Supervisors hear update from Department of Corrections

     Joel McAnulty, director of the 6^th District Department of Corrections, and Damian Teymer, probation officer, met with the Jones County Board of Supervisors during their April 30 meeting to provide an update.

   Supervisor Joe Oswald sits on the 6^th District Advisory Board. Prior to a new state law put into effect in 2023, the advisory board was a governing board.

   "A little bit of background information with the state alignment bill that took effect last July 1," explained McAnulty. "It changed our structure. Historically, there had been a delegate from each county board of supervisors who served on our board of directors, which was, at the time, an autonomous decision-making body. When July 1 came, that legislation essentially did away with boards of directors as they were established and reestablished them as advisory boards, which, I'm just being transparent here, don't have decision-making authority.

   "I just think it's incredibly important, regardless of what's going on at the state level," continued McAnulty, "that we still work really hard to try to maintain the local relationships with our counties. This is where the work gets done, and this is where we still have impact."

   "It wasn't popular with the 6^th District board, what the state did," expressed Oswald. "But I feel it was popular that they hired Joel. He's done a great job."

   McAnulty also shared statistics via the Department of Corrections as it relates to Jones County…

   As of March 24, there are a total of 154 people in probation or parole supervision. Six of those people were parolees. There are 123 probationers, nine special sentence sex offenders, 19 on work release.

   "Those would be work release folks who are in one of our facilities in Linn County," offered McAnulty.

   There are two OWI offenders in Jones County who are working within a facility in Linn County.

   "We do risk assessments on everybody we supervise," added McAnulty. "We tend to categorize these folks as low-risk, low-moderate, moderate-high, and high-risk. That's based on an objective assessment that considers a variety of factors including criminal history, how old you were when you first got involved in the system, etc."

   As of March 24, there were 29 low-risk, 39 low-moderate, three moderate-high, and seven high-risk.

   McAnulty said there is a caveat to these assessments, their self-supervised program.

   "It's frequently utilized among the counties as plea deals," he said. "I don't mean that in a bad way; it's just a statement of fact. These folk are put on self-supervised (probation), but we still supervise them."

   There are 71 people in Jones County on self-supervised probation.

   There are a variety of offenses for which people are placed on probation. In Jones County, 21 percent are due to drug offenses, 16 percent for property offenses, 43 percent for public order, and 20 percent for violent offenses.

   "It's probably worth pointing out, people who have committed sex offenses in Jones County are covered by our officers out of Linn County," said McAnulty.

   Teymer oversees those on supervised release. His case load right now includes 96 offenders.

   "They are the ones who report to me," he said. "Or I go to their homes. There are 121 who are in my name, but they're either in jail or absconded."

   He also performs home visits for the sex offenders who reside in Jones County.

   Supervisor John Schlarmann asked if the self-supervised release is a popular option.

   "I would say yes," offered Teymer. "Our county attorneys are very good about who they place on self-supervised probation. I think they understand the risk-need value, because obviously you don't want to put somebody on probation who is a very low risk. That's a waste of resources."

   McAnulty agreed.

   "It's the county attorney's office making good choices with those cases," he said. "That doesn't happen in every county. It depends on which county you're in and how it's been utilized.

   "The intent of self-supervised (probation) is basically a paper trail," added McAnulty. "It's pretty hands-off."

   Those offenses granted self-supervised probation include OWI 1^st offense, driving while barred, the low-risk offenses.