Pubdate: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 Source: Winston-Salem Journal (NC) Copyright: 2003 Piedmont Publishing Co. Inc. Contact: http://www.journalnow.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/504 Note: The Journal does not publish letters from writers outside its daily home delivery circulation area. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) A GOOD EXAMPLE Keep your fingers crossed for John Savage. Savage is starting life over at age 37. For the past 19 years, he's been in and out of prison, hooked on cocaine and alcohol off and on, and a member of society who took more than he gave. Now, as Journal reporter John Railey detailed in a front-page story Monday, he's staying at Samaritan Ministries, working at a job laying concrete and vowing to stay out of prison and off controlled substances. It's taken some perseverance. Savage was honest about his past and had some trouble landing a job before being hired by Ernest Anthony, who says, "I don't pay any attention to what he did if a man works." Savage earns $10 an hour. After work, Savage goes back to Samaritan and attends Bible-study classes and programs aimed at helping him stay off drugs. So far, so good. The senior staff counselor at Samaritan says Savage is "very focused on what he wants to accomplish." Turning a more or less habitual offender into a productive citizen is not just good for him. It's good for society generally. When someone is behind bars, he's not paying taxes, he's not supporting his family and he's costing the state $65 a day in room and board. On Oct. 31, there were 34,056 people in the state prison system, which releases 23,000 of them each year. Almost a third of those released are charged with new crimes inside two years. The finances are finally attracting some serious interest in the possibility of taking people who are dependents of the state and turning them into productive citizens. Programs to do that, monitored for success, can be among the soundest investments a society can make in a healthy future, both for the society and for its citizens. The programs needed vary in subject matter widely. In some programs, the object is to make an ex-offender a credible job candidate, wearing appropriate clothing, speaking and acting like a potential employee and gaining self-confidence. Other programs attempt to bring job candidates together with those who have jobs available. Transportation is an issue that is being addressed in some innovative ways. Recidivism is one of society's most insidious problems. It reflects wasted resources and wasted human lives. Ideally, of course, the best way to address recidivism is to keep people out of prison in the first place. But we all make mistakes. They shouldn't necessarily be unforgivable or fatal to a productive life. - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl