SECTION: Part A; Page 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1109 words

HEADLINE: RENO PROPOSES RESTRUCTURING LOCAL COURTS

BYLINE: ERIC LICHTBLAU, TIMES STAFF WRITER 


DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:
Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, condemning the failure of current criminal justice policies, on Tuesday proposed a potentially radical restructuring of the nation's local court systems to prevent convicts from shuttling in and out of prisons "again and again and again."

Reno's plan essentially would create special courts authorizing judges to oversee the reentry of inmates into society and to supervise their rehabilitation through work, education and community programs, aides said. The Justice Department now will solicit the ideas of state and local officials on how the proposal might be implemented.

"Let's give our courts, our judges what it takes to do justice, what it takes to solve the human problems that bring the cases before them," the attorney general said at the annual meeting of the American Bar Assn. in Atlanta. "It makes no sense to send somebody to prison for an armed robbery and have them come out in four years . . . without the problem being addressed," Reno said.

The idea, modeled after drug courts in Miami, Los Angeles and other cities, seeks to swing the pendulum of criminal policy back toward rehabilitation after a 25-year focus on tougher punishment, aides to Reno said.

The proposal was triggered by persistent trends in criminal recidivism: About two-thirds of convicts return to prison within three years of their release, aides said. With half a million inmates now returning to society each year, "we have a lot of people out there under virtually no supervision who pose significant risks to their communities," said Jeremy Travis, director of the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department.

But some skeptical crime-policy experts said that they believe Reno--who has been described by critics as a social worker in prosecutor's clothing--is viewing the problem through rose-colored glasses.

To think that an armed robber who has been in and out of prison all his adult life stands much chance of rehabilitation "is simply nonsense," said UCLA professor James Q. Wilson, who is regarded as one of the country's leading thinkers on criminal policies.

"It's just a nice-sounding generality that has little, if any, basis in serious thought. It's a wholly untested idea," he said. The convict--especially one with five or more convictions--"almost surely will commit another crime" once released, Wilson said.

But Justice Department officials have been researching the concept with increasing enthusiasm in recent months. Reno quickly embraced the idea, Travis said in an interview.

The next step is for the Justice Department to solicit concept papers next month from state and local jurisdictions on how the idea might be implemented. But no funding has been committed, and it is unclear what role the federal government might play.

"We're trying to put a new concept on the table for discussion," Travis said. "We're very early in testing the idea . . . but this is really a new dimension in thinking about the role of the criminal justice system."

In looking at ways to reverse the intractable problem of recidivist offenders, federal authorities have been bothered in recent years by the deteriorating role of parole offices that often are understaffed and overworked, Travis said. Meanwhile, the nationwide push for mandatory sentences for criminals--with parole abolished altogether in some states--has taken away discretionary powers from judges and has loosened supervision over inmates who are released back into society, he said.

Reno's proposal seeks to counter that trend, creating "reentry courts" to handle inmates leaving custody.

In theory, Travis said, a local judge could be assigned a docket of cases consisting of already-imprisoned inmates scheduled for release in the next few months. The judge's role, he said, would be to oversee the inmate's return to society and monitor his progress once he is out, ensuring drug tests, tracking work and educational opportunities and getting reports from the parolee, his family, employer and others.

The judge would perform many of the tasks commonly associated with parole officers--but would have the power to put the convict in prison for the weekend or return him to prison altogether if he failed to comply with terms of his release, Travis said. "You would have the judge at the center, managing the levers of support and coercion" to ensure rehabilitation, he said.

The idea is modeled after drug courts, which have gained popularity in recent years as a way of weaning nonviolent offenders from a life of drugs and crime. Reno, as state attorney for Florida's Dade County, helped pioneer the drug-court concept in the late 1980s, and Los Angeles has hailed its own program as a strong success. A recent sampling of former users completing the Los Angeles court program, a supervised year of intense counseling and drug testing, found only 5% were arrested again on drug charges.

As a companion proposal to the "reentry court," Reno and aides said Tuesday that they want to push for an expansion of specialized courts, catering exclusively to specific types of offenders, such as domestic abusers or those with mental health problems, for instance.

The push for better rehabilitation is not merely a way to give inmates a break on the outside, said Sharon English, who heads the office of prevention and victim services at the California Youth Authority and took part in a recent panel discussion on the reentry court concept.

If the court system helps to ensure that newly released inmates get jobs, it also will make it more likely that they will have the money to pay for child support, restitution to their victims and the like, she said.

"I don't really care if they go to therapy, but I would like them to repay a victim who has thousands and thousands of dollars in medical bills. They have to be held responsible for their actions," English said. "No parole means no supervision and that's not a good thing for anybody."

Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office in Sacramento, said there is no disputing the fact that the "revolving door" of offenders is a critical and growing problem. But he said it is too early to say whether Reno's approach is the best way to solve it.

Reno herself sought to head off concerns about her ideas, noting that some people may question the cost of creating new reentry courts.

But she asked: "How do we afford what we have now, with people recycling through the system again and again and again?" She added: "When failure finally occurs, it is the criminal justice system that takes the blame."

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, speaking before the American Bar Assn., favors authorizing judges to oversee the reentry of inmates into society. PHOTOGRAPHER: Associated Press

LOAD-DATE: August 11, 1999