Nebraska parole officer Jeremy Orescanin last week checked back in with a parolee who had been lapsing back into drug use.
Orescanin had earlier determined that a bad living arrangement and loneliness had put this client in contact with some bad influences, and perhaps on a pathway to reoffending and back to prison. So the parole officer had worked with a community partner organization to fi nd a new, more structured living arrangement.
As Orescanin now did another in-person assessment of the former inmate, he could see the plan was working.
"I saw a lot of change in his life," said the military veteran with a degree in social work. "He was working, had the support and was doing well."
Would Nebraskans feel safe if the state started releasing former prisoners into the community without that kind of oversight and assistance?
No testing to ensure they're not using drugs.
No one making sure they keep a job.
No one seeing if they have the support they need to avoid returning to a life of crime.
Well, that's pretty much what's happening today with nearly four out of every 10 inmates who leave Nebraska's prisons.
Out of 2,252 inmates released in 2022, 829 — 37%— walked out with no parole or probation supervision, according to new state corrections data analyzed by The Omaha World-Herald.
Prisoners call it "jamming out" — fully exhausting their sentence while behind bars.
Criminal justice experts call it a recipe for reoffending and a return to prison, saying post-release supervision is a critical part of public safety.
"You are taking someone with no money, putting them on the street and saying 'Good luck,'" said Brian Lovins, president of the American Probation and Parole Association. "We create these huge barriers, and then we are surprised when they fail."
Nebraska's rate of unsupervised release of prisoners is among the highest in the nation, the World-Herald analysis found.
There's also a dichotomy in Nebraska's current system of transitioning inmates back to society.
The Legislature eight years ago passed a law requiring post-release supervision of inmates, but it applies only to those convicted of lower-level felony crimes.
That means many of those coming out of prison unsupervised today were convicted of the state's most serious felonies, with most of those crimes involving violence, drugs, sex or guns.
Exclude the low-level supervised off enders from the release figures, and in 2022 just under half the remaining, more serious off enders left prison unsupervised, including more than 50% of those convicted of assault.
Those jamming out included 112 who had been imprisoned for felony assault, 57 sex offenders, 233 drug offenders, 35 who had committed robbery, and 89 imprisoned on weapons offenses.
"That's shocking, and that is very dangerous," said State Sen. Justin Wayne, chairman of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee. "We should not be having people jam out with no supervision."
Wayne called jam outs a disservice to everyone — the offender, the justice system and the public that the system is supposed to protect.
The ironic thing is, it's been widely acknowledged in Nebraska's justice system that supervised release is preferable to jamming out.
Still, crafting a system to assure that all released prisoners receive supervision has proven elusive. It would require changes to the sentencing system for serious felons, and that has often sparked controversy.
But Wayne said he now has hope the Legislature can take a step toward addressing jam outs yet this year.
A package of criminal justice reforms set to come up for debate in the Legislature Monday includes a provision aimed at reducing jam outs by giving most inmates a window of parole eligibility as they near their mandatory discharge date.
The package of reforms set to go before lawmakers is also more broadly aimed at confronting conditions in Nebraska's chronically overcrowded prisons.
Nebraska's prison population has been rising faster than in any other state over the past decade. Between 2011 and 2021, Nebraska's prison population grew 21% while prison numbers fell nationally by 24%.
Nebraska lawmakers appear poised this session to address the growth and overcrowding by spending $366 million to build a 1,500-bed replacement for the Nebraska State Penitentiary. But based on current projections for the state's prison population, Nebraska would be faced with building another new prison before the decade is out — at a time many other states around the country are closing prisons.
"The data points are clear that the day that prison opens, it's going to be full," Wayne said. "We have to look at what's going on."
Omaha parole officer Alyssa Hanks had a number of new clients last week who were fresh out of prison.
As required, within 24 hours of leaving their institutions, she was meeting with them to begin orientating them to the parole process.
She also assessed the risk they posed for reoffending as well as their needs for help. She frankly discussed with them any triggers in their past history that could again lead them down the wrong path.
Every parole certificate issued by the state — the ticket for early release — requires the parolee to be drug and alcohol-free. So depending on the level of assessed risk for relapse, parolees may be tested as often as twice a month. Some may even be fitted with ankle monitors that can detect alcohol use.
If they are former gang members or sex offenders, they will be fitted with an ankle bracelet that will allow the parole division to track their movements.
Their parole officer will also typically meet with them face-to-face every month, either in the office, at their home or on the job. If they are considered high risk for reoffending, it's twice a month. There are random checks with family members and employers, too.
It's all individualized and intended not only to help the parolee get off on the right foot in starting a new life, but also to protect public safety.
"That's the No. 1 priority for us," Hanks said.
When times get tough for a parolee, the parole officer is also there to offer counsel, encouragement or referrals to counselors, therapists or treatment.
"They should know we have their best interest at heart," Orescanin said. "If you do slip up, please call me. I can help you through this negative time."
Figures from the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services show that 875 inmates were released last year to such parole supervision. Another 548 lower-level felony offenders were released from prison to supervision under the state's probation department.
But another 829 inmates completely exhausted their sentences and were then mandatorily discharged without supervision.
"You wake some guy up in the morning, give him his clothes, wish him luck and he goes out the door," said Spike Eickholt, who lobbies on criminal justice issues for ACLU Nebraska. "It's always better to have a period of supervision and transition."
To be sure, there are risks of failure whenever former criminals are released into the community, supervised or not. About three in 10 prisoners released in Nebraska are back behind bars within three years.
But it's also true that some 95% of people sentenced to prison will one day return to society. There's broad consensus in criminal justice that it's best for public safety to give those transitioning offenders the tools, assistance and supervision needed to succeed.
Those who are coming out of prison face countless challenges to a successful new life.
Many have been locked up for so long they don't know how to function in today's world. Some have never operated a cellphone. One of Orescanin's recent clients didn't understand the self checkout lanes at the grocery store, standing around waiting for someone to help him.
Parolees can face difficulty finding housing, especially if they are a sex offender. They have little, if any, financial resources.
They most likely have a history of drug abuse or mental health problems that directly contributed to their incarceration, and which may well still shadow them.
And they may be returning to a neighborhood where there are many of the same bad influences that got them in trouble in the first place.
"Anybody coming from prison and entering into the community is in crisis mode," said Jasmine Harris of RISE, an Omaha-based reentry program. "If there's no support and preparation, it's very difficult."
RISE works with individuals in prison to prepare them for release. It's also there to help them once they're on the outside, regardless of whether their release was under supervision or not.
The Corrections Department also works with inmates before they leave, regardless of post-release status, to help them establish a foundation for success on the outside.
But once they walk out the door, whether they connect with supportive services or not and stay on course is more haphazard if they don't have parole or probation officers monitoring and helping them.
Most states supervise higher percentages of prisoners as they transition back into society than Nebraska.
According to federal data for 2021 — the most recent available — Nebraska's rate of unsupervised release was the 13th highest among the states.
Florida led the nation with more than 60% of released inmates unsupervised. In Kansas, less than 4% of inmates were released without supervision. In California, it was less than 1%. The national rate was just under 20%.
There are a number of reasons that so many Nebraska inmates leave prison unsupervised.
Some inmates intentionally serve out their full sentence, not wanting to deal with parole officers.
Some were denied parole, with the parole board deciding that their criminal past, behavior behind bars or other considerations made them unworthy of early release.
Some were paroled, slipped up, were returned to prison and then jammed out. More than 150 of those who jammed out in 2022 had previously been paroled.
Other jam outs can be directly attributed to the sentences the offenders were handed before they even entered prison.
For most serious crimes involving violence, drugs, sexual assault and weapons, Nebraska uses indeterminate sentencing that sets a minimum and maximum penalty.
The minimum determines when the offender becomes eligible for parole, and the maximum determines when the offender will be mandatorily released. The time between those dates is the time the offender can spend under parole supervision if released by the parole board.
That structure creates a balancing act for sentencing judges, and then later the parole board. The longer they choose to keep a prisoner locked up, the less time there is for supervision on the back end.
Additionally, if a judge hands down a sentence where the minimum and maximum are the same number — say, 20 years to 20 years — the offender has no opportunity for parole or supervision. Under what is often called a "flat sentence," by the time offenders hit the minimum number and become parole eligible, they have served their maximum sentence and are set free.
Looking at inmates released from Nebraska prisons in 2022, it appears more than 300 had flat or nearly flat sentences that left them little or no window for parole release.
