Group hopes to help prisoners return to society

WASILLA — The Valley’s court system, probations offices and case workers have banded together to do something about a problem many might not be aware of — what to do with prisoners re-entering society.

Amy Abbott, who heads the Palmer Probation Office, said at a meeting Tuesday that the state’s Department of Corrections releases 30 to 50 felons from prison monthly and drops them off in the Valley.

And that number doesn’t count misdemeanor offenders, of whom there are many more.

Bill Aube, with Daybreak, an organization handling a lot of these cases and a member of the broader Neighbor to Neighbor: A Community Solution to Homelessness group that called Tuesday’s meeting, was asked to quantify how much housing the Valley has for people released from prison and re-entering society.

For his part, Aube listed two facilities, Delphi House in Palmer and Chugach View in Wasilla. Each has six units that are constantly full. Eventually there will be five more units at a place called Swanson House in Wasilla, due to be established in April 2012.

Aube said there used to be a facility on Knik-Goose Bay Road, but it was far enough out that transportation to and from appointments became an issue.

“The gentleman that was running that program, he basically became a taxi,” Aube said.

So the facility moved operations to Anchorage.

That leaves 12 total units in the Valley, with five more units to be added in 2012. But many of these units are only for people who have diagnosed mental illnesses.

Abbott said other housing options are relatively scarce.

“It’s really sad, but the main option that they have is either the Peking Inn in Palmer or the Alaska Choice Motel,” she said.

She said some people are able to move in with family or maybe into a trailer on a family member’s land.

“We get a lot of people that move to Anchorage,” Abbott said.

Kim Hull, who coordinates Palmer’s mental health court, said the cabins at Pittman Road and the Parks Highway are another lower-cost housing option.

“Those are affordable, but I would not say safe,” she said.

To some degree, the coalition seemed to agree there is a problem of landlords not wanting to rent to people coming out of prison. Landlords also worry about renting to felons, but Aube said that’s not the biggest problem.

“It’s not so much that people won’t take people into housing,” he said. “We have no housing. How do we increase the stock of houses?”

While housing might look like just one of many concerns a prisoner has upon getting back into society, it’s usually the main concern. Aube said most of the other programs out there to help people who get out of prison tend to fall apart if the person isn’t in stable housing.

“We can’t do good case management if we don’t have housing,” he said.

It’s a problem the Department of Corrections has recognized. At the start of Tuesday’s session on prisoner re-entry, the department’s deputy commissioner, Carmen Gutierrez, said the prison system recognizes that housing plays into recidivism and the state has a problem with people reoffending.

“Reducing recidivism, and how do we as a community of Alaskans promote re-entry into our society is really, truly one of the most exciting issues,” Gutierrez said.

She said her boss, corrections commissioner Joe Schmidt, inherited a system that didn’t do much rehabilitation, believing that rehabilitation just doesn’t work.

Schmidt doesn’t agree with that and is working for change, but it’s a big problem.

Statewide, she said, 295 felons are released each month. She said in 2007, two thirds of them wound up back in jail. Those numbers have held through 2011.

In addition to housing, Gutierrez said DOC has been looking at education and employment. On the education side, the prison system is introducing more vocational education and other programs designed to give prisoners marketable skills.

On the employment side things are stickier, she said. There are 492 rules and regulations about where felons can and can’t work or live. Most have to do with employment. The department is working with lawyers and judges to see which of those needs to stay, which can be modified and which can be eliminated.

She noted that if everything in the system stays the way it is now, when the Goose Creek Correctional Center at Point MacKenzie opens, it won’t be long before the state is looking to build another prison.

“We’re going to need to start planning for another Goose Creek a year from now,” she said.

At the end of Tuesday’s meeting, Aube and most everyone else in the room signed up to be part of a task force to establish some kind of housing for re-entering prisoners.

“This next year we’re going to get something done,” Aube said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.