James Haywood, a 20-year veteran AP&P agent, is waiting for a parolee whose case he handles. The offender is late.

Being late or not showing up are red flags for the men and women shepherding inmates back into the mainstream.

"I don't think this guy is going to make it," Haywood says.

He's right.

A week later, Haywood is writing a warrant on the 27-year-old man.

"I think he's out drugging and using," Haywood said. The offender's brother got out three weeks earlier, and both are in the wind. It's a family where drugs and criminal activity have been the norm his whole life.

The sons have both been locked up for using and dealing drugs. Their mother was HIV positive from drug use and selling herself as a prostitute on the streets. Then the offender didn't show up for his mental health evaluation and missed two reporting meetings with Haywood.

"It's time for us to find him and put him back in the box," Haywood said.

Drug-abuse cycle

In a couple of years, corrections officials hope the "box" isn't the prison but a privately managed 300-bed parole violation center. The department requested $7.6 million in its proposed 2008-09 budget for the project.

Corrections executive director Tom Patterson said the center would ease prison crowding and rehabilitate offenders.

Other than that project, the proposed budget doesn't include new money for AP&P. Parole and probation agents, whose starting salary is $16.14 an hour, aren't in line for raises like correctional officers.

"We're trying to address where we're bleeding the most, then we'll have to prioritize the next area of bleeding. That would be one of the next ones," Patterson said.

Corrections administrators always have been in this struggle, evaluating real needs while balancing political and public expectations of incarceration.

For two decades, Haywood has watched the policy of this department swing with the political and administrative winds. There used to be a "lock-them-up" mentality, but then the prison walls bulge and the pendulum swings the other way to "treatment for everything," he says.

And with 75 percent of the cases related to drugs, Haywood says, "We have got to be getting these dopers some treatment."

An array of facts support Haywood's claim.

• Of those in the prison population, 70 percent to 80 percent are addicted to drugs and alcohol. Many have been sober inside but face the real-world scenario where drugs and alcohol are available once they get out.

• Only 5 percent get substantive substance-abuse treatment in prison. This does not include AA meetings.

• There is a three-month waiting list for most affordable treatment centers.

"You take the victories where you can get them," Brown said.

There aren't many.

About two weeks ago, Worley attended a graduation for a female parolee. The woman had graduated from treatment, and her relatives and friends spoke about the offender's strengths and how much she'd changed.

"It was nice," Worley said, "thinking I might have had a role in that."

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