workable model of a new MAPP-like program. Like all programs, the MAPP model is expected to have strengths and weaknesses.

North Carolina has published not only its 2011 report but also its MAPP's policies and procedures. The director and warden of Centervale Prison have asked you to review these documents and report on the following in an 8- to 10-page document.

Make sure your document is APA formatted and follows guidelines of the sixth edition of the APA, using credible scholarly, academic, and government resources.

Here's What You Need to Do .

Research the purposes and goals of inmate reentry programs. Define and discuss the purposes and goals of inmate reentry as they relate to the ethical obligations prison administrators and government officials have to society.

North Carolina has been criticized for allowing violent offenders to return to society only to reoffend (see the digital resources).

Some citizens of Centervale are concerned about violent offenders who were once in maximum security, sentenced to life in prison, but who are now in medium or minimum security after completing or continuing extensive inmate rehabilitation programming, being accepted into the MAPP and eventually being released into Centervale.

Recently, citizens have raised their concerns to the warden and director of prisons because a MAPP parole reoffended by committing a violent sexual assault on an elderly female after one week of his release from prison.

Evaluate the criteria for eligibility for North Carolina's MAPP. Address citizen concerns and prison programming's impact on society if the Centervale State Penitentiary were to adopt a similar model.

Propose modifications to North Carolina's MAPP eligibility criteria toward ethical obligations to public safety. Be sure to provide support for your proposed changes based on your research on other reentry programs.

In August 1979, the state of Wisconsin published a report on the problems that ended its Department of Corrections Mutual Agreement Parole Program. Some of the problems that the Department of Health and Social Services identified were as follows (State of Wisconsin, 1979, pp. 116-123):

No clear expectations and goals were set for inmates.

There was lack of rational planning structure by staff.

The prison administration did not value or train the MAPP staff efficiently or effectively.

The MAPP had no real links to outside inmate employment opportunities.

No postrelease follow-through took place.

Compare North Carolina's MAPP policy and procedures with the understanding that Wisconsin's program fell apart because of some of the problems listed above.

As a consultant for the Centervale State Penitentiary, recommend how Centervale's new model might address Wisconsin's problems a, b, c, d, and e. Develop solutions to these problems and support your ideas with research on programming models that have proven to be successful.

Analyze North Carolina's policy and procedure for termination or renegotiation for inmate MAPP contracts. What changes or recommendations to this policy and procedure might you suggest for Centervale?

The director of prisons has come to you with concerns that his office is being criticized for being soft on crime. He claims that the Gainsville state attorney general has accused him of unethical practice by making promises to parole inmates who are considered dangerous to society through the new MAPP program regardless of Gainsville state's attorneys, judges, victims, witnesses, and law enforcement officers who testified in their trials by writing compelling letters protesting the inmates' release.

The Gainsville state attorney general has argued that North Carolina's MAPP eligibility requirement of being infraction free for ninety days is unreasonable because the inmate who was released and who reoffended after only seven days had forty-one infractions over more than fifteen years, including assaults on prison staff and attempted sexual assaults on other inmates, before being infraction free for ninety days and, therefore, qualifying for the MAPP.

The attorney general further argued that infraction free for ninety days or not, this inmate should have never qualified for the MAPP in North Carolina and that it was unethical to put citizens at risk by granting him parole.

The director of prisons tells you that the Gainsville attorney general has begun a movement for a new type of parole board in response to the director's announcement that the MAPP might be coming to Centervale.

The Gainsville attorney general wants the citizens of Centervale represented on the MAPP parole board. Recommend how you might create a board of individuals that would take into account the ethical considerations of the inmates, the MAPP staff, the victims and families of the convicted inmate being considered for release, and the citizens of Centervale.

Attachments:

Report on the Status of the Mutual Agreement Parole Program

Mutual Agreement Parole Program: Policy and Procedures

The Mutual Agreement Program: A Study of System Intervention in the Wisconsin Division of Corrections

References:

North Carolina Department of Corrections. (2011). Report on the status of the mutual agreement parole program. Post Release Supervision and Parole

Commission, (Section 17.1, S.L. 2007-323).

State of Wisconsin. (1979). The mutual agreement program: A study of system

intervention in the Wisconsin division of correction (pp. 1-254). Madison,

WI: Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Corrections.