Colorado — The Colorado Department of Corrections has recently opened a new ambulatory surgical center, according to Correctional News. The $2.8 million facility is one of the only surgical centers in the country that is “within the secured perimeter of a correctional facility.” The facility opened on the grounds of the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Unit — an inmate facility where acutely ill or post-surgery inmates are cared for. Construction of the facility took less than four months and was designed to allow the state to address inmate health issues more efficiently. The main diagnostic center is adjacent to the new surgical unit and can hold nearly 1,000 inmates who are waiting for surgery or in a recovery room. The close proximity of the new surgical center to the diagnostic center was a very important factor in its construction according to Joan Shoemaker, deputy director of prisons in Colorado. “What this does is puts inmate health care behind the secure perimeter of the facility and really promotes public protection here in Colorado,” Shoemaker said. The unit will allow six to eight surgeries per day once the facility has received the appropriate licensure.

District of Columbia — The U.S. prison population has dropped for the first time in nearly 40 years, according to Correctional News. Recent government data reveal that the number of inmates is down by 1.3 percent to about 7 million offenders. Officials attribute much of the decline to “a well-informed group of policymakers.” States have been working on lessening sentences for nonviolent offenders, which officials believe is working. “What’s happening is that they’re realizing that we know so much more today than we did 25, 30 years ago about what actually works to stop that revolving door,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project for the Pew Center on the States, during an interview with National Public Radio. Gelb believes that real, encouraging results have taken place through policymakers’ dedication to reforming the system. “We learned a lot more about what treatment works,” Gelb said. “We don’t just sit around in a circle and talk about problems. There are cognitive behavioral therapies that teach offenders how to deal with the situations that they find themselves in and how to get out of and avoid those situations.”

Virginia — Alternative sentencing programs for nonviolent offenders have seen rising popularity in Virginia in recent years. According to the Daily Press, “Studies show that alternative sentencing programs are much more effective than prisons and jails at preventing recidivism, and much less expensive to operate.” Newport News Sheriff Gabe Morgan noticed the change in public perceptions of alternative programs about five years ago, when it became apparent that building more prisons was becoming costly. For the past 10 years, Virginia officials have encouraged judges to consider alternative sentencing programs, such as the Youth Challenge faith-based treatment program, over short-term prison sentences. Youth Challenge is a 12-24 month program for adult nonviolent offenders and serves more than 150 men and women per year. The program focuses on giving inmates responsibilities such as chores or jobs, while also focusing on reentry training. “There’s other ways to hold people accountable than prison,” said Tracy Valezquez, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute. “Programs where people are getting the treatment they need lowers the risk factors of recidivism, when you’re keeping people out of jail, in their jobs or training and providing for their families.”

West Virginia — A new program created by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) will allow more than 200,000 inmates to carry MP3 players loaded with “personalized music lists,” according to USA Today. “The MP3 program is intended to help inmates deal with issues such as idleness, stress and boredom associated with incarceration,” said BOP Spokeswoman Traci Billingsley. The program is currently being tested at a women’s unit in West Virginia and will allow inmates to choose from about one million songs. However, the list will be monitored to exclude tracks deemed “explicit,” such as tracks that include obscene or “racially charged” material, Billingsley said. David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project says the program may be “the first of its kind” in the country and represents a “positive step” toward improving prison security while also providing inmates with a link to the outside world. He asserts that music “allows for an important connection that assists with their eventual reentry” into society. Inmates will not have Internet access and will instead be able to scan the available titles from an internal computer system, listen to samples and download them to their MP3 players, Billingsley said. The program is expected to expand to other state correctional systems later this year.

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