Demarcus Peters has seen the rampant property crime wrought by economic desperation and drug addiction.
But little happens to those criminals who recycle through the jail, many ending back on Peters’ turf on English Avenue. He pushes for more police, but he also supports a Fulton County program being designed to reform repeat offenders.
He’s seen that some potential property criminals prefer work. If more did, it would stabilize their lives, cut crime in neighborhoods and cut jail costs for taxpayers.
“We have found through our own programs that we are operating that some are thirsty for opportunity,” said Peters, director of the English Avenue Neighborhood Association. “If there are programs to help them, then some of them can be saved.”
Fulton County Commission Chairman John Eaves is spearheading a pilot program to see if social workers can get inmates who have been repeatedly arrested for nonviolent crimes to change their behavior.
The county has a $750,000 federal grant to establish a pilot program in which two case managers work with 40 inmates for five years with the hope that at least 20 will go straight.
The immediate savings to taxpayers if the program meets its benchmark would be $545,000 a year, based on the daily cost per jail inmate. Bigger savings would come, both in taxes and the uncalculated costs of stolen property and damages, if the program proves its merit and the county expands it, said Erika Story, who is heading the program.
The program will provide repeat, nonviolent offenders help in securing housing, education, drug treatment and employment and intensive counseling, said Story, who was a Bronx prosecutor for a decade before returning to Atlanta.
The program will focus on inmates from the 30318 ZIP code, which includes English Avenue, because of the high number who come from there. While in jail, the participants will be separated from other inmates and the goal will be to release them quickly under heavy supervision, Story said.
“This is not hug a thug,” Story said. “But these people get out of jail and we have to deal with them or they are going to victimize somebody else again.”
The barriers to success are high, Story said. At a task force meeting this week, she produced Fulton County jail data showing 90 percent of inmates hadn’t graduated from high school, 65 percent didn’t read better than a seventh-grader and 85 percent were arrested again within 12 months of release.
At the meeting, Superior Court Chief Judge Cynthia Wright noted hurdles counselors will face getting treatment for participants. Despite the jail averaging about 800 inmates on mental illness medications and a majority also testing positive for substance abuse, the Superior Court’s drug and mental health wings can’t get many defendants into treatment because they lack health insurance, Wright said.
Michael Leo Owens, an Emory University professor, co-authored a study of the barriers felons face in rejoining legitimate society. He said the program’s value as a case study will be undermined if its 40 participants aren’t representative of the varying attitudes inmates hold toward rehabilitation. While it might show how society can benefit from working with motivated prisoners, many prisoners won’t be as motivated, he said.
He said the biggest barrier the study identified was getting a job because many employers weren’t willing to take a chance on an ex-con.
“The question really is whether there is the political will to address these issues,” he said.
Peters, the neighborhood advocate, said he thinks the program has a decent chance of success. The English Avenue Neighborhood Association hired locals regardless of whether they had a criminal record, and Peters said the workers put in long days for $100 a week.
Peters asked them what they needed to change their lives. They said an education and drug treatment.
“They were candid about their needs,” he said. “What that revealed to me was that given a small opportunity, people were willing to do good.”
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