Leaving prison once and for all: Helping ex-prisoners successfully return to society can greatly improve their chances of staying out of trouble.

Robert E. Roberts knew the political earth had shifted when a bill or funding his Project Return came before the Louisiana Legislature last year, and a handful of conservative lawmakers widely known for their get-tough approach to crime came forward to sing the program's praises.

"That was a great moment for us," said Roberts, executive director of the New Orleans-based prisoner re-entry program started in 1994. "To have people, including a former Republican governor, who are from the 'lock 'em up and throw away the key' school, publicly support what we are doing not only gave us needed recognition, but showed that there's a real movement out there to do things differently."

One of those lawmakers, Senator John T. "Tom" Schedler, says his support for Project Return was based on economics. "We spend about $30,000 a year per person in prison. Frankly I don't see how we can afford to keep it up. Any program that can cut down on the large number of people who return to prison every year is going to get my support. It just makes good fiscal sense."

In a state where up to 5,000 men and women are released from prison and holding facilities every year--and some 1,800 are almost immediately returned due to parole violations--Roberts' program is a welcome relief.

Project Return makes a difference, he says. Its concept is dramatically simple: By offering what program managers call a "safe environment" for recently released inmates, the odds tangibly increase that ex-prisoners will succeed and not return to criminal behavior.

With more than half of its staff composed of former prison inmates, Project Return combines drug counseling, literacy training, computer skills training and job placement with group therapy workshops designed to bolster former inmates' self-esteem.

RECIDIVISM LESS THAN 10 PERCENT

Over the course of seven years, the recidivism rate among the excons entering Project Return's doors has been less than 10 percent during a time when the statewide average has topped 37 percent.

That figure looks even more promising when it's stacked against the 75 percent recidivism rate for former inmates who have been out for up to three years.

That Project Return has received national notice may have as much to do with its success rate as where it is located: Louisiana. The state has one of the largest-at roughly 30,000-inmate populations in the country and historically has not emphasized programs for either inmates or parolees.

That also means that Louisiana is a big prisoner-release state, equal to the far larger Florida, Illinois, New York and Ohio in the number of inmates-at least 14,000-who are returned to society every year. Louisiana's demographics increasingly mirror the nation's, which in the past decade has seen its prison population jump from less than 800,000 to more than 1.2 million.

And like Louisiana, the number of individuals being released from the nation's prisons is staggering: more than 600,000 people this year. Experts predict the same for each of the next several years. It's a phenomenon that Time magazine accurately describes as "the largest prison exodus in history," an exodus whose economic and social burden on the communities and families they return to, let alone the local economy that is expected to absorb them, is near incalculable.

HOMELESS, FRIENDLESS, DESTINED FOR TROUBLE

Even more challenging, according to a report released last summer by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., nearly two-thirds of those 600,000 prisoners are expected to be re-arrested for serious misdemeanor or felony charges within three years. The report calls this the "cycle of removal and return" and says that the large numbers of former prisoners, mostly men, "are increasingly concentrated in a relatively small number of communities that already encounter enormous social and economic disadvantage."

"The implications are enormous," says Jeremy Travis, who co-authored the Urban Institute report, "From Prison to Home-The Dimensions and Consequences of Prisoner Re-entry."

"Every day more than 1,700 individuals will walk out of prison with minimal skills and education-oftentimes coping with serious drug problems-returning to communities where the social fabric is already torn and job opportunities for them are scarce," he says.

And those new releases will come on top of a parole population that has already reached an historic high. There are now more than 4.6 million people in the country on parole, according to the Department of Justice. Of that number, up to a quarter are homeless, friendless and destined for trouble.

"The numbers are overwhelming," agrees JoAnne Page, executive director of the Fortune Society in New York City. Up to 50 percent of the expected 14,000 people who will be released and returned to that city this year may end up homeless.

"Oftentimes, the families they are returning to are in worse trouble than the people being released," says Page. "Many former inmates try to make it in shelters, but those shelters can be dangerous, which ultimately means that many of our clients have preferred to live on their own in the parks.

"We see many more people coming out with more needs than we can possibly meet," Page says. Her nonprofit Fortune Society is dedicated to making the transition smoother from prison to the outside world for recently released parolees. "And the barriers for them to succeed remain enormous," she says. "Up to a third will be returned to prison because of some sort of parole violation. Considering the odds, I am amazed that that number is not higher."

The chances of being sent back to prison in some states are high not only because so many recent releasees are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of everyday life, but also because parole rules and regulations often unintentionally make a parolee's life more difficult.

A New York parolee may be required to meet with his parole officer once a week, a drug counselor twice a week and a welfare caseworker every month. Urine samples for all three officials are often required with each visit. A missed appointment can prompt a revocation of parole.

