Pubdate: Sun, 26 Jun 2005
Source: News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)
Copyright: 2005 The News and Observer Publishing Company
Contact: https://miva.nando.com/contact_us/letter_editor.html
Website: http://www.news-observer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/304
Author: Kate Zernike, The New York Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

WITH FOCUS ON DRUG TREATMENT, PRISON CUTS RECIDIVISM

Inmates Also Get Training For Jobs

CHICAGO -- Andre Willis started selling cocaine and heroin when he was
14, and by age 25 he had been sent to prison four times. Each time he
got out, he would go back to selling drugs and smoking marijuana. The
fourth time the state of Illinois offered a different kind of
sentence: a year at a new state prison dedicated to drug treatment,
where Willis got job training and addiction counseling that has
continued into his parole.

When he got out of prison in late 2004, his parole officer and
treatment counselor helped him find a halfway house to live in, away
from the patterns of his old neighborhood. And they watched as he went
door to door for three months until he found a job at a food market.
"It's not the job I want," said Willis, who turns 27 next month, "but
it's a job."

Faced with a record 40,000 inmates coming out of prison this year, as
well as record rates of recidivism, Illinois has put the new prison --
the Sheridan Correctional Center -- at the center of a plan to prevent
repeat offenders from returning.

Opened 18 months ago in a previously shuttered prison 70 miles
southwest of Chicago, Sheridan will soon be the nation's largest
dedicated drug treatment prison. Sixty-nine percent of all inmates are
in prison on drug-related crimes.

Across the country, more than 600,000 prisoners are released each
year, and about two-thirds return to prison within three years,
according to the Justice Department. About 70 percent have drug or
alcohol problems, and about 40 percent return to prison because of
drug violations.

With prison costs rising and budgets tightening, even states that had
embraced tough law-and-order approaches are now trying to smooth
re-entry to break the cycle of repeat offenses. Illinois officials say
even small declines in recidivism would save money in the long term
because now statewide, 55 percent of all prisoners return within three
years and 80 percent are rearrested.

The Sheridan program costs about $35 million to run a year. Keeping a
medium-security inmate in a conventional prison costs about $25,000 a
year.

Promising early results at Sheridan have made it something of a model.
Corrections officials from Kentucky and Louisiana have visited. And in
the Midwest, where a surge in methamphetamine use has officials
desperate for any possible remedy, Nebraska and Iowa are also studying
whether to dedicate facilities to drug treatment.

Sheridan's differences

There are about a dozen drug treatment prisons across the country, but
most focus on first-time offenders. Sheridan is rare because it is a
medium-security prison and most of its inmates are repeat offenders
convicted of serious crimes. Its post-release services are also unusual.

The state has added 100 parole agents, for a total of 440, to allow
agents to work more closely with former felons. It has also assigned
drug treatment counselors to all Sheridan parolees to help them find
jobs and housing and obtain IDs such as driver's licenses -- services
often not available to former felons.

Illinois has opened seven re-entry centers where some parolees check
in daily for drug testing and others come for job and treatment
support. And for the first time, state officials have worked formally
with local groups in Chicago that have set up drug addiction support
groups.

"These people are coming home; they're going to be behind you in line
at the Wal-Mart," said Michael Rothwell, Sheridan's warden. "Not to
help them is folly."

Prison officials say Sheridan inmates begin preparing to leave the day
they arrive at the prison, set on 270 acres surrounded by cornfields.
Inmates divide their time among group therapy, drug counseling and
classes or job training, which is mandatory.

Rothwell, the warden, arranged for the National Association of Home
Builders to teach construction trades. The Illinois Manufacturers'
Association, facing a wave of retirement among workers who make spring
wires, asked to set up a program as well and has hired hundreds of
graduates, said John Bitowt, who trains the prisoners.

The men are searched and tested for drugs. They are sent back to a
regular prison if they are found to be involved in gang recruitment or
violence. About 800 men have completed Sheridan, and about 250 have
been expelled.

The prison tries to build trust, responsibility and some measure of
independence. The inmates move in small groups without guards to
escort them, although cameras track their movements. As a result,
Sheridan looks more like the boys' reform school it once was than a
conventional prison.

Getting out

Most prisons release inmates with a small amount of money and
sometimes clean clothes; at Sheridan, inmates meet with parole
officers 30 days before they leave and are assigned a drug counselor
as well to work with them after release.

Among the first 150 graduates of Sheridan, 27 percent were arrested
within nine months of release, said David E. Olson, a professor at
Loyola University Chicago who has tracked the program. That is
compared with 46 percent of a group of inmates of other institutions
with similar background offenses and drug use. Ten percent of the
Sheridan graduates returned to prison within that time, compared with
27 percent of the comparison sample.

Some Sheridan parolees have resented the follow-up, but success
depends largely on motivation. Reginald Banks, 38, had been through
drug treatment in his previous prison stays when he arrived at
Sheridan in January 2004.

"When I got out I'd just get myself a bag," he said. "I knew it wasn't
going to work." That changed after his most recent arrest for dealing
drugs, when his 5-year-old son told him, "That's all you do, is stay
in trouble."

At Sheridan, Banks said, he learned "there are more important things
than being on the corner."

"What's important to me is being home with my son, rather than just
having him accept my phone calls."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin