On this one, I stepped out of my comfort zone. While I normally write about national security, foreign policy, and the military, yesterday I placed an op-ed in the Washington Post about none of the above. Rather, the piece was about my experience as a “mentor” (a term that seems funny) to my friend, Tim Cofield. We met through a charity called the Welcome Home Reentry Program. As that title might suggest, Tim is an inmate in the D.C. jail, and has been for a good chunk of his life — 13 out of 54 years. The only upside to that is that he essentially missed the Bush years. But as of right now, he’s still there, despite being scheduled for release last Friday.
The point of my article is pretty simple — Tim keeps ending up in jail (he’s been convicted four times, by my count), but he’s not necessarily getting any better. Unless he gets high-quality and consistent mental health and substance abuse care, not to mention a stable place to live and a steady income, Tim is almost certainly going to find himself back in jail soon.
This is a difficult issue for politicians, particularly those on the state and local level who control budgets. Fearful of looking “soft on crime” (hello, California’s three strikes law), politicians promise to throw any transgressor behind bars without paying attention to the consequences. State budgets go bust, and overcrowded prisons are eventually emptied, even though prisoners’ behavioral patterns haven’t been altered.
Here’s an excerpt:
If all goes according to plan, my friend Tim Cofield will be a free man by the time you read this. He was scheduled to get out of the D.C. jail Friday. Despite having spent more than three months in an orange jumpsuit, Tim would probably disagree with Eric Holder’s February speech to the National Symposium on Indigent Defense, in which the attorney general called for more funding to fulfill Americans’ right to competent defense. While I’m sure Holder is correct that “in some parts of the country . . . basic public defender systems simply do not exist,” Tim — whom I mentor through the fantastic Welcome Home Reentry Program — would tell you D.C. public defenders are actually quite good.
In the District, money would be better used to improve post-release rehabilitation and mental health programs. Without better support for parolees, we cannot break a cycle that leads to the reconviction of two-thirds within three years. This astonishing statistic is due to many factors, but here are two big ones: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 74 percent of inmates enter state prisons hooked on drugs or alcohol and 56 percent have a significant mental health problem. Tim checks both boxes.
[…]
We’re at a crucial point. Tim has probably (though not certainly) stayed clean in the prison’s rehab program. I visited him in jail, and he seemed clear-headed and resolved. He is being released into a halfway house that also serves as a drug treatment program. The quality of these programs varies wildly, but regardless, I know he needs much more than just rehab.
His chances to salvage any semblance of a productive life depend on a combination of high-quality substance counseling, consistent therapy and stable housing.
Read the entire thing here.