Intensive parole supervision, contends Travis, "does not tend to reduce the rate of recidivism. In fact, most of the available evidence suggests that it increases the revocation rate. The more closely you watch somebody, the more you place conditions on them, and the more likely it is that they will do something wrong."

Conversely, parolees with no supervision are often the ones most likely to get in trouble. And because of truth-in-sentencing laws, lack of supervision is now more likely. Under truth-in-sentencing laws in some states, a person serves all of his sentence in prison and doesn't have to check in with anyone upon release.

"There are people out there who very much need to have some sort of supervision once they are released, particularly those we refer to as offenders with special needs," remarks Reginald Wilkinson, director of Ohio's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

"These are people who may be mentally ill or retarded or older. Parole officers target people with certain kinds of mental illnesses, for example, just to make certain they take their medication," he says.

Although there are many studies suggesting that the most effective way to reduce the nation's recidivism rate is through a more thorough and activist system of parole, others say state efforts-specifically in-prison programs that emphasize education and vocational skills, as well as treating drug abuse problems and mental disorders-should be launched long before probation is even considered.

"For years, many prison systems, ours included, tried to prepare offenders to go back into the community by putting them through a two-month pre-release training session," says Wilkinson.

"But now we know that the most effective preparation for a prisoner's release must begin long before that at the point where the person first enters our system," he says, "not just two months before they are released."

Although such programs, generally bunched under the term "rehabilitation," were popular in the 1950s and '60s, state dollars in the past decade have been largely devoted to both the building and staffing of ever-larger prisons.

Ninety-four percent of the $22 billion spent on prisons in 1996- the last year for which information was available-went to the construction and maintenance of the prisons themselves, while only 6 percent was used for in-prison programs, according to the Urban Institute study.

Not surprisingly, the percentage of inmates participating in such programs has declined, during the very years in which the overall prison population witnessed its greatest growth.

In 1991, for example, 31 percent of inmates participated in some form of a vocational program. By 1997, that number was down to 27 percent. Similarly, 43 percent of the nation's prisoners took part in in-prison education programs a decade ago, a number that fell to 35 percent six years later.

BOLSTERING IN-PRISON PROGRAMS

Some states, particularly Maryland, Minnesota and Ohio, are seeking to reverse the declining fortunes of in-prison programs by offering a wide range of services to address specific prisoner needs from the first day of incarceration.

"We do a profile on each of the people who come in and try to ascertain what their highest level of education is, what kinds of jobs they have held in the past and even their medical histories," explains Wilkinson.

Ohio corrections supervisors also study the arrest records of inmates to get a better understanding of the type, location and circumstances of each crime committed.

"The idea is a simple one," adds Wilkinson. "If we can understand where a person is coming from and what it was that prompted that person to get in trouble, we will have a better opportunity of developing plans to prevent the same thing from happening once that person re-enters society."

Ohio Senate President Richard Finan supports Wilkinson's efforts. "Two things that separate those who return to prison from those who don't are their education level and whether or not the person leaving prison has any sort of marketable job skills," he says.

Inmates in Ohio's prisons--most of whom read at a sixth grade level--are encouraged to study for their GED degrees. "We also have a pretty active prison industry in four of our prisons," Finan notes. "Prisoners can learn how to become carpenters, electricians or even mechanics. Some of them have done microfilming work for certain state offices.

"The idea in teaching them a skill," he says, "is to at least give them a chance to get a job once they leave prison. New skills make it more likely that they won't be back."

With a 32 percent recidivism rate for the 17,000 people who yearly leave Ohio's correctional facilities, the state is slightly below the national rate of more than 37 percent. But Wilkinson is convinced that that percentage will decrease even further once the prisoners who have been part of the state's in-prison programs are released over the next decade.

"We know that in the places where prisoners have been a part of some sort of in-prison program, the recidivism rate actually drops as low as 25 percent or so," Wilkinson says. "This should tell you something about the effectiveness of in-prison programs."

The emphasis on in-prison education and job skills programs has even reached the county level as can be seen by a new program unveiled earlier this year in Los Angeles County. It will provide training in such areas as computers, music and even the culinary arts for more than 22,000 youthful offenders.

"You don't have to wait until a young person gets to the prison level to reach out and help him," maintains Larry Springer, director of juvenile courts and community schools for the Office of Education in Los Angeles County. "You can do it as soon as that person is incarcerated for the first time while they are still a teen--and you can do it as a state program."

"What we're trying to do is match the needs of the kids who are incarcerated, trying to find out the things they are lacking, so that when they leave here they will have some skill and some interest that will give them a chance on the outside," he explains.

