ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

After Prison Boom, A Focus On Hurdles Faced By Ex-Cons

Housing, Work -- Even An ID -- Can Be Hard To Attain; A Bill Would Smooth Path

Ms. Owens's Firefighting Hopes

In the kitchen of an Applebee's restaurant in Queens, N.Y., Jacqueline
Smith has been a model hire. In less than two years working as a cook, she
got a promotion to supervisor, doubled her salary and won the award for
employee of the year.

Her success hasn't come easily. The dark-haired 38-year-old is an
ex-convict who served more than nine years for transporting more than half
a pound of crack cocaine from New York to Washington. Since being released
in July 2003, she has struggled with basic necessities such as finding
affordable housing and getting a valid state ID card.

A single parent with a steady but low-paying job, Ms. Smith would normally
be considered a prime candidate for public-housing assistance, but she
knows the odds are against her. Local housing rules bar ex-felons from
living in public housing for six years after completing their sentence. So
every night around midnight, Ms. Smith takes a few buses and switches
subway lines for an hour-long trek to a Manhattan shelter for female
ex-convicts where she and her daughter have been living for more than a
year.

"It's one battle after the next -- trying to obtain housing, trying to
obtain employment," Ms. Smith says. "I want a second chance. I want people
to see I made mistakes, but I am making it right."

Ms. Smith is one of more than 630,000 people released each year from
corrections institutions in the U.S. Not surprisingly, people who have been
locked up for many years, often poorly educated and lacking in financial
support, face a range of obstacles to re-entering society. Yet some of the
biggest are put there by federal, state and local governments, including
hurdles to getting student loans, public housing and other forms of
government assistance.

For years, the thinking among law-enforcement officials and politicians was
that this was the price people should pay for breaking the law. Now there
is an emerging belief that the larger price is being borne by society,
since the practical barriers facing ex-prisoners make it more likely that
they will slip back into a life of crime.

Two-thirds of ex-felons return to police custody within three years of
their release for new crimes or for probation or parole violations,
according to Justice Department studies. U.S. taxpayers spent $60 billion
on corrections in 2002 at the local, state and federal levels, up from $9
billion two decades earlier. Over that same time frame, corrections has
been the second fastest growing government spending category after health care.

Aside from public-housing restrictions, many former felons find they need
special waivers to get licensed in vocations they learned while serving
time. Some find their attempts to get an education are stymied by laws
barring loans to those convicted of a crime. Still others can stumble into
technical violations that send them back to prison, such as reporting late
for a meeting with a probation officer. For those who have completed
lengthy sentences, the most frustrating barrier is also the most basic --
getting a legitimate ID card, such as a driver's license.

"One barrier may not be that big a deal," says Debbie Mukamal, director of
the prisoner re-entry institute at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice
in New York. Usually, though, offenders face several barriers, she says,
adding: "You can't get housing, you have child support" payments to make,
"you can't get ID and no one will hire you. Cumulatively, that sends a
signal: You're not wanted." Ms. Mukamal is the co-author of a sweeping
report last year funded by the Justice Department and conducted by the
Legal Action Center, a New York nonprofit, examining "roadblocks to entry"
facing ex-offenders.

After years of pushing for tougher sentences, politicians in Washington are
rethinking their approach. The Second Chance Act, hammered out by a
bipartisan group of lawmakers and introduced last month, would provide more
than $80 million in grants for programs to help ex-offenders re-enter
society.

Kellie Mann Owens might have benefited from a key part of the legislation:
a provision ensuring that ex-offenders can be licensed in occupations they
trained for in prison.

Ms. Owens was determined to learn a skill so she could land a job when she
left the Alderson, W.Va., women's prison made famous recently for housing
Martha Stewart. In 1993, Ms. Owens, who had just finished her sophomore
year at Santa Rosa Junior College in Northern California, obtained LSD for
her ex-boyfriend and mailed it to him in Georgia. He was caught and
cooperated with authorities against those he had enlisted to secure drugs,
including Ms. Owens. He was sentenced to two years while she received 10.

Ms. Owens, now 34 years old, joined the prison's all-women fire-fighting
team, a group that provides fire protection for the prison and backup for
other local fire squads. She figured it would position her well for a
decent job. For more than five years, she slogged through classes and
training, entering smoke-filled rooms with her oxygen mask blackened to
simulate rescue situations and navigating the Appalachian mountain roads
near the prison in a yellow fire truck.

"Any of the physical requirements that you had to do" for state licensing,
"we were required to do in our classes," says Ms. Owens.

