PRISON REFORMERS URGE: LET'S FIND OTHER, BETTER WAYS

Mary Previte knows prisons.

As a child during World War II, she spent five years in a Japanese
concentration camp.

As a 32-year-old suburban mom, she took over the Camden County Youth Center,
one of New Jersey's toughest juvenile lockups, in the middle of a 1974 riot.
Mixing innovative programs with tough love, she turned it into a facility,
which she still runs, that hasn't had a major disturbance in 30 years.

In January, Previte, a Democrat elected to the Assembly in 1998, pushed
through a bill that she calls "the most important legislation I will ever
sponsor."

The bill creates a commission to study the fairness of the state's harsh
sentencing laws -- the first step, advocates say, toward major sentencing
reform. The bill passed unanimously, drawing support from even hard-liners
appalled at the costs and inequities of the state's $1.3 billion
correctional system.

"Prison reform this time around isn't about a bunch of liberals sitting
around a campfire singing 'Kumbaya,'" said Previte, the only veteran state
legislator with corrections experience. "It's about balancing a system that
seems to have gone terribly wrong.

"We can no longer afford a path that only leads to prison."

Twenty-five years after New Jersey began waging its war on drugs through the
courts, the state is saddled with a swollen prison population it can neither
afford nor properly serve. Nowhere are the flaws in the system more apparent
than in the female inmate population, which has grown four times faster than
the men's population in the past decade.

It is a phenomenon that is reflected nationally. In the last few years,
however, several states have sought alternatives to prison.

It is time, many corrections officials, inmate advocates, criminologists and
legislators agree, for New Jersey to get on the reform bandwagon.

"Here we are in what was always the progressive Northeast, but when you look
at sentencing reforms, even states like Louisiana, Alabama and Florida are
now taking" a more enlightened approach than New Jersey, said state
Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown.

"It's shocking, really, how far we've gotten behind the curve. We need to
change."

Women -- and, by extension, their children -- are the unacceptable
collateral damage of the failed drug war, experts say.

Mandatory sentencing, drug-free school zones, three-strikes laws and
no-frills, longer-term incarceration were supposed to punish and discourage
the drug kingpins.

But many of those caught in the net weren't narcotics masterminds. They were
drug-addicted single mothers, mentally ill women, survivors of physical and
sexual abuse and petty thieves. They are primarily women of color, with low
education, minimal job skills and extensive, although usually nonviolent,
criminal backgrounds.

In New Jersey, they are housed at the state's only prison for women, the
Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Hunterdon County.

Reform advocates say New Jersey stands out not only for the proportion of
low-level drug offenders it puts behind bars, but for its resistance to
change.

"Even Texas has treatment for drug offenders instead of prison," said
Roseanne Scotti, spokeswoman for the Drug Policy Alliance, a national drug
law reform lobby that last year set up shop in New Jersey.

"When New Jersey is more repressive than Texas, things are screwed up
somewhere," she said.

In November, the New York state judiciary released a study showing that
diverting low-level offenders to drug courts reduced recidivism by 32
percent.

The recidivism rate for women inmates in New Jersey is twice that for men.
In nearly 60 percent of the women's cases, they landed back in prison
because they violated parole, not because they committed a new crime.

In 2000, California voters passed Proposition 36, which diverted low- level
drug offenders to treatment. According to a UCLA study, 37,495 people were
diverted from prison to treatment in the first year the law took effect, for
a savings of $250 million.

Since then, states that have undergone some type of sentencing reform
include Texas, Nebraska, Michigan, Ohio, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina
and Florida.

Texas lawmakers changed possession of less than a gram of marijuana from a
felony to a misdemeanor. The first year the change took effect, the state
saved $35 million in court and prison costs, according to a report to the
Legislature.

New Jersey's tack has been to develop drug courts that can sentence
offenders to treatment centers. But there are drug courts in only 13 New
Jersey counties, and there is a shortage of treatment beds in the counties
where they do exist.

Aside from sentencing reforms, states are tackling other issues involving
women inmates.

In the wake of the federal Prison Rape Reduction Act, signed last year, many
corrections departments are rewriting training manuals to reflect zero
tolerance for sexual abuse. Last year, Ohio legislators heard testimony from
women inmates who said they had been sexually abused in prison.

Last month, the Ohio corrections department also launched an intensive
training program for corrections officers and victim support teams that will
go into the prisons. Other states are weighing new security equipment to
keep tabs on both prisoners and staff.

Also last month, a Florida jail received $1 million in federal funds to
create a "triage" system. The plan is to identify all mentally ill inmates
for diversion to community treatment within 48 hours of arriving at the
jail.

More and more states also are starting prison nurseries.

New York has had a nursery since 1901 at its Bedford Hills women's
correctional facility, but most modern nurseries were started in the past
five years.

There are now such programs in Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio, New York,
California, Washington and Massachusetts.

