Kansas
7/01/07
Kansas legislative update
FAMMGram, summer 2007
3/25/07
KS: Few funds for parolee drug abuse treatment
The Wichita Eagle
3/2007
FAMMGram: Kansas lawmakers taking fresh look at reform
In January, FAMM’s Midwest organizer Peter Ninemire attended a legislative day sponsored by the Kansas Association of Addiction Professionals. He joined legislators, sentencing reform advocates and addiction experts in supporting effective approaches to rehabilitation and re-entry for substance abusers.
Ninemire met with legislators to discuss expanding Kansas's drug treatment program to include individuals incarcerated for drug use who were sentenced before the effective date of S.B.123, the treatment alternative to prison bill that was enacted in 2003.Many legislators were interested in this and other sentencing reform proposals that would reduce the state’s burgeoning and costly prison population.
Other sentencing reform advocates discussed the use of day reporting centers to reduce parole revocations and ease Kansas’s skyrocketing jail populations.
Ninemire and his colleagues were invited to attend upcoming House Judiciary Committee hearings on reform measures designed to reduce the need for building additional bed space in Kansas.
A Kansas legislative task force meeting will be held soon to discuss reform proposals. Family members, treatment providers and advocates for drug treatment and sentencing reform measures should contact Ninemire at pninemire@famm.org for additional information about the hearings. Kansas FAMM members will receive updates and alerts in the coming weeks.
8/31/06
Treatment bill tabled, reintroduction planned
Peter Ninemire, FAMM's Midwest organizer, is working with legislators
and key stakeholders to read House Bill 2231 for reintroduction by Rep. Bill McCreary (R-Wellington) in 2007. The bill provides placement into treatment for some individuals serving prison time for nonviolent, first-time drug offenses.
Progress on H.B. 2231 stalled after at the February Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, criticism of the bill focused on the legal and political ramifications of language allowing individuals to petition the court for re-sentencing to treatment. The committee tables the bill, pending revision. Nine believes the suggested revisions will both satisfy concerns raised in committee and provide the needed relief for individuals sentenced prior to passage of SB 273.
This session, the Kansas legislature passed H.B. 2576, which sets mandatory sentences for sex offenses and authorizes a privately owned prison to be operated in Kansas. A Senate committee inserted the private prison measure into the bill, angering opponents of private prison expansion who had defeated similar measures in the previous two legislative sessions. Ninemire joined those opposing H.B. 2576, arguing that sentencing reform would reduce the need for additional prison beds.