WICHITA — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly says she wants to move the state’s prison system from being “all-punitive to much more therapeutic.”
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that Kelly made the comment Tuesday while speaking to more than 200 people at a Wichita school district administration building. Kelly says she has learned challenges within the Kansas Department of Corrections are worse than anticipated. In the search for a replacement to the agency’s interim leader, the governor said she would seek someone eager to properly staff prisons and transition the facilities to a rehabilitative footing.
She also says Kansas should engage in comprehensive sentencing reform because too many people were being thrown in jails and prisons. And she added that too many were held long after a point in which it had any benefit.
