PRISON NATION TURNS ITS BACK ON RELEASED CONVICTS

NEW YORK -- We've seen this scene in countless movies: A just-released
inmate stands at the gates of a fortress-like prison clutching a bus
ticket, two $20 bills and a slip of paper with the name of his parole
officer. His hunched shoulders and his puzzled gaze suggest that it will
take more than a hot shower to wash away the memories of captivity. He is
nominally free, but we know that his prospects are bleak and his re-entry
to life on the outside will be harsh.

Now for the reality. This year, according to estimates by the federal
Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 600,000 Americans will be released
from state and federal prisons. Overwhelmingly male, disproportionately
black and Hispanic, mostly ill-educated, this army of former inmates
represents a searing and neglected social problem. The nation's fragile
victory in the war against crime depends on the choices that these former
prisoners will make during their first months on the streets.

"They have two options the way I see it," Raul Russi says. "Either they
work or they go back to jail." Russi, 55, just finished a five-year stint
as Mayor Rudy Giuliani's probation commissioner and served six years as
chairman of New York state's parole board under former governor Mario
Cuomo. He knows all too well the stakes involved.

"Once someone is punished, we have to figure out a way for the punishment
to end and for them to get on with their lives," he says. "Otherwise
they'll return to the only behavior they've ever known."

After 30 years in law enforcement, beginning with his days as the first
Puerto Rican cop on the Buffalo police force, Russi has learned the limits
of incarceration. As a senior vice president with America Works, a
for-profit job-placement service that helps welfare mothers obtain
full-time employment, Russi's new mission is to find jobs for former inmates.

Other groups around the country, mostly non-profit social-service agencies,
are also on the front lines of the efforts to keep former prisoners on the
right side of the law. But like the new initiative by America Works, which
was recently awarded a grant by New York City to help recently freed
inmates find jobs, these programs are dwarfed by the magnitude of the task.
It is strange that a nation that can find the funds to build new prisons is
so stinting when it comes to resources for those who have served their time.

In a sense, the employment problems of former inmates are the flip side of
the welfare-reform struggle. This time it is the men, just out of prison,
who need far-reaching help in entering the job market. As Peter Cove, the
founder of America Works, puts it, "The 1990s were about rescuing women
from the welfare system. This decade is about redirecting the men from the
criminal-justice system."

Just like many Americans in the 1950s willfully averted their eyes from the
realities of segregation, now we are reluctant to face the social
consequences of 2 million men and women behind bars. Sure, we revel in the
dramatic reduction in the crime rate. But with most prisons in rural areas,
we have the luxury of pretending that these inmates exist in some
alternative universe that has no connection with our daily lives.

Responding to the get-tough political attitudes of the past two decades,
prisons across the nation have abandoned any pretense that rehabilitation
plays a role in punishment. Prison libraries, remedial education and job
training have been jettisoned as symbols of the mushy-headed liberalism of
the past. Discussing his own experience with New York state prisons, Russi
says, "Rehabilitation has lost. If they're doing it, they're not talking
about it."

In a new book, Going up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation, Joseph T.
Hallinan vividly describes what passes as rehabilitation at Alabama's
Limestone Correctional Center. Hallinan, a Wall Street Journal reporter,
writes that the prisoners "grab the yellow-handled sledgehammers, draw them
up high, and begin pounding the boulders of limestone. . . . This is their
job all day long, five days a week, smashing boulders into rocks." The
image could have been lifted from the 1932 Paul Muni film classic, I am a
Fugitive From a Chain Gang.

Prison reform is a cause that lacks a political constituency. The
widespread fear of crime is too recent a memory and the victims of harsh
mandatory sentencing laws are too invisible to prompt a national crusade
for the liberalization of prison policies. But it should be a different
issue once someone has paid his debt to society. For if we want to fight
crime, there is no better method than to find honest and fulfilling work
for former inmates.

Welfare reform has taught us that work works. Now this same principle must
be extended to former residents of the ultimate in public housing.

As Russi puts it, "An individual who's working gains self-esteem and
respect for himself and his family." It isn't compassion so much as
self-interest that argues for a helping hand for the 600,000 former
prisoners who are headed our way each year.