LIFE AFTER PRISON: LACK OF SERVICES HAS HIGH PRICE

Nearly 2 million Americans are behind bars during a prison-building boom
widely considered central to the sharp nationwide drop in crime. But after
spending billions of dollars to take so many criminals off the streets, law
enforcement experts are turning their attention to a different concern: 95
percent of the inmates will be set free, and many will soon commit crimes
again.

An estimated 585,000 felons will be released from state and federal prisons
this year, heading home to communities where 62 percent will be charged
with new crimes and 41 percent will return to jail within three years,
according to the Justice Department.

In light of the high price of repeat offenses in dollars and in crime,
analysts and policymakers inside and outside the government are studying
what happens after prison ends. More must be done, they believe, for
inmates released into an often unforgiving world of scarce services and
thin support.

"That's when they need the help more than anything," said Ray Procunier,
former corrections director in Virginia and California. "It's all 'lock 'em
up and throw the key away. ... There's no way the world can afford what we
do right now."

Attorney General Janet Reno, in a recent New York speech, called for
increased supervision and a larger safety net for released convicts. She
announced an intensive court supervision project modeled on successful drug
courts around the country. The administration is seeking $145 million.

"We are not going to end the culture of violence," Reno said, "until we
address this problem."

As it stands, overworked parole officers and underfunded social agencies
are part of a patchwork that offers no comprehensive approach to the
difficult task of integrating ex-convicts into workaday life. As D.C.
parole chief John A. Carver III put it: "Generally, the system is set up to
produce failure."

A paradox of the nationwide determination to punish violent offenders with
ever harsher sentences, experts say, is the reduction of transition time in
such settings as halfway houses. And with more fixed sentences and fewer
credits for good behavior, inmates have fewer incentives to better
themselves behind bars.

A toughening of rules designed to keep drug sellers out of public housing
projects makes it harder for ex-offenders to find a place to live. In
prison, drug treatment programs tend to be weak. With an estimated
two-thirds of lawbreakers testing positive for recent drug use, it is
accepted wisdom that existing community treatment programs are insufficient
to meet the need.

"In almost any instance where you see someone who has a long-standing,
untreated or uncured drug habit, there's a substantial likelihood of
reoffending," said Montgomery County Deputy State's Attorney John McCarthy.
"Burglary, shoplifting, bad check offenses - they're going to reoffend."

Sometimes, the new crimes are ghastly. Among the infamous were the 1993
murder in California of 12-year-old Polly Klaas and the 1994 killing in New
Jersey of 7-year-old Megan Kanka.

In 1994, in Howard County, freed rapist Thurman A. Moore raped again. In
1995, in Springfield, James Arthur Murray became a repeat killer.

Antoinette Cash went to prison on a credit card conviction in her early
twenties, then righted herself with a parole officer's help. She remembers
the difficulty of finding her way after two years behind bars and has seen
the struggles of others who were less resilient.

"When you get out, you are buck wild. There's no more doors shutting, no
more 'Turn the music down!'" Cash, 29, said at a support group hosted by
Our Place, D.C., in Southeast Washington. "They create these hopes, but
when you get out, there's nothing there. Some women I've seen have really
struggled to keep their head up, without any support from outside."

D.C. Council member Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7), who represents some of the
District's most violent neighborhoods, emphasized the cost of repeat
offenders to the community.

"It's too easy for them to fall back into old habits and become predators,"
Chavous said. "It's a public safety issue. It's also a public welfare
issue. If you're not a contributing, productive member of society, you're
in some form dependent on the government."

The fledgling effort to improve what is called the back end of the
corrections system is grounded in a simple notion: When fewer ex-offenders
commit new crimes, fewer people will be hurt by lawbreaking and fewer
prison beds will be filled at a typical cost to taxpayers of $20,000 a
year. Together, the state and federal prison systems cost roughly $25
billion a year.

Until about 25 years ago, the guiding principle of the American prison
system was rehabilitation – hence the name "corrections." But the idea
that inmates could be improved by prison and parole fell out of fashion in
favor of stricter and more certain sentences. Punishment overtook
rehabilitation as tactic and byword.

Crime has been declining for seven years while prison and jail populations
continue to reach new highs. The Justice Department announced last week
that the national inmate count reached 1.86 million in mid-1999 - not
including an estimated 100,000 juveniles confined to adult facilities. The
U.S. incarceration rate is the highest in the world.

