Community Partnerships
Collaborative Participation
Community Corrections actively participates in the Washington County Children and Families Council and Children's Mental Health and Chemical Health Action Collaboratives. The council's mission is to promote the planning and coordination of community-based delivery systems in order to improve child well being.
Community Justice Circles
Community Justice Circles represent a community-based process that emphasizes individual, family, and community responsibility for responding to the problems associated with crime. Community Circles shift the justice process from the courts to a shared community-based partnership. Circles involve judicial system professionals, offenders, victims, their respective support groups, and community members in a decision-making process that combines indigenous and western processes based upon the principles of interest-based negotiation, mediation, consensus building, and peacemaking.
Juvenile Prevention/Early Intervention Restorative Grants
Services for prevention, diversion, and early intervention with youth involved in at-risk behavior are provided through contracts with the following four youth-serving community agencies: Forest Lake Youth Service Bureau, East Communities Family Service, Youth Service Bureau, Inc., and White Bear Lake Community Counseling Center. Youth are referred to these agencies by schools and local law enforcement as a diversion from the court system. Youth may also be referred by Community Services and Community Corrections as a part of the conditions of their probation.
These agencies provide counseling services, supervision, and monitoring of community work service, educational and prevention programs regarding chemical use, truancy, theft, violence, and other at-risk behavior. Interventions that incorporate the philosophy of restorative justice include community panels that meet with juvenile offenders to review the offense, its impact on the community and the juvenile’s plan for reparation; conferences involving victims, offenders, and family members or their concerned individuals; parent-child mediation; and educational programs that have been revised to include a victim awareness component.
Adult Residential
This program provides for correctional residential treatment for offenders. Offenders who are under parole or supervised release status from state institutions are also eligible for these programs, if they are residents of Washington County.
Services are purchased from various agencies. Specialized programming such as chemical dependency and sex offender programming offer 24-hour supervision, individual and group counseling, adult education services, urinalysis testing, and drug counseling.
Adult Non-Residential Outpatient Services
Non-residential programs include evaluation or assessment of offender needs and programs designed to address those needs in order to facilitate a change in attitudes and behavior. Probation staff refers offenders to Human Services, Inc., in Washington County, for psychological and chemical dependency evaluation. These services are provided under county contract.
Adult Local Incarceration and Detention
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office has the responsibility for the security of pre-trial and sentenced prisoners, as well as for jail treatment programming. The sheriff has been one of three providers of electronic monitoring services for offenders in Washington County. Electronic monitoring services are consolidated under the sheriff through a collaborative effort of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and Community Corrections. Community Corrections pursued grant funds to assist in this process. The result provides a simpler and more effective approach to electronic monitoring.
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