KS- GROUP HOME'S CLOSING SENDS PAROLEES OUT ON THEIR OWN

3-29-2009 Kansas:

Parolees sent out on own after cuts

WICHITA - For the past decade, some of the most troubled convicts released from state prisons have lived temporarily in a Wichita group home.

The prefab building -- at 3820 N. Toben, in an industrial park in northeast Wichita -- has housed the kind of men nobody wants as neighbors.

The group home's 46 beds were almost always taken.

But now, because of state budget cuts, the parolees who had been living at the Toben facility are having to move to neighborhoods around Wichita and live on their own -- without the monitoring they had at the Toben building.

A Wichita deputy police chief says it raises the risk to public safety.

Among the men who have recently lived at the Toben facility: Two have been convicted of sex crimes against 4-year-old girls and must register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

A third man has a conviction for aggravated sexual battery against a 16-year-old girl. He has a tattoo of the grim reaper.

Until recently, they and other parolees like them have lived at the Toben facility, usually for two to six months as they ease their way back into society while serving parole -- the period after release from prison during which they have to report to a parole officer and live under restrictions.

The last parolees to live at the Toben site will be re-located by Tuesday.

Their new homes will be wherever they can find rent low enough for their limited incomes. Many of them have few job skills and have difficulty getting jobs. Some of them receive government assistance for disabilities.

In the past, few landlords have been willing to rent to parolees from the Toben facility, said Beverly Metcalf, president and CEO of Mirror Inc., a private, nonprofit corporation that provides community-based correctional services. Mirror has operated the Toben facility under a contract with the Kansas Department of Corrections.

Fifteen staff members who worked at the Toben facility are being laid off because of the closing.

'I'm concerned'

Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said he worries that the closing will put the public at a higher safety risk because the parolees won't have as much monitoring.

The Police Department will be asking the Department of Corrections where the relocated parolees will be living so officers can help "keep an eye on things," Stolz said.

"I'm concerned any time we put sex predators back on the street... even though they were going to go back out there anyway," Stolz said.

"We're going to prematurely put them back out there," he said.

"I'm a firm believer that you don't just dump people from prison into society."

At the Toben site, parolees were monitored by cameras. They had to sign in and out and use a door card.

Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz conceded that the parolees are "certainly going to settings where there is less structure."

"It does increase the chances that something bad will happen, but it doesn't mean that something bad will happen," Werholtz said.

Bill Miskell, a Department of Corrections spokesman, said that parolees will still be supervised by parole officers who will periodically meet with them and check on them as part of the basic parole conditions.

"The staff have been put on notice that they have to check in just to see that they are doing OK" in their new homes, Miskell said.

Meanwhile, legislators are trying to restore funding that could allow for a resumption of housing similar to the Toben facility.

The Toben facility is among a number of cuts made to the Department of Corrections budget that will save the state a total of about $640,000.

But even if the funding gets approved, the money would not become available until after July 1, and the contract for future housing would be rebid, Miskell said.

Since 1999, the Toben facility has served as transitional housing for the most-difficult-to-place parolees.

They have a tough time finding a place to live because of medical disabilities, mental health problems and, especially, the severity of their crimes.

Many of them don't have relatives willing to take them in, Miskell said.

Some of the businesses near the Toben facility haven't wanted the parolees, either.

Who they are

Anyone with Internet access can look up the state's list of people who are required to register as offenders because of sex crimes or violent crimes. You can get to the registry by typing in www.accesskansas.org/kbi/ and clicking on the registered offender search option.

If you type "Toben" into the registry's search program, a list of names will appear. They are registered offenders who reported 3820 N. Toben as their address in recent months.

The registry provides information about their convictions, the age and sex of their victims, their vehicles, their mug shots and their identifying marks, including scars and tattoos.

The idea is that residents should be able to learn about offenders living near them.

From July 1 to March 13, the latest period available, 181 offenders have lived at different times at the Toben facility, Miskell said.

Almost one-third of the 181 offenders were sex offenders. The number of violent offenders was not available.

Of the six registered offenders who recently reported the Toben facility as their residence, five are sex offenders.

One of them, a 42-year-old man from Missouri, committed his crime against a 4-year-old girl. He was transferred from Missouri to serve his parole in Wichita.

Another is a 37-year-old convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Montgomery County.

Sixty-seven of the 181 offenders who lived at Toben had some kind of medical problem or, more often, some type of mental health issue, Miskell said. ..News Source.. by TIM POTTER, The Wichita Eagle