OFTEN, PAROLE IS ONE STOP ON THE WAY BACK TO PRISON

LOS ANGELES, - It seemed like the perfect solution. Build more
prisons and America would be a safer place. In fact, as the nation's
incarceration rate has quadrupled over the last two decades, the crime
rate has fallen for eight straight years.

But only now are politicians and criminologists beginning to confront
an unexpected consequence of the get-tough-on-crime philosophy that
created the prison-building boom. More prisoners in prison means that,
eventually, more prisoners will be let out. This year, a record
600,000 inmates will be released from state and federal prisons
nationwide, up from 170,000 in 1980.

As the former prisoners return, largely to the poor neighborhoods of
large cities, there is mounting evidence that they represent what some
criminologists and prison officials now call the collateral damage of
the prison-building boom.

Because states sharply curtailed education, job training and other
rehabilitation programs inside prisons, the newly released inmates are
far less likely than their counterparts two decades ago to find jobs,
maintain stable family lives or stay out of the kind of trouble that
leads to more prison. Many states have unintentionally contributed to
these problems by abolishing early release for good behavior, removing
the incentive for inmates to improve their conduct, the experts say.

In addition, parole officers are quicker to revoke a newly released
inmate's parole for minor violations, like failing a drug test,
meaning more inmates are returned to prison time and again, creating
what some experts say is a self-perpetuating prison class. In
California, for example, 68 percent of the people admitted to prison
last year were on parole at the time they were sent back, up from only
21 percent in 1980, according to the California Department of
Corrections.

Evidence of the troubles posed by the large number of returning
prisoners is beginning to show up across the nation.

In Boston, which has had one of the largest declines in crime of any
major city, the police superintendent, Paul Joyce, said that newly
released inmates were a major reason for a 13 percent increase in
firearms-related crimes in the first half of the year. Mr. Joyce said
part of the reason was that the former inmates brought prison grudges
or gang affiliations back to the streets.

In Tallahassee, Fla., Todd Clear and Dina Rose, a husband and wife
team of criminologists, have found that the crime rate in poor
neighborhoods rises as the number of newly released inmates increases.
Family and financial pressures often are the cause, they say
including the pressure to pay the $50 to $150 the state charges them
for their own supervision.

California Led the Way

Although law enforcement experts say that the large number of inmates
being returned to prisons is a nationwide phenomenon, nowhere is it
more striking than in California, the state with the largest prison
population and the first state to abolish flexible sentences, which
historically led to early release for good behavior.

In California, four out of five former inmates returned to prison were
sent back not for committing new crimes but for technical violations
of the terms of their parole; for example, failing a drug test or
missing appointments with parole agents.

The state retains the authority to supervise released offenders even
though they serve their full sentences. The parole supervision
normally lasts three years, barring other infractions. Some of these
returning inmates have been to prison 10 times. (The so-called
three-strike law, which puts a habitual offender in prison for 25
years to life, does not apply to parole violations.)

Without such a high rate of return of parolees, studies have shown,
California's prison population would have declined, not grown, as
crime dropped in the 1990's.

The difficulties that inmates face on release showed up in a
report last year by the California State Legislative Analyst's
Office: 85 percent of released prisoners in California are drug or
alcohol abusers, 70 percent to 80 percent are still jobless after a
year, 50 percent are illiterate and 10 percent are homeless.
Nationwide, the figures are similar. Allen J. Beck of the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, a branch of the Justice Department, said 82
percent of people on parole who are returned to prison are drug or
alcohol abusers, 40 percent are unemployed, about 75 percent have
not completed high school and 19 percent are homeless.

Other reports have found that 20 percent of inmates nationwide suffer
from severe mental illness, like schizophrenia or depression. In
addition, almost one-quarter of all people infected with the AIDS
virus and more than one-third of those with tuberculosis were released
from prison or jail in the past year, according to a new study by
Theodore Hammett, of Abt Associates, a consulting firm in Cambridge,
Mass.

"When most Americans think of the surge in the prison population, they
think it has reduced crime and that makes them more secure," said Joan
Petersilia, a professor of criminology at the University of California
at Irvine, a leading authority on parole. "What they forget is that 97
percent of prisoners will be released, and the more times a person has
been to prison before, the more likely they are to be rearrested,
because things like finding housing and jobs and re-establishing
family ties become harder and harder for them."

The problem is not that individual criminals are committing more
crime, Mr. Beck said, but that the pool of potential criminals has
grown. "What's worrisome," he said, "is that because we've got more
and more people coming out of prison, more and more people are
failing, so the risk to the community has increased
dramatically."

