RENO WANTS STATE, LOCAL COURTS TO HELP OVERSEE EX-PRISONERS

Washington - Attorney General Janet Reno wants to use state and local judges
to help supervise released prisoners in community-wide plans designed to
reduce the number who return to prison.

"Too often, offenders leave prison and return to the community without
supervision, without jobs, without houseing," she said on Thursday. "They
quickly fall back into their old patterns of drug usage, gang activities and
other crimes."

Each year, 500,000 state prisoners are released and up to 22 percent have no
continuing supervision through probation or parole. She wants to enlist
state and local judges in overseeing such high-risk ex-prisoners.

"Our goal is to minimize public safety risks that occure when offenders come
back to the community ill-prepared to cope", she said.

The Justice Department sent letters to several thousand state and local
officials this month soliciting proposals for so-called re-entry courts,
which would be paid for locally but receive technical assistance from the
federal government.

"A re-entry court is a court that would oversee an offender's return to the
community after release from prison", Reno said.

"Judges, working closely with others, would approve a plan for reintegrating
the offender into the community. The court would then monitor and enforce
the plan," Reno said. "The partners of the court would include institutional
and community corrections officials, law inforcement, local businesses, the
clergy and the cuurches they serve, support services, victims' advocatyes
and neighborhood organizations."

She compared re-entry courts to drug courts, which she championed as a state
prosecutor in Miami and which have since spread around the country. "The
court would use its authority to apply ... as drug courts do ... the
carot-and-stick approach: Stay clean, stay out of trouble, get a job, and we
will help you in that effrt. But if you come back testing positive for
drugs, if you commit further crime ... you're going to face a more serious
punishment every step of the way."