How To Keep Ex-Cons At Home

Tonight, there are more than 2 million Americans locked up in jails and prisons, including 1 out of every 75 men. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, surpassing places like Russia and China. Why the population explosion? Well, one reason is that 52 percent of all prisoners who are released end up going back to prison.

Correspondent Scott Pelley reports for 60 Minutes Wednesday, about a little program in Maryland that claims it may have part of the answer. The Maryland Reentry Partnership says only 11 percent of its ex-cons go back to prison. That's almost unheard of: they rescue nine out of 10. To find out how they do it, 60 Minutes Wednesday spent a year with one ex-con in the program who turned out to be a serious challenge.

Terrance English is a classic example of failure to reform. 60 Minutes Wednesday first met him in the old Maryland Pen in Baltimore, at the end of his third stretch in prison.

He's never been convicted of anything violent; it's been theft, drug possession, small-time dealing. He's 38 years old with no job skills, no high school diploma. What he does have is a relentless addiction to cocaine and heroin.

"I'm addicted. I know I'm addicted," says English. "I try to get away from this addiction, and it keeps resurfacing. My family looking at me like I'm not goin' never change. 'He's gonna be that way until he die.' "

He's being released on probation for the third time. He says it's his last chance to make it with his fiancée and 3-year-old daughter. So this time, English is trying something different. He's volunteered for the Maryland Reentry Partnership. It's run by a non-profit group called the Enterprise Foundation. Joann Levy helped start the partnership three years ago.

When one of these offenders is coming through that gate, free at last, headed back to Baltimore, what's he facing?

Says Levy, "The odds against him are incredible. Many times, he has an active drug addiction. Oftentimes, he doesn't have a place to live. Many times, he doesn't have a supportive family to go back to, no job skills, no training. Very, very, very slim prospects."

The reentry partnership takes about 100 ex-cons a year. Each one is managed by two counselors who make sure that he finds a house, finds a job and, if necessary, finds a way out of addiction.

When Levy talks to new partners, she tells them: "So you guys are going to come out with a team of people that are going to work with you night and day. They're going to eat with you and breathe with you and cry with you and sweat with you and get through all these issues, just to make sure that you don't come back here (to prison)."

The program is open to all convicts, except sex offenders and those who commit crimes against children. It's voluntary. The ex-cons can leave at any time.

Nevell Thompson is a counselor, and Terrance English will be his problem. When he looked at English's case file, what did Thompson think?

"Addict. Addict. Not a bad guy. Just a sick guy," Thompson replies. "The most important thing that I'm going to be pushing on Terrance is keeping his recovery first. No matter what else, you can't use."

But what are the chances? Nobody reading Terrance's folder would pick this guy for a winner.

"Nobody except people like me," he says.

That's because Thompson himself is an ex-con and recovering addict.

He explains, "I know that if I can do it, I just believe that anyone can, if given the opportunity and given the right time, the right place and the right set of circumstances, and I can't tell you what that would be or when it would be in anyone's life. Is it time for Terrance English? We won't know 'til we know."On June 24, 2003, Terrance English walked out of prison and took exactly 11 steps in freedom before he was in the arms of one of his counselors.

One of the first things that trips up many ex-cons is simply where to stay. Drug offenders aren't allowed to live in most public housing, and many can't afford a place of their own.

Says Jackie Cornish, who gives many of the ex-cons a place to stay, "All these barriers are being put in these people's way, and yet, at the same time, we're saying to them: 'Make it. Huh. Go ahead, I expect you to make it.' It's like you're, you're telling them to run a race on one leg."

Cornish runs a non-profit group that builds housing. Cornish is at the heart of the re-entry partnership, supplying the ex-cons with shelter, food and clothes for three months. It's free but not easy.

"These guys don't come in here and we just do everything for 'em, make their beds, get 'em up and fed," she explains. "They have to have jobs. They better get a job, and if they're not working within a certain period a time… 'What's the reason why you're not working? Are you on drugs? Then you're in counseling. You have to be doing something that is showing us, as well as yourself, that you're trying to better yourself.' "

Darroll Cribb wanted to better himself, but the odds weren't good three years ago when he became one of the first ex-cons to try the partnership. He'd been in and out of prison six times, stealing to buy heroin.

Says Cribb, "I didn't have no structure when I got out. I didn't have no structure at all. I didn't have no supports, and every time I came out, I would come back into the same situation."

The situation would change with the reentry partnership, even though, at first, Cribb resisted the rules.

"When I got out, I didn't want to be confined to a house," he recalls. "I didn't want nobody telling me what to do. I'm a grown man. I don't need you telling me what to do. What I've seen, in the long run, the bigger picture was, this will help you, and this has gotten me where I am today."

Where he is, is downtown Baltimore, in a new life, with his own business: a dry-cleaning shop. He's also studying to be a minister.

Cribb told 60 Minutes Wednesday that the partnership put him on the road to leave a 25-year drug addiction behind.

Pelley: "How long you been clean?"

Cribb: "I've been clean seven years."

Pelley: "Seven years."

Cribb: "Seven years, going on seven years, going on seven years."

Pelley: "After 25 years of using."

Cribb: "Yeah, it's a miracle. It's a miracle. It sure is."

But if there's going to be a miracle for Terrance English, he's off to a bad start. Unlike Darroll Cribb, English isn't following the program. He refused the first critical step — free housing. Instead, he's moved in with his fiancée. And now, just a few weeks out of prison, the pressures of raising his family are crushing English.

He says, "The reality of the situation is, I thought I was going to come home, and it was going to be almost easy. This has been a real struggle, a real struggle. I haven't been able to find gainful employment to support my family as I thought I would be able to do, and it's been a real stress on me."

But believe it or not, that's the least of his problems. He has missed two meetings with his probation officer, Lisa Nixon, and here's why:

"I drunk some beer, I smoked some coke, and I sniffed some heroin," he admits.

English has been out only six weeks. Even though he's already relapsed, he insists he's got it under control.

"It's behind me, and I'm moving forward," he says. "I fell down, I got up, and I'm starting to walk again."

But he tells Nixon he won't take weekly drug tests, because he's too busy looking for work.

"If that's gonna cause me to violate whatever conditions that's there, then so be it," English says. "But I'm gonna try to protect my family, plain and simple. That's the way I see it."

Nixon can send him right back to prison.

She tells English, "I'm telling you, you know, the attitude you got now, it's not looking good. You need to really sit down and rethink what you're doing, because you're heading to go right back to prison, and that's not solving any of your problems."

Any other ex-con might be facing Nixon alone, but because of the reentry partnership, English's counselor, Thompson, is there, and he tries to talk some sense into English before he gets himself handcuffed again: "I think that your whole goals, all the goals and all the dreams and all the things that you say you wanna do, don't stand a chance if you don't deal with this disease of addiction you have, man."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."