The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Local News

Related Photos

  • A Sentence to Serve crew removes an old wooden wheelchair ramp at a county-owned house on Hickory Street. Hollis Joslin (right) says the work is “better than jail.” The Historic Courthouse is visible in the background. Pat Christman

    Sentenced to serve.jpg

May 6, 2010

Blue Earth County to cut back on Sentence to Serve

Adult crew to remain, but juvenile crew won’t

By Dan Linehan Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO — A team of six took sledgehammers and hammers to a decrepit wooden wheelchair ramp at a county-owned house on Hickory Street earlier this week.

They won’t get paid for their time, but they’re not exactly volunteers, either.

“It’ll make me not want to get in trouble again,” said Hollis Joslin, an eager 19-year-old. In exchange for avoiding jail time for a misdemeanor alcohol charge, he’s spending five days doing labor.

“It feels like you’re actually doing community service,” he said.

It’s called Sentence to Serve, and is used both to keep low-level offenders out of jail and allow people to work off fines. In the first three months of 2010, Blue Earth County’s adult crew worked 4,564 hours, mostly for the city of Mankato and the county.

Counties around the state are rethinking their Sentence to Serve programs after the state cut its contribution from 50 percent to 25 percent. Blue Earth County has operated two crews — one it pays for itself, the other state-funded — but will likely cut one of its crews.

The county has a general policy against restoring state cuts with local tax money, and the County Board didn’t appear willing to pay the extra $19,000 to maintain the state-run crew. That crew leader, Eric Olson, has split his time between juvenile work crews and administering drug testing.

He says he’s “met a lot of neat people over my nine years,” though he acknowledges “juveniles are a little more challenging.”

The county decided to keep its adult crew partly because as many as 14 people can work at once, said Josh Milow, interim corrections director. With juveniles, eight are considered the maximum, he said.

The county’s probation officers will have to get a little more creative to find work opportunities for juveniles once the crew is gone, which is scheduled to happen July 1. One crew leader is expected to lose his job.

The county also is considering contracting with a company to do drug testing.

Milow said he asked the state to transfer its 25 percent support of a position to the remaining position, but the state refused to amend its current contract, which runs through June 2011.

Sentence to Serve was created primarily as a way to keep people out of costly jails, Milow said.

It had evolved as an option for people who wouldn’t get any jail time as an element of “restorative justice” to repair the bond between the law-breaker and society.

“I still like the humanitarian factor,” Olson said.

It’s also helpful for the local governments and nonprofits that benefit from the labor. For-profit companies are prohibited from using Sentence to Serve labor.

This winter, crews spent 1,052 hours clearing snow from fire hydrants in Mankato, of which there are roughly 2,000.

It’s typically a home owner’s responsibility to clear off hydrants, but December was particularly snowy and the city had to use its global positioning system to locate the hydrants.

Text Only | Photo Reprints
Local News