A flood of parolees hits streets

Here in Houston, inmate Dockery laments the loss of a life-skills class that was cut since he was here a year ago on another parole violation.

The financial squeeze is discouraging to many who believe that successful reentry must begin long before prisoners are shown the door.

"The reentry issue must be dealt with while a person is still incarcerated," says Mario Paparozzi, a justice expert at The College of New Jersey and a former chairman of that state's parole board.

Successful reentry, he says, means creating a thoughtful review and release process and rethinking how best to use already available resources. It means building strong ties between local housing authorities, police, and businesses. In short, says Dr. Paparozzi, it means "owning crime as a social problem."

One such innovative program is La Bodega de la Familia in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Knowing that roughly 80 percent of all people who leave prison have a substance-abuse problem, the center aims to involve families in the reentry process in an effort to keep parolees drug-free.

"There is tremendous pressure on returning prisoners, who feel society is waiting for them to fail instead of helping them to succeed. That's why relapse is so high," says Carol Shapiro, executive director of Family Justice in Manhattan and creator of La Bodega.

If successful, parole is cost effective, experts say. Locking someone up runs between $30,000 and $40,000 a year, while having them on parole costs between $5,000 and $10,000 a year.

Nationally, 35 percent of everyone returning to prison is a parole violator. While some argue that it makes no sense to send people back to prison on technical violations, parole officers say they face an almost impossible task in making such decisions.

"Parole is the dog that everyone likes to kick," says Carl Wicklund, executive director of the American Probation and Parole Association in Lexington, Kentucky. "In addition to working under increased caseloads and increased workloads, [parole officers] know that they will be blamed for everything that goes wrong."

Intense public pressure prods many parole officers to send people back to prison for technical violations, says Mr. Wicklund.

That is just what happened in inmate Dockery's case. He is currently being held in a facility that consists almost entirely of parole violators - costing Texas taxpayers $31.13 per inmate per day.

Even though he's been in and out of prison most of his adult life, he says he will do things differently this next time around. "In the past ... I never changed anything when I got out," he says. "But not this time. I made up in my mind that this is my last confinement."

The challenge for Dockery, for other inmates, and for US society, will be to beat the pattern of the past.

A study this year of 300,000 prisoners released in 1994 found that within three years:

• 67.5 percent were rearrested (up from 62.5 percent in 1983), almost all on felony or serious misdemeanor charges.

• 46.9 percent were reconvicted for a new crime.

• 25.4 percent were resentenced to prison for a new crime.

• 51.8 percent were back in prison for a new sentence or for a technical violation of their release.

• Rearrest rates were highest for property crimes such as burglary.

• The rearrest rate for violent offenders was 61.7 percent, up slightly from 1983.

Source: US Department of Justice, 15-state survey

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