WHAT DELAWARE CAN DO TO CUT CRIME

Like its bigger neighbors, Philadelphia and Baltimore, Wilmington is
dealing with runaway violent crime -- enduring a record 26 homicides in 2008.

But in Baltimore and Philadelphia, homicide rates have fallen.

The difference appears to be that Delaware's big-city neighbors have
started programs that train -- even prod -- convicted felons to find
work and adjust to life on the streets after they get out of prison.

No such state-sponsored programs exist in Delaware, where inmates are
released with little more than the clothes on their backs.

It helps explain why Delaware was ranked 47th out of 50 states for
its re-entry efforts. And some say violent crime won't go down until
inmates emerge from prison with skills to keep them from returning to
the only trade they know -- dealing dope in the city's poorest
neighborhoods, their guns loaded.

Robert Walker left Young Correctional Institution with just the
prison-made clothes on his back.

He had nowhere to go, no money, no credit and no job prospects.

"I went right from being in jail for some two years, to being put
right back on the street pretty much being on my own," said the
24-year-old Walker, who had been convicted on assault charges.

He once dreamed of a nursing job, but found his felony record made
that impossible.

"It's not just hard getting a good job," he said. "It's hard to get
simple jobs like McDonald's."

To cope, Walker said, he turned to drugs, which created even more problems.

"If I could get a great-paying job, there would be no reason for me
to want to get high," he said. "I would be happy, I could succeed, I
could go somewhere."

Stories like Walker's are familiar to Delaware police and
prosecutors, who see the same convicted felons again and again in the
backs of patrol cars and in courtrooms.

National studies show that people released from prison are three
times more likely to be re-arrested if they don't have jobs.

While other states and federal probation programs provide counseling,
advice on how to find work, even clothes for job interviews, Delaware
offers limited -- if any -- help to ex-offenders.

The ramifications were clear last year in Wilmington, where the city
saw a record-high 26 homicides. Police have charged 14 suspects in 10
of those slayings. Of the 14, all had been in custody less than a
year before they were arrested in connection with the 2008 slayings,
according to court records.

Yet in nearby Baltimore and Philadelphia -- which are dealing with
similar problems related to drugs and a sagging economy -- homicide
rates dropped in 2008.

Probation and criminal-justice experts believe the disparity is due
in part to efforts by those cities, and their states, to focus on
preparing inmates for life on the outside and helping them find work.

The simple logic of re-entry programs is that those who have been in
trouble are likely to revert to their old ways unless they are
provided -- or prodded into -- an alternative.

"It is not the only thing, but it does contribute to lowering the
crime rate," said Felix Mata, the national coordinator for the
federal Defendant Offender Workforce Development initiative. He
singled out Baltimore as an example of a successful program.

"This is not just a theory, it has proven results," said Jack
McDonough, chief of U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services in the
District of Delaware.

"It takes a lot of work. It is a lot harder than conventional
approaches," McDonough said. "I think it can reduce crime and can
reduce violence in the city of Wilmington."

Re-Arrest Figures Untracked

The chance of an inmate getting re-arrested within three years of
release is 47 percent to 67 percent, according to national
statistics. Experts believe Delaware's rate is higher, but there are
no current numbers because the state doesn't keep track, officials said.

A national study by the Legal Action Council, a nonprofit advocacy
group, ranked Delaware 47th out of 50 states for its re-entry
efforts, charging the state makes it far more difficult for a
prisoner to return to society and stay out of trouble. The
"roadblocks" it cited included the state's making it difficult for
felons to get public assistance, housing and driver's licenses.

A national expert on re-entry, Professor Christy A. Visher at the
University of Delaware's Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice,
said the state does not need millions to get results.

"Baltimore did [this] with very little extra money. There was
someone in the mayor's office, working with the Department of
Correction, working with the Department of Labor [and others]," she
said. "It just requires some creative thinking and the will."

It's more than finding an inmate a job. It also involves
anger-management training and other programs to help inmates reintegrate.

There is support in Delaware for this kind of reform -- Wilmington's
Hope Commission lists re-entry improvement as a "core priority" --
and pilot efforts are under way to launch new re-entry measures, such
as a job and training center for probationers.

There also have been successes in the private sector. About a year
ago, drug-abuse counselor Tammy Robinson opened the Robinson & Them
employment agency in Wilmington specifically to help former inmates.
So far, she has helped about 150 people find work.

Visher and others said there needs to be a unified program with
leadership from the top. "The state just hasn't gotten all the
players together. The Department of Labor hasn't been willing to
think of offender work-force development as a strategy, as a
priority. That kind of priority can only come from the governor's
office," she said.

Newly inaugurated Gov. Jack Markell agreed Friday.

"I think it is a very important issue for the state," he said.

Markell said 97 percent of the state's inmates are going to get out
someday, making it necessary to prepare now for their return to society.

He said his administration will meet with Delaware re-entry groups,
"figure out what works best, and then let's do it.'

"I agree with the premise that leadership has to come from the top,"
he said. He said that effort should also include community and church groups.

A Delaware study by the local advocacy group Stand Up for What is
Right and Just in 2007 highlighted re-entry as a concern.

"Currently, one in 13 Delaware budget dollars is spent on corrections
. " the study's authors wrote. "Although we are spending a great
deal of money, what we are doing is not reducing crime or making our
citizens safer. What we need are smart sentencing strategies,
alternatives to incarceration, and programs that will revitalize
communities, reduce recidivism, and promote the successful re-entry
of ex-offenders back into society."

