PUTTING PRISONERS FIRST

A recent proposal by Sen. John Whitmire, a Democrat, and Rep. Jerry
Madden, a Republican, to stop our state's gross overspending and
reliance on prisons should lead to finding and funding innovative
alternatives to incarceration. Such a proposal is long overdue,
considering that Texas has rightfully earned the nickname 'The
Lock-'em Up State.' Of the 2.2 million people incarcerated in the
United States, one out of five is in a Texas prison.

Whitmire and Madden's proposal is indeed a promising start, but
there's a catch: The proposal won't solve the Texas prison problem
completely because we can't reduce prison populations without curbing
recidivism.

The issue of recidivism is often left out of discussions about prison
reform, yet recidivists account for an enormous number of people
behind bars. As of 2002, 39 percent of prison inmates had served
three or more sentences. Sixty thousand incarcerated men and women
will return home to Texas this year, and with few resources and
little assistance for transitioning back into society, half won't
make it on the outside. They'll end up back in prison within the next
three years.

This cycling in and out of prisons comes at a huge cost to families,
communities and taxpayers: Texas spends about $2.5 billion a year to
maintain its prisons.

Recidivism is an urgent problem and has proven extraordinarily
difficult to combat.

Creating a successful prisoner re-entry program requires tireless
perseverance; systems must be tried, altered, and tried again. But
I've recently seen a powerful film about a program that actually
works. 'Hard Road Home,' which debuted at the South by Southwest Film
Festival documents several months at the Exodus Transitional
Community in Harlem.

Exodus is unique for two reasons.

First, it is run by a former drug dealer and ex-prisoner, Julio
Medina, who has experienced the challenges of reentry.

Second, Exodus is part of the Ready4Work initiative, a national
project developed by Public/Private Ventures with the Department of
Labor and the Department of Justice.

Ready4Work is an innovative re-entry program model because it
integrates job placement, case management and mentoring to create a
comprehensive support system for ex-prisoners, an approach that has
brought real results. The Ready4Work initiative has reduced
recidivism rates for its participants by 50 percent.

Ready4Work's progress is so promising that it inspired a new federal
funding initiative -- the President's Prisoner Re-entry Initiative.

One character we meet in the film, Griffik, offers a particularly
poignant example of why this system works.

After Exodus staffers spend hours helping him find a job, he doesn't
show up for the interview. Griffik receives a stern lecture from
Julio Medina, the director of the program, who has invested a lot in
Griffik's reentry.

Meanwhile, the program staffers find him another job interview.

This time, he shows up and lands the job. He realizes that it takes
work and patience to build a viable post-prison life, but the effort
is worthwhile. Without Ready4Work, Griffik might not have gotten a
second chance.

Stories such as Griffik's show us that our prison crisis is not
hopeless. But in the United States, and especially in Texas, there is
a tremendous amount of work to be done. Though the Whitmire and
Madden's proposal is valuable, we must remember not to leave
recidivism out of the prison conversation. By supporting and
cultivating programs like Ready4Work in Texas, we can make real progress.

Let's make this a model of how, instead of locking 'em up twice, we
can help them thrive.