What happens later is the topic of the day, for a majority of released
inmates fail to make it on the outside and often return to jail. According
to 1998 figures reported by the Justice Department, 62 percent of state
inmates were arrested on new charges within three years, nearly 50 percent
were convicted, and 41 percent landed back in jail.

Ex-convicts on parole numbered 206,000 of the 565,000 people dispatched to
state prisons in 1998 - an increase of 54 percent since 1990, said Justice
Department statistician Allen J. Beck. One-third had committed new drug
crimes, one-third had committed property crimes, and one-quarter were
guilty of violent offenses.

A study of 556 District inmates released in 1992 showed similar results. In
the first year, 49 percent were arrested and 35 percent were sentenced to
at least 60 more days behind bars. In the first five years, 82.9 percent of
the former prisoners were arrested at least once.

As jail terms grow longer - the average was 27 months in 1997, compared
with 22 months in 1990 - inmates face heightened adjustment problems.
"They're coming out crippled and less able to get integrated in society,"
said George Washington University crime expert James Austin.

At the conservative end of the political spectrum, a Texas academic who
describes himself as "hard-nosed, get tough on crime" believes the country
"should do a much better job" preparing inmates to live straight lives.
"Corrections should do a far better job of correcting," said Morgan O.
Reynolds of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Simple things count. In the District, for example, the Department of
Corrections destroys inmates' property if no one collects it or pays for it
to be shipped home within 15 days after arrest. That includes
identification - driver's licenses, Social Security cards – which
means many prisoners arrive home unable to prove their identity to a
landlord or an employer.

A District woman named Vickie talked one evening at Our Place, D.C., about
her frame of mind after 6.5 years in prison on convictions including theft
and robbery. The nonprofit group established a storefront in January to
fill a void for women returning from custody, providing clothes, advice, a
strong shoulder, candy bars, condoms.

"You lose touch with reality in prison. You're in a closed little world,"
said Vickie, 30, who asked that her last name not be used. A sign of her
fragile confidence was the anxiety she felt when given new $20 bills upon
her release from a Connecticut prison. Unaware that the U.S. currency had
changed, she was sure she was being cheated.

Four of every five inmates released from prison or jail receive some form
of supervision, ranging from a monthly appointment with a parole officer to
more frequent visits, drug tests and other requirements. Probation and
parole officers, traditionally overburdened, have not seen their resources
keep pace with increased reporting rules or the rising number of people
under supervision - 4.1 million at last count.

"Most of the funding goes toward arrest and prosecution and then building
more prisons," said Carl Wicklund, director of the American Probation and
Parole Association. "Probation and parole get very little attention."

That may be changing. As jurisdictions around the country experiment with
carrots and sticks, Reno announced support for nine pilot projects known as
Reentry Courts, as well as another series of demonstration programs
designed to increase counseling, therapy, training and support for
returning convicts.

Patterned after drug courts, the idea is to monitor returning prisoners
more closely to prevent them from sliding back to crime. Violations of
release conditions would be punished with graduated sanctions, such as five
days in court or a weekend in jail - and harsher punishment if the behavior
is worse. Motivated ex-offenders, the thinking goes, will be given more
support.

Delaware, one of the models, designed a program to start with meetings
before the prisoner is freed. For 60 ex-offenders, release in New Castle
County will mean three tiers of supervision from weekly to monthly. Case
managers will be assigned to notify an assigned judge about needed services
and treatment.

"We have six years of experience in operating drug court. We see the same
issues here: release without a whole lot of preparation or follow-up," said
Thomas J. Ralson, Superior Court administrator. "The judge can immediately
sanction you, whereas the probation officer can write a report and run it
through the probation hierarchy and send it to the court."

Skeptics say they admire Reno's concept but question its efficacy,
wondering aloud whether the same couldn't be accomplished by reinvigorating
parole and probation departments around the country.

"If the courts work well, much of the success will just replicate what a
good parole officer would have done 25 years ago," said Marc Mauer of the
Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group that seeks sentencing reform. "It
seems to me to be a very structured and cumbersome mechanism to get at what
we know is needed, which is education, health and job services for the
ex-offender.

"As we shift resources away from community supervision to the prison
system," he added, "we're robbing the capacity to effectively supervise
offenders when they're back home living next to us."