They allow inmates who give birth while in prison to stay with their infants
at a nursery cellblock, usually for a year or two. One program at a
converted school in California, however, allows mothers to stay with their
children up to age 6.

Studies of nursery programs in New York and Ohio have found that they recoup
costs because the infants don't become wards of the state. They also can
reduce recidivism rates by as much as half.

A MAN'S SYSTEM

Six months after he arrived in New Jersey in 2002, Brown declared that the
DOC's mission is: "...to be the most progressive and proactive correctional
system in the nation."

To date, his accomplishments include a $35 million cut in overtime costs,
incurring the wrath of the unions. He produced a long-overdue standardized
DOC policy manual and launched parent-child video-conferencing.

He received a federal grant to evaluate and get accreditation for all
prison-based therapeutic programs, which had come under fire from advocates
for substandard practices.

He began one of the most comprehensive inmate intake evaluations in the
country, by ordering that every inmate receive a detailed physical and
mental health evaluation within 72 hours of arrival.

Brown junked Jerry Springer and afternoon soaps on inmate television. He
substituted the "Correctional Learning Network," focusing on documentaries,
news and instructional programs about hepatitis, AIDS and finding
employment.

It is, he said, not enough. One of the most intractable problems, he said,
is the system's failure to account for gender. It's a man's prison system,
even if women are the fastest-growing prison population.

"We have to give greater recognition to the difference in gender roles (in
prison) and the ways genders respond to stress," said Brown, who began his
corrections career as a forensic psychologist.

Brown noted that many women landed in prison in New Jersey because they were
"exploited by men." He said this makes them particularly vulnerable, not
only to sexual misconduct, but to the more aggressive, paramilitary approach
favored by officers dealing with male inmates.

He supported the staff and programs that already are offered at Edna Mahan,
noting that the prison has some job training programs not available in men's
prisons. But it is not enough.

"We are not doing enough to identify the best approaches with women inmates.
We are not doing enough on re-entry," Brown added, using the current
buzzword for helping an inmate adapt successfully back into society, a key
factor in recidivism. "Re-entry is vital, but wouldn't it be better to have
prevented the whole thing in the first place?"

Prevention, he said, should mean early intervention to prevent crime and
alternatives to prison. He also endorsed time off for good behavior even for
inmates serving mandatory minimums.

One program Brown said he is following closely is in Maryland, where he was
a top corrections official. In January, Maryland's director of corrections
announced a dramatic expansion of drug treatment and basic academic classes,
to be funded by cutting 218 correctional officer positions.

In exchange for those slots, Maryland officials hope to add 210 drug
counselors and teachers by 2007.

Brown has been a vocal proponent of sentencing reform, particularly in
low-level drug crimes. In his corner are activists, criminologists and
several states that already have revised mandatory-sentencing statutes.

"Our high rate of incarceration nationwide should trouble all of us, because
it means that society is failing," state Attorney General Peter Harvey said
in January, after he ordered an in-house study of New Jersey's sentencing
laws geared toward reducing the prison population.

The state Parole Board also changed its regulations earlier this year,
reducing the number of ex-convicts sent back to prison for minor parole
violations.

Working against comprehensive reform, however, are corrections officers
unions and, to some extent, county prosecutors.

The unions have been actively seeking Brown's ouster since last fall, when
the commissioner likened prisons to "America's new plantation."

Union officials howled that the speech was racist, and demanded that Gov.
James E. McGreevey fire Brown. The governor has continued to stand behind
the commissioner on most issues, but insiders also note that McGreevey
depended heavily on union support in the last election.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Superior Officers Association, one of three
unions representing prison supervisors, called Brown's approach to reform
"crackpot theories that don't work in the real world.

"The commissioner is soft on crime, and he has got to go," said Scott Derby,
executive vice president of the union. "The union doesn't stand in the way
of progress, but I don't think letting criminals out of prison is the way to
go."

Robert Bernardi, president of the state County Prosecutors' Association,
noted that prosecutors do not "favor reducing the number of people in
prison, simply for its own sake," and added: "We don't consider
(corrections) costs to be our problem."

Bernardi, the Burlington County prosecutor, has been named to the state
sentencing review commission, which is still being formed. He agreed with
Brown that school zone laws are "onerous and unfair" to minorities,
particularly women, in the inner city.

"But we don't support letting drug dealers get a free pass," said Bernardi.
"I think we should be very careful about how we dismantle 25 years of
criminal code."

Previte said the intent of her sentencing commission bill was never "to take
down the system, but to make it more fair.

"How can we say a system is right when a person can kill someone and get
less time than a drug addict committing a nonviolent offense?" Previte
asked, adding, "I hope the commission will consider the whole gamut of
prison issues, including women's and children's issues.

"We can't just keep putting everyone behind bars," Previte said. "Sooner or
later they are going to get out, and then what are we going to do with
them?"