A program that offered in-person check-ins with parole officers, face-to-face classes on anger management and other tangible resources to people newly out of prison has been quietly eliminated.

Lawmakers questioned officials from the Division of Parole and Probation during a meeting of the Assembly Judiciary Committee on Wednesday about the fate of the Day Reporting Centers, which the Legislature authorized in 2017. The physical hubs served hundreds of people, but were one of the casualties of pandemic-related suspensions of in-person activities and a $10 million budget cut to the division during a summertime special session.

“We were just transitioning to a different vendor. And so there was some difficulty trying to figure out how to transition, and then with COVID, and then having no funding,” explained Anne Carpenter, the former director of the parole division.

The centers are not in the governor’s recommended budget going forward, according to parole division chief Thomas Lawson. It’s a setback for a legislative effort to keep people out of prison and provide a higher level of support for formerly incarcerated people reentering the community than a traditional parole arrangement might.

The centers, located in Reno and Las Vegas, were public-private partnerships between the state and corrections companies. Parolees who committed technical violations — something not allowed under the terms of their parole but short of a new crime — were directed to the Day Reporting Center as an “intermediate sanction” instead of being sent to jail.

“When I first arrived, I had my tour of the Day Reporting Center. And I really thought this is a really promising program. And we were really jazzed up about it,” said George Togliatti, head of the Department of Public Safety, the umbrella agency for the parole division.

But the centers attracted some skepticism from state auditors. An audit presented last February argued the centers “showed low performance” because out of the 4,536 people who had participated in the center’s activities at the time of the report, only 113 — less than 3 percent — had formally “graduated.”

“Although DRCs are becoming a popular alternative to incarceration for those under community supervision, there is conflicting research on the overall effectiveness of DRCs,” the audit said.

The report also looked askance on the fact that the center was running 12 percent below capacity on average, while the state was paying a flat rate of nearly $769,000 a year to run the centers. That created a “windfall” for the contractor that could be better used to pay rent for people newly released from prison — an intervention that might make the difference in them being released on parole or kept in a prison setting past their eligibility date for lack of an adequate living situation.

“DRCs are a high cost program serving a small percentage of offenders at an additional cost to community supervision,” auditors wrote. “Allocating resources to other successful programs and services optimizes limited funds for reintegration efforts to maximize outcomes.”

The program also attracted scrutiny when Nevada looked to switch contractors from Sentinel — a company that offers drug testing and GPS monitoring services — to a subsidiary of the GEO Group, which operates dozens of private prisons and immigrant detention centers. Progressives are critical of companies such as GEO because they profit from incarceration, but the state Board of Examiners eventually approved a two-year agreement last February, with member and Attorney General Aaron Ford saying he was “so proud to support this.”

Parole officials did not immediately provide answers on Thursday to questions about whether Day Reporting Centers will be part of the state’s parole portfolio going forward, and whether any money was lost in the severance of a contract.

“Maybe this is kind of another example of why we have issues with these private public partnerships,” Assemblywoman Lesley Cohen (D-Las Vegas) said at the Wednesday meeting. “Because when we have to change contracts ... we can have a program that's working well, that just kind of falls apart and puts more strain on your department.”