Pubdate: Sun, 28 May 2000 Source: Austin American-Statesman (TX) Copyright: 2000 Austin American-Statesman Contact: P. O. Box 670 Austin, Texas 78767 Fax: 512-445-3679 Website: http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/ Author: Neal Peirce REHABILITATION THE KEY TO STEMMING CRIME WASHINGTON -- Here and in state capitals across America, there's a wave of anguish: What do we do about the 585,000 convicts who will come out of federal and state prisons this year? And who'll keep coming out in huge numbers each year, as far down the road as we can see? The easy political formula since the '70s has been to lock up wrongdoers, generally with set sentences so no soft-headed judge or parole board could set them free prematurely. Rehabilitation was dismissed as worthless, drug treatment pitifully underfunded. So now we have to reap the whirlwind. Whether or not they were abused or sodomized in prison, most prisoners emerge embittered. Few have job skills. Many are illiterate. Frequently they have no place to stay. Many got illicit drugs behind bars, maintaining their drug addictions. At current recidivism rates, 62 percent of state prisoners will be rearrested for some crime within three years, and 41 percent will return to prison. Big numbers in, big numbers out -- what did we expect? Ex-cons may be a few years older and less likely to commit violent crimes. But if they're hooked on drugs, if they've been regimented and isolated from normal work and family pressures, the bigger wonder would be a quick adjustment and going straight. So the Clinton Justice Department wants to spend $145 million on drug treatment, court supervision and job training for some returning convicts. With 4.1 million offenders already under supervision, it's your classic drop in the bucket. Thirty years of law and order, trying to scare people out of offenses with heavier sentences, have failed abysmally to stem crime, says ex-Watergate offender Charles W. Colson. Colson's Justice Fellowship and Prison Fellowship Ministries seek to create person-to-person bridges between prisoners and communities, focusing on offender-victim reconciliation, volunteers mentoring offenders,and assisting ex-offenders in finding a job. Scattered across America, other imaginative programs are trying -- as Colson puts it -- "to restore the right moral balance to a community fractured by crime." Consider the San Francisco Bay Area's Garden Project, created and directed since 1985 by reformer Catherine Sneed. Inmates at the San Bruno County Jail can volunteer to work at an organic farm and greenhouse on the premises. On release, they can graduate to a paid job, working a minimum of 16 hours a week, at a city community garden. But not without stiff rules: Participants must stay drug-free, pay court-ordered child support, work for a General Educational Development diploma or take college courses, get a California driver's license and open a bank account. Recidivism among Garden Project participants? It's 24 percent, compared with 55 percent for nonparticipants. In St. Louis, a "restorative justice" program operating since 1993 has helped 43 ex-offender "Care Team" members -- first with housing, transportation, drug counseling and basic education, but also by placing them in jobs where they have a chance to serve people more needy than themselves. So far, reports board member Rosanne Bennett, not one participant has reoffended or returned to prison. However promising and heartening such programs may be, they can't substitute for a rational American corrections system. Costs, public fears, recidivism will all continue to mount, barring two fundamental reforms: well-planned rehabilitation for prisoners, and drug treatment for all who need it. Though rejected by law-and-order politicos starting in the '70s, classic rehabilitation had dual common-sense goals -- to protect the public and to help offenders return to a crime-free life in the community. Criminologist Robert Fosen, who worked in the California justice system in the '50s and '60s, explains how prisoners were then assigned individual counselors, received full physical, dental and psychological tests, and were prescribed individual treatment plans. Indeterminate sentences to provide incentives for good behavior were critical to the approach; so was funding for training, especially in basic literacy. On release, offenders received ample parole services -- easy enough when incarceration was a tiny percentage of today's level. Would it cost big money to recreate such services now? Of course. But rationally, we really have no other choice. Nor can we avoid, ultimately, another big bill to pay: universal drug treatment for addicted offenders. High percentages of arrestees test positive for illicit drugs; 60 percent of inmates say they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of their offense. My columns about drugs and prisons have evoked dozens of letters from inmates pleading for drug treatment. Virtually every study says drug rehab programs work -- indeed whether they're entered under legal pressure or chosen voluntarily. Delaware offenders who received therapeutic drug treatment, both behind bars and afterward in a work-release program, were 70 percent less likely than other convicts to return to drug use and incur rearrest, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It's simple folks: $$$$$. Not whether we'll spend it, but how. Peirce is a Washington columnist and contributing editor of the National Journal.