Meet The Authors
“The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation’s prisons and jails, a 500 percent increase over the last forty years. Changes in sentencing law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding and fiscal burdens on states to accommodate a rapidly expanding penal system, despite increasing evidence that large scale incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety.”
Michael Johnson
Lieutenant Michael Johnson retired from his career in corrections in early 2020. His work spanned nearly fourteen years, twelve of those with the Montana Department of Corrections (DOC). His corrections experience broadly included working with juvenile boys and girls, and adult men and women. He has worked with incarcerated people in a correctional setting of both genders, ranging from 13 to 90 years old.
Accreditations
Rhonda Champagne
Rhonda Champagne is a licensed clinical social worker, a therapist. She graduated with a master’s degree from Walla Walla University. She currently holds a private practice providing individual therapy. She was hired by the Montana DOC to assist with the implementation of a pilot project implementing a trauma-informed treatment program for adult female inmates. She worked most of her college and post-college career in a community mental health center where she wore many hats, each one for about 3 years including day treatment specialist, case manager, crisis intervention specialist, therapist, team leader, and eventually the director. She has served over 1,700 people suffering from a wide range of serious and disabling mental illnesses. She has worked with people heading to prison and coming from prison. She has testified on their behalf and against them. She has diagnosed and treated, but feels she made the most impact when she connected and related with people.
Accreditations
Advocate For Legislative Action
Enter your email below and join us in advocating for a change in treatment offered within the correctional system.
- Stop using treatment centers as forms of punishment.
- To cease all 20-year contracts between the Department of Corrections (DOC) and private organizations.
- To mandate trauma informed treatment in Montana’s DOC owned and/or privately contracted treatment facilities using the evidence-based guidelines provided by Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
- Mandating 'independent standardized measuring tool' to assess recidivism rates.
- To mandate the use of SAMHSA’s six key principle guidelines to measure the effectiveness of Montana’s DOC owned and/or contracted treatment centers with private organizations.
- To mandate the development of specialized Correctional Counselor, trauma informed trainings. Training which will teach Correctional Counselors to uphold a safe and secure environment through a relationship-based rapport with incarcerated people in Montana’s DOC owned and/or privately contracted treatment facilities.