Good Afternoon,
I am writing to share the October 2021 Office of the Corrections Ombuds (OCO) Monthly Outcome Report. I apologize for the significant delay in releasing the monthly reports.
We have been undergoing many changes in our office over the past several months to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our work. One of the changes has been to our internal case management system that we use for all OCO cases. We have instituted changes to the information we enter into the system in order to better track the cases and our work. One area of improvement has been to the reasons for closing a case. You won’t see the full difference in the case closure reasons in the October report; however, beginning with the March Monthly Outcome Report you will see many more cases in the report and changes to the case closure reasons that should provide more clarity about how and why the case was closed.
This work with the case closures has caused us to reevaluate all of the entries to the Monthly Outcome Reports and has slowed the release of the reports. Over the past few months, we have been going through every entry in the reports to make sure they clearly articulate what occurred in the case and the reason for the closure. This has been very slow work and has taken far longer than I had hoped.
It is our goal to release at least two Monthly Outcome Reports each month until we are caught up and then we will be endeavoring to release the reports by the end of the month following the closing date for the report. I am also working with DOC to get these reports distributed to the incarcerated individuals in the DOC facilities as soon as possible. We will also have the reports posted on our OCO website.
In addition to the work we are doing to provide clearer monthly reports, we are working on using our data to better determine where to focus our efforts with the Department of Corrections (DOC). In particular, you will see in the reports that there are many cases in which we are able to substantiate a complaint, but could not reach a resolution with the DOC. There are also many cases in which the case is closed because there was not a violation of a DOC policy. In these cases, we have begun to work on figuring out better ways to prioritize policies upon which we should focus based on our data, and where we can try to achieve some improvements to policies or practices that are the basis for repeated complaints.
We have not yet instituted these changes to how we work on cases where we have closed the case due to no policy violation; but it is our goal to use the data from the concerns we receive to identify the most frequent areas of concern and to be able to enter into discussions with the DOC based on the data.
Thank you for your patience as we are implementing these changes and improvements. We are already seeing improvements in the speed of our response and effectiveness at helping to resolve issues for the incarcerated individuals. As we continue to make improvements, we are confident we will continue to be able to make more of a difference for those we serve.
Best,
Sonja Hallum
Interim Director
Office of the Corrections Ombuds
