SUCCESS OF PROGRAM HINGES ON HELPING EX-DRUG DEALERS

Still In Its Infancy, The Plan For Young Felons Readjusts To Serve
Its Clients' Needs

After 30 years at Ameritech, James Otey's retirement plans didn't
include hanging out at the House of Correction, and you can hardly
blame him.

"It bothers me to go out there and see that many young men
incarcerated," Otey said. "It takes me about four or five hours to
come down from that experience when I go there."

And while Otey was using some of his increased spare time to mentor
an 11-year-old boy, he had no thoughts of trying to help a young man
get his act together after a felony drug-dealing conviction.

That was until he saw Robert D. Davis talking about himself during a
group session at the workhouse.

"Robert had an anger management issue that was something that I went
through myself," Otey recalled. "I bonded with Robert, and I'm
convinced that this is what the Lord wanted."

Davis, who is in a nine-month-old program that gives young drug
dealers the chance to avoid a prison term, freely admits, "I don't
know anything about my dad."

However, when Otey talks to Davis he listens, be it about no one from
Davis' family showing up at his high school graduation, his interest
in studying art in college or a girlfriend with problems of her own.

"She can drag him down," Otey explained.

"I know he's right," Davis said. "She's not right for me."

Otey emphasizes that he's not playing amateur psychologist, and he's
convinced that most of what he tells Davis the young man already
knows. However, during the time that they have spent together, Otey
has become an important part of the 23-year-old man's life and a key
ingredient to steering him away from trouble.

The Felony Drug Offender Alternative to Prison program is still a
pilot project even though 59 young drug dealers have been sentenced
to it and some of its first entrants have reached the third and final
phase.

Like other pilot programs, its future hinges at least partly on the
success of approaches not tried before, approaches including the use
of voluntary mentors like Otey (they need more) who meet one-on-one
with participants on a regular basis.

In addition to offering traditional training and counseling the
program teaches the young men about victim empathy and dealing with
family relationships.

"We didn't have a model to look to when we formed this program," said
Jan Cummings, regional chief of probation and parole in Milwaukee.
"What we did was ask ourselves what we could offer these people to
make them contributing members of the community."

The program, created with Milwaukee's drug-dealing problems in mind,
targets defendants 17 to 25 years old who have been convicted of a
felony drug trafficking offense that otherwise would leave them
serving a prison sentence in the three-to five-year range. They must
not have used a weapon in their offense and must not have an adult or
juvenile prison sentence in their past.

Judges placing participants in the program order them to serve three
to five years of probation in lieu of a stayed prison sentenced. The
stayed sentence is imposed if the participant is revoked from the
program - something that has happened three times so far.

"This program is harder than prison," Cummings said.

Graduating Steps

The program has three phases. The first phase, which has 48 slots, is
at the workhouse, where participants get comprehensive drug and
alcohol abuse therapy, education and job training.

Phase two is in a minimum security prison in the city, with
participants receiving additional lifestyle programming while
beginning employment and community service. Phase three involves
intensive probation supervision beginning with electronic monitoring,
continued employment and community service.

Soon to be former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson strongly supports the
program, as does Department of Corrections Secretary Jon Litscher.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge M. Joseph Donald and District Attorney
E. Michael McCann are among the officials that have visited the
workhouse dormitory.

As with any new project, the people running the program are still
learning what works best and what kind of shortcomings the
participants have when they arrive.

"What we found was that many of these men will require more intense
work than we thought," Cummings said.

"Most of them have never had a father figure in their life," said Jan
Shorts, a division of community corrections supervisor who oversees
the program. "We have a kid whose mom smoked (with a crack cocaine
purchase) the money he gave her to get a copy of his birth
certificate for him.

"We have a kid who was given away at age 4. We have some who were
given to their grandparents to be raised and their grandparents were
on drugs."

Most of the participants got little out of school when they bothered
to show up.

"They come to us with a ninth-or 10th-grade education," Shorts said.
"Eighty percent function at a level of sixth grade or below when it
comes to math.

"Seventy-four percent read at or below the sixth-grade level. We have
one who cannot read. He cannot read 'The.' "

Davis, who graduated from Vincent High School in 1996, is an anomaly.
More typical is Ricardo Figures, a 20-year-old placed in the program
in April in lieu of a five-year prison term for delivery of cocaine.

"I went until the ninth grade," Figures explained. "I just quit.

"I got into the fast life. I was into that weed real bad.

"I got stuck in the drug game. The money was coming so fast."

The first program participant to reach phase three, Figures now
attends school four days a week and expects to get his GED in the
summer.

Figures wants badly to work but has yet to land a job.

"We're looking for employers for these guys," Cummings said.

Davis is doing well at a video rental store where he works and his
boss wants to put him on a management track.

"I give them (his employer) everything I've got," said Davis, who is
in phase two.

Brian Alexander, who went to the program in June instead of having to
serve a five-year prison term for LSD trafficking, works as a cook
nearly full time and will start school part time soon to pick up the
11/2 credits he still needs for his high school diploma.

"I see Judge (Clare) Fiorenza on Jan. 19 about going to phase three,"
said Alexander, 23. "I'll be court-ordered to live with my mom and my
stepdad who was a cop.

"But I think I'm finally above all the sneaking around. . . . I've
been sober for nine months now."

Judges Determine Next Step

Judges must approve advancement from phase two to phase three and
last month Fiorenza balked at moving 18-year-old Terrance L. Warren
to the final phase because he had not found employment.

Public Defender Daryl A. Kastenson said Warren, who was convicted of
cocaine trafficking, was unemployed because he was young and still
completing his education.

"I understand he's young, but he was going to prison if it wasn't for
this program," Fiorenza told Kastenson. "I have no doubts that Mr.
Warren is trying very hard.

"But the fact is he's not employed. . . . I'm afraid I'm going to see
Mr. Warren back here on a new case."

That same day, though, Fiorenza advanced Harold D. Conner, a
22-year-old convicted marijuana dealer, to phase three.

"I want this program to work for you, sir," Fiorenza told Conner, who
is in training for an assistant manager job at a video store. "I
don't want to see you back in my drug court."

While they acknowledge that they are learning as they go with the
project, Cummings and Shorts, veterans of an often overworked,
underfunded probation/parole program, talk enthusiastically about
what they have seen so far.

"When they come to us, they don't trust us," Shorts said. "There is a
skepticism about the whole program.

"We see a lot of change."

Davis is confident that he has changed for good.

"When I was locked up, I prayed to God," Davis recalled. "I prayed
for a chance and this is the chance God gave me.

"I know I'm going to make it."