How To Keep Ex-Cons At Home

In Baltimore, Some Ex-Cons Get Some Extra Help

(CBS)  Thompson wins another chance from the probation officer, and English promises to take his drug counseling seriously.

"Now, we've just got to start again," says Thompson, "and let's just hope and pray that his relapse is going to be the beginning of his recovery."

But just days after meeting with his probation officer, English disappears. Thompson wants to find him before the police do. He searches through some of heroin’s haunts in Baltimore, the same neighborhoods where Thompson himself once bought drugs.

Thompson crosses an intersection, and there's English.

Thompson: "What goin' on, man?"

English: "Nothing."

Thompson: "Something goin' on. You know you in trouble? What you wanna do? You want to get in? … You told me you wanted to get some help. I don’t know what to do, man. You ain’t no match for this disease, not by yourself."

English: "Everybody can see it but me, everybody saying the same thing, then it’s obvious it’s a problem, then I’m back in the stage of denial."

Says Thompson, "This is where I wanted him. I wanted him in a position where as he comes out with his hands up, and he surrenders and says 'I need help.' "

The help Thompson has wanted for English from the start is long-term treatment, maybe a year in a place far from the streets. English doesn’t like the idea, but he promises to try.

"See you tomorrow," he says.

"You have to want to change. You have to," says Cribb. He told 60 Minutes Wednesday that all the discipline and support are worthless unless the ex-con has the will.

That's the first, that's the first thing you have to make up in your mind: that you want to change," he explains, "or you won't."

And it’s looking like Terrance English doesn’t want to change. Remember when he told Thompson, “See you tomorrow?” Well, he didn’t show up, and six months after 60 Minutes Wednesday taped him walking out of prison, they found him, arrested for heroin possession, awaiting trial, and facing 10 years.

Pelley: "Nevell had a plan for you."

English: "Nevell had a plan. I don't know if his plan was for me; but Nevell had a plan."

Pelley: "You didn't follow the plan."

English: "I tried to comply with what was going on as far as the program was concerned, and my addiction told me not to do so, and that's what I done. I followed my addiction, and now I'm back here."

Says Cornish, "We try to work with them, to instill in them the knowledge and the sense that they are worth more than what that thing is out there on the corner, worth more than crack, more than cocaine, more than ecstasy or any of those other drugs out there."

Pelley: "You know what some people watching this interview are thinking: 'These are drug addicts, they're…' "

Cornish: "Your brother."

Pelley: "-- three-time losers."

Cornish: "Your sister."

Pelley: " 'You're never gonna be able to fix 'em.' "

Cornish: "Your uncle. I don't believe that, and I don't think they do. If you look at it on a individual basis, you don't believe that your father will never change. They will, if they're given the opportunity.

"Now I say that for the majority of them," he continues. "There are some … absolutely, we're gonna lose 'em. But for those who are serious and want to make a positive change in their lives, we need to be there."

You can’t fully understand the revolving door of American prisons until you spend a year and more with a man like Terrance English. He resisted all the reentry partnership had to offer, and he fell into every trap.

Darroll Cribb had the same challenges. But, like most who volunteer for the partnership, he also had the will to change. In three years, the reentry partnership has taken on 193 ex-cons. And so far, only 22 have gone back to prison.

"I'm still living because God had a plan for me," says Cribb. "Believe me, I would not be here talking to you right now if it wasn't for God."

And if it wasn't for the Maryland Reentry Partnership?

"Realistically," says Cribb, "I would probably be dead."