Just as important, Springer says, such programs can be implemented without taxing state resources. "What we're doing here has not cost us one extra penny," he says. "We have private donations. People in the community donated musical instruments, for example. And Verizon gave us a $100,000 grant to pay for libraries at every one of our juvenile halls and camps."

Another source of support for the states may be found with the new and ambitious Serious and Violent Offender Re-Entry Initiative, a federal program that will provide grants between $500,000 and $2 million for states to develop in-prison programs that emphasize job skills, education and drug counseling.

A unique joint effort by the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Labor, the goal is to eventually fund re-entry programs in all 50 states.

"But being in every state is not the most important thing for us," says Adam Spector of Justice's Office of Congressional and Public Affairs. "What matters much more is the quality of the program and if it is available to prisoners at least a year before they are released.

"While there may be variations in the kinds of state programs we will ultimately support, the one thing each must have as their primary focus is providing for the successful transition of an ex-offender back into the community. That's the bottom line."

At the same time some states have already established re-entry programs with an eye on snaring federal funds.

"You have to find other funding sources for things like this because, let's face it, most state budgets are in trouble," says Nevada Assembly-woman Sandra Tiffany, who last year helped usher through the Legislahire a bill calling for the creation of a re-entry court program.

In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Tiffany said there was a need to establish some system of after-release help and supervision for parolees who are usually released with "only $28, prison blues on their back and not much else."

The resulting legislation allows for the early release of some prisoners, a move that Tiffany says will ultimately save the state $16,000 per inmate. Such parolees will be part of a structured monitoring program that will also revolve around drug treatment and job training.

"We took a holistic approach to the problem," explains Tiffany. "We had nothing that addressed the prisoners' needs at the time of their release. How to help them, for example, get all their documentation together, apply for a job and write a resume, how to get housing and a driver's license, and maybe even re-unite them with their family."

Funding for Nevada's re-entry courts will come from the Justice Department's initiative, which already is funding re-entry court sites in California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, New York, Ohio and West Virginia.

A smaller number of states, meanwhile, have won money from the Justice Department for what is officially called Re-entry Partnerships, designed to coordinate the many different housing, social service and neighborhood services that could conceivably help a prisoner upon release.

"The thing for the states to keep in mind is that they don't have to face the challenge of prisoner re-entry alone," says Travis.

"There are other sources of funding out there to help them. It's just a matter of addressing specific needs and priorities, really looking at the system you have for prison release in your own state and trying to fix what doesn't work."

Such assessments, of course, can be painful, revealing, as they may, painful flaws in approaches that once seemed entirely right.

"It can be a painful process," agrees Roberts of Project Return, who last year heard Louisiana lawmakers say they thought they had put too much emphasis in the 1990s on incarceration.

What lawmakers seem to be looking for is accountability, Roberts says. "Everyone has to look in the mirror and ask, 'What are we doing wrong?' And then ask 'What can we change to make things better?' "That approach may not give us the one answer that will solve all of these questions," he contends, "but it will at least move us in the right direction."

Editor's note: Information on the Serious and Violent Offender Re-Entry Initiative is available at [phone] and at the Department of Justice Web site at www.OJP.USDOJ.gov

RELATED ARTICLE: WHY SO MANY PRISONERS?

From her downtown Manhattan office, only blocks from Sept. 11's "ground zero," JoAnne Page daily works with men and women who have been released from prison. Her nonprofit Fortune Society provides re-entry services to some 2,000 former prisoners a year coming out of New York's correctional facilities.

But it is the ones going in who really worry her. "We have so many people coming out because we have so many people going in," says Page. She contends that up to a third of the people sentenced to prison in New York are nonviolent drug offenders "most of whom are easily supervised in the community, which would be an enormous financial savings to the state.

"As it stands now, there are simply too many people doing too much time," she says. "It's more than we or the state can adequately handle."

There are more people than ever before behind bars: 1.2 million men and women were locked up in state prisons as of 1999, a figure that has nearly quadrupled during the past generation.

"The per capita rate of imprisonment in America hovered at about 110 per 100,000 from 1925 to 1973, with little variation," notes the Urban Institute report "From Prison to Home," That rate jumped to 476 incarcerated individuals for every 100,000 people, beginning in 1973. From just 1985 to 1998, the number of people sent to prisons jumped from 280,000 to more than 610,000.

Scholars point to three reasons for the prison population explosion. One was the rapidly spreading popularity of crack cocaine in the mid and late-1980s, the use of which oftentimes led to violent behavior. Both zero tolerance and truth-in-sentencing laws, reflective of a more conservative and tougher response to crime, that swept through the country's state legislatures during the past decade also added numbers.