Take three recent California cases, drawn from official records and
interviews with the former inmates:

Antoine Mahan, 33, was released from prison after serving four years
for burglary, the last two in solitary confinement. After releasing
him directly from solitary confinement, the prison gave him the
customary $200 in "gate money," which was supposed to help him start a
new life, then drove him to the train station for the trip home to San
Francisco.

But Mr. Mahan described himself as a crack addict with the AIDS virus
and a diagnosis of manic depression, though he received no drug or
psychiatric treatment while in prison, he said. By the time the train
reached San Francisco, it was evening, too late, he recalled in an
interview, for the required check-in with his parole agent, so, he
said, he broke into a McDonald's to sleep and resumed selling and
taking drugs. So far, he remains out on parole.

And there is Steven Butler, 44, who was released from prison after
serving a one-year sentence for possession of cocaine. Records show
he was given his $200 and a bus ticket back to Los Angeles, where he
had been arrested.

But Mr. Butler was homeless at the time of his arrest, with no family
here, so the first night after getting off the bus, he said, he went
back to sleeping on the same skid-row street just east of downtown
where he had lived before. With no education, job skills or hope, he
said, he used some of his money to buy dope to make himself feel better.

There is also Sam Watland, a 33-year-old from coastal San Luis Obisbo
who looks like the surfer he once was. He has been released on parole
nine times in the last decade: three times after serving sentences for
embezzlement, auto theft and assault, and six times after parole
revocations. He has had his parole revoked so many times, and so
quickly once he lasted only 14 days on the outside that the day
before his most recent release from prison, he had nightmares he would
get picked up again.

California parole agents have become quicker since the early 1980's to
revoke paroles, sending people back to prison for violations of the
conditions of their release, said C. A. Terhune, who recently retired
as the director of the Department of Corrections. Mr. Terhune said
that was a response to "the current public climate" to get tougher on
criminals, tightening the conditions for parole. With improved urine
tests, for example, it is easier for parole officers to catch drug
use.

A growing number of prison officials and criminologists say they
question whether this drive to revoke parole so quickly is good public
policy or whether it simply drives up costs and diverts money from
more effective treatment programs.

"I'd have fewer inmates if there weren't parole officers whacking so
many guys back," said Martin F. Horn, Pennsylvania's secretary of
corrections.

3-Time Parole Violator

Jason Peterson had lost 60 pounds when he was released after spending
almost two years in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay, California's
super maximum-security prison, while serving a sentence for possession
of a pipe bomb.

When he returned to his mother's house in San Francisco, after months
without human contact, he refused to leave his bedroom, his mother,
Jeannine Peterson, said in a lengthy interview recently. Her account
was supported by her son's lawyer and a psychiatrist hired by the family.

Concerned about his mental state, Mrs. Peterson, an elementary school
special education teacher, called his parole officer, who offered to
take him to the hospital. Instead, she said, the parole officer
arrived with police officers, who handcuffed her son and took him into
custody.

The next morning, the parole agent called to say that Mr. Peterson's
parole had been revoked for psychiatric reasons and he had been given
an additional year in prison at San Quentin, his mother said.

Mrs. Peterson hired a lawyer, Graham Noyes, who demanded a parole
revocation hearing, and a psychiatrist, Terry Kupers, to examine her
son. Mr. Noyes and Dr. Kupers said they were excluded from
participating in the revocation hearing.

The issue of providing lawyers for inmates in parole revocation
hearings is the subject of a class-action suit pending against the
California Department of Corrections in Federal District Court in
Sacramento. The inmates contend that under rulings by the United
States Supreme Court in the 1970's, they are entitled to such
representation. The corrections department generally allows lawyers in
parole revocation hearings only if the inmate is deemed mentally
impaired. Inmates may not call witnesses or exclude hearsay evidence.

Hearings are presided over by a deputy commissioner of the Board of
Prison Terms, a branch of the Department of Corrections, who serves as
both judge and jury.

The deputy commissioner in Mr. Peterson's case found him to be
psychotic and a danger to others, and sentenced him to the additional
year in prison, according to department records.

Since then, Mr. Peterson has become an apprentice plumber, but he has
had his parole revoked three more times, department records show. Once
it was revoked for possession of a dangerous weapon a serious issue
to the department, given his original conviction though his mother and
lawyer say it was only a plumber's knife his parole agent found in his
toolbox when the agent searched Mr. Peterson's truck.

The next time it was again for possession of a dangerous weapon, what
the parole agent described as a hand grenade in Mr. Peterson's
bedroom. Mr. Peterson's sister said it was actually a toy grenade she
had bought for her Halloween costume.

