Pubdate: Wed, 20 Dec 2006
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2006 St. Petersburg Times
Contact: http://www.sptimes.com/letters/
Website: http://www.sptimes.com/home.shtml
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419

SMALL SUMS; BIG REWARDS

Department of Corrections Secretary Jim McDonough says that Florida 
will release 36,000 inmates this year and a third of them will be 
back in the state's prisons within 36 months. The reason so many 
reoffend, McDonough says, is that "they're not prepared to live a 
life without crime."

Finding ways of helping them change that pattern was the job of a 
task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush that just submitted its final 
report and recommendations. Most of the task force's findings and 
suggestions are obvious - providing inmates with educational 
opportunities because most enter prison with about a 6th-grade 
reading level; and offering vocational training and substance abuse 
treatment because more than half of all inmates enter the system with 
an addiction problem. But Florida does woefully little to help 
ex-offenders succeed in a crime- free life after prison. And we reap 
what we sow, with whopping prison costs, higher crime rates and fewer 
productive citizens.

At the front end, a small investment will be required. But as Florida 
TaxWatch has found, for every dollar spent on inmate programs, $1.66 
is returned in the first year and $3.20 in the second. We can't 
afford not to do it.

Oddly, one of the most specific and strongly urged recommendations 
was to triple the number of faith-based prisons in Florida within the 
next two years, even though the task force acknowledges there is no 
evidence those programs lower recidivism.

Florida's experiment with faith-based prisons is one of Bush's pet 
projects. The three current facilities raise significant church-state 
separation issues as well as balkanize prison populations by 
religion. These programs have lower disciplinary problems, but that 
is largely because only inmates with clean disciplinary records qualify.

It doesn't make any sense to spend money and time expanding a program 
that is constitutionally suspect and fails to do much to prepare 
prisoners for reintegration. As McDonough points out, the primary 
tools for reducing recidivism are improving literacy - which he says 
reduces the likelihood of reoffending by 6 percent for every 
grade-level increase - vocational training and substance abuse 
treatment. Faith-based programs are well down the list.

Another blatant oversight by the task force was that it put off 
dealing with the automatic restoration of civil rights for ex-felons. 
Without those rights restored, ex-felons are barred from seeking a 
variety of employment and occupational licensing opportunities. The 
task force recommended disconnecting civil rights restoration and 
employment opportunities. But it makes just as much sense to do as 
Gov. -elect Charlie Crist has suggested and provide some kind of 
automatic restoration of civil rights to those who have served their time.

Beyond these few obvious missteps, the task force's recommendations 
are a series of solid ideas that would give ex-offenders a far better 
chance at a success. McDonough says it wouldn't cost much more than 
an additional $6-million to increase reading levels and provide 
substance abuse treatment to Florida's inmates, and the state would 
see a return of up to sixfold in money saved and crimes averted. That 
is a small price to pay for such a significant return on investment.
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