The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

One staggering fact risks being overlooked in California's debate over prison reform: 90 percent of state prisoners will return to our
neighborhoods sooner or later. And after they come back, more thanhalf of them will go straight back to prison within two years, most for committing more crimes. The surge of repeat offenders returning from jails and prisons is emerging as the most urgent threat to public safety in
California.

As state lawmakers engage in a special session dedicated to prison reform and prepare to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to effect that reform, we must demand that they get it right. What happens when former offenders return to our cities and towns must not be an afterthought, but our top priority.

The stakes couldn't be higher for crime victims and their families.
California suffers from the dangerous combination of having the nation's largest prison population and one of the nation's worst recidivism rates. An estimated 120,000 former offenders will be released into California neighborhoods this year, and without an effective strategy to keep them from ending back in prison, the safety of our communities is at enormous risk. We must enact a statewide plan for closely supervising former
offenders by making an historic investment in programs to prevent
re-offending. These programs must target the crucial process of what's called "re-entry," the release of former offenders from state prison or county jails back into society.

Making re-entry a central tool of ensuring public safety means that we need to fundamentally re-think our approach to keeping people safe. We have to start doing what works, rather than just doing what we're used to doing. My fellow prosecutors and I convict offenders, send them to prison,and last year, taxpayers spent $7 billion to house and feed them. But after serving their sentence, more than half of these offenders come back
to their neighborhoods to pick up right where they left off -- committing
more crimes and claiming more victims. To truly protect residents in our
communities, we need to be more than tough; we need to be smart. Public
protection demands that we stop the revolving door between prison and the
streets and reduce the likelihood of re-offense.

Re-entry programs do work, both in preventing crime and saving taxpayer
dollars. Last year, we convened a broad partnership of San Francisco
public and private industry leaders to launch a re-entry program called
"Back On Track." Back On Track changes the lives of young adult first-time
drug sellers in an effort to prevent them from re-offending. Defendants
are required to plead guilty and then are released from county jail
directly into an intensive, full-time, 12-month program at Goodwill
Industries that requires them to get their GED, attend community college,
hold down a job, pay child support and engage as responsible parents and
good neighbors. The results have been remarkable.

Out of nearly 150 participants in Back On Track over the last two years,
only two have been re-arrested -- an enormous improvement over the 47
percent recidivism rate among drug offenders statewide. All current Back
On Track participants are employed full time, in school full time, or both.
The program is a bargain for taxpayers; for every $1 spent on Back On
Track, San Francisco saves $5 in jail costs alone. Re-entry programs in
Brooklyn, N.Y., the state of Michigan and other parts of the country, have
shown similarly positive results. For offenders who genuinely want to
re-enter society, the most effective re-entry programs impose swift
sanctions for bad choices and offer strong incentives for good ones. This
combination of accountability and opportunity is turning lives around.

For example, one young woman entered Back On Track after being arrested
for selling crack on a San Francisco street corner in San Francisco's
Hunter's Point neighborhood. After pleading guilty and entering Back on
Track, she was closely supervised while she enrolled in school, performed
community service and held down a full-time job. By the time she graduated
from Back On Track, she had received a full scholarship to attend Academy
of Art University, where she recently finished her first semester with a 3. 8 grade point average.

Re-entry programs work. They must be at the center of any prison-reform
effort, however, not at the margins. We are at a critical moment in
California's dialogue on public safety and, as elected leaders, we have
before us a tremendous opportunity to find new ways to keep people safe.
It is time to make serious investments in reconstituting former offenders
back into society, so they can be good parents and good citizens. With so
much at stake and so many of them returning to our streets every day, we
must embrace bold, cost-effective ways of doing the business of public
safety. Ultimately, it is the right and smart approach, not only for
victims of crime, but for all of us.

Kamala D. Harris is the district attorney of the City and County of San
Francisco.
http://sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/07/14/EDGOBIPV0Q1.DTL
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