Then last spring Mr. Peterson was charged with assault and making a
terrorist threat when he got into an argument with a former
girlfriend, who he said had been harassing his current girlfriend. A
department spokesman said the former girlfriend's mother testified
against him, but Mr. Peterson's boss in the plumber's union, who tried
to testify for him, was excluded from the hearing.

So far, Mr. Peterson has spent a year and 11 months in prison on
parole revocations, almost as long as he did on his original two-year
sentence. And the total could go on almost indefinitely, because under
California law, each time Mr. Peterson has his parole revoked, he
stops earning credit toward his original three-year parole term. The
parole revocations themselves, in California, can last from a few
weeks to a year.

In support of the quick parole-revocation policy, Jerome Marsh, the
assistant regional director of parole for southern California, said,
"Our No. 1 priority now is public safety," not the more historical
goal of trying to help keep offenders from going back to prison.

Parole Disappears

It was not always this way.

In 1977, only 788 inmates who had been released on parole were
returned to prison in California, compared with 90,000 in 1999.

At that time, most inmates across the nation served flexible
sentences, say 5 to 10 years, and parole boards appointed by governors
had discretion in determining when prisoners were ready for release,
usually when they could show they had rehabilitated themselves or had
a job or family waiting for them. Prison officials approved of parole,
because it encouraged inmates to improve and helped maintain order.

But California led a sweeping national change in 1977 when it became
the first state to take away the power of the parole board and
eliminated flexible sentences, replacing them with fixed terms
determined in advance by a judge. Under the new system, inmates were
automatically released at the end of their term without review by a
parole board, though after their release they were still on parole.

The switch came in reaction to the explosion of violent crime in the
late 1960's and early 1970's and an unusual agreement by liberals and
conservatives that discretionary release on parole was a failure.
Liberals complained that parole boards were too influenced by an
inmate's race, leading to longer time served for blacks. Conservatives
attacked parole boards for letting criminals out too early.

Unfortunately, Professor Petersilia said, "When we adopted fixed
sentences, there is no longer any incentive for prisoners to reform,
just as there is no way to judge whether their behavior has improved."

Moreover, although in California newly released inmates are still
monitored by parole agents, in many states inmates who "max out," in
prison slang, are simply allowed to walk out without any further
monitoring, sometimes directly from solitary confinement. Nationwide,
of the 600,000 inmates to be released this year, 100,000 will be
unsupervised, according to Mr. Beck of the Justice Department.

At the same time, the public was calling for a get-tough approach to
crime, and many prison rehabilitation programs were eliminated. They
included classes, vocational training and halfway houses, where
inmates could adjust to the outside world by working regular jobs in
the day and staying in supervised housing at night. The money saved
went to building more prisons.

According to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number
of state prison inmates participating in drug treatment programs
dropped to 1 in 10 in 1997 from 1 in 4 in 1991. At the same time, many
states, including New York, have stopped allowing inmates to take
college extension courses, which were once very popular, and Congress
prohibited inmates from receiving Pell grants to pay for college class
tuition, said Jeremy Travis, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute in
Washington.

Now, only 9 percent of prisoners are in full-time job training or
education programs, while 24 percent are completely idle, said James
Austin, director of the Institute on Crime, Justice and Corrections at
George Washington University.

Bruce Western, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, has
found that even when paroled inmates are able to find jobs, they earn
only half as much as people of the same social and economic background
who have not been incarcerated.

William Sabol, a senior researcher at Case Western Reserve University,
said, "That makes parolees less capable of forming stable
relationships and supporting families, and therefore more likely to
engage in illegal activities."

Similarly, men who have been imprisoned and paroled will have a harder
time supervising their children, Mr. Sabol said, making their
offspring more likely to get into trouble. Several other studies have
found that half of all teenagers in juvenile prisons have parents who
have been incarcerated.

In Tallahassee, Professors Clear and Rose found neighborhoods where
everyone had at least one friend or relative who had been in prison.

Florida is one of 13 states that now permanently take away the right
to vote from anyone convicted of a felony. This is another factor that
tends to alienate former prisoners from being a part of society, the
experts say.

Another pitfall for former inmates is that even when they do try to
succeed, the get-tough movement has made it hard for them to find
jobs, with recent laws barring them from certain occupations. In
California, parolees are legally banned from working in law, real
estate, medicine, nursing, physical therapy and education. Harriet
Davis of Berkeley got out of prison in 1986, after serving three years
for shooting a man who beat her, and then earned a college nursing
degree and passed the registered-nurse licensing test. But the new
California law barring ex-felons from nursing has left her to scrape
by as a stock room clerk or home care aid, or sometimes on welfare.

