Three months into their work, members of a group charged with reforming the state’s criminal justice system say they’re learning there’s no easy fix.

“I think the clearest thing at this point is that we still need to do a comprehensive study — and I mean something significantly more than just sitting around as a committee listening,” said William Rich, a Washburn University law professor.

An interim report is due in lawmakers’ hands Feb. 1. Group members say it’s likely their report will be a request for the Legislature to authorize a more in-depth study.

Most of the group’s meetings so far have dealt with the state’s prison population — not just the question of whether Kansas needs more beds, but what happens to inmates after they’re released and why many offend again.

Tom Stacy, a Kansas University law professor who serves on the committee, said the three important issues that affected how inmates fared after being released were their mental health, substance abuse issues and family ties.

“The idea is that somebody who can be reintegrated into a social network has a better chance of going straight than somebody who is lacking in those social supports that most of us have,” he said.

Committee member Ed Collister, a Lawrence attorney, said he’s been impressed to learn of the efforts the Kansas Department of Corrections and other agencies make to help people adjust to life once they’re released, an issue the public doesn’t consider as much as it should.

“We send them to prison or we punish them, and then my impression has been that we sort of forget about them,” Collister said. “If somebody commits a crime, there’s something that needs attention.”

Rich said he had focused most of his attention so far on inmates’ behavioral-health issues. He said corrections department data showed more than 20 percent of the state’s prison population was taking psychotropic drugs.

Panel to review state’s criminal justice system (08-17-04)

“The extent to which we are treating people with mental illness primarily through the criminal justice system rather than through some alternative treatment methods is a real problem,” Rich said.

He said the state’s sentencing standards, which set a tougher penalty for people with worse criminal records, might compound the problem.

People with mental-health problems “might be the ones with the long criminal history, and our guidelines don’t really provide for any recognition of that, nor do they provide any clear treatment alternative for that group,” Rich said.

The 16-member group, called the Kansas Criminal Recodification, Rehabilitation and Restoration Project, was created by a bill passed in the 2004 Legislature. It will give its final report in January 2006.

Collister said the process was the third major effort to modify Kansas’ criminal laws. One happened in 1963. Another happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, about the time the state enacted a sentencing grid.