First 'grad' lauds prison aftercare

CHICO – He'd just gotten out of prison, but Louis Doolittle knew he needed one thing really bad when he became a free man March 28.

"More time," he said.

The 27-year-old parolee was being sent back to the same Chico streets where he'd raised methamphetamine hell for more than a decade and a half. He didn't have a stitch of clothes to his name, let alone a job or a place to live. The $200 in gate money he got from the state when he was released wouldn't last him a week.

But even with freedom's dim prospects, Doolittle caught a break. It came in the form of a new law that forces lower-risk drug offenders like him into a community-based residential treatment program. Do more time in a 150-day program after you're released from prison, the law says, and you're off parole supervision.

The extra time paid off enormously for Doolittle. In the confines of a converted roadside motel north of downtown, he spent five months in a program run by the Well Alternative, continuing to dig inside himself for the roots of his addiction.

On Aug. 28, he checked out of the program and into free society – free, even, from the strictures of California's parole system. Now, he's got his own place to live. He's laying tile for a living. He's heavily involved in his church, keeping tight with his family and staying clear of the old mistakes he still sees around town. And he doesn't have to check in with a parole agent.

He swears by the help he got from aftercare.

"They gave me a place to live," Doolittle said. "They fed me. They encouraged me to continue on. They helped me get employment and my (driver's) license back. It was an opportunity to transition back into society and have some more time to do it."

Doolittle, it turned out, was the first offender in the state to complete an aftercare program and get discharged from parole supervision under the provisions of Senate Bill 1453, the 2006 law that made aftercare mandatory for some parolees.

As of Thursday, 351 offenders had completed aftercare under the auspices of SB 1453 and were free from parole supervision. Another 204 had failed to complete the program and were returned to prison or placed in other state-sanctioned community-based drug treatment programs, losing their chance for early parole discharge. Another 475 parolees were still participating in the programs.

Deborah Shoup, a program director for the prison agency's Division of Addiction and Recovery Services, said the discharge program enacted under the law "is going pretty well."

"The majority of people have been going through the program," Shoup said. "They've had a couple of hiccups along the way, but they're following through and doing all that's required of them. They're getting a chance at some real recovery that they've probably never had before."

More than 5,000 parolees who meet the criteria are expected to participate in SB 1453 programs through June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. They include nonserious, nonviolent offenders who are serving fixed sentences, who don't have to register as sex criminals and who already have completed in-prison substance abuse programs. The state, which spends about $70 a day for each parolee enrolled in community-based programs, has budgeted nearly $11 million in the current fiscal year to pay for them.

Shoup said corrections officials are thinking about proposing new legislation to make the program voluntary. The big problem with it being mandatory, she said, is that some parolees who don't want to be in the programs face the prospect of getting returned to prison for refusing to participate, a violation they otherwise wouldn't be committing.

"The people who really want to do the treatment are excited about doing it, but those that don't want to go resent it," Shoup said. "They go on the run, and they abscond. If they weren't mandated, they wouldn't be absconding."

The early discharges for the aftercare success stories are coming at a time when the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is taking a fresh look at who it is keeping on parole, why, and for how long. It's pushing hard on frontline parole agents to discharge any qualifying lower-risk offender from supervision if they go 13 months without committing a parole violation. The state also is trying to set up more alternative sanctions for parolees who violate the terms of their releases.

About the writer:

• Call Andy Furillo, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1141.