In the Community

DOC Invites Reporters to Learn more about High-Risk offenders

By Chad Lewis, West Team Leader, DOC Communications Office

Patricia Murphy, a reporter with KUOW, follows Community Corrections Officer Randy Vanzandt inside a house where an offender lives in Seattle. DOC invited Murphy to learn how DOC supervises Dangerous Mentally Ill Offenders in communities.
Patricia Murphy, a reporter with KUOW follows Community
Corrections Officer Randy Vanzandt inside a house where
an offender lives in Seattle.

As Community Corrections Officer Randy Vanzandt’s well-traveled white van bounced through the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Patricia Murphy tried to hold her large microphone in place.

Murphy, a reporter with KUOW – Seattle’s NPR station – was seeing firsthand how DOC officers like Vanzandt supervise Dangerous Mentally Ill Offenders in the community. Vanzandt took her inside offenders’ homes and through high-crime areas. During the summer she visited Monroe Correctional Complex to see how the prison and community corrections staffs coordinate to develop release plans for some of the state’s highest-risk offenders.

Reporters covering DOC is hardly new. What was different about these stories is that the agency’s Communications Department initiated the coverage.

“Our goal is to better inform the public about some of the highest-risk offenders before there is a high-profile incident,” Communications and Outreach Director Belinda D. Stewart said. “In the past we wouldn’t tell the public about the work we do and when an offender committed a crime people would assume that DOC had done something wrong, when actually it was the offender who did something wrong.”

It’s been an ongoing effort by the Communications Department to inform the public about some of the most serious issues facing the agency today. In February the Washington State Penitentiary hosted a press tour to show reporters how the agency had significantly reduced gang violence. Airway Heights Corrections Center and Monroe Correctional Complex have hosted press tours of their Sex Offender Treatment Programs.

“We’ve historically been pretty good at talking publicly about some of our family-friendly and reentry programs, which is really good,” Prisons Director Dick Morgan said. “But until recently we weren’t as good at talking publicly about some of the potentially dangerous aspects of corrections, like gangs, contraband and mentally ill offenders. Now we’re doing a better job of telling the broader story.”

Assistant Secretary Scott Blonien says proactive communications like the news media ride-along with officers who supervise Dangerous Mentally Ill Offenders help the public better understand the agency, which ultimately leads to more public support.

“It’s hard to support something that you don’t understand,” Blonien said. “Now, with us doing a better job of talking to news media, the public has a better understanding of what we do.”

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