Dale Preston spent 18 years in a Maine prison, long enough, he said, to forget how the world worked outside.
“You develop a skill set inside the prison that you survive by,” he said.
After being released seven years ago, it took him a long time to readjust to un-incarcerated life. Sometimes it was little things, like realizing he could take longer than three minutes to eat a meal.
“You don’t have much time to eat when you’re in there,” Preston said.
Other times, he had to readjust to society in general. Life on the inside was a lesson in group survival, Preston said. Inmates had to cooperate and live by group rules if they wanted to keep the peace and get things done. Ironically, outside prison Preston found it’s more every person for his/herself. He said it took about three years before he could relax.
“The transition is still going on,” Preston said.
Now Preston and his wife want to give other inmates the opportunity for an easier transition. This December, they’re set to open an innovative pre-release residential home called Shank’s Mare; the home will provide a structured place for minimum security inmates to spend the last year of their sentences, while offering continuing education, counseling, and job opportunities to help make their post-release lives successful. The home is based on a popular program in San Francisco.
Preston recently completed interviews with potential candidates at a minimum security prison in Warren and expects the first of three inmates sometime before the end of the year for a pilot program. He favored older candidates for the first three slots, he said, because they often have the wisdom to value their freedom.
“They’ve seen enough of prison that they know they don’t want to come back,” he said.
Once at Shank’s Mare, inmates will wear street clothes and be free to move around the community, but not completely free of responsibilities or restrictions. Each week, the home’s residents will have to submit for approval a schedule of their whereabouts to parole officials that they must abide by. The schedule must include a 40-hour (or more) per week job.
Once home, they must be within range of the phone if called. The phone is not cordless, and at least one resident will need to be near it at all times. Failure to follow these rules means a return to prison.
The home itself will not be conducive for a couch potato, either. There will be no TV, radio, or Internet. There’s even a restriction against piercings and long hair among the male residents. Preston wants them focused on bettering themselves.
“They’re not there to be babysat,” he said.
Preston is an accountant, and will give new residents a crash course on the subject. The course will set the tone for their stay at the home; “shank’s mare” is a Scottish phrase that means “to go on your own two feet.”
“Learning accounting gives them the concept of accountability,” Preston said. Recently, pre-release programs have become a popular way to combat both prison overcrowding and high jail recidivism rates. According to U.S. Justice Department data, the percentage of incarcerated Americans jumped 380 percent since 1980; 67.5 percent of U.S. prisoners are re-arrested and 51.8 percent are re-incarcerated within three years of release. The resulting jump in prison population has community leaders and prison experts scrambling for innovative and cost-effective ways to rehabilitate prisoners.
“We’re looking at more and more community-based centers,” said Dr. Becky Hayes Boober, executive director for the re-entry network for the Maine Department of Corrections.
But unlike some programs, Shank’s Mare seems to have strong community support. Rep. Edward Mazurek, Rockland’s former mayor, said he was sold on the program after taking a tour of the house and listening to a presentation from Preston.
“It was really quite impressive,” Mazurek said. “They really did their homework quite well.”
Mazurek believes Preston has the support of both community leaders and neighbors. Preston said he’s been trying hard to reach out to the community and provide as much information as possible. It probably helps that Preston restricted arsonists and sex offenders from being potential candidates for the house.
Preston is committed to making Shank’s Mare work, enough so that he’s willing to live apart from his wife until the facility goes co-ed. Jail time is impossible to leave behind, he said, but he hopes the home will help people move forward.
“You never lose that, you can eventually go past that,” he said.