CATCH AND RELEASE

Parolee Substance Abuse Program Seeks to Rehabilitate, Not Incarcerate

For more than 20 years, Julius Johnson's life swung dangerously out of
balance. Although he tried to attend school and hold down a job, plans
for how and where to get his next drink or bag of weed crowded his
mind. Constantly drunk, stoned or both, he landed in prison multiple
times.

"You don't wanna know how many times I've been in," said Johnson,
shaking his head. At 45, his face is still boyish, but the ache in his
voice reveals a man who has suffered beyond his years. He's tried to
walk the straight and narrow, but always loses his balance and winds
up back "behind the wall."

This time it's different. After his most recent parole violation,
Johnson was given a choice: Go back behind the wall, or enter the
Parolee Substance Abuse Program, located in the Folsom Transitional
Treatment Facility, in the shadow of the maximum-security state prison.

Johnson chose the latter, and now he says he's been
"reborn."

Like Johnson, all of the 200 parolees participating in the recovery
program have at least one nonserious, nonviolent felony on their
records. Some have been in and out of custody for as long as they can
remember. This time when they violated parole--many, but not all, for
failing drug tests--they were given the same choice as Johnson: Return
to prison for five months to a year or begin a 90-day substance-abuse
and transitional living program at Folsom's minimum-security
treatment facility.

With California's prisons facing unprecedented overcrowding and
ballooning costs, proponents of parole reform are looking at programs
like Folsom's to keep inmates from repeatedly returning to prison.
Many experts say California's rigid parole policies result in parolees
returning to prison at nearly twice the rate of the national average.
They want more options for parole violators, including expanding
rehabilitation and transitional services as an alternative to lengthy
and costly prison terms for nonviolent offenders.

Nevertheless, systematic improvements have been met with resistance
from government leaders, the public and the California Correctional
Peace Officers Association. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the
Legislature have repeatedly stricken reform measures from the budget,
while voters and the CCPOA continue to hold fast to "three strikes."

The short of it? Unless the state takes immediate action, the three
federal judges empowered in 2007 to reduce prison overcrowding may
turn loose as many as 50,000 nonviolent offenders on the streets. Many
won't have the skills to survive and will land right back in trouble.
And thanks to the state's ongoing financial problems and lack of
political will, recovery programs such as Folsom are in short supply
exactly when they're needed the most.

"If no one addresses their substance abuse, even if they have a job,
they're right back," insists Thomas Powers, director of the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's Division of Addiction
and Recovery Services. "The more risk and needs we can address in an
inmate, the lower chance they have to recidivate."

In the cavernous room where Johnson and the other men sleep, a row of
low concrete walls separates narrow beds from a section of the dorm
used as a classroom for new arrivals. Battered lockers next to each
bed provide some sense of individual space, and slivers of natural
light fall from narrow windows. Outside the window, a fence topped
with barbed wire and video cameras encloses the property.

The mattresses aren't soft, but it could be worse. The parolees could
be behind the wall. A 2007 audit of CDCR's rehabilitative services
labeled in-prison programs across the state "a complete waste." The
program at the Folsom Transitional Treatment Facility, outside the
main prison, offers a stark contrast to that assessment.

The Contra Costa County Office of Education runs the program;
principal Shannon Swain monitors activities on site. She strolls
across the linoleum floor in a long skirt, passing parolees who move
aside and say, "Excuse me."

One guy looks up, his blue eyes dancing, and grins at Swain as she
passes.

"Hey, you're the director or head coordinator or something, right?" he
asks. The yellow lettering on his uniform reads "CDC Prisoner."
Although the CDCR changed its name to include "Rehabilitation" in
2005, not all of the uniforms reflect the change.

"Principal," Swain says.

"I knew it was something like that."

Swain and project coordinator Sam Williams Jr. proceed across the
enclosed outdoor common area to a classroom where parolees in their
first 30 days of the program--Phase I--are reviewing the answers to a
test on psychopharmacology. They sit around tables in small groups,
folders, paper, pens and blue "Framework for Recovery" workbooks
covering the surfaces in front of them. A few men chatter. One rests a
foot on a chair.

The teacher, a small, peppy woman with graying hair moves back and
forth to the whiteboard at the front of the room. She has written the
objective at the top: "Student will classify drugs into categories and
will be able to identify two withdrawal symptoms from each category."
All of the teachers at PSAP are credentialed. They utilize structured
lesson plans as wells as hands-on and cooperative learning to keep
their students engaged.

"Under law, barbiturates are classified as ... " she calls out, getting
the ball rolling.