"The states did what they felt they had to do during an era of rising crime," observes Jeremy Travis, senior fellow at the Urban Institute. "The thinking was that too many people who committed crimes served no time at all in prison. And those who did serve did not serve long enough."

Lawmakers expressed particular frustration over prisoners being released after serving only a fraction of their sentences, in some instances less than 50 percent.

In response, 17 states created sentencing commissions designed to restrict what is called "judicial sentencing discretion." At the same time, 40 states enacted truth-in-sentencing laws, 27 of which require violent offenders to serve at least 85 percent of their sentence behind bars.

Three-strikes legislation also has proved popular during the past decade. Twenty-four states passed laws demanding lengthy sentences for offenders who have broken the law at least three times.

The cumulative effect of such legislation, thinks Page, "is not only far more prisoners at any given time than anyone could have imagined," but a growing percentage "who could far more effectively be dealt with in the community, outside the walls of prison."

Many lawmakers who originally supported "get-tough" legislation-- some of whom now emphasize the importance of in-prison education and effective re-entry programs--say they still believe tough sentencing laws are important.

"Maybe for a smaller offense, say a first-time nonviolent offense, we don't need such tough laws," says Louisiana's Senator John T. "Tom" Schedler. "But when it comes to something like murder or rape, a violent offense, don't even talk to me about it. That's just how I feel."

In Ohio, Senate President Richard Finan has hopes that the prison population will go down without getting rid of tough sentencing laws. "The number of new people coming into our prison is actually below that of a year ago," he says, noting that the decline in numbers has allowed Ohio to even board up one aging facility.

"It may be that we've peaked, and now we're actually going to see fewer prisoners coming in," Finan says. If such is the case, Finan says, he still wants to see that Ohio keeps its tough sentencing laws on the books, primarily because "you never know when you will need them."

PRISONER GROWTH RATE MAY BE DROPPING

The numbers are daunting. The United States is not only nearing a historic high as it flirts with a prison population of 2 million, according to a Bureau of justice Statistics report released last summer, it may also be on its way to a world record. It could match or perhaps even surpass Russia as the country with the highest rate of incarceration. In the United States in 2000 there were 699 prisoners for every 100,000 people.

But behind those numbers lurks a glimmer of hope, according to the same report. Last year, for the first time in a decade, the growth rate for federal and state prisoners actually slowed to 4.4 percent. For the past decade the rate has been around 7.6 percent.

In fact, nearly a dozen states--including California and New York--even reported an overall decline in their inmate populations from 1999 to 2000. "The drop in crime is finally starting to show up in a smaller growth rate in the number of prisoners," says Allen Beck, co-author of the report.

The recent decline in crime and subsequent slowdown in the growth of the national inmate population does not mean the overall prison population is expected to drop anytime soon, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington think tank that studies criminal justice issue.

The Sentencing Project predicts that the national prison population may increase for each year leading up to 2005, reaching a new peak of more than 2.1 million people. That figure would represent nearly seven times the number of people who were in prisons in the United States in the early 1970s.

But while those numbers may not offer hope, the ages of inmates may. The same Bureau of Justice report notes that inmates between the ages of 21 and 35--the ages that comprise what is popularly known as Generation X--make up only 52 percent of the national prison population. By contrast, 10 years ago inmates in that same age group made up a far larger 62 percent.

The proportional drop in inmates from this age group may have less to do with a lack of criminal behavior and more with simple numbers. At 14 percent of the population, according to the latest U.S. Census, Generation X is one of the smallest generations of its kind. It's smaller than the Baby Boomers, who continue to make up the largest population group in the country at more than 34 percent; smaller even than the emerging Millennials--those who were born after 1980--who already comprise roughly 14 percent of the population.

What impact any of these numbers will ultimately have on prison populations and state correctional budgets, of course, is difficult to predict. But many corrections officials believe a leveling off or even a decline in their state prison populations is certain sometime in the next decade.

"I think the numbers are going to go down in a lot of places," says Reginald Wilkinson, director of Ohio's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. "You should start to see changes in the next couple of years, at least a slowing of the growth rate, if not a reversal."

But after that, as Generation X nears middle age, Wilkinson says it's difficult to make any predictions. Yet the Millennials will comprise a block as large or larger than the Baby Boom. Isn't it likely that we may see a similar growth in prison populations as they move into the key crime committing ages?

This much is certain: So far the young Millennials only comprise just over 3 percent of the nation's prison population. That number is just short of the 3.5 percent that those in the 1 7- to 20-year-old category comprised a decade ago as the first wave of Generation X.

Garry Boulard is a frequent contributor to State Legislatures magazine. He is a New Orleans free-lance writer.