HELPING ADDICTS HELP THEMSELVES

Recovery -- Statistics Show One Program's Success Through Job Placement And
Support

GETTING hard-core addicts to stop using drugs is one thing; getting them to
stay off drugs and lead normal, socially productive lives is often quite
another.

That's what makes statistics from Recovery in Community (RIC) - a novel
substance abuse program in one of Baltimore's most drug-infested areas - so
promising.

Twenty-four of 27 addicts who "graduated" from the program in August 2000,
with a year free of drug use, were tracked by program managers and an
independent evaluator. Of those, 17 (or 71 percent) had full- or part-time
jobs; another two were in school. All continued to use the program as a
resource.

Of an additional 25 people who completed a year in the program two months
ago, 15, or 60 percent, were working.

And of nearly 120 people now participating in the program, just more than a
third are employed - about twice as many as had jobs when they began.

In a city that shows signs of getting a grip on an entrenched epidemic of
drug abuse and the crime that it generates, with a boost in treatment money
and a decline in drug-related emergency room visits, the program offers a
potential model for keeping recovering addicts from returning to the streets.

To Lena M. Franklin, the significance goes beyond numbers. "What we're
talking about is enhancing people's lives," she said.

Franklin is director of RIC, the 2-year-old program run out of a converted
church rectory in the Franklin Square neighborhood of West Baltimore.

Funded by a $2 million, three-year grant from the Abell Foundation and
administered by Baltimore City Healthy Start Inc., a nonprofit group
overseen by the city, RIC is not a treatment center. Rather, it is a
program that attempts to connect addicts to treatment and then offers them
extensive post-treatment support in their neighborhood, ranging from
acupuncture to group therapy to job counseling.

One of the first graduates who says his life has been enhanced is Ernest
Murphy, 53, a former heroin addict and self-described "street hustler" who
works part-time as a cook for a private caterer.

"I started at $8 an hour. Now I'm up to $9," said Murphy, who lives with
his sister not far from the program's offices at St. James United Methodist
Church on Monroe Street.

Another is Chauncey Clifton, 43, whose crack habit cost him his job as a
roofer. After six months getting clean, he spent six months working in an
auto shop and now works as a locker room attendant at a downtown club.

"I made $23 an hour as a roofer," he said. "Today, I make $7.25. But I keep
more money in my pocket now because I'm not using."

Anthony Weathers, one of three workers who try to reach out to neighborhood
addicts and a recovering addict himself, calls graduates like Murphy and
Clifton "one of our strongest referral services."

"Not because of what they say, but because people see them," he said.

Plenty of people need to be referred. The neighborhood the program operates
in was also the setting for The Corner, the book about the inner-city drug
trade that was developed into an award-winning HBO television series.

An independent evaluation of the RIC program this year by the Center for
Social Research in Marriottsville dispelled any lingering doubts about the
links between drugs and crime.

With the consent of the participants, the evaluators obtained criminal
histories of 377 addicts who entered the program in its first year and a
half. They had been arrested and charged with a total of 4,666 crimes - an
average of 12 per person. About a third of the charges were for drug
violations; another quarter were for property crimes; and about one in five
were for violent crimes.

But the evaluation also found a two-thirds drop in arrests of people after
they entered the program, and a smaller dip in crime and drug arrests for
the Franklin Square, Boyd Booth and Lexington neighborhoods.

"It is possible that RIC and the community-based style of work that it
represents is influencing the rate of crime among its participants and also
influencing the amount of drug activity and arrests in the surrounding
community," the evaluation noted, adding that more study was needed.

Backers are similarly cautious in their assessment of the program, which is
in its last year as a demonstration project and will likely need public
funding to continue.

Indeed, one reason that the program makes such a point of recognizing its
"graduates" is that the 12-month milestone is relatively rare. The average
length of enrollment is a little more than five months, according to the
program's analysis.

"It's a difficult endeavor," acknowledged Jane Harrison, senior program
officer of the Abell Foundation. "It's incredibly hard to sustain someone
in recovery in a place that's saturated with drugs."

Still, she said, "What is emerging is that there is a climate of support
that is important. The trends are very encouraging."