Answers pop up from around the room. A blond-haired guy calls out from
the back row, "B--narcotics!"

The teacher writes the answer on the board and continues. The pace is
quick. Participation is high.

"A lot of drugs make you impotent," she mentions at one point. A lanky
college-age parolee whispers a question from his seat in the front.

"Not being able to rise to the occasion," answers the
teacher.

The guy mouths, "Ohh."

Slumped in his seat in the back of the room, a short, muscular Latino
man with tattoos under both eyes and above one eyebrow folds his arms
tightly across his chest. His jaw is set and he looks tense, guarded,
as if he's defending a one-man fortress. He's been staring straight
ahead since Swain and Williams entered the room.

Swain asks to borrow his test packet momentarily. He
nods.

"How are you doing?" she asks, gently lifting the packet from his
hands.

The man's pained face softens into a smile. His shoulders drop. "Good,
good," he says quietly. He has been here two weeks. The first days and
weeks of Phase I are perhaps the most difficult. Detox, depending on
the parolee's drug of choice, can be physically demanding, and the
intense psychological work needed to root out the addiction can be
emotionally draining.

At least two parolees per month drop out of the program and return to
prison. But Julius Johnson is no quitter. It was during Phase I that
he realized he'd been given a second chance. Outside the wall, Johnson
spent most of his time trying to score. Early mornings would find him
passing by the same building where the same group of people always
seemed to be standing outside, waiting to get in. Even when it was
cold, even when it was dark, they were there.

One day, returning with his stash, Johnson noticed the walk in front
of the building was empty and decided to investigate. He pushed opened
the door, stuck his head inside, and was greeted by a roomful of
familiar faces turning to look at the man hovering in the doorway.

Johnson backed out of the silent room, away from the faces. Later that
day, he asked a custodian what took place there in the mornings. It
was an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

The next time he passed by, he could have walked in, grabbed a cup of
coffee and taken a seat. He could have told them his name and admitted
he had a problem.

"That should have been my wake-up call," he said. "This is where I was
supposed to go, but I didn't."

When his parole officer suggested he attend a rehabilitation program
instead of returning to a prison cell, Johnson initially resisted. He
knew how to do prison. He'd never attended recovery before, and he
didn't believe in it.

"I knew I had a problem," he said. "But I always thought if a person
wanted to stop, they would."

"The first week or so, they don't wanna be here," confirmed project
coordinator Williams, who passed on his powerful physique to his NFL
player son. "Their parole officer did them an injustice. Then after
about a week, it's, 'Oh, this isn't as bad as I thought it was. I
could learn something here.' We see that all the time."

Phase I opened doors for Johnson, teaching him how to raise his
self-esteem and understand his emotions.

"It was like I was reborn," he said.

Later in Phase I, Johnson and his classmates cycled through lessons
such as "The Process of Addiction" and "Cognitive Restructuring"--or as
Williams calls it, "changing their stinkin' thinking."

The walls come down. Denial and grief are exposed. The men often keep
it together in the classroom, only to break down in sessions with
their independent-study teachers later. They reveal that a father
abused them or that a mother taught them how to use drugs. To climb
out of the hole, they've got to get to the bottom of it first.

In response to the 2007 audit, Gov. Schwarzenegger and prison
leadership convened an expert panel to make recommendations for
improving rehabilitation and reducing overcrowding. Among the numerous
problems they found with existing in-prison programs were shoddily
monitored care providers, classes frequently interrupted by lockdowns
and prison politics that distracted inmates from the mental and
emotional work of recovery.

Stephen Siscoe, a recovering methamphetamine addict currently going
through Phase I, has experienced prison politics up close and
personal. He says the continuous, often violent struggle between
various gangs and factions behind the wall don't apply at Folsom's
minimum-security program.

After spending six hours a day in classes together, many of the men go
back to the dorms and continue their conversations. Some talk about
their pasts. Others prefer to focus on the future. There is almost
always someone willing to offer support.

If Siscoe hadn't been sent to the program, he has no doubt he would
still be on the streets, addicted and on the run.

"I would be out there cheating, lying, justifying my behavior, looking
behind my back," he said, elbows perched on a metal table bolted to
the dormitory floor. Siscoe's large hands spill out of his denim
uniform as he describes what landed him here. Family, adolescence,
culture, choices.

"We're all adolescents inside," he said. In Phase I, he finally began
to grow up.

