Best halfway house honor going to CCA for success

The state gives the award annually in four categories.

YOUNGSTOWN — Community Corrections Association halfway house on Market Street has been selected to receive the Cliff Skeen Award by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction as the best of 26 halfway houses in the state during the last fiscal year.

Linda Janes, deputy director of the Division of Parole and Community Services for the ODRC, said the Youngstown nonprofit organization will receive the award Oct. 25 in Columbus.

She said the award was given for the company’s work with clients during the 2007 fiscal year, from July 2006 through this past June.

The award is given out annually in four categories to residential and nonresidential offender diversion programs. The award is given based on an evaluation of their programs and performance in several areas. The halfway house category is one of the four.

CCA says it scored the highest termination rate of the 26 halfway houses in the state at 79 percent, meaning that 79 percent of its clients successfully completed their program rather than have to return to prison for violating the terms of their probation.

CCA also had the lowest absence-without- leave rate of 3 percent, meaning that 3 percent of clients walked away from the facility without permission.

“It’s a high honor,” Richard J. Billak, chief executive officer of CCA, said of the award.

The organization has 100 beds in three halfway houses on Market Street, where individuals are sent after returning to the community from state and federal prisons, Billak said.

The organization also has a 70-bed probation unit, also at its Market Street campus, which accepts individuals who are given alternative sentences by common pleas court judges.

CCA also provides nonresidential services such as electronic monitoring, employs three probation officers who work with the common pleas court, and has three full-time staff members working in the Mahoning County Jail.

Among the jail services are literacy, education, substance abuse, role-playing therapy and defensive driving, Billak said.