The News Tribune (Lite) - State should scrap felon services grant

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Section: Opinion

State should scrap felon services grant

THE NEWS TRIBUNE
It’s easy to get a million-dollar grant from the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development – especially if you make up stuff on your grant application.

An organization called Citizens for Responsible Justice was able to more or less dupe the agency into awarding it a $1.1 million grant last month to house released felons in Pierce County.

The Tacoma nonprofit wants to house 70 ex-inmates in a pilot program to test whether stable housing and case management can reduce the number of felons who re-offend.

And where would these participants be housed? Why, in Tacoma’s Hilltop community, of course – the very neighborhood that already gets a grossly disproportionate share of group homes for “high-risk, high needs” people.

That alone would be grounds to question the wisdom of the CTED’s award to Citizens for Responsible justice.

But it’s also obvious that CTED officials didn’t look too closely at the group’s application. As The News Tribune columnist Kathleen Merryman reported Saturday, the application didn’t square with the truth in some respects.

For example, the Tacoma nonprofit claimed that it had established “a high level of collaboration with DOC (the state Department of Corrections), local law enforcement and agencies in Pierce County.”

Tacoma police, however, told Merryman, that they were given no inkling of Citizens for Responsible Justice’s latest proposal. And there is not one hint of a “collaborative” relationship between the organization and the Hilltop community, which unsuccessfully fought its plans to open a 28-bed group home for released prisoners in 2005.

Merryman also discovered that Citizens for Responsible Justice, or “C4RJ,” misleadingly claimed it had access to 140 beds for the grant program. At least seven organizations listed as places that could provide housing have no agreement to that effect with Citizens for Responsible Justice.

Further evidence of C4RJ’s suspect business practices is the fact that it apparently has operated since 2005 without a city business license, although the city says it has sent the organization three letters about it. City officials now intend to check the 13 locations in Tacoma where C4RJ operates group homes for compliance with city regulations.

There’s more, but that’s more than enough to understand why CTED has decided to delay – at least until Feb. 1 – signing the final grant agreement with Citizens for Responsible Justice.

The idea behind the pilot program, one of four authorized by the Legislature, is not unreasonable. Legislators and corrections officials want to see if providing more support to newly released inmates will slow the revolving door that spins so many felons back to prison.

But the state has an obligation to see that the pilot programs are operated responsibily and do not impose an undue burden on struggling communties. C4RJ’s application looks like a bust on both counts.