| Chapter 15
Covering Community Corrections: Probation, Parole and Beyond
By Jenifer Warren
Barriers to Re-entry
When prisoners first leave prison, their needs and challenges are many and daunting. Despite the recent attention to re-entry, only a minority of inmates are able to take part in meaningful vocational or educational programs behind the walls.
In most states, once it is time for release, they are given only clothes, a small sum of money, and instructions to report to their parole officer within 24 hours.
Not surprisingly, the first days after release may be the most difficult. Ex-inmates may not possess identification necessary to obtain a job or housing, such as a driver’s license, and may not have applied for basic benefits that are available to most citizens. Without family housing, they may be relegated to sleep in a shelter. Medicaid benefits that do not start for 30 days may leave them without medication.
Most are unskilled and may still be battling addictions. Many are estranged from family, poorly educated and ill-trained for the job market. Rejoining the free world, after years of a life in which every moment is dictated by their custodians, is unsettling. And while free, parolees face many continuing consequences of their conviction, as well as the constant threat of reincarceration for slip-ups, placing them in a sort of legal limbo.
They also are stigmatized with the indelible label of ex-con, which brings discrimination in everything from finding housing, getting a job and regaining parental rights to, at least initially, participation in the basic rite of democracy, voting. While some states restore voting rights once a felon has completed a prison term or parole, others strip the franchise from ex-convicts for life.
Barriers in the workforce may be the most painful for parolees to overcome, as they are both official and unspoken. Legal obstacles arise in part because certain occupations require licenses that are denied to any ex-convict—bans upheld in the courts. Beyond that, employers are suspicious of parolees, viewing a conviction as evidence of a character flaw. The result: the work options for ex-convicts are narrowed, adding to their struggle to regain their footing in the outside world.
Beyond employment, parolees convicted of drug crimes face barriers in obtaining food stamps and public assistance; public housing; and student loans and grants.
“One has to question whether we are jeopardizing public safety by making it so difficult for prison releasees to succeed,” says Petersilia.
Evaluating Prisoner Re-entry
Before the Second Chance Act was passed, the federal government gave grants to state and local agencies starting in 2002 under a $110 million Serious and Violent Offender Re-entry Initiative. Each of 89 programs devised its own re-entry projects; researchers have been studying 16 of them in 14 states to learn lessons that might be applied nationwide.
Not surprisingly, the programs were dealing with a troubled population. Drug use was reported by 95 percent of participants, and more than half had been treated for a mental health or substance abuse problem; only 60 percent of the adults involved had finished 12th grade or had a GED.
In their evaluation of the reentry programs, researchers found that a higher proportion of convicts received drug treatment in custody than they did on the outside. But on a brighter note, participants in the community “were much more likely to receive a broad array of services” than those who didn’t take part and were 10 percent more likely to get jobs. Recidivism rates of participants in this program had not yet been calculated as of mid-2009.
However, Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an authority on prisoner re-entry, told a congressional committee in 2009 that effective re-entry programs had the potential of reducing recidivism by 15-20 percent. Travis based his assessment partly on research by Steve Aos and colleagues at the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, who have studied recidivism reductions as a result of various education, job training, and drug treatment programs.
Sex Offenders: Special Scrutiny
The recent flurry of federal and state laws governing released sex offenders has created new and extraordinary challenges on the housing front. First came Megan’s Law, which required public disclosure of sex offenders’ information – such as their name, picture, address and crime – on the Internet. The law was inspired by the rape and murder of four-year-old Megan Kanka in New Jersey.
Next came a series of laws passed after Jessica Lunsford, a nine-year-old Florida girl, was raped and murdered in 2005 by John Couey, a convicted sex offender. In addition to lengthening prison terms for sex offenders and subjecting them to lifetime monitoring, versions of Jessica’s Law in some states prohibited the offenders from living within a half-mile of a park or school. In California, this restriction has created a housing crisis that has driven numerous paroled sex offenders to live on the street – making them difficult to supervise — or merely abscond. While many of these offenders are serious and dangerous criminals, others – say, a teenager guilty of statutory rape for having sex with an under-age girlfriend — committed crimes that make them far less of a public threat.
Jeremy Travis calls such restrictions “invisible punishments,” and notes that at a time when prison programs to prepare parolees for life outside were dwindling, barriers hindering offender reintegration have proliferated.
That scenario sums up the overall tension within corrections – and community corrections, in particular. On the one hand, law enforcement officials have an overriding responsibility to protect public safety. On the other hand, society is obliged to protect the rights of ex-felons and help them begin a new and more productive life.
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