Going straight:
Stout, Robert Joe
Going straight ROBERT JOE STOUT TO THE OUTSIDER it sounds easy: "You've learned your lesson, you know what being in prison is like, so get a job, go straight, leave it all behind." Get a job....
...He traded the shoes he'd been given upon his release for "a pint of vodka and some smelly old brogans" because he felt that people recognized the newer shoes as prison wear and were avoiding him because of them...
...Even with the help of such a program, or the support of social services like New Jersey's Community Readjustment Program, the released felon must get his life in order while facing a bewildering onslaught of needs and emergencies...
...In many instances, incarceration removes or relieves guilt...
...Finally I just say 'to-hell-with-it,' and do like I always done...
...Hell, that cut out just about everybody I knew...
...Many more of its members were legitimately employed...
...The initial confrontation with the 'streets' is apt to be painful and . . . accompanied by disappointment, anxiety, and depression," John Irwin states in The Felon...
...Few marriages survive a prison term," a Texas social worker, Mike Flanagin, observes...
...What do you put down...
...But I wasn't out five hours but I was so depressed I wanted to turn around and run back and bang for them to let me in them gates," a black first-time parolee told a Lincoln, Nebraska, social worker...
...Them guys that make up rules, they never had to live where I do...
...The most ordinary transactions often are exceedingly difficult for the ex-con...
...Carder's wife divorced him while he was in prison and she and their two young sons moved to California...
...I hardly could find work before I was sent up, much less after I got out...
...A Mathematica Policy Research study in Baltimore examined the post-release-patterns of 432 offenders, which they divided into four groups...
...A Chicago parolee committed suicide nine days after his release from Joliet...
...I can get along...
...Jobs, man, they don't grow on trees...
...All prison sentences, Robert A. Fangmeier believes, are "life sentences...
...Rehabilitation means to restore to useful, productive, and acceptable lives,'' criminology professor Mary G. Almore of the University of Texas at Arlington contends...
...Those who don't usually wind up in a skid row hotel, where the cash that they've received upon their release- usually about $60-lasts only a week or two...
...The first- or second-time offender often comes to view himself as ' 'wronged," a member of the' 'better element" in prison life...
...He convinced himself that he had a right to strike back at them.' 'At least, in the joint, there's other people like me...
...Never...
...Floyd reports that many releasees drift back into crime "in order to get caught" and be reinstitutionalized...
...Thirteen months after being paroled with good-time credits, he was arrested during a liquor store break-in, shot in the left leg and bound over for trial...
...Nor was the recidivism rate lowered in the non-subsidized groups by the availability of these services...
...Those who have a home to go to-a wife, parents, brother or sister, or other relative-temporarily solve the need for shelter...
...Ex-offenders who come from broken homes, or backgrounds where violence is a part of everyday life, often find themselves at conflict with parole officers and social workers whose definition of "normal" is far different from theirs...
...Arrested after a brawl outside a rural tavern, he was released without charges being filed...
...Where pre-prison life has consisted of ruleless behavior and a disregard for social and religious values, the felon lacks both patterns and peer group support...
...People who've been pushed around, and know what it feels like...
...He began to drink rather heavily, despite the fact that staying away from bars was a condition of his parole, and to mix with the few women who found him acceptable...
...Robert taggart in maintains that the most effective rehabilitation for first- and second-time offenders involves pre-sentencing intervention...
...Then I'm 'sposed to hold a job...
...In addition, one group also received job placement services for a year, as did one of the groups that did not receive weekly stipends...
...You don't never get rid of it...
...Charles D. Mallar and Craig V. D. Thornton, who headed the study, concluded that the $60 a week "cushion" had enabled those who received it to search for long-term jobs which offered a higher degree of security than those obtained by their non-subsidized counterparts...
...Another Nebraska ex-con-one who lasted only twenty months "on the outside" before being arrested and convicted for burglary and assault-recalled his troubled re-entry period...
...Well, the joint puts a mark like that in your mind...
...I worked two weeks and got laid off...
...So I lie to my P.O...
...Had not his parole officer intervened, he would have been sent back to prison after being picked up for disturbing the peace...
...How many residents of our prisons ever led particularly useful, productive, and acceptable lives...
...First, I wasn't 'sposed to associate with any felons...
...During incarceration, he follows vocational and study programs to prepare himself for the life he will lead when he is released...
...Like many ex-cons with a history of periodic violent confrontations with other members of society, Richard Carder couldn't make it on the outside...
...Like many ex-cons, particularly those sent up for theft, burglary, armed robbery and/or assault, the Nebraska parolee tried to solve his readjustment problems with the help of alcohol...
...The inability to renew old relationships, particularly where wives or children are involved, proves to be catastrophic for some released prisoners...
...He began to identify the social forces that he had had to deal with- prospective employers, parole officers, affluent neighbors- as oppressors...
...Under this type of program, which has been effectively tested in several states, post-prison employment is set up before the offender leaves the courtroom to begin his sentence...
