Pubdate: Sat, 04 Jun 2011
Source: Journal-Inquirer (Manchester, CT)
Contact:  2011 Journal-Inquirer
Website: http://www.journalinquirer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/220
Author: Chris Powell
Note: Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

REHABILITATION REQUIRES A JOB AND A PLACE TO LIVE

Legislation to authorize the Correction Department to reduce 
sentences for prisoners who complete self-improvement programs is 
agitating minority Republicans as it gets rubber-stamping from the 
Democratic majority in the General Assembly. Republicans say that 
while the bill is dressed up as a public-safety measure, it is meant 
only to save money by reducing the prison population and will 
increase crime by parolees. Some prisoners convicted of violence, the 
Republicans note, might qualify for the rehabilitative programs and 
then earlier release.

But of course it probably has been decades since anything good at the 
state Capitol has been done for the right reasons, and if someone's 
ulterior motives disqualified legislation, there might never be any 
law at all. Governor Malloy and prison administrators say the 
rehabilitative programs will do some good, and the chance of earning 
sentence reductions can be a valuable disciplinary tool with prisoners.

It sounds plausible enough, and if there really is any rehabilitation 
to it, it would be silly to deny it to even to those perpetrators of 
violent crimes if they are going to be released eventually anyway. 
But it will be a miracle if such programs push Connecticut's 
recidivism rate below even 50 percent. In many cases Connecticut is 
far too slow rather than far too quick to imprison -- see the case of 
the career criminals turned mass murderers Steven Hayes and Joshua 
Komisarjevsky -- and for most prisoners, by the time they get to 
prison, their lives are already almost irretrievable; they are 
already too damaged psychologically and beyond most productive 
purpose, as well as without job skills.

Which is not to say that there's nothing to be done here.

The most efficient way to reduce crime is simply to legislate less of 
it, which is easily done, since most crime in Connecticut, as 
throughout the country, is drug-related, a consequence of the 
criminal-justice premium built into the cost of illegal drugs. People 
put their lives at risk with drugs and when it catches them the 
government makes sure that their lives are damaged. The criminal 
justice approach to the drug problem has plainly failed; drug abuse 
is as prevalent as ever and this approach serves only as an 
employment program for police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, 
probation officers, and prison guards.

The critical but unasked questions remain: How much drug 
criminalization can Connecticut afford as it enters upon the biggest 
tax increase in its history? Could the consequences of letting 
dopeheads get stoned in peace, or leaving the federal government to 
pursue them on its own, be worse than the consequences of 
criminalizing their intoxication, consequences including so much 
violent crime and the uninhabitability of Connecticut's cities?

Discussion of reducing the penalty for possession of a small amount 
of marijuana is the closest anyone at the state Capitol can get to 
this question.

But even assuming that it will be a long time before the drug issue 
can be discussed seriously, there is something to be done here. With 
or without the rehabilitation legislation, Connecticut's prisons will 
continue to disgorge prisoners into hard times where there are no 
jobs for 10 percent of the law-abiding population. With the Malloy 
administration and the legislature's Democratic majority determined 
to choke the private economy to death with taxes, Connecticut has no 
prospects for job growth. In these circumstances the rehabilitation 
problem for prisoners is not inside prison but outside.

For without jobs and housing waiting for prisoners upon their 
release, prison rehabilitation programs are a waste. But such jobs 
and housing well might pay for themselves in diminished crime. And 
state government, municipal governments, and charitable organizations 
have infinite needs for manual labor, from cleaning up roads, 
railroad grades, and stream beds to maintaining public facilities to 
repairing delapidated property.

Yes, locating halfway houses for parolees is always difficult 
politically, but a municipality's accepting a halfway house could be 
the price of free state-paid manual labor for local government. And 
the annual cost of paying a parolee a modest salary -- say, $400 per 
week -- and giving him a room to himself with a little privacy in 
which a psyche might begin to normalize, not just dumping him at a 
shelter madhouse, would be far less than the annual cost of imprisonment.

Surely state government could arrange a parolee hiring program with 
municipal governments and charities. Otherwise, earlier releases will 
mean only more crime.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom