Harold Clarke DOC by David Bash 5/20/05

Mostly the African American community threw a reception last week to welcome the new Secretary of the Washington Department of Corrections, Harold W. Clarke to Seattle. Clarke, who is Black, is formerly the Director of the Department of Corrections Services through three Nebraska state governorships for the past fifteen years and has been on the job here in Seattle since Feb. 28th. The Secretary of the Department of Corrections is a cabinet-level position appointed by Governor Christine Gregoire to administer state adult correction facilities, community supervision programs and correctional industries impacting the DOC’s $1.4 billion proposed two year spending plan. The Thursday, African American community reception at the private downtown College Club was attended by about 45 guests of mostly African Americans and a lot of ministers, was sponsored by King County Councilman Larry Gossett, Seattle Urban League president James Kelly, State Rep. Eric Pettigrew, Seattle City Councilman Richard McIver, pharmaceutical company Elli Lilly regional administrator Nate Miles, and Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP) director, Tony Orange. “On any given day anyone of us or our loved ones could be ourselves locked up,” said Secretary Clarke, adding, “In corrections we are in the business of crime and punishment. Corrections is about people. We need to forge a relationship between the right people, the right reasons, and the right amount of time,” to lock people up, he said. Clarke, who is the fourth child of nine and whose first language is Spanish, is married to a lawyer, has two children, his father and two brothers are ministers, and he considers his corrections work “ministry.” He said that as warden of the Nebraska State Penitentiary he took his Jamaican mother, who was living in Panama at the time, through that prison’s maximum security section where she stopped and spoke with prisoners. Citing statistics that “69 percent of prisoners read bellow 8th grade level, around 20 percent have treatable mental illnesses, and that 80 percent violated drug laws or drug activity,” he said that “incarceration goes just so far,” adding, “The best protection we can do for the community is to return [better] people.” King County Councilman Larry said in his opening remarks that the Seattle community is very involved with prisoners and that he cared particularly about the racial disproportionality of the state’s incarceration rate and that the community wanted to “be informed and have direct access” to prison policy makers. “We need to reform the three strikes law,” Gossett added.Alexis Harris, who shared disproportionality statistics and opening remarks along with Gossett, forecast that, “This is the time when pastors and politicians can talk about providing alternatives to incarceration.” (more) Clarke DOC Add-2 Urban League president James Kelly said that the group was honored to have the state’s first African American DOC secretary and that he wanted to publicly applaud Governor Gregoire for appointing Clarke. He said that the Urban League wanted to be the bridge to the African American community. “We need to know what your values and commitments are because we have too many of our people in your system. You can be an advocate that the system does the right thing,” adding, “We were surprised you were a brother. We had to come see. Welcome to the family.” he joked. Rep. Eric Pettigrew said that he was going to work closely with the new secretary to get prisoners educated while in the prison system and better prepared to reenter the community. “Punishment is part of the system but these men and women are coming back into our communities.” Rep. Pettigrew said that legislation he helped pass lifted the restrictions the federal government had against drug convictions getting food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and that he got $1million dollars for one-time stipends for kinship care-givers of incarcerated parent’s children. ‘I’m hoping he’s kinda on the same line,” Pettigrew said. “Prisons are jobs for white folks, housing for Blacks,” city councilman McIver quipped. Nate Miles of the drug giant Eli Lilly Co, said that the Black population is “seven times our population in prison here,” adding “We know you’re not the messiah but you can help find ways to keep our people out of the system. The African American community here is a fair group. We have your back in this political situation your in.”Miles also pointed out the importance of addressing the mental illness issues in the African American community CAMP director Tony Orange praised the Black male mentor group – the Breakfast Group – which had meet recently with 69 young men and tongue-in-cheek taunted Clarke with, “We stole 69 from ya. You will not see them in the system,” before graciously presenting the reception guest book to Clarke. Clarke, who has a slight Caribbean accent and says Harry Belafonte is his second cousin, is a member of a number of professional associations, board member of the Girl Scouts, Council on Alcoholism and Drugs, Awardee of the Martin Luther King Award for Community Service, Executive of the Year for Substance Abuse association and a writer of a number of magazine articles on leadership and management and the Guide Book for Black American Perspective for college students. The DOC Secretary serves on the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, the Sentencing Guidelines Commission, and the Correctional Industries Board, and is co-chair of the Washington State Law and Justice Advisory Council. And the Secretary’s Office also manages, develops, and coordinates the DOC’s legislative, constituent and Federal liaison program including the development and review of all legislative proposals and the review of other agencies’ legislative requests. (more)Harold Clarke DOC Add – 3 Also part of the Secretary’s Office is the Community Protection Unit & Victim Witness program that provides notification to victims and witness of violent sex, serious drug, and felony harassment crimes upon the release of the offender to the community. The Victim Witness Program’s main objective is to attempt to alleviate the high level of emotional stress suffered by victims and witnesses and to alert them of the offender’s release back into the community. In addition to notification, the program provides crisis intervention, referrals to resources for victims, and educates victim groups on the role of the Department of Corrections within the criminal justice system.Today, DOC employs over 8,200 men and women to administer, supervise offenders in the community, and manage more than 16,600 offenders housed in 15 institutions and 15 work release facilities. DOC currently rents 570 beds from other jurisdictions and as of June 2004, there were over 33,600 active supervised offenders in the community. (more)Harold Clarke DOC Add -4 Confinement StatisticsNUMBER OF INSTITUTIONS 15NUMBER OF WORK RELEASES 15CONFINEMENT POPULATION 17,422Washington Facilities Total Confinement Population 15,743 90.3%Washington Facilities Work Release Population 692 4.0%RENTED OUT-OF-STATE BEDS Population 530 3.1%RENTED IN-STATE BEDS Population 457 2.6%CAPACITY 15,062Total Confinement Operational Capacity 14,388Work Release Capacity 674PERCENT OF CAPACITY Total Confinement Percent of Operational Capacity 109.4%Work Release Percent of Capacity 102.7%GENDERMale 15,962 91.6%Female 1,460 8.4%RACEWhite 71.5%Black 20.6%American Indian 3.9%Asian 2.9%Unknown/Other 1.1%HISPANIC ORIGIN 9.7%AVERAGE AGE OF POPULATION 36.2CITIZENSHIPUnited States 92.6%Mexico 3.4%Other 4.1%LENGTH OF SENTENCELess than Two Years 24.6%Two to Five Years 23.2%Five to Ten Years 20.6%Over Ten Years 28.9%Life without Release 2.7%