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YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri |
Report No. 2000-85
August 31, 2000
The following problems
were discovered as a result of an audit conducted by our office of selected
operations of the Central Office of the Department of Corrections.
� According to Department of Corrections policy, all receipts are to be immediately transmitted to the Department of Revenue.� However, we noted that as of December 1999 Missouri Vocational Enterprises was holding undeposited receipts totaling over $1,593,600, including over $11,500 in cash.� Some of the undeposited receipts had been held at Missouri Vocational Enterprises for more than five months.� We also noted other instances in which Missouri Vocational Enterprises held selected receipts for several months prior to transmittal to the Department of Revenue for deposit.
� At June 30, 1999, Missouri Vocational Enterprises operated 28 enterprises at 11 of the correctional institutions.� Some of those industries show substantial losses while others continually show a net profit.� A contributing factor to the inequities in the profits and losses of certain entities is an inadequate charge structure.� Part of the reason for the inadequacy of the charge structure is not all of the factories are using a cost accounting system that provides or assembles sufficient data to implement an adequate costing system for all manufactured items.� Only eight factories are currently using a system that provides an adequate costing system.� In reports for the previous eighteen years, similar deficiencies have been noted in the cost accounting system.
� The Board of Probation and Parole operates a continuum of community supervision programs.� One of those programs is the Electronic Monitoring Program.� The Electronic Monitoring Program is a program designed to allow certain offenders, as assigned by the Department of Corrections, Board of Probation and Parole, or the courts, to live and work in the community.�� Offenders in the Electronic Monitoring Program are supervised by Probation and Parole Officers in the area where they live.� The offenders are required to pay a portion of their gross earnings to cover the costs of the program.� The payments are made to the Department of Corrections Central Office, and according to department procedure are to be deposited by transmittal to the Department of Revenue promptly.
These receipts were not always transmitted to the Department of Revenue on a timely basis.� During late November 1999, we noted that the Department of Corrections was holding undeposited receipts totaling over $179,500.� These receipts consisted of over 3,300 money orders from offenders that had accumulated since July 1999.� After we brought the problem to the department�s attention, these payments were promptly deposited.
� The department has a contract with a medical services provider, Correctional Medical Services, to provide all types of medical services, excluding mental health and psychiatric care, to all inmates housed in state institutions except for those inmates assigned to residential treatment facilities, the community release centers, and the electronic monitoring program.� The department has contracted with the same provider since December 1992.
The contract between the department and the medical contractor allows the department to issue a notice of deficiency to the medical contractor if the contractor�s performance is unacceptable.
To help ensure the integrity and adequacy of the medical services provided to the inmates, the department should establish procedures or criteria which document when and under what circumstances a formal notice of deficiency should be issued to the medical contractor.� While these procedures need not identify every possible problem that could result in a deficiency, they should set general parameters that provide general guidelines as to when and under what circumstances a deficiency should be considered.
� The department allowed a backlog of approximately 2,400 second appeals by inmates regarding grievances, to develop and did not clear them within the time frames required by department policy.
� The department retained over $19,000 in the Inmate Canteen Fund that should be turned over to the State Treasurer as unclaimed property.
