EXPERTS SAY MOBILE WOMAN'S FRUSTRATIONS TYPICAL OF FORMER PRISONERS

Price Of Freedom: Gaines' Struggle Continues

One year removed from a federal prison in Florida, Dorothy Gaines let loose
a broad smile as she opened a Christmas card Tuesday morning and found
inside a check for $4,500, a gift from an anonymous giver.

The money came at a critical time. Gaines, 43, has not found anyone willing
to hire her with a felony conviction. Her daughter Natasha, 27, has
struggled to afford car repairs and mortgage payments. And Gaines' youngest
daughter, Chara, 18, recently gave birth to a baby boy.

Yet to say the least, Gaines has had it better than most former prisoners
trying to readjust to the working world.

Three days before Christmas last year, President Clinton commuted the
Mobile woman's sentence, six and a half years into a nearly 20-year federal
prison term. Gaines, 43, had no felony record when a jury in Mobile
convicted her in 1994 of having a bit part in a crack cocaine ring.

State prosecutors declined to prosecute her, saying the case was too weak.
The evidence against her came purely in the form of testimony from others
who admitted organizing the drug ring, as investigators never found any
drugs. Most of those co-defendants received far lesser sentences.

Gaines became a cause celfter the Mobile Register wrote of her plight in a
1997 series that touched on minimum mandatory sentences for drug offenders.
Even since before her re lease, sympathetic philanthropists have helped
Gaines and her family get by. After she got out, one man even set her up in
two-story home in west Mobile.

"I've been out for a year, and I haven't suffered one day," Gaines said as
her children and grandchildren played with toys bought with an additional
$500 the secret Santa gave Natasha.

Gaines knows she is a rarity. Advocacy groups warn that a decrease in
funding for prison programs designed to prepare inmates for release will
only worsen a self-promulgating problem -- someone who's been to prison
once is all too likely to go there again.

"It's a problem that the system has not addressed enough," said Monica
Pratt, director of communications for Families Against Mandatory Minimums,
a Washington, D.C.-based group that lobbied for Gaines' release. "Very
little has been done to address the issues on the back end."

Corrections managers should tackle those matters well before they come up,
said Susan Tucker, director of the After-Prison Initiative, a grant program
administered by the Open Society Institute. The institute is based in New
York and is part of a group of nonprofit organizations founded by
philanthropist George Soros, a financing magnate.

"From the moment that they're sentenced, discharge planning should begin,"
Tucker said.

According to Tucker's group, of the nearly three-quarters of a million
people who go to jail or prison every year, one in three is a repeat
offender. Of the 600,000 who are released each year, 60 percent get
arrested within three years, and 40 percent end up back behind bars.

Tucker acknowledged that a fair number of those who turn back to crime
would do so regardless of whether they have help available to them. But she
argued that in the long term, money spent helping ex-convicts get back on
their feet is well-spent.

Educational, professional and counseling programs in prison are the first
to go when budgets shrink, Tucker said. This happens despite the fact that
"all the studies that have been done show that these programs are the one
thing that have been proven across the board to reduce recidivism -- I
mean, dramatically so," she said.

Reintroduction programs, Tucker said, are a necessary antidote to prison
life itself.

"What makes someone a successful prisoner, if you will, is the exact
opposite of what makes people succeed on the outside," Tucker said. "You
have to follow orders. You have to not take initiative. You have to not
think for yourself. When you get out, you have to do these things every day."

Pratt noted that, while Gaines missed some of her children's formative
years, at least her family backed her up. All too often, she said, inmates'
families shun them, adding yet another obstacle to face upon release.

Gaines, a nurse technician before she went to prison, said she cannot find
work in her field because of her record. She spent parts of the past year
taking trips to appear on television shows and to speak before various
groups. She hopes to start an intervention program for young men and women,
whereby she can warn them to stay away from people who can get them into
trouble.

A year ago, Gaines celebrated Christmas with her family and spoke in the
same terms about starting such a program. She still believes she will --
largely with the backing of other benefactors -- but she admits she is
still at square one.

"Unfortunately, gifts aren't enough," said Pratt, who knew last week of the
money headed for Gaines. "I don't mean to detract from the fact that
somebody gave this gift. It's wonderful. It's part of the Christmas spirit.
But it takes more than that."

Pratt noted that because Gaines' release came about suddenly, she would not
have had access to whatever reintroduction programs her prison might have
offered.

"It's not society's problem that people have broken the law," Pratt said.
"But it is society's issue when these people get out and try to get going
again."