The sign above the door of the Phase II classroom reads: "Nothing
Changes Until I Change." Williams and Swain venture into the
classroom, where parolees continue to focus on unlocking negative
thought and behavior patterns. They learn how to manage anger and
maintain healthy relationships, all the skills necessary to stay clean
and sober outside the wall.

The room is packed with men sitting in pairs at rows of tables. An
animated discussion in the classroom next door filters through the
floor-to-ceiling room divider, but no one seems to notice. Someone
jokes, "We're all crazy in here," but no one laughs.

Even with his beard, the teacher looks younger than the majority of
men in the room. He's not intimidated, and enthusiastically leads a
lesson on stereotypes.

"Is there such a thing as a 'bad' person?" he asks.

The room is quiet, and the teacher asks a thin young man with a
close-shaved head if he would like to answer.

The man says he's not sure, so the teacher presses him to share some
things about himself that show he's a good person.

"Playing with my kids, hanging out with my old lady, working. Those
show I'm not bad."

A few others raise their hands. The discussion takes a philosophical
turn.

"Everyone does bad stuff, it's just some get caught," comes a voice
from the back of the room.

Cedric McKinney reached his turning point one day during the second
phase. He and his classmates were asked to consider the way substance
abuse had affected their lives. The teacher told them to think of
three things they had lost.

"I could think of more," he says.

McKinney wants to change. That increases his chances for success. But
in a prison system where participation in some rehabilitation programs
has actually been correlated with a higher recidivism rate, wanting to
change isn't always enough. For McKinney, the difference is in the
support he receives from the teachers at Folsom.

"The people who run the program give you all they have," said
McKinney, who tutors fellow parolees for the GED in the evenings after
class. "They don't just let you float through like it's prison."

James Ayres spent 31 months behind the wall and was released back to
the community before coming to the program. On the outside, he
informally counseled other addicts on the street. Then he got hooked
again himself.

Ayres prefers to keep to himself in the dorms, but he has developed an
admiration of teacher Mike Gray. Beyond helping him develop a
transition plan for attending school, Gray has helped Ayres understand
what the experience might be like.

In Gray's classroom, a detailed pencil drawing of Emiliano Zapata
rests on a table. Gray encourages his students to explore and take
pride in their cultures.

Throughout his 30 years of social work and teaching experience, Gray
has worked to balance the need to maintain appropriate boundaries with
his students and communicating to them that he knows where they've
been.

To Ayres, Gray is "on the level."

As the lesson on stereotypes continues in the Phase II classroom, a
common theme emerges.

"No one in society thinks we can be better," one parolee says soberly.
"You find that out when you try to get a job."

"You begin to feel hopeless," another student chimes
in.

From the front of the room, a heavy-set African-American man gets the
floor.

"They don't care about us," he says. "Or they say they care, but they
do it from a distance. If there were more programs, if we had more
people advocating, we'd do better."

Dr. Barry Krisberg, director of the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency, says there are limits to the effect rehabilitative
programming can have on reducing recidivism. Nevertheless, he laments
what he sees as a lack of reform in CDCR's rehabilitative policies and
programs.

"The principal barrier has been political will," said Krisberg. "We
added the 'R' [in CDCR], but the progress has been glacial."

The three-judge federal panel in the overcrowding case that recently
wrapped up in San Francisco found that California could save $803
million to $906 million annually by instituting a system of earned
credits and parole reform to reduce the prison population. That money
could be used to implement the expert panel's recommendation to
provide more evidence-based rehabilitation programs in the community.

CDCR currently provides 5,692 community treatment slots that deliver
transitional services for recently released inmates. Some 2,028 slots
are being utilized by parolees in another remedial sanction program
for parole violators, the In Custody Drug Treatment Program. The
three-judge panel left the door open for state officials to divert
prisoners into rehabilitative programs rather than commit to a
wholesale release of the estimated 50,000 prisoners it would take to
bring the population to a safe level.

Nevertheless, in a March report, the California Rehabilitation
Oversight Board noted none of the incentive-based rehabilitation
reforms recommended by the expert panel were included in the
governor's final budget, passed in February.

"The expert panel's report was basically thrown in the garbage,"
Krisberg said. "If we're unwilling to change because we're afraid of
being seen as soft on crime, then we're locked into the same failure
mode."

Back at the Folsom Transitional Treatment Facility, it's almost time
for the head count. The parolees have lunch together and return to
their classrooms for three more hours of instruction.

Tables are arranged conference style in the Phase III classroom, where
Swain slips into an empty seat next to Johnson. All around her,
parolees focus on teacher Vic Wedloe, a muscular former cop who leans
against his desk and looks hard at the men as he lays out a situation
they're likely to encounter once they're back home, around the old
influences, the old temptations.

