DRUG PROGRAM BEARS SPARSE FRUIT, CRITICS SAY

Few Felons Finish, But Backers Plead For Time

Dressed in a yellow jumpsuit, Rico Reed sat in a cell-turned-meeting room
at the state's Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility explaining to a visitor
how he ended up getting busted selling drugs.

"I caught a charge for selling cocaine," Reed said. "I lost my job and
needed money and went back to my old ways."

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, a treatment specialist
intervened, instructing him to use other language that shows he has
accepted responsibility for his actions.

Reed is one of 183 current participants in the state's Felony Drug Offender
Alternative to Prison program, which aims to rehabilitate men convicted of
drug sales and possession without sending them to state prisons. He hopes
the program helps him "lose the desire to sell drugs and do the right
things in life."

But the chances of that are slim, if the program's past results are any
indication.

Since former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson announced it in his 2000 "state of the
state" speech, Milwaukee County judges have sentenced nearly 400 men to the
program, officials said. Of those, 19 finished the program, while 180 were
revoked and sent to state prisons to serve out their terms.

Those results have some state officials calling forthe end of the program,
which sends participants through phases at the Secure Detention Facility
and the Felmers O. Chaney Correctional Center before they are released on
electronic monitoring. It requires offenders to stay off drugs, complete
community service and hold a job.

"Whatever they're doing - it's not working," said Senate President Alan
Lasee (R-De Pere). "It might be time to pull the plug and start all over
again."

But corrections officials along with Sen. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee), who
advocated for the program's expansion, three Milwaukee County judges
involved with drug cases and the lead drug case prosecutor think the
program hasn't had time to succeed.

The program began inauspiciously as administrators scrambled to put
something together after Thompson's announcement, said Stan Stojkovic, dean
of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Helen Bader School of Social
Welfare. In 2003, Stojkovic co-authored a Department of Corrections-funded
report critical of the program.

"It didn't have a whole lot of conceptualization up front," Stojkovic said.
"There were a lot of good-hearted people in the Department of Corrections
who wanted things to go right, but the reality is that it didn't do that."

According to the report, the leading reasons for revocation were physical
violence and disruptive conduct while at the Secure Detention Facility and
absconding from a probation and parole agent, drug use and drug arrests
once the offenders left the facility. Problems from beginning

Problems with the program began with its inception as a political
commodity, Stojkovic said, and an early move from the Milwaukee County jail
to the state's Secure Detention Facility across State St. But once the
program started, lax oversight and a lack of constant analysis prevented
problems from being caught and improvements from being made, he said.

For instance, after offenders have served six months at the Secure
Detention Facility and are released into the community, they are supposed
to be assigned mentors to guide them back into society. But that aspect of
the program never materialized, Stojkovic and others said.

At first, the program was limited to 17-to-25-year-old men convicted of
selling or possessing cocaine or marijuana in Milwaukee. To qualify,
offenders had to have no prison record, had to have no prior sexual assault
convictions and must not have used a gun with their crime.

After the harsh report - by then two men had completed the program while 90
were revoked - administrators expanded the population to include men as old
as 30and began accepting parole violators. Judges also began sentencing men
who had served prior prison time, against Department of Corrections
recommendations.

Reed, 29, is emblematic of changes in the program. In the 1990s he served
14 months in three different drug-related stints in Illinois prisons,
which, along with his age, would have disqualified him.

But after the report, officials sought to expand the program's population
in an attempt to find men who could complete it, said William Grosshans,
the state Department of Corrections' assistant administrator of the
Division of Community Corrections.

Moore advocated for the program's 2003 expansion from 48 to 70 beds and to
a women's version of the program set to begin this fall. She said the fact
that comparatively few men have graduated from the program shows that
Wisconsin is tough on crime.

"It's proof that we're not being soft on crime, with all the revocations,"
she said. "People are given very clear expectations that . . . if you
aren't going to take it seriously, then you aren't going to be moved along
and graduated. It's not a joke."

Though Thompson, then the state's leading Republican, is the father of the
program, some Republican legislators are now calling it a waste of state
resources. Rep. Mark Gundrum (R-New Berlin), the chairman of the Assembly's
Judiciary Committee, said the program's success rate does not justify what
state taxpayers are paying for it.

Gundrum: Cost must be a factor

"People will say, 'If you can help one person, it's worth any amount,' "
Gundrum said. "But you have to balance that against education, paving the
roads, etc. You have to balance the costs."

Grosshans said it costs $18,772 over two years to keep an offender in the
alternative to prison program, compared with the $51,000 he said it costs
to keep someone in a state prison for two years.

Milwaukee County officials involved in the program defended it, though most
said either that its success rate has been disappointing or that its
success cannot be categorized by statistics.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Elsa Lamelas, who sent dozens of offenders
to the program from her bench in felony drug court, said the program
represents an investment in the lives of people who have not had any prior
assistance in becoming productive citizens.

"I do think that even those who fail or some of those who fail will
nevertheless . . . gain something that is of advantage to them and of
advantage to the community at some point in the future," she said.

[ Sidebar ]

Felony Drug Offender Alternative to Prison

Program Results

Of the 222 men who began the Felony Drug Offender Alternative to Prison
program between Jan. 1, 2000, and Sept. 30, 2002:

- - 143 completed Phase I, and 35 failed. The other 44 were still enrolled as
of Sept. 30, 2002. The report lists the most common reasons for Phase I
revocation as physical violence (42.9%) and disruptive conduct (40.0%).

- - 100 completed Phase II, and 23 failed. Twenty were still enrolled in
Phase II as of Sept. 30, 2002. The report lists the most common reason by
far (69.9%) for Phase II revocation as absconding.

- - Two completed Phase III, and 32 were revoked. The other 66 were still
enrolled as of Sept. 30, 2002. The most common revocation reasons in Phase
III were absconding (40.6%), new arrest-drugs (28.1%) and drug use (15.6%).