Pubdate: Sun, 27 Mar 2005
Source: News & Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2005 The News and Observer Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.news-observer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/304
Author: Thomasi McDonald, Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

PRISON ALTERNATIVE SAVES A LIFE

Funding Cuts Put Backers On March

RALEIGH -- As he stood before a Wake County Superior Court judge in
1991 on a felony larceny charge, Ollie Hooker's life was a mess.

A heroin and cocaine addict for most of his life, Hooker had already
spent 18 years in prison for thievery and petty drug crimes fueled by
a $250-a-day narcotics addiction.

"The district attorney was talking about 40 years," said Hooker, who
was 40 at the time.

But Hooker caught a break. Officials with a prison alternative
sentencing program intervened on his behalf, and he was sentenced to a
two-year drug treatment program in Winston-Salem.

Today he has two college degrees, and for the past five years he has
been a Wake County human services employee.

Advocates for alternatives to prison point to success stories like
Hooker's when asking legislators to reconsider cuts made four years
ago in a prison alternative program's operating budget. The General
Assembly cut Sentencing Services' then-$5.8 million budget by 40
percent during a state budget crisis.

Gov. Mike Easley did not recommend replacing the program's lost
funding this year, but advocates hope legislators will do so anyway.

Sentencing Services began in 1984 in response to a federal lawsuit
against prison overcrowding in North Carolina. In 2001, Sentencing
Services was presenting treatment plans for about 2,100 people in the
state courts each year. One year after the cuts, services fell by 400
cases, said Lao Rubert, director of the Carolina Justice Policy Center
in Durham and one of state's leading advocates for alternative prison
sentencing.

The program tries to offer an alternative to prison for low-level
criminal offenders referred by a judge, an attorney or even
themselves. After investigating a client's background, the staff
submits a treatment plan for substance abuse, mental hardships or
other problems to a judge for approval.

Preventing crime is the major goal of Sentencing Services. Studies
funded by the N.C. Governor's Crime Commission have shown 72 percent
of clients do not commit crimes within two years of treatment, which
most often takes place outside prison walls.

The program also saves taxpayer dollars, said Louise Davis, executive
director of ReEntry Inc. in Wake County a private, nonprofit agency
that runs the county's Sentencing Services program.

It costs the state $24,000 a year to house a prison inmate, Davis
said, and that money could be saved if a defendant gets a sentence
other than incarceration.

Tale of addiction

For Hooker, the savings were even greater.

Instead of languishing in prison, Hooker earned his master's degree
last year in clinical counseling from Webster University in Myrtle
Beach, S.C. For the past three years he has worked as a clinician with
Wake County's Program for Assertive Community Treatment.

"We provide holistic treatment for the severely mentally ill," Hooker
said about his work.

A soft-spoken man with a full salt-and-pepper beard, Hooker, 53,
credits his turnaround to Sentencing Services.

"If I hadn't been introduced to ReEntry, if they hadn't stuck with me,
I wouldn't be where I am today," Hooker said from his office at the
A.A. Thompson Building on Hargett Street.

In 1967, Hooker tried heroin for the first time at a friend's garage.
He was a 10th-grader at the old Ligon High School in Raleigh.

He used only on the weekends or at parties then at $5 or $3 a bag but
by the 12th grade, Hooker was an addict.

He spent a year in Washington, D.C., after graduation. When he
returned to Raleigh, crime supported his habit.

In 1971, he was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to one day to
14 years in prison. He was paroled in 1977. "When I got out, I went
back to drugs," Hooker said.

 From then until 1991, that was Hooker's life: in prison or strung out
on drugs. He was stealing to support a cocaine habit in 1991 when
Raleigh police charged him with two counts of larceny.

That was the beginning of Hooker's break. He was represented in court
by Wendell attorney J. Harold Broadwell, who was also a member of
ReEntry's Board of Directors.

Before his court appearance, the program found Hooker a bed in a
28-day drug treatment program at John Umstead Hospital in Butner. It
was Hooker's first time in drug treatment, and he realized he liked
being sober.

"I was really engaged," he said.

A changed life

Hooker flourished at the Forsyth Initiative for Residential Self-help
Treatment (FIRST) program in Winston Salem. He developed a community
education program about the treatment center and started a landscaping
project. He also enrolled in classes at Guilford Community College.

In 1996, Hooker moved back to Raleigh after finding work as a
counselor with SouthLight, a private substance abuse treatment program.

ReEntry's support was vital, he said.

"I could have given up, but too many people were invested in me,"
Hooker said. "I didn't want to disappoint them."

Cuts hurt program

In 2003 as a result of the budget cuts, two full-time employees were
laid off from the ReEntry staff in Wake County. That left one salaried
position, with the two remaining staffers as contract employees with
no benefits.

Susan Brooks, director of Sentencing Services, said the program has
asked the legislature to add $500,000 to its $3.6 million budget. That
would not restore the money lost in the 2001 cuts. But Brooks said she
knew about a movement to do so "and we certainly support that."

Efforts to restore funding for Sentencing Services will depend on the
state's overall budget picture, Rubert said.

"If the cuts were restored, I believe Sentencing Services could
present even more plans than they did in 2001," Rubert said.

"We could save a life like Ollie Hooker."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin