Progress is being made as Missouri's "Work Group on Sentencing and Corrections" continues studying and talking about operations of the state Corrections system and the people who are ordered to live in it, group members said after the most recent meeting Thursday.
"I'm actually very encouraged," said state Sen. Jack Goodman, R-Mount Vernon, who co-chairs the group with Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia.
"A lot of times, you have a working group that gets bogged down in the identification of problems," Goodman added, "and then may get to brainstorming - and then that may be the end of the process."
The ultimate goal, he reminded the 13-member group at the beginning of Thursday's three-hour session, is "to reduce corrections spending so that more of our public safety dollars are reinvested in strategies to reduce" the numbers of people returning to prison, providing "safer neighborhoods going forward, at a reduced cost to taxpayers."