University Daily Kansan
Friday, April 20, 1975
5
Criminal corrections could evolve operate best at KU,official says
Staff Reporter
Bv BRENDA WATSON
The University of Kansas could play an indispensable role in developing criminal corrections that could be operated in this community, Patrick McManus, Kansas secretary of corrections, said yesterday.
McManus spoke to 52 people in the Big Eight Room of the Kansas Union as part of a seminar and panel discussion sponsored by the Department of Education.
McManus, who opposes the death penalty, promotes the provision of alternatives to imprisonment for non-dangerous criminals. A non-dangerous criminal would not be considered a threat to a society. McManus said.
The University could help develop a theory of community corrections because "a community under the shadow of a university is perhaps the best place for the sophistication and understanding needed for such a theory to occur," he said.
"If he could be kept in the community it would be less damaging to the community and certainly less damaging to the individual," he
"The INTERACTION between students, faculty and their research capabilities would help us articulate what we're doing," he said. "Young, inquiring, bright people are a great asset toward these. They aren't willing to just accept things the way they are."
MeMansu said the prison has not changed as an institution over the years.
"It is still a large place where people removed from the community are sent to be reformed, rehabilitated, to repent, whatever."
"We would have to say that they are not successful in terms of turning the person around.
"Communities are dissatisfied with current criminal and juvenile corrections systems. We need something else."
That "something else" McManus said, is a good community corrections program which would help criminals learn to interact with young people.
"It doesn't offer a cure, but a more realistic possibility of a criminal coming back to function in society," McMansie says.
Such a program would be directed by a corrections advisory
board of private citizens and community representatives from the professions of law, education and corrections.
McMANUS SAID the promise of federal money would be an incentive for participation in such a program. The community would need to find solutions to the problem.
"You could have only one plan," he said. "You would have to decide between using the money to send the affenders to prison or to leave it on the street."
McManus used halfway-house residences as an example of community corrections.
He cited one small community in which junior college students ran a halfway house for criminals in exchange for free room and
"Their primary function was to serve as model roles for the prisoners," he said. "It was a beautiful arrangement."
"A hundred times that could be done here with so much student talent."
McManus said that community resistance to such a program would be "100 percent," but that resistance could be alleviated by taking the community's fears seriously, breaking down stereotypes and halting halfway houses in the middle of residential communities.
"ACTUALLY THESE houses are much more controlled than a fraternity house. In fact, I would much rather have a well-run halfway house than a fraternity in my community," McManus said.
But the real key to acceptance by community members is making them feel as if they own the program, McManus said.
"It has to belong to the people," he said, "otherwise there is no incentive to make it work.
"They have to believe in it, put their guts into it and be willing to work to make it successful."
McManus, appointed corrections secretary by Gov. John Carlin early this year, served as an assistant to the assistant of Corrections in Minnesota and was responsible for the additions in Minnesota Community Corrections program before coming to Kansas.
County given priorities for computer use
He was called in as a consultant on designing the Kansas Community Corrections Acts of 1872 and later was asked to assist in the construction of a new jail.
The director of the Douglas County data processing center yesterday submitted a list of priorities to the Douglas County Comptroller to increase the county's use of its computer.
The list of priorities for the data center includes the recording of traffic tickets, the general county ledger, the payroll and the registrar of the registrar of deeds onto the computer.
A priority list is submitted annually to the commission for its approval.
Jim Tate, coordinator of the data
processing center, said the county had never listed those items on the computer.
The computer, which is housed in the Lawrence Administrative Center, 2017 Louisiana St., is rented by the county, and the Lawrence School District.
According to Bob Neis, county commissioner, the county plans to put the records of the offices of the treasurer, appointee and clerk on the computer in the future.
The county has ordered four computer terminals, one of which will go to the telephone switchboard.
Presently, county records filed in the computer must first be recorded by hand and then sent to the data center to be filed into the computer.
Tate said that when the terminals were installed, time would be saved that now was
"One of the beautiful things about these terminals is that they will reduce our job as well as the money we spend."
"Some of this record keeping is so monotonic that it is ideal for a machine to