Monthly Status:
The CAPPAC funding subcommittee met on April 9. CSG Justice Center staff (1) offered brief historical context for providing formula funding to probation/community corrections agencies, highlighting Minnesota, Oregon, and Texas; and (2) provided (with the actual presentation by PCCD staff) a depiction of the substantial impact on funding, for one county in each county class, of using any single one of the factors discussed to this point (and for which data is available). Compared to the outdated grant-in-aid formula, the largest counties (particularly Philadelphia) and the smallest counties would lose considerable funding in any scenario. The subcommittee agreed to slow their process, rather than vote on a formula approach as planned, for further exploration of data and ideas.
New Insights:
Broadly, two new opportunities for data and questions about data came to light in April. First, data on risk levels of people under supervision by local departments may be newly available but will need to be standardized across different risk assessment instruments; work is underway to do this. Second, Philadelphia Municipal Court (MC) is not required to report sentences to the Sentencing Commission (PCS), since PCS limits reporting requirements to courts of record. For the same reason, Magisterial District Judge (MDJ) courts in other counties do not report dispositions/sentences to the PCS. And while Philadelphia MC has broader jurisdiction (cases with maximum of five years), it and MDJ courts in many counties place individuals on probation. It appeared the best source of information on orders of probation by these courts is the AOPC (from management systems styled MDJCMS & CPCMS). An attempt to supplement PCS data on sentences to probation with AOPC data on sentences to probation revealed major differences (even outside Philadelphia) as depicted below. Further analysis is underway, for example to reconcile “people” being counted by PCS, and “cases” being counted by AOPC.
PCS AOPC
Example
Counties by Class 2019 Probation Sentences 2019 Probation Sentences
Philadelphia 808 12,589
Allegheny 5,394 10,938
Montgomery 2,685 6,772
Lancaster 1,079 4,278
Monroe 528 1,450
Blair 566 1,400
Elk 207 271
Wyoming 63 73
Sullivan 12 16
State Total 37,336 93,968
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• 4/1: Call with Deputy Chief Counsel and Data Exchange Project Manager of the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC) to discuss a data request to compare court system sentencing data with sentencing data from the Commission on Sentencing (PCS).
• 4/6: Call with the CAPPAC funding subcommittee (nine members) and eight PCCD staff to discuss funding formula options and data development.
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