Transition from Incarceration to Communities: Alternatives to Total Confinement

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Jennie Fitzpatrick is the Parenting Program Administrator for the Parenting Sentencing Alternative program at Washington State Department of Corrections. Jennie holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and worked 18 years in the TANF and WorkFirst world of case management and working directly with families. There’s a shared population with the Department of Corrections with overlapping needs that impact the individual and their families. She also provides lived experience as she has a long-term incarcerated sibling. She believes we need to provide wrap-around services and resources to help individuals reentering the community to find their way back to their families and society, in a productive and legal way. Her goal is to be a steward of change for those in their care and turn the vision towards seeing it as a helping profession, rather than one just of supervision and enforcing laws. Jennie believes the Parenting Sentencing Alternative Program is a good step in that direction. In her free time, she loves to kayak, read, explore outdoors, and spend time with her family.

Kelly graduated from Sam Houston State University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice in 1994. After graduation, she worked as a Community Supervision Officer in Texas for 3 years and then moved to Washington State. Kelly was hired by the Washington State Department of Corrections in 1999 as a Community Corrections Officer 2. During her 24 years career, she has held many different positions. For 13 years, she supervised multiple field units to include Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative, Sex Offender and Court Unit. She was a supervisor at WCCW and at two Reentry Centers. She has worked on many projects and implementation teams to include the 6204 Implementation Team travelling across the state to train and assist staff in implementing Swift and Certain Sanctioning and the STRONG-R Development Team. As part of the Strong-R team she assisted in laying the groundwork for our current assessment tool the WA-ONE. In 2015 she joined the SMART Supervision Implementation Team and trained staff in Impacting Behavior Change. Kelly was the Section 6 Field Administrator for 7 years and supervised the CCD Tolling Strike Team. Currently Kelly is the Graduated Reentry Administrator.

Mac began his career with the Washington State Department of Corrections on June 1, 1999 as Community Corrections Officer in Port Orchard. He has promoted through the ranks in the Community Corrections Division (CCD), serving as a Community Corrections Supervisor in Seattle and Kent/Federal Way, Electronic Monitoring Program Administrator, Field Administrator for Pierce/Kitsap counties and as a Regional Administrator for the East. Today, Mac serves as the Assistant Secretary for CCD, a role that he has been in since 2017. Mac has his Bachelor of Criminal Justice from Seattle University and his Masters of Arts degree in Criminal Justice from Washington State University. Additionally, he is a graduate of the National Institute of Corrections' Executive Excellence Program (2015), recipient of the Secretary's Leadership Award (2013), WSU Distinguished Professional Achievement Award for Criminal Justice and Criminology (2018), and most recently the recipient of the Seattle University Advisory Committee of the Year – Innovation in Criminal Justice Education Award (2022). Mac has also served as an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Seattle University since 2004 and is an inaugural member of their Criminal Justice Advisory Board.

Kristine M. Skipworth is a 1990 graduate of Gonzaga University. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice. While in college she was employed with the Spokane County Juvenile Court as a Juvenile Probation Officer Intern and as a Juvenile Corrections Officer at the Juvenile Detention facility. Upon graduation from college she obtained employment with Echo Glen Children’s Center and was one of two female juvenile security guards working in a maximum security unit. 30 years ago, in 1993, she was hired by the Department of Corrections where she began her career as a Community Corrections Officer 2 in the Burien Field Office. She worked in partnership with local law enforcement and was integral in the establishment of SMART partnerships with various King County Sheriffs agencies. She was later promoted to a CCO3. During her tenure as a CCO3, she was invited to participate in a legislative workgroup to write and provide critical review of draft legislation and feedback as to content and effect of the proposed Drug Offender Sentence Alternative (DOSA) legislation prior to it becoming a law. At the conclusion of this committee she was offered a position of Legislative Program Manager with the Departments Chemical Dependency unit and was responsible to establish policy, manage and implement the Drug Offender Sentence Alternative (DOSA) legislation for the Department. Since this time she has held various Community Corrections Supervisor positions to include Work Release and Field units in King and Pierce County. Kristine was hired as the Section 4 Field Administrator (FA) in DOC’s Community Corrections Division for all of Pierce County, overseeing 12 Units, 1 Work Crew, and the Western Region Transport Team with a combined total of 143 staff. For the past 7 years, Kristine has been working as the Community Corrections Division, Regional Administrator for Eastern Washington. In this role she is responsible for all operational, policy and staff within Community Corrections in Eastern Washington. She is also responsible for the supervision and oversight of the Graduate Reentry Program, the Parenting Sentencing Alternative program and is the Executive Sponsor/Program lead for the agencies most recent supervision initiative Individualized Community Oriented Accountability Collaborative Help (iCoach). Kristine has been married for