Another in an occasional series following Ronald Eugene Williams as he returns to the Sacramento region and attempts to stay out of prison.
Ron Williams' reacquaintance with freedom took an abrupt turn this week.
The parolee with a 20-year history of crime and drugs got kicked out of his halfway house Wednesday.
For Williams, the issue was school. For California, the issue was getting the right parolees into the right programs to keep offenders from recycling through the prison system at a rate that's as bad as bad gets in the United States.
Williams wanted to enroll in a real estate-oriented curriculum at Sierra College. The providers at Hope, Help and Healing in Auburn wanted him to slow down and stay focused on his sobriety.
The dispute went to Williams' parole agent on Thursday, and she placed him in a new sober living environment, one that will let him go to college in the fall.
"I want my recovery," Williams said in an interview outside his parole office in Auburn, after he moved to a program run by Re-entry Inc., a for-profit provider. "I need my treatment. I need also to plan a life, and they need to work together. They don't need to butt heads."
The treatment twist made up the latest chapter in Williams' journey that has provided a close-up view of the difficult path that confronts California's more than 125,000 parolees on the search for their way back into society.
Some 370 parolees walk out of prison every day, and about 70 percent of them are walked back in within three years of their release on new crimes or revocations.
To try to knock down California's worst-in-the-nation recidivism rate, state parole officials over the past few years have stepped up their emphasis on community-based drug treatment.
The state spends more than $50 million a year on treatment for parolees in programs that range from long-term residential to outpatient care.
It's not unusual for offenders like Williams to bounce from one program to another until they find one that fits.
"Different strokes for different folks," Magdalena Cardona, Williams' parole agent, said Thursday, after she found him the new slot in Re-entry. "Some guys do better in one program and some not in others. It happens."
Williams, 44, has a substance abuse history going back to the age of 10. It went from pot to crack to crank, and his addiction lay at the root of a criminal career heavy with domestic violence and sprinkled with theft and gunplay. He's been arrested on 31 felonies, convicted of nine and has spent 8 1/2 years in prison.
He's done drug treatment before, including during his last yearlong stint at San Quentin. Paroled on May 31, he wound up at the Hope, Help and Healing house on Meadow Glen Road in Auburn.
His 45 days there went pretty well – until Wednesday. Williams blew up during a meeting at the program's office and stormed out, slamming the door.
"I felt they were putting an ultimatum down on me, to get out of the college," Williams said. "They said going down and filling out the paperwork and stuff was taking me away from the program. (A counselor) said I was using the place as a bed and breakfast."
Bob Murray, the program's executive director, confirmed the gist of Williams' account.
Murray said the dispute had to do with college, but it wasn't totally about college.
"It was a conflict about hours away from the program," Murray said.
"We've got a program to run, and I can't subject everyone else who is working a program to his schooling," Murray said. "We let him go (to Sierra College) the one time, and I was told that was it, to pre-register. Then it was another thing and another thing, and then it was like, 'No. We're not focused on the right thing here. Let's reel him in a little bit.' And he blew up."
The door slam, Murray said, "left me no choice" but to tell Williams to leave.
Hope, Help and Healing is a Christian, faith-based program that includes daily Bible study.
Williams said he is a believer, that he enjoyed the program, but that it didn't really speak to him.
Call Andy Furillo, (916) 321-1141.
