When their jail terms are up, inmates at Ellsworth’s Hancock County Jail are released at 6:00 a.m.
Getting out of jail usually isn’t carefree, said Judy Garvey, director of Volunteers for Hancock County Jail Residents. Most former jail residents still must deal with the addictions and mental conditions that helped land them in jail. Many also must wrestle with more practical problems like finding housing and employment, which can be especially tough with a criminal record. Some of them have to do all this alone.
“The majority of people have someone to meet them” when they leave jail, Garvey said. “But there are some who don’t.”
Jail and prison advocates have long argued that a lack of social services for released inmates contributes to a high rate of recidivism in the U.S. A 2002 Justice Department report found 67.5 percent of U.S. prisoners are rearrested and 51.8 percent are re-incarcerated within three years of release.
Garvey’s group has been providing a virtual post-release center for released jail residents. Upon release, residents receive a packet containing information on addiction and mental health counseling, a phone card and a certificate good for a free meal at a downtown restaurant open at 6:00 a.m. Garvey and other volunteers also provide an informal phone network and a post-release stress reduction class.
But the group also is raising funds for the Landing, a proposed post-release center with an actual address where former residents can access mental health counseling, mentoring, a phone and a cup of coffee. If the group can find donated space, Garvey said the center could be up and running for about $25,000.
By helping prevent recidivism, Garvey argues, the Landing wouldn’t just help former jail residents; it would provide better public safety and help curb incarceration costs. Currently it costs roughly $33,000 in the Hancock County Jail and $44,000 in Maine State Prison to incarcerate someone for a year, she said
“The Landing would benefit everybody in the community,” Garvey said.
She believes it would be the first post-release center at the county level in Maine. But it soon may not be the only post-release program in Hancock County.
In Lamoine, fellow jail volunteer Mary Henry and her husband hope to start a transitional home for women leaving the jail system who are struggling with addictions. Henry, a recovering alcoholic herself, said a safe and neutral space is vital for women to break the cycle of addiction.
“There are five women [currently in the jail],” she said. “All are going back to homes that aren’t safe to go back to.”
The home, still in the planning stages, also would provide counseling, transportation and continuing education. Henry also envisions providing space for successful program participants to live with their children at the home. She hopes to open in spring 2009.
Henry says she’s been overwhelmed by the support her proposal has received at a town meeting. She believes people want the home because so many families are affected by addiction.
There are similar grassroots post-release efforts occurring in communities up and down the Maine coast. Some provide mentoring, while others hope to provide housing. Many are still in the planning stages.
More communities are embracing the need for post-release support, says Stefan LoBuglio, a re-entry program expert in the Maryland corrections system, because studies show such programs help curb recidivism.
It’s also becoming harder to ignore the rising percentage of the population that’s incarcerated, LoBuglio said. In testimony before Congress earlier this year, he cited Justice Department statistics showing that the incarceration rate has jumped 380 percent since 1980 to 2.2 million people. Most of those 2.2 million have to come out sometime, he argued.
“Not only are we putting more people in,” LoBuglio said in a recent phone interview, “a lot more people are coming out.”
But most re-entry programs have only begun in the last decade, he said, as society slowly steers away from a pure “get tough on crime” mentality toward a more realistic approach toward rehabilitation.
“We’ve become a lot more pragmatic,” he said.
Most programs have focused on the prison system, LoBuglio said, leaving the jail population underserved.
But he hopes that will change if Congress passes the Second Chance Act, a bill that would provide seed money for community post-release programs like Garvey’s and Henry’s, as well as pre-release programs within jails and prisons. LoBuglio hopes that if the bill passes through Congress (it’s still in committee), it would be one of the few things the President and Congress can agree upon. President Bush has shown support for similar programs in the past.