TOUGH LAWS CREATE 'RECIPE FOR DISASTER'

Parolee Recidivism Rate (In Calif.) Highest In Nation

Each of the many times Harry Ismail Taylor was paroled from prison in the
past 13 years, he knew he wouldn't last long outside.

Released with only the standard $200 and a bus ticket home, still lacking
job skills, poorly educated and addicted to the cocaine that got him
imprisoned in the first place, Taylor would drift naturally back to his old
neighborhood in San Francisco's Fillmore district and start getting high
again.

Sooner or later, his parole officer would catch him and 'revoke' Taylor
back behind bars.

"I felt like a boomerang going back and forth," said Taylor, now 33 and
free, once again, on parole.

The number of parolees is at an all-time high and continues to rise, a by
product of the explosion in California's prison population caused largely
by tough anti-drug and "three strikes" sentencing laws introduced since the
1980s. There are more than 108,000 men and women on state parole, more than
four times the total in 1984.

But as the number of parolees has skyrocketed, the resources to help keep
them from winding up back in prison -from parole agents to drug
rehabilitation programs - have not kept pace. Partly as a result,
California has the worst rate of recidivism, or parolees being sent back
behind bars, in the country.

Two out of three California parolees become recidivists, more than double
the rates in Texas and New York. Incarcerating each one costs more than
$20,000 a year.

"High parole revocation rates," sums up a recent report by the National
Council on Crime and Delinquency, "present an enormous waste of California
Department of Corrections' resources."

According to the state Department of Corrections, 10 per cent of parolees
are homeless, half are illiterate and 85 per cent have substance abuse
problems. Only about 10 per-cent, however, receive pre-release services to
get them ready for the outside. Small wonder that many end up involved with
drugs again, or commit other crimes, say experts.

Awareness is slowly growing that spending money on programs to help
parolees make it on the outside can help pre-vent the much higher costs of
throwing them back in jail. Since the early 1990s, the Department of
Corrections has launched a series of small programs aimed specifically at
preventing parole failure.

Harry Ismail Taylor is currently learning basic reading and mathematics
skills through one such program, a competent literacy project designed by
the Contra Costa County Office of Education, a nonprofit group. "I really
got tired of the drugs," said Taylor, sitting in the computer lab in a
downtown San Francisco drug rehabilitation and social services center. Now
clean and sober, he is aiming to study psychology at City College.

The Office of Education's literacy programs, and a drug rehabilitation
program it designed, serve thousands of parolees across the state every
year. Such programs have been found to reduce recidivism. But the total
budget for such anti-parole failure programs is currently $7.9 million -
less than $75 per parolee.

The state Legislature is seeking to as much as double the funding for those
programs. Their fate remains uncertain, however, with the state budget
still in limbo.

Another $5 million to $6 million dollars are spent every year on other
support services for parolees, such as bus passes or temporary shelter.

Those services are usually coordinated by parole agents, who are often too
overworked to do much more than monitor whether their charges are vio-Latin
their parole conditions.

Twenty years ago, a typical parole agent was tasked with supervising 45
parolees. Today, the ratio is about 80 parolees per agent.

"Parole officers used to try to at least get their parolees on welfare, if
there was nothing else availab]e, but now that's drying up too," said Craig
Cornett, a spokesperson for the Legislative Analyst's Office in Sacramento.
"So you end up with all these guys with few marketable skills, drug habits
and nowhere to turn out on the streets. It's a recipe for disaster.'