MDOC Director Patricia L. Caruso recently announced her first department reorganization since becoming Director in July. Here is a message from the Director outlining those changes.

For nearly six months now I have had time to closely review the operations of all organizational units of the Department and that time has served to reinforce what I knew all along, that we are blessed with hard-working, dedicated employees who ‘get the job done’ usually under very stressful and challenging circumstances. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that to begin with.

The other conclusion I quickly made was that we, as a state, cannot afford to build our way out of the prisoner population dilemma with which most states are confronted. Our ‘Five Year Plan to Control Prison Growth’ continues to fine tune our policies and practices so that we reserve expensive prison beds for the most violent and dangerous offenders. We have already witnessed progress in slowing down new prison commitments and the return of technical violators by rethinking and reemphasizing the use of community corrections approaches.

A major component of this effort is our recently launched Prisoner Re-entry Initiative and its emphasis on creating new collaborative approaches with public, private, state and local agencies to better prepare prisoners for release and re-entry into our communities. This has the potential to be the most far-reaching shift in operational approach that any of us have witnessed to date. The traditional walls of ‘prison’ (CFA) and ‘community supervision’ (FOA) operations will hopefully erode as we see the transition of the offender coming from the community to prison and then back to the community as a single, integrated continuum.

To date, the responsibility for coordinating this entire Initiative has been assigned to Dennis Schrantz, in addition to his duties as Deputy Director of Field Operations Administration. I have now come to the conclusion that the significance of this Initiative requires the full-time attention of Mr. Schrantz. Integral to the success of this massive effort will be sound research and strategic planning, as well as subsequent revisions to department policies. Consequently, I am creating a new Policy and Strategic Planning Administration and appointing Mr. Schrantz as the unclassified Deputy Director of this new Administration. The Office of Policy and Hearings currently in the Executive Bureau will be transferred to this Administration, as well as the Office of Research and Planning, currently in the Administration and Programs Administration. The reassignment of Mr. Schrantz will then permit the posting and filling of the FOA Deputy Director position.

I am also pleased to announce an addition to the Department. Donald Weatherspoon has agreed to leave his current position as Chief Deputy Director of the Family Independence Agency and join the Department in a newly-created unclassified position of Special Assistant to the Director. He initially will be detailed to Deputy Director Schrantz to assist in coordinating the development and implementation of our Prisoner Re-entry Initiative. His appointment is effective January 4, 2004. I am excited with the addition of Mr. Weatherspoon because he has already been intimately involved in the Re-entry Initiative by serving as the FIA representative to the Initiative’s State Policy Team chaired by the Executive Office of the Governor. I am pleased he has accepted this appointment and look forward to tapping into his extensive state government experience.

This reorganization also abolishes the Executive Bureau as it is currently structured. With the retirement of Richard McKeon and the transfer of the Office of Policy and Hearings to the new Policy and Strategic Planning Administration, Heidi Washington and David Newman will report directly to me. Mr. McKeon’s position will be restructured, posted and filled as my new staff level Administrative Assistant.

I encourage all employees to congratulate Deputy Director Schrantz on his extremely challenging new assignment and to welcome Mr. Weatherspoon to the Department of Corrections.

—Director Patricia L. Caruso

Michigan Department of Corrections FYI 12-18-03