'There Is a Different Way'

Wilmington resident Nathan Dollar has been looking for work since
getting laid off from his truck-driving job in the fall. The
29-year-old needs a good-paying job to help support his two children,
ages 7 and 8. But with his 1998 drug conviction, it has become nearly
impossible.

"It's hard. They don't want to give you a chance. It's 2009; that
happened 10 years ago."

Dollar currently works in his uncle's detail shop. He still applies
for other jobs, but doesn't hear back after they learn of his record.
When he does, the jobs don't pay enough.

"It shouldn't be like this," Dollar said. "Everybody makes mistakes.
Everybody deserves a second chance."

The thought of turning to crime has crossed his mind, especially when
the bills arrive.

"But I wouldn't put myself in a situation like that," he said. He
doesn't want to be a bad example to his children, he said.

"I don't want them to grow up the way I did," he said. "I want to
show them there is a different way. They don't have to go out there
and sell drugs. They can live a positive life."

A resource-supported effort

Focusing on helping felons when they leave the prison system, rather
than waiting for them to get into trouble again, is already being
done in Delaware in the federal criminal-justice system headed by McDonough.

Over the past few years, the federal probation office has been
transformed into a job training and placement center, with the strong
support of judges and recently retired U.S. Attorney Colm F. Connolly.

The federal probation office in Wilmington offers classes on how to
go through a job interview and has a closet full of donated business
attire for probationers to use when they go on interviews. It also
offers job-hunting resources and group therapy sessions for
ex-offenders who are having difficulty reintegrating.

The office also has contracts with outside groups to provide training
for such jobs as auto mechanic, heating and air-conditioning repair,
cosmetology and truck driving.

"The program focuses on 'triggers' of criminal behavior," McDonough
said. This includes not only the lack of a job, but a lack of housing
when they get out, a lack of proper identification to get a job
interview and transportation.

"It takes collaboration between the Department of Labor, the DMV,
housing agencies," he said, as well as state medical programs.

The federal probation program is tiny compared with the state's, but
McDonough said the process has worked in other areas with probation
numbers equal to Delaware's.

A Reason for Optimism

Michael D'Aguiar, 36, of New Castle said he went on job interviews
last year after he was released from federal custody on drug charges.

He hoped his background in computers and data processing would help
him find work. But the first company he talked to told him that
because of his record, they could not even talk to him for seven years.

D'Aguiar has since landed a job stocking shelves in a supermarket but
still credits federal probation officials for even this modest success.

"They have been behind me and pushing me," he said.

D'Aguiar said they pressed him to further his education, so he
enrolled in classes to get a degree in management.

Former state probationer Walker, by contrast, said he went back to
nursing school but dropped out after he was told that he was "wasting
his time" because no one would hire a felon.

"You're stuck in a one-way street," Walker said. "It's like you got a
double sentence -- you got sentenced for your crime and then you got
sentenced for the rest of your life where you can't succeed like you
would like to."

Michael Elliott, 52, who is in the federal work-force development
program, said probation officials helped him with anger issues that
got him into trouble in the first place. "They taught me how to think
things out better and how to talk to people. It was a big help," he said.

He landed a job in construction but recently was laid off because of
the slumping economy.

But he's optimistic about getting another job because of support from
the federal probation office.

A Success Story for Delaware

Mata, the coordinator for the federal re-entry effort, said 30 of 94
federal districts have a workforce program in place while a number of
states and cities have launched similar efforts, including
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Chicago and Newark, N.J.

McDonough said the Delaware federal district has seen progress during
the two years it has been trying this approach.

About 28 percent of those released on federal probation in Delaware
end up back in police custody within three years, less than half the
national rate.

Last year, when Wilmington posted its record homicide numbers, 8.76
percent of the approximately 388 people the federal probation office
in Delaware supervised were re-arrested.

In St. Louis, Mo., where the federal work-force development program
has been in place for about eight years, the re-arrest rate is 14
percent to 15 percent.

The unemployment rate of probationers is 3.5 percent there, below the
area's unemployment rate of 7 percent.

"That is remarkable, considering these people have criminal records,"
Mata said.

McDonough said such re-entry efforts won't work for everyone and they
don't change crime statistics overnight.

But every success not only means less crime is committed, but also
one fewer person the state will have to feed, clothe, house and guard, he said.

Mata estimated the cost savings of keeping one person out of prison
for a state is as much as $20,000 a year, not counting any money that
person might put back into the system as a taxpayer.

Creating a New Structure

Before being incarcerated at Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna,
Howard Funn, 35, had never held a job for more than 30 days. But
since his robbery and weapons conviction, Funn said, he has learned
to get up for work, show up on time and be responsible.

"It's like a work ethic that I'm learning," he said Friday, while
working in the Smyrna-area facility's laundry unit.

For many Delaware inmates, the jobs they hold while in prison are the
first legitimate work they've ever done, said Tonya Smith, a support
services manager at Vaughn Correctional Center. While prison jobs
don't necessarily translate into jobs on the outside, prisoners get a
framework they have lacked, she said.

"That's a structure a lot of these guys didn't have out on the streets."

Inmates, who will carry the felon label, know it will be difficult to
find well-paying jobs once they get out.

Angelo Coles, who was a banquet server before his conviction, worked
on his kitchen skills while in prison and is now Vaughn Correctional
Center's top cook.

The 50-year-old Brooklyn native hopes these skills he learned in
prison will mean a better-paying job when he gets out, but he knows
he will struggle with his felony conviction and have to take mediocre jobs.

"I'm going to have to crawl," Coles said. "I just need to keep my
nose to the grindstone."