THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 18, 1994 TAG: 9412160041
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
Two sides one might think would have nothing to say to each other met in Richmond the other day. And with a surprising result. Virginia corrections director Ronald Angelone, who claims not to believe in rehabilitation, and Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants, which obviously does, found areas of agreement.
Differences remain, of course. But one CURE member told Angelone: ``I wouldn't be honest if I said I didn't agree with very much of what you're saying.''
When the prison head said rehabilitation ``doesn't work - it never can work - because there's no such thing,'' he presumably was using hyperbole to dramatize his point that prisons can't force rehabilitation on anyone, that a prisoner can't change unless he wants to.
But a penal system can help cut further reduction by making sure that inmates are exposed to incentives to change and that they have available the kinds of programs that will enable them to do so when they return to society.
Angelone told CURE that he favors education and treatment, but he would not say how much funding he'll seek from the General Assembly.
Virginia has long provided education, job training, counseling, work release and other opportunities. But because the commonwealth has been stingy with money, these services don't begin to meet the need. Several years ago, the Board of Corrections asked for $9 million - a minuscule percentage of the prisons' budget - to expand such programs. Only $670,000 was approved.
Del. Marian Van Landingham of Alexandria, who headed a legislative task force studying transition services for inmates, told the Virginia Crime Commission the other day that the need for rehabilitation services will increase further with the state's ending of parole. ``If we keep them in longer,'' she said, ``they're going to be even more institutionalized than they are today. When somebody has been in prison for 20 years, what happens when they go into society?''
Anticipating a sharp rise in inmates from both today's 83-percent rejection rate for parole applicants and next year's start of the no-parole policy, the commonwealth will spend $2 billion to enlarge cell space. What a betrayal of taxpayers it will be if Virginia continues to skimp on programs that will help lower the state's appalling repeat-offender rate. by CNB