SMALL SUMS; BIG REWARDS

Department of Corrections Secretary Jim McDonough says that Florida
will release 36,000 inmates this year and a third of them will be
back in the state's prisons within 36 months. The reason so many
reoffend, McDonough says, is that "they're not prepared to live a
life without crime."

Finding ways of helping them change that pattern was the job of a
task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush that just submitted its final
report and recommendations. Most of the task force's findings and
suggestions are obvious - providing inmates with educational
opportunities because most enter prison with about a 6th-grade
reading level; and offering vocational training and substance abuse
treatment because more than half of all inmates enter the system with
an addiction problem. But Florida does woefully little to help
ex-offenders succeed in a crime- free life after prison. And we reap
what we sow, with whopping prison costs, higher crime rates and fewer
productive citizens.

At the front end, a small investment will be required. But as Florida
TaxWatch has found, for every dollar spent on inmate programs, $1.66
is returned in the first year and $3.20 in the second. We can't
afford not to do it.

Oddly, one of the most specific and strongly urged recommendations
was to triple the number of faith-based prisons in Florida within the
next two years, even though the task force acknowledges there is no
evidence those programs lower recidivism.

Florida's experiment with faith-based prisons is one of Bush's pet
projects. The three current facilities raise significant church-state
separation issues as well as balkanize prison populations by
religion. These programs have lower disciplinary problems, but that
is largely because only inmates with clean disciplinary records qualify.

It doesn't make any sense to spend money and time expanding a program
that is constitutionally suspect and fails to do much to prepare
prisoners for reintegration. As McDonough points out, the primary
tools for reducing recidivism are improving literacy - which he says
reduces the likelihood of reoffending by 6 percent for every
grade-level increase - vocational training and substance abuse
treatment. Faith-based programs are well down the list.

Another blatant oversight by the task force was that it put off
dealing with the automatic restoration of civil rights for ex-felons.
Without those rights restored, ex-felons are barred from seeking a
variety of employment and occupational licensing opportunities. The
task force recommended disconnecting civil rights restoration and
employment opportunities. But it makes just as much sense to do as
Gov. -elect Charlie Crist has suggested and provide some kind of
automatic restoration of civil rights to those who have served their time.

Beyond these few obvious missteps, the task force's recommendations
are a series of solid ideas that would give ex-offenders a far better
chance at a success. McDonough says it wouldn't cost much more than
an additional $6-million to increase reading levels and provide
substance abuse treatment to Florida's inmates, and the state would
see a return of up to sixfold in money saved and crimes averted. That
is a small price to pay for such a significant return on investment.