Programs equip prisoners with skills to re-enter society

Parole officer Joe Keevama talks with a parolee's relative to help the family get ready

It might take a month, and once, it took a year and a half, but always he went back to using methamphetamine and wound up back in prison.

But this time, Arvizu, 38, is serving his yearlong sentence in a special prison yard created to make inmates more successful when they are released. He earned his GED, is taking mandatory classes to learn to make better choices and already is creating a transition plan for his release in two months.

Arvizu is benefiting from a nationwide push to focus more efforts on prisoner re-entry to reduce recidivism and prevent future crimes.

When he walks out of prison this time, Arvizu will move into a halfway house for three months.

He'll go back to work as a house painter and continue to attend substance-abuse counseling.

"I feel good about getting out this time," Arvizu said. "Last time, I really wasn't excited about getting out. I knew I was going to mess up. This time, I know it's going to be different. I'm going to succeed."
 

Parolee population

In Arizona and across the country, a burgeoning number of people are being released from prison each year, the by-product of a 40-year trend of increased incarceration.

In 2006, one in every 284 Americans was on parole. Nationwide, parole entries have crept up in every year except one since 2000.

In Arizona, the number of felons on parole, called community supervision in this state, has more than doubled in the past 16 years. Arizona inmates typically serve 85 percent of their sentence behind bars and 15 percent on community supervision.

An Arizona Republic analysis of nearly 5,000 convicts on community supervision found they are living in virtually every Valley ZIP code, from the wealthiest in Paradise Valley to the poorest in central Phoenix.

With that come new efforts to help them become productive members of society. In Arizona, money now is being deducted from inmate wages to fund transition programs for certain drug offenders.

Prison officials also are overhauling pre-release preparation and have launched a pilot program to better ease the transition for at least some of those coming out of prison. The programs already are showing promise, with early recidivism rates lower than state and national averages.

"Focusing on the sentence alone does not give our state all of the protection it deserves," said Dora Schriro, director of the Arizona Department of Corrections. "The sentence is a finite period of time, and then it's over. And when it's over, they come home. The question we should ask is: How do we want them? You don't just want them not committing new crimes. You want them civil and productive."

Mounting obstacles
 

Program reform

Corrections Director Schriro has been working for four years to transform Arizona prisons into a "parallel universe" where inmates engage full time in activities that mirror the outside world. Schriro said the goal is to make inmates successful "because we want the community to be safe."

Re-entry preparation and support is part of that, and it starts with education, vocational training and substance-abuse counseling the moment a person is incarcerated.

Three initiatives show early signs of success:

• Level 1 beds for minimum-security inmates within two years of release have been opened at the Perryville, Tucson and Douglas prisons. Inmates who have earned their GEDs and completed work-based education and job training work full time during the days, then spend their evenings planning their transitions back to the community and taking classes on topics such as cultural diversity, parenting skills and conflict resolution.

During fiscal 2006 and 2007, 1,588 men and women completed the program. Only 22, about 1.4 percent, have returned to prison with new felony charges.

That is a dramatic decrease from the state's overall recidivism rate: 16.2 percent of inmates return to custody with a new felony conviction within two years of release. By the third year, the recidivism rate is nearly one in four. Nationwide, the recidivism rate for parolees was 16 percent in 2006.

• The Fast Track program, begun in September 2006, is geared toward minimum-custody inmates sentenced to fewer than six months in prison. The Fast Track units at Perryville and Florence immediately focus on discharge planning and try to instill "life-coping, get-along skills."

There also is a push to get a GED.

Arvizu, who is on his fourth stint in prison, said the small yard, individual attention from counselors and high expectations have made a difference.

"It makes you want to succeed and not do drugs," Arvizu said. "They really opened my eyes to see what I have out there and what I'm losing out there. When you come here, you lose everything. Hopefully, this time I'll make wiser choices."

About 1,240 inmates completed the Fast Track program in the first 13 months. Eighteen percent have returned to custody. Only 35 of those, or 3 percent, had new charges; the other 189 were returned for technical violations of parole.

Schriro said that, with four out of every 10 inmates serving six months or less, she plans to expand the program in January to inmates at higher custody levels.

"It's way too early to declare victory, but it's a promising indicator about our underlying premise," Schriro said. "When you press the population to make better decisions and you give them the education and the job skills, guess what happens? They succeed."

• The Legacy Program, which began July 1, is a more hands-on, collaborative approach to stabilizing parolees in ZIP codes that bear a disproportionate concentration of returning offenders. Parole officers are partnering with other state agencies to provide easier access to resources, housing and health care. The pilot program, launched in south Phoenix's 85041 ZIP code, will begin expanding in January. Eventually, it will encompass three south Phoenix ZIP codes, two in Tucson and one in Yuma.
 

Early results