"It's the middle of the night," says Wedloe. "And you've got the
craving. How do you get through it?"

Eyes flicker. The sea of blue uniforms shifts. The men seem to ponder,
but no one raises a hand to answer. Wedloe calls on a wiry man a few
seats down from Swain.

The man hesitates, but finally says, "If I can recognize it, I guess I
can substitute drugs with something else."

His comment motivates others to speak up. They share stories and
insights, chuckles and knowing nods. They articulate their plans: Turn
on the television, rearrange the fridge, use positive self-talk. But
Wedloe doesn't let them off easy. There are plans, and then there's
the reality of facing a lifelong drug addiction.

When Johnson suggests he will call his sponsor, Wedloe challenges
him.

"It's 3 in the morning. You wanna wake him up?"

Johnson pauses, looks down. "The way I understand it, he's gotta pick
up. If he's a good sponsor, he'll pick up."

Wedloe nods, satisfied. If the men become familiar with their symptoms
and have the tools to fight back, they can recover.

"That sensation's never gonna rule your life again?" asks
Wedloe.

"Never," Johnson says.

Like 60 percent of the program's graduates, Johnson will attend a
90-day after-care program that includes transitional housing, recovery
services and job assistance. Krisberg and other experts say aftercare
is critically important--to increase the odds that a parolee will, in
fact, stay clean.

Williams, the program's coordinator, is careful to point out that
recovery, like addiction, is a process. Some of the parolees will
return. Recently, a man who was part of the first group to attend the
program approached Williams in the yard and asked if he remembered
him.

Williams had to think a minute, but then recalled the man's stay. It
wasn't a pleasant one, and the man didn't attend aftercare.

"I shoulda listened to you," he told Williams.

Although the price tag for a parole violator to attend substance-abuse
classes is $50 higher per day than a prison stay, the program stands
to save the state money since the stay is shorter and, at least
anecdotally, the parolees who attend the Folsom program stay out of
trouble longer, even if they do eventually recidivate.

"The old approach based on revenge needs to be replaced with something
based on science," Krisberg said.

Williams isn't about revenge. He shakes his head when he talks about
the parolee in the yard, but his voice is filled with
understanding.

"We're not mad at them if they come back," he said. "If a lifelong
addict can stay clean for six months to a year, it is counted as a
success.

"Of course," he added, "we hope they stay out for longer."

Graduations occur on a rolling basis, since new parolees enter the
program almost every day. CDCR director Powers says there are no
current plans to expand the Parolee Substance Abuse Program, but he is
optimistic that improving in-prison rehabilitative programs will lower
recidivism rates. "What we're trying to do is make the whole yard a
therapeutic yard," he said.

He also stresses the need to expand the number of openings in
community-based transition programs for parolees beyond the current
5,692 slots. California currently releases more than 100,000 inmates
back to the community each year.

With Assembly Bill 900, the Public Safety and Offender Rehabilitation
Services Act of 2007, Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislators attempted to
improve prison conditions and rehabilitation programs without
releasing prisoners. Since the bill's passage, the number of in-prison
drug-treatment slots has increased to nearly 10,000.

Powers, however, estimates 35,000 to 40,000 inmates could benefit from
treatment. Many other experts, including Dr. Joan Petersilia, a
professor of criminology at UC Irvine who served on the state's expert
panel for prison reform, put the estimate at more than twice that.

Meanwhile, Stephen Siscoe will soon leave Folsom to enter a recovery
program and take steps towards becoming a substance-abuse counselor
himself.

"I've thought about it a lot," he said. "If I understand even more,
I'll be more likely to stay away."

Ayres also plans to become a certified counselor. McKinney managed to
enroll himself in a construction training course to begin the Monday
immediately after his graduation.

Pastel-hued paper mobiles hang from the ceiling above Julius Johnson.
The tags, with words like "hobbies," "family" and "respect" written on
them, reflect the pieces individual parolees must juggle to lead
balanced lives.

If he had been sent back to prison for his parole violation, Johnson
would still be there, serving out his sentence and waiting for his
"gate money," the $200 all prisoners are given on completion of their
sentence. Instead, he will soon enter aftercare and start attending a
school that will move him towards his goal of attaining a
heavy-equipment operator's license.

At the Folsom facility, Johnson has been reborn. He's been given a
second chance, and he knows it's up to him to restore balance to his
life. He does not intend to go back behind the wall.