By ANDREA WOLF
Vallejo Times-Herald staff writer
Related: An ethical foundation: Retraining from a correctional perspective
VALLEJO, Calif. — Gregory Carter, a native Vallejoan who has bounced in and out of incarceration for years, credits a city parolee re-entry program with saving his life.
Carter, a 47-year-old longtime drug user and parolee, is one of the approximately 400 parolees in Solano County involved in the voluntary Parolee Re-entry Program led by Vallejo’s Fighting Back Partnership.
“I was raised in a wonderful home with a country girl for a mother and an honest, hard-working father,” Carter said. “Anything negative that has happened since then, I volunteered for.”
While still in the midst of recovering from two decades of heroin and methamphetamine addiction, Carter said he would likely not have a home, a job or a future without the reentry program’s support and guidance.
A year after Fighting Back Partnership, Youth and Family Services and the Vallejo Police Department were awarded $1.2 million to address Carter’s needs and those of Solano County’s other parolees, officials say recidivism has dropped.
The program is covered by the state funded grant for 30 months and project officials said they hope to secure additional funding for it to continue.
John Allen, of Vallejo’s Fighting Back Partnership and project director, said the program focuses on three main issues parolees like Carter face after prison: drug and alcohol dependency, lack of housing, and job opportunities.
“The majority of those in prison suffer from drug or alcohol addiction and until those issues are addressed it is difficult to help them not return to prison,” Allen said.
Tony Pearsall, Fighting Back’s executive director, said Solano County parolees in the program rarely return to prison.
“The program has been so successful that we have been asked to go to other communities in California and share what we are doing,” Pearsall said.
The program assigns parolees to one of the three case managers who act as a 24-hour contacts for participants.
According to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation statistics, there are about 1,600 active parolees living in Solano County, and the state has a recidivism rate of about 73 percent.
Officials said Carter is like a lot of parolees the program serves. Allen said the project aims to help the two-thirds of the prison population that has a desire to change. Unfortunately, he said, about a third of inmates have little chance of turning their life around.
Carter said in an interview that he started smoking marijuana in high school and almost immediately turned to harder drugs.
“After the first joint I smoked behind Winchell’s Donuts in 1973, I never did homework again,” Carter said. “At 25, I started heroin and that’s what turned me into a pariah. Unless you have a trust fund to support your habit, a heroin addict needs to steal around the clock. The only days off are when you get arrested.”
Carter said he began pulling off commercial burglaries to support his addiction and soon was in and out of jails around the Bay Area.
Carter said one night he knocked over a store he had been frequenting since he was 7 and came out with $40 in cash and some food stamps. He was sent to prison for the first time and served a three-year sentence.
“There are guys that do time and they can get OK with it,” Carter said. “It wasn’t like that for me. I wasn’t raised to do time. When I got out I had every intention in the world of not going back.”
But his addiction sucked him right back into his old ways.
Then one night he borrowed his roommate’s car without permission and ended up back in prison on stolen vehicle charges.
“It didn’t dawn on me that when normal people discover their car is not there, they are apt to call the police,” Carter said. “I shouldn’t have oughta done that. Not with my record.”
While in prison, Carter thought everything would be the same as he left it when he got out. He thought he could go back to his old life.
“That wasn’t what happened. Everything was gone, nothing’s the same,” Carter said. “I was out not even three weeks and already loaded, playing with the freedom I was just awarded.”
But something wasn’t right. The drugs weren’t doing it for him.
“For the first time I started to search out not for a meeting, but a place where I could learn to live. I didn’t have anywhere to go and my options were the graveyard, prison or recovery,” Carter said.
That’s when he found Allen of Fighting Back Partnership, who immediately got him a bed in a home for recent parolees and helped him get his recovery program started. Carter said the kindness and support from Allen and Fighting Back are what has allowed him to make it five months clean and sober so far.
Carter also credited Joe Bates, Vallejo’s assistant maintenance supervisor, with helping him acclimate to life outside prison walls with a landscaping job.
Employment’s a major hurdle for felons since employers often end the interview once the, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” box is checked on an application, Carter said.
Carter said his checkered past had destroyed any sense of self worth, but Bates’ encouragement and praise has brought back self-esteem and the work ethic Carter was taught by his father.
“Because they took a chance on me and trusted me, I was able to rise to the occasion and step up to jobs and do well,” Carter said. “I was met with nothing but respect and treated professionally and admirably.”
Allen said it can be a challenge to get support for programs aimed at helping convicted felons, but reintegrating parolees into society benefits an extended network of spouses, family members and children affected by an incarcerated individual.
“It really about getting parolees out of the cycle of addiction and incarceration,” Allen said.
Copyright 2008 The Times-Herald