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Committee advances MOU to adopt StrongR risk-needs assessments for felony inmates
Summary
Committee members discussed an MOU with the Tennessee Department of Correction to use the StrongR risk‑needs assessment and agreed to forward the MOU; county officials said the state will provide licenses and training at no cost and will audit a sample of cases.
Sumner County committee members discussed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Tennessee Department of Correction to implement StrongR risk‑needs assessments for felony inmates and moved to forward the MOU after discussion about benefits, costs and oversight.
Scott, a jail official, described TCA 41 as a recently enacted requirement that “requires felony inmates who are sentenced to receive what’s called a RNA or risk needs assessment.” He said the state offered free licensing and training under the MOU and that “there’s no cost” to the county as long as the county remains in the MOU.
Officials said the assessment would let the county complete a standard intake classification that the state often requires before prisoners move to state custody, which can speed credits and placements. The county official told the committee the tool is a layperson’s instrument to route inmates into programs such as education, anger management and recovery groups and that the state will audit a random sample of files: “the state's gonna place an audit on 5% of the files,” the official said.
Committee members asked about costs and data handling. The jail official said the MOU will provide a license that can serve the whole agency, and that training would be provided by the state. He also told the committee the program could increase per‑inmate reimbursement under a state tier system: “TCI has a tier 1 level that we could achieve with this, and that's about a 12% increase per inmate per day,” he said, and offered an illustrative billing example moving from about $2,000,000 to $2.2–$2.3 million with the higher tier.
Committee members discussed practical details — when assessments would be completed, who would perform them and whether the assessment labels would create negative consequences. The jail official said staff corrections officers would perform the assessments and that the tool is intended to gather and pass information to direct inmates to services rather than to make clinical diagnoses.
The committee moved the MOU forward for further consideration; the meeting record shows a motion was made, seconded, and the voice vote carried. The mover, seconder and specific vote tally were not specified in the meeting transcript.