Sometimes it was because the sentencing judge threw the book at them.
Sometimes it was because the state's laws requiring mandatory minimum sentences for certain serious crimes left the judge little choice but a flat sentence.
Sometimes the overall sentence was so short the offender had already almost served it by the time they were sent to prison, considering credit for time served in jail awaiting trial.
Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley has seen cases where prosecutors argued for flat sentences, wanting to maximize the time served behind bars. But the prosecutors might as well have argued that they wanted the offender released without supervision, too, because that's what happens when sentences are flat.
A sentence that provides a reasonable window for release on parole "is not being soft on crime," Riley said. "That's being smart on criminal justice."
Nebraska has seen in the past that jam outs can also lead to tragic consequences.
After serving 10 years in prison for a pair of carjackings, Nikko Jenkins was released from prison directly into society in July 2013. Within three weeks, he went on a 10-day killing spree in Omaha that left four people dead.
It was later discovered Jenkins had received little preparation for release and no supervision upon leaving prison after having spent months in solitary confinement, which experts say can exacerbate behavioral and mental health problems.
The Jenkins case sparked efforts at reforming Nebraska's parole, prison and legal systems. But a decade later, the state has yet to arrive at a system that assures each offender serving a prison sentence also receives a significant period of post-release supervision.
"The Nikko Jenkins example has yet to be resolved," said Douglas County Sheriff Aaron Hanson, who has been active in recent state discussions on criminal justice reform. "It has never been addressed."
The Jenkins case and the state's fast-growing prison population did spark a reform movement a decade ago, including efforts to prevent unsupervised releases. But policy differences between advocates of criminal justice reform and those in law enforcement have kept the state from stopping jam outs.
In 2015, lawmakers passed a law generally reducing criminal sentences but coupling the change with at least a year of required post-release supervision under the state's probation system. But the change applied only to lower-level offenses, those today carrying prison sentences of four years or less.
The change had the effect of reducing the total percentage of inmates jamming out without supervision, which at one point had exceeded 50% of all releases from Nebraska prisons.
But it also created the current dichotomy where the vast majority of low-level felons are supervised, while many convicted of the most serious and violent felonies aren't. Prosecutors, then-Gov. Pete Ricketts and others that same year opposed a provision that would have capped minimum sentences to make more serious felons eligible for parole sooner.
In 2020, Ricketts vetoed a bill that would have made most prisoners eligible for parole within two years of their mandatory release date.
Last year, a state commission recommended a number of changes aimed at reducing the state's prison population growth, including provisions aimed at reducing jam outs.
But Ricketts and the state's prosecutors balked at any changes that reduced sentences or made inmates eligible for parole sooner, with Ricketts calling them "soft on crime." With lawmakers and Ricketts unable to reach any compromise in the final days of the session, nothing passed.
Looking back, Wayne said there's lots of blame to go around for the failure to deal with jam outs. It's easier for state lawmakers, governors, the parole board, judges and prosecutors to keep the status quo because of what Wayne calls "the fear of the one'' — fear of being blamed for the one inmate released on parole who reoffends in a spectacular way, creating a public outcry and political fallout.
But if the public truly comprehended the system, he said, they would understand the inmate who isn't paroled and then is released unsupervised in many cases poses an even greater threat.
"What we should fear is the one who jams out," he said.
The package of criminal justice measures that Wayne hopes to push in the Legislature beginning Monday includes a specific provision seeking to reduce jam outs.
Similar to the bill Ricketts vetoed in 2020, it would generally create a mandatory window of parole eligibility beginning at least two years before an inmate would be mandatorily discharged. Release decisions would remain up to the parole board.
But Wayne and Hanson said the ultimate solution to jam outs will likely require a complete overhaul of the state's sentencing laws. Also part of the criminal justice package recently negotiated with new Gov. Jim Pillen is the creation of a state commission that would spend the next two years studying the entire sentencing system.
Both Wayne and Hanson said they would prefer to drop Nebraska's system of indeterminate sentences for one providing more set prison terms, followed by a significant term of post-release supervision. Not only has the current structure resulted in many unsupervised releases, they said, there's a lack of transparency, too.
"Let's add post-release supervision to all felonies," Wayne said. "We have to at least agree that jamming out is a bad thing."