The growing number of inmates returned to prison carries a cost to
taxpayers as well. Nationwide, in the 1990's, the number of criminals
sent to state prisons rose 22.7 percent, to 565,291 in 1998, up from
460,739 in 1990, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. But
the number of new criminals sent to state prisons rose only 7.5
percent, while the number of inmates returned to prison, either for
parole violations or for committing new crimes while on parole, jumped
54.4 percent, to account for the bulk of the growth in prison inmates.

Problems, Solutions

The cases of Ruth Ann Clements and Raul Morales, drawn from interviews
and court papers, illustrate the perils of release and a hope for the
future.

Ms. Clements had no family or friends in Stockton, the agricultural
city where her parole officer took her last spring, putting her in a
rundown residential hotel after she had served 10 years in Valley
State Prison in Chowchilla, the last four years in solitary
confinement, for stabbing her boyfriend to death.

Her parents are dead. Her four children were scattered around the
country one was in a juvenile prison in Louisiana for being a
runaway. Her years in solitary left Ms. Clements, 43, depressed,
anxious and disconnected from the world, she and her lawyer, Casandra
Shaylor, said.

A prison doctor had prescribed Prozac and Buspar for her depression
and anxiety, but when she was released she was not given a supply of
the drugs, as required by state law.

Prison officials declined to comment on why she was denied the drugs,
citing privacy concerns.

"I get overwhelmed easily now," Ms. Clements said recently, sitting in
her small room in the residential hotel, filled with other drug
addicts and parolees, put there by the authorities.

Even cooking a meal was hard, she said, since she had not cooked in 10
years. She did not have a car or a driver's license it expired long
ago and she did not know how to get a new one or to find her way
around Stockton. Discouraged, she made no effort to find work.

In September, Ms. Clements was charged with drinking and battery,
violations of the conditions of her parole, according to the
Department of Corrections, after she and a man in the residence got
into an argument. She is now back in prison, her parole revoked, with
an additional term of 10 months.

Her daughter Amber, 16, who had been released from juvenile prison in
Louisiana and put on a bus to Stockton, has been placed in foster care.

"So much for the belief that families should be put back together,"
her mother wrote in a letter from prison.

Raul Morales has a better chance, thanks to a new official awareness
that the prison and parole systems are leading to failure.

A 34-year-old heroin addict from East Los Angeles, Mr. Morales has
been sent to prison five times for convictions for drug possession and
burglary, and eight times for parole violations. (His early
convictions were before enactment of the three-strike law.)

Heroin was all he knew, Mr. Morales said, explaining, "My dad and
grandfather did heroin, and so I did heroin with them."

Prison did not change his drug habit. "It says Department of
Corrections, but there was no corrections," Mr. Morales said. "You do
your time, then you get out, and then you go back to drugs."

But in his most recent incarceration, he found himself in Corcoran
State Prison in a new drug treatment program run by Phoenix House,
which has a contract with the California Department of Corrections. As
he was about to be released, he agreed to enroll in a continuing
program administered by Phoenix House in an old apartment building on
the boardwalk in Venice, an ocean-front section of Los Angeles. To
make sure he did not slip, a Phoenix House van picked him up at the
gate outside Corcoran and drove him there.

The Venice building contained 50 beds, with a view of the Pacific, and
group therapy, a 12-step self-help program, anger-management classes,
vocational training and free medical care. After six months, the
former inmates are supposed to be ready to go out on their own.

"It's not easy," said Howard Friend, the director. "When you go for a
job application, you have to tell them you've been in prison, and then
you often don't get called back."

The Phoenix House program in Corcoran is too new to have been
evaluated. But a study of a similar program at the R. J. Donovan
Prison in San Diego found that of inmates who completed treatment in
prison and then went through an after-care program in the community,
like Phoenix House, only 27 percent were returned to prison after
three years. By comparison, in a control group of inmates who did not
participate in treatment, or refused after-care, 75 percent ended up
back in prison.

That is a surprising result, California officials say. The drug
treatment program reversed almost exactly the state's overall
recidivism rate of nearly 70 percent of inmates ending up back in prison.

It could be such success stories that led California voters to
approve, over the strong opposition of virtually all law enforcement
officials, a referendum that will change the state's approach to drug
violations. The ballot measure calls for first-time drug offenders and
parolees found using drugs to be provided treatment instead of being
sent to prison.