She eventually rose to the fire team's top rank of lieutenant, garnering
300 hours of training and 100 hours at the scenes of actual fires in the
towns outside the prison.

In January 2001, President Clinton granted her clemency on his last day in
office after receiving her name from Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a
group that advocates changes in sentencing laws.

After eight years in prison, she left Alderson for her parents' home in
Alpharetta, Ga., confident a fire department in one of Atlanta's booming
suburbs would hire her. She filled out each job application truthfully,
noting she was a felon. But state law bars hiring former felons.

Ms. Owens says she offered to "clean hoses, flush the truck," anything to
get her foot in the door -- to no avail.

Eventually, she got a job with an organization that trains service dogs for
people with debilitating diseases and injuries. Last year, she moved to
Hawaii and started a catering business with her husband, who she had met
back in high school. The business didn't take off so they are planning to
try again in Mississippi.

Many ex-convicts leave prison wanting to start anew, and the first step is
often trying to get an education. But while 63% of all undergraduates
receive some form of financial aid, money isn't easy to come by for ex-felons.

Emily Wheeler, of Kenosha, Wis., says she was arrested Aug. 5, 2003, for
growing and selling marijuana with her boyfriend.

Nineteen years old and in the early stages of pregnancy, she received a
sentence of three months in jail and three years on probation --
reasonable, given that "I did screw up," she now says.

After she was released in January 2004, she applied to take classes in
word-processing and other office skills at Gateway Technical College in
Kenosha. "I was filling out the application [for financial aid] and I got
to question 35. It asked me if I'd been convicted of a drug felony," she
says. "I was totally halted right there."

Federal law states that first-time offenders convicted on federal or state
drug-possession or drug-trafficking charges are ineligible to receive
financial assistance for as long as two years after their convictions.
Completing drug rehabilitation can cut that time, but such programs can be
expensive.

"I understand their concern. A college campus is a perfect place to sell
drugs, but I also know I can't move forward in my life without an education
and a good job," says Ms. Wheeler. She now earns $7 an hour at a Culver's
Frozen Custard, a fast-food restaurant, trying to make ends meet to help
support Olivia Rose, her 1-year-old.

For Ms. Smith, the Applebee's cook, finding housing for herself and her
teenage daughter has been the toughest challenge. Upon being released in
July 2003 from the women's prison in Danbury, Conn., Ms. Smith headed for a
halfway house.

Like many prisoners released before their sentence is completed, Ms. Smith
was required to find a job in 15 days or face the possibility of being
returned to prison to finish her last six months. But to get a job, Ms.
Smith needed valid identification from the Department of Motor Vehicles. In
New York, residents need a combination of documentation such as bills and
voter registration cards that each add up to enough cumulative "points" to
qualify for a driver's license or nondriver ID.

Ms. Smith had a federal prisoner ID, a birth certificate and a Social
Security card. Those were not enough. Motor-vehicle personnel asked if she
had a passport, a bill with her name on it, any additional identifiers. "I
kept telling them that I'd been in prison the last 10 years and didn't have
any other identification." Eventually she found a sympathetic supervisor
who issued her the card.

She found a job quickly at a clothing store but switched after a few months
to work for Applebee's, where she could use the culinary certificate she'd
earned in training on the inside.

She struggled to find a cheap yet safe place for her and her daughter. The
two are now living in the Sarah Powell Huntington House, a Women's Prison
Association facility, funded through the city department of homeless services.

Ms. Smith has been trying to apply for subsidized housing. The federal
government has a small number of restrictions against ex-felons living in
public housing, such as sex offenders and those who have manufactured
methamphetamine in a housing complex. However, local housing authorities
are able to impose their own restrictions on ex-felons living in public
housing, and those can be expansive.

Howard Marder, spokesman for the New York City Housing Authority, says
there are virtually no vacancies in the city in public housing and with
about 136,000 applications pending it is unlikely that someone with a
felony record will get in. Besides, ex-felons are ineligible for public
housing for six years after the completion of their sentence, including
probation. Ms. Smith, who will be on probation another three years, won't
even be eligible until 2014.

Ms. Smith recently met with a New York City Housing Authority case agent to
discuss her application. She took certificates showing her training and her
work experience, but the conversation turned toward her felony record. "I
asked if that meant I wasn't going to get it. They wouldn't say no
outright," she said, but she was left with the impression that her
application would be rejected. "I still hope everything works out," she
says, "but I don't know."

Until something else comes along, Ms. Smith says she'll keep pushing for
promotions at work, while staying in the shelter. Returning to a life of
crime and risking a return to prison is not an option, she says: "I don't
have another 10 years to give to nobody."