Prison break: how Michigan managed to empty its penitentiaries while lowering its crime rate.

• Author: Mogelson, Luke

Anyone involved with rehabilitating former prisoners learns to live with modest accomplishments. In its last study on recidivism, in 2002, the Department of Justice found that over two-thirds of former prisoners were rearrested within three years of being released. There's no reason to think those numbers have improved. The recidivism rate in California, for instance, has hovered at around 70 percent for the past twenty-five years. On such bleak terrain, gains are measured by a hairsbreadth.

That's why eyes are turned to Michigan. In 2003, the state launched the Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative (MPRI), which amounts to the most comprehensive program in the country for helping parolees transition from prison back into society. The premise of the MPRI is familiar: that it's both cheaper and safer to invest in preventing ex-cons from reoffending than it is to repeatedly incarcerate them. The methods, however, are new. And preliminary data from the Michigan Department of Corrections is promising: parolees who have been released through the MPRI are returning to prison 27 percent less frequently than similar offender types released without it. Other measures also point to progress. Last year saw the fewest parolees committing new crimes since 2005 and the smallest percentage of total paroles revoked since record keeping began more than twenty years ago.

When parolees are less likely to reoffend, more prisoners can be let go without jeopardizing public safety. Going hand in hand with Michigan's improved recidivism rates, therefore, has been a correspondent increase in parole approvals. Over 3,000 more prisoners were paroled in 2009 than were paroled in 2006; approvals for violent offenders have gone up by more than half (from 35 to 55 percent), while approvals for sex offenders have more than quadrupled (from 10 to 50 percent). As a result, during the past three years, the number of state inmates in Michigan has shrunk by 12 percent, reversing a sixteen-year trend of steady prison population growth. The turnaround enabled Governor Jennifer Granholm to shut down ten prisons last year, and an additional eight are slated to be dosed by the end of 2010.

A few months ago, I sat in on an MPRI employment readiness seminar at the Oakland County parole office. The office is in Pontiac, the former hub of Automation Alley, where over half of the workforce is still employed by General Motors. Some twenty-five parolees--white, black, young, old--crowded into a small room, where they listened to Chaka McDonald, a sharply dressed case specialist, explain things like the difference between a laptop and a desktop.

"Who's surfed on Yahoo?" asked McDonald midway through the class.

Two men raised their hands.

"Who has e-mail?"

Four hands.

"Who's familiar with Facebook?"

One hand.

McDonald held aloft a black Dell notebook. "How could it benefit you, knowing what kind of computer this is, if you're meeting with an employer?"

"The job might be ran on them," answered a young man in his twenties.

McDonald nodded and moved on to explain how a wireless USB internet adaptor worked. "How could this benefit me, if I go see an employer and I'm not shocked looking at this thing protruding out of this computer?"

A man with a shaved head, who'd been running a comb through his long black goatee, raised his hand. "It shows you have a working knowledge of the technology."

"There you go. Because at some point we know we gonna have to address the felony. So if I know at some point I'm addressing the felony, if I can let this employer know I'm still computer literate, won't that diminish that felony a little bit?"

After the class, a reentry coordinator named Sherry Carter pulled the man with the goatee and shaved head into her office. The man's name was David, and he'd recently been released after doing ten years for having had sex with a thirteen-year-old girl. (David had been seventeen at the time.) He was hoping to get a job at the Silverdome, but he knew his prison tattoos would disqualify him. "SCORPIO" was inked on one side of his neck, "BETTY" on the other, and "D-A-R-K-N-E-S-S" across his knuckles.

"Are you interested in having your tattoos removed?" Carter asked him.

The Pontiac parole office has an agreement with American Pride, a local parlor that performs laser removals. In David's case, the procedure would likely take two sessions, each costing $100, but the Michigan Department of Corrections, with MPRI time, was willing to pay for it.

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Later, David told me that when he was released from prison the MPRI set him up with an apartment, provided him with bus passes, gave him vouchers for clothes, and helped him create a resume and apply for jobs. MPRI officials also got him enrolled in Oakland Community College, where he will be pursuing a degree in automotive technology.

This sort of assistance is a big change. Prior to the MPRI, Michigan parolees received a little bit of cash and two weeks of transitional housing. After that, one former parole agent says, "They were out on their ass, either sleeping on a park bench or in the shelter."

Under such circumstances, David told me, he probably wouldn't have made it. "A guy like me, I did ten years in the joint. You get out and you got nothing. I had one outfit when I got out. That's the only thing I had in my entire possession. If it wasn't for the MPRI program, I'd be on the street right now."

Between 1970 and 2005 the number of incarcerated Americans grew by 700 percent, accounting for one-fourth of the...