
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 18, 1990                   TAG: 9007180407
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

PULASKI TEST

VIRGINIA'S reinstitution of a major work-release program for non-violent prison inmates is one way to reduce the likelihood of a return to crime after they're released. But it's only one piece of the picture.

From the newly expanded Pulaski Correctional Unit No. 1 near Dublin, for example, comes news of another piece: a program to break offenders of the drug (including alcohol) addictions that helped land many in prison in the first place.

Such programs are not to new Virginia's prisons, but they are woefully few. The one at the Pulaski Unit is experimental in that it's run by an outside agency, the Substance Abusers Service of the New River Valley Community Services Board. If it works, it suggests a method for expanding in-prison drug-treatment efforts more speedily.

If success is defined as a 100-percent recovery rate, the program is doomed to failure. But if success is defined more modestly, as avoiding for some offenders what otherwise would be an almost-certain return to crime, the program holds out a good measure of hope.

by CNB