ALTERNATIVES TO JAIL CAN SAVE LIVES, MONEY

A program for female offenders breaks the cycle between jail and the
streets.

Helen cycled between jail and the streets. Drunk driving. Driving with
suspended license. To support her methamphetamine habit, she cheated on
disability payments, sold drugs and stole credit cards and checks. She
married--for immigration purposes only--a man who promised to pay her
$10,000. When she deposited her sham husband's first check, she was
arrested again. It was stolen.

"I could have done my jail time and been out by February." Helen says. "By
now, I'd be using again." Instead, Helen is celebrating her release from
house arrest, seven months of sobriety and her upcoming graduation from
phase one of San Mateo County's Alternatives program for non-violent female
offenders. And, for the first time in four years, she' looking for a job.

Half the women who enter Alternatives don't make it through the 14 month
program, say Cleo Smith, the supervising probation officer. Unable to
complete with the rules, they go back to jail.

But those who have completed the program since its inception in 1995 come
back only as visitors: 95 percent have not been arrested again. When women
aren't at the Redwood City program or at mandatory 12-step meetings, they're
home, tethered to an electronic monitor and subject to unannounced searches
by a probation officer.

After six months or more, graduates enter phase two, when they're required
to work or train for a job and attend a weekly evening session. In phase
three, they attend a monthly meeting.

Alternatives teaches women how to cook a healthy meal, balance a budget,
prepare for a job interview, cope with domestic violence and relieve stress
without using drugs or alcohol. They learn about parenting--92 percent are
mothers--and about birth control. They make quilts for children at homeless
shelters, so they can be, for once, contributors.

Alternatives' basic tool is cognitive skills training, which has been shown
to cut recidivism rates. Offenders learn a new way of thinking. They learn
that they have choices.

A woman doesn't pay her gas bill and gets a shut-off notice. "I ask them to
identify the problem, and they say she has no money," Smith says. But the
real problem is that she chose to do nothing. "When she first realized she
couldn't pay the bill, she didn't call PG&E to explain and work out a
payment schedule."

You're not a victim of society, Smith tells the women. You have the ability
to do for yourself. You can take power over your life.

A probation officer for 24 years, Smith helped start the program. She'd seen
the cycle: Go to jail. Get out of jail. There's no staff to supervise
offenders who aren't considered dangerous. Go back to jail. And the kids?
They go to jail too.

At a Monday meeting, eight women talk about their weekends, trying to
identify their triggers for drinking and drug use and sharing how they've
coped. One young mother had just qualified for "hours"--time away from the
monitor. She describes taking her children to the park, seeing her baby play
in the sand for the first time.

Now off the monitor, Helen went out for coffee with her adult daughter, a
new experience for them. They went to a baby shower where wine was served.
"Instead of making a choice of drinking, I looked at my daughter and decided
I don't want to go there," Helen said. "I've come a long way."

Helen tried drugs in high school, but quit with her first pregnancy. She
started on methamphetamine to keep going when her second child was born with
a rare cancer. Helen "started to lose things." She lost her marriage, her
job, her home, her car, her self-respect and her freedom. She sacrificed
her relationship with her daughter, who rejected the drug life, and the
future of her son, who accepted it as normal.

In Alternatives, she stopped apologizing for everything she said, stopped
kicking herself for past mistakes. "It taught me to stop, think and listen,"
Helen says. Like all the women, she keeps a journal , using it to understand
her patterns of behavior. "I started to look at myself and like myself
more," she say. Before, "I never cared enough about myself to stay clean."

At 43, Helen is starting adult life. Her first goal is a job. An
experienced cashier, she'll apply at Home Depot, which hired an Alternatives
graduate for a $12 an hour job. "I'm prepared for rejection because of my
felony record, "Helen says. "I'll keep looking."

Volunteer Peter Ullman, who teaches job search skills and resume writing,
wonders why non-violent male offenders aren't offered the same chance to
turn their lives around. "As a taxpayer, I'm paying for them to sit in jail
playing cards, doing nothing," say Ullman, a retired engineer.

Cost isn't the issue. Arizona, which sentences non-violent first and second
time drug offenders to treatment, saved $2.6 million in the first years, a
study by the state courts concluded. Prison is so expensive that anything
else is cheap in comparison.

Like Alternatives, Arizona relies on cognitive skills training to change
offenders' behavior. About 61 percent completed drug treatment successfully;
77 percent made at least one payment toward the cost of treatment.

Arizona's jails, and prisons "will be reserved for violent and chronic
offenders", the report states.

California's jails and prisons are filled with non-violent offenders,
usually there because of drugs or alcohol. Among them is a 17 year old boy
awaiting trial in a juvenile center. He grew up with a mother who was
stealing and dealing drugs, says Helen. She hopes it's not too late for her
son to see that he has better choices.