From the Baker City Herald, August 13, 2010

Robert Chance had little hope of ever breaking a cycle of drug addiction, crime and prison until a judge ordered him to serve his third stint in prison at the Powder River Correctional Facility in Baker City.

At Powder River, Chance and other inmates get drug and alcohol treatment through New Directions Northwest, which provides those services under contract with the Oregon Department of Corrections.

“The other night I had a client inmate come in and thank us for the program we have at Powder River. He said it had saved his life, and he went on to say that his children want to thank us too, because now they have their dad back,” said Shari Selander, incoming director of New Directions Northwest.

Selander said the intense drug and alcohol treatment program typically lasts about six months and is designed to give inmate clients the skills and knowledge to break out of the cycle of addiction and crime, and go out into the community to be successful.

“Going through the intense program allows them to look deep inside themselves and look at the choices they’ve made in life, and where those choices have got them today,” Selander said.

“Now they have a second chance of turning their lives around and being able to live out their dreams and find success in areas that were lost.”

Drug and alcohol addiction, family and friends involved in drugs or crime, along with unemployment and lack of job skills are among the leading factors associated with drug addiction and criminal activity, Selander said.

“Nobody grows up thinking I want to be a drug addict,” she said. “Oftentimes people have stresses in life that they aren’t able to cope with, so they turn to drugs to escape.”

Sometimes those stresses go back to childhood, including child abuse or growing up in a home where drugs and alcohol are abused, Selander said.

Some of the inmates undergoing drug and alcohol treatment at Powder River and other prisons have had mental health issues that went undiagnosed, so at some point in their lives they started self- medicating with drugs or alcohol, and wound up addicted.

“Drug and alcohol problems were a factor in 80 percent of the criminal cases that got them here. That’s why it is so important that the State of Oregon continue to implement these drug and alcohol programs with the prisons,” Selander said.

Most of the 271 inmates at Powder River also get basic work experience doing kitchen duty, janitorial, laundry and groundskeeping jobs, but a select few land jobs working in the physical plant where they can learn electrical, carpentry and plumbing skills, or manufacturing computer printer cartridges in a shop operated inside the prison by Step Forward Activities.

“People who say rehab doesn’t work need to look at the program we run in Baker City,” said Gene Button, executive director at Step Forward Activities.

“It does work,” Button said. “We follow up with the people who work for us in prison. We give them a work reference and we help place them into viable jobs when they get out.”

He said the company’s follow-up data shows that 88 percent of the ex-convicts who worked for Step Forward assembling printer cartridges were employed one year after their release.

That figure is more than double the 40 percent rate of employment nationwide among the general prison population, Button said.

“Eighty-eight percent of the people who went through our program are now drawing a paycheck and contributing thousands of dollars in taxes, instead of sitting inside a prison costing taxpayers thousands of dollars,” Button said.

The jobs program Step Forward started at Powder River seven years ago was the first of its kind in the nation, where we built a facility inside the walls of a prison, Button said.

“One of the goals of the DOC is to give inmates the training and education they need so they can get gainful employment and not re-offend and go back to prison,” Button said. “That’s where we shine.”

Chance is one of those who couldn’t find a job, went back to selling meth and wound up returning to prison to serve two prison sentences at taxpayer expense before he was finally given an opportunity on his third time in prison to work for Step Forward and get drug and alcohol treatment with New Directions Northwest.

Now in his 50s, Chance said he doesn’t want to waste any more of his life sitting in a prison cell, or enslaved to meth.

“Hopefully I will get some tools this time so I can avoid using and get a job. It’s what I want,” Chance said. “I see this as a career move.”

He applied for work manufacturing computer cartridges for Step Forward in hopes it would lead to a new career outside of the prison gates.

“I was real fortunate to get through the screening and qualify to get to work here,” he said.

The FBI reports that drugs and alcohol are a factor in about 80 percent of the felony convictions for violent crimes, property crimes and drug offenses, and studies show that 60 percent of ex-convicts are unemployed one year after their release from prison.

The Oregon Department of Corrections reports that drug and alcohol treatment combined with job training is provided at the state’s alternative incarceration prisons to about 600 inmates a year, out of more than 14,000 inmates serving sentences in Oregon.

Powder River is one of three alternative incarceration prisons in Oregon providing alcohol and drug treatment along with various types of work experience.

Ken Neff, operations manager at Powder River, has taken on most of the superintendent responsibilities since Jean Hill retired from the superintendent’s position earlier this year.

Neff said teaching inmates job skills in prison is huge.

“Some have never had jobs. They don’t know work ethics. They don’t know anything about job skills,” Neff said.

Inmates at Powder River who want to earn some money and gain basic jobs skills are required to fill out an application and go through a job interview, Neff said.

Ron Miles, communications officer at Powder River, said inmates have to meet certain qualifications to be eligible for treatment, or for jobs inside the prison.

To be assigned to Powder River and be eligible for treatment, inmates generally have to be at the low end of custody level,” which Miles said is based on a complex scoring system that takes into account factors such as age, the nature of the crime, history of drug or alcohol addiction and disabilities.

“Some inmates come in at higher custody levels, and over time they earn the lower custody levels through behavior and other factors. Behavior is the biggest factor,” Miles said.

“If they have good behavior, custody level usually drops after age 30. Statistics show us they are less likely to commit violent crime after age 30, even though they are in for violent crime,” Miles said.