...One guy-usually the smallest-was 'whore for the month.' We used to-" Or sijt over coffee across from the wife you'd asked to stop visiting you in prison and see the strain on her face as she brushed away all mention of years on food stamps and welfare checks and guys on the make and the kid bragging what his old man would do when he got out and the daughter arrested for lifting an $8.00 ring from Penney's and...
...So everytime I'm with a friend, I'm lookin' over my shoulder, scared I'm doin' something wrong...
...The change from incarceration, where life for the convict is slow-paced and routinized, to the high-charged bustle of American street life is drastic...
...We have recidivists because we make no room for those released from prison in our society...
...Hell no, I don't like it here," a San Quentin resident told a prisoner's rights movement worker, "but I know what's expected of me...
...His parole officer dealt a sternly worded warning: do it again and you go back to jail...
...Investigations revealed that he'd argued with his wife, who was pregnant with another man's child, and been kicked out of a temporary residence because he'd failed to pay the promised $15 rent...
...He began to seek out other released felons because he felt more comfortable with them...
...Although they were less likely to get full-time jobs right away, they were more likely to- enroll in school or training programs...
...I'm a loser either way...
...He managed to find a job, rent a room and gradually adjust to his new environment...
...If so, explain...
...By the end of the first year, the financially aided group showed a much lower recidivism rate...
...Transforming a rigidly routinized individual who virtually has been living in a state of suspended animation in prison into a self-sustaining member of society takes more than a pair of shoes, $60 in cash and a warning...
...Through a relative in rural southwestern Missouri, Carder found work with a mobile home-assembling firm...
...See that?That's in the skin and it don't come off...
...The price we pay, both as victims and as taxpayers, is far greater than an intelligent pre- and post-release rehabilitation program would cost.e rehabilitation program would cost...
...Recividism among men who, as children, grew up in families where at least one other member was a convicted criminal is twelve times greater than it is for those who grew up in families with no criminal backgrounds," a report to the New Jersey Attorney General's office showed...
...Seven out of ten convicts released from prison find themselves back behind bars within three years...
...I mean I hated it so bad I used to choke myself to get to sleep...
...Transferred to another division of the mobile home firm, Carder was fired after a fellow employee complained that he was abusive and difficult to work with...
...The problems of release are so immediate, and so complex, that few offenders forced to' 'make it on their own" without substantial support from family, social institutions, and friends escape recidivism...
...Though he earned enough for rent and food, and bought a second-hand car ("I had to pay cash for it-I couldn't get no loans . . ."), he was left with a lot of time to himself...
...robbery of a grocery clerk while holding a crowbar against his throat...
...I hated prison...
...Concluded Mallar and Thornton, "The provision of financial aid led to a large and statistically significant reduction in theft re-arrests, while the provision of job placement services proved to be singularly ineffective...
...My life outside ain't that much better than it was in the joint...
...The complainant, it turned out, was a Protestant lay preacher who admitted that the "abusiveness" was confined to language and the ex-con's outspoken attitudes toward women and sex...
...But not only has the felon changed during incarceration, his family has changed too...
...In most states, released felons must meet standards dictated by middle-class needs and customs...
...The incidents confirmed Carder's perception that the world was out to get him...
...Counseling helped the parolee understand that his reactions were "normal...
...Carder responded by getting drunk...
...Two groups received $60 a week for the first three months of their re-entry period, the other two did not...
...Then, when he gets out, he can't handle his family's attitudes, and they can't handle his...
...manslaughter while driving drunk . . ? Or you tell the waitress you' ve been dating,'' Yeah, I was in the joint...
...Crime is easier than making it as an ex-criminal," a three-time loser was quoted in the American Journal of Correction...
...But," Jim Floyd of the State Law Enforcement Planning Agency of New Jersey warns, "unless counseling leads to the solution of immediate problems which have high priority for offenders, it is unlikely to have any impact on future criminal behavior...
...A prison-toughened Missouri parolee pointed to tattoos on his left bicep...
...While in prison, the offender has not had to cope with situations like those he confronts upon his return to society...
...No differences were noted between the group that received job placement services in addition to aid from the one that didn't...
...THE EXPERIENCE of spending a year-or even less-in 1 prison radically transforms a man's personality," a Florida psychologist told the now defunct Law Enforcement Assistance Administration...
...former prison chaplain Father S. B. McGraw of San Francisco insists...
...Every application form has a section on the first page, near the bottom, "Have you ever been convicted of anything other than minor traffic violations...
...Although willing to admit that the robbery attempt was both ill-planned and "stupid," Carder bitterly told his court-appointed attorney that it didn't make that much difference...
...Sociologist Robert Taggart Ill's studies of released felons confirmed that many of them suffer from paranoia during the first year after their release...
...He felt thwarted and alone...
...and then I'm scared he'll find out and he'll revoke my parole...
...I was arrested and convicted of assault...
Vol. 108 • January 1981 • No. 1
