PRISONS STILL FULL OF REPEAT OFFENDERS

For years in Virginia's criminal justice system, a major challenge has
been to prevent freed convicts from returning to a life behind bars.
While the state is working on the challenge, it has a ways to go
before it can declare success.

According to a recent series of stories on the state's revolving
prison doors by Frank Greene of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, almost
one third of the prison population of some 33,000 is released to
freedom every year. About a third of them - unprepared for the society
beyond prison walls - will be back in prison within three years. That,
in the language of the system, is recidivism.

There's not much mystery about why that happens. With little or no
rehabilitation or work experience, the state releases those inmates to
the outside with $25 in their pocket, the shirt on their back, no job
prospects and often no place to go. It's little wonder they quickly
return to a life of crime.

Rehabilitation has always been in the state's interests, but money for
rehabilitation programs is never easy to find, especially when it is
competing with such basic needs as education, transportation and
health care for law-abiding citizens who have never spent a night in
prison.

A recent Justice Department study pointed out that in recent decades
more money has been spent on more prisons, but not for more
rehabilitation. As a result, "fewer inmates leave prison having
addressed their work, education and substance abuse problems."

Funding for rehabilitation has not kept pace with demand in Virginia,
according to Barry Green, deputy public safety director.

Some alternatives for released inmates that fall within the realm of
rehabilitation include accessible drug-treatment programs, electronic
monitoring of parolees and day-reporting centers where offenders
report before and after work each day.

Virginia has those programs, but some, like in-patient drug-abuse
treatment programs, are only available to a relative few. And there
aren't enough programs.

"Unless they're lucky enough to have a family who wants them and is
understanding and willing to put up with all the changes that have
occurred since they were locked up, they're not really in a position
to make it out there," said Green.

In 1995, Governor George Allen made good on his promise to end parole
and establish tougher sentencing guidelines for violent criminals, an
effort, he said, to shut "the revolving door of justice." He
complained that three out of four violent crimes were committed by
repeat offenders.

Nearly 10 years later, the Times-Dispatch reports, violent criminals
are serving substantially longer sentences, but the average time
served for all inmates is less than four years. And according to the
most recent data available, it appears that repeat offenders commit
three out of four violent crimes.

So little has changed.

In his State of the Union address this year, President Bush touched on
the importance of assisting convicts with a proposed $300 million
"re-entry initiative" for released prisoners. The president put his
finger on the problem when he said, "We know from long experience that
if they can't find work, or a home, or help, they are much more likely
to commit crime and return to prison."

And when they do that, they become wards of the state with a
decreasing chance of ever becoming productive citizens.

And to make matters worse, Frank Green's report found that Virginia is
one of the four toughest states in the land where legal roadblocks
make it difficult for convicts to return to society. In Virginia,
according to a study by the Legal Action Center, employers and
licensing authorities can refuse to hire anyone with a criminal
record, drug felons are barred from public assistance and food stamps
for life and voting rights can be restored only by the governor.

Nonetheless, the Department of Corrections is working on a number of
programs that begin the day the inmate enters the system. H. Scott
Richeson, correctional programs manager for the department, said the
state is trying "to begin release-planning when the person is received
into the department."

The department uses the court's pre-sentence report, which contains
information about the offender's background, crimes and problems, to
help draw up a treatment plan while the inmate is in prison, she said.

"Right now, we have vocational training, anger management, substance
abuse services - all those relate to release skills."

Barry Green said the General Assembly added $1 million to the current
fiscal year and $1.8 million for fiscal 2006 to expand post-release
residential treatment programs.

But Richeson says that is not enough to do the job. "We estimated we
would need 400 beds to meet demand," she said (the state has 90 such
beds), adding that the residential treatment programs, both in prison
and post-release can handle only a fraction of the substance abusers
among the 11,000 inmates who are released every year.

One of the state's success stories is O'Harold Staton, now a barber
with a shop of his own in Richmond. He has been out on parole for 12
years after being sentenced to 23 years for robbery in 1968.

Staton concedes that his family was there to help him, but says that
the best thing the state could do to prepare inmates for release is to
make it mandatory they learn a trade or a skill "that will enable them
to do something when they are released."

Still, he said, "prison is not going to force you to become a better
man. You have to do that on your own."

The Department of Corrections is wrestling with the recidivism
problem. That's the good news. But it does not have the money to
accommodate those 11,000 inmates who are released every year.

But, isn't it a false economy for the legislature not to put up more
money for vocational, substance abuse and post-release programs? Isn't
it better to spend the money to help the former inmates turn their
lives around with the hope of making them productive citizens?

Or is that money better spent by covering the costs of keeping them
behind bars for the balance of their lives? Almost everyone knows the
answer to that.