Rochester

Pizzas and submarine sandwiches are often delivered to a well-kept old house in the Corn Hill section of Rochester. The house's residents tend to come and go at all hours, usually via public transportation. Neighbors regularly see them toting their clothes to a laundromat down the street or going to the corner store for toothpaste. There are no outward signs that the house is a state correctional facility or that the men engaged in these mundane activities are inmates. It doesn't look like a prison; and it's not supposed to.

The three-story, red brick building - identified only by a marker with the initials "R.C.F." for Rochester Correctional Facility - has no fence, no barred windows. No one wears a uniform here. Even most of the Officers on the Rochester police force are not aware of the nature of this unusual residence.

Rochester is a community-based facility. The term in this case is no euphemism: no one would ever think to call it a prison.

Sitting inconspicuously in a residential neighborhood a brisk walk from downtown Rochester, the facility provides a bed and supportive services, like a half-way house or YMCA, to a group of people at transitional points in their lives. The residents spend very little time inside. Like other busy Americans, they are on the go. Forty hours a week and more are spent working and commuting. Off-hours are filled with shopping and other personal errands, adult education at local colleges, seeing the doctor or dentist, going to church and attending AA and other self-help groups in the community. And like the rest of us, the men are often at home with their families.

All inmates are assigned to one of two "continuous temporary release" classifications: work release and day-reporting.

Up to 110 men are work release residents who sleep two or three nights at the facility, sharing the 70 beds on a rotating squad system and spending the other nights at home on furloughs. As they near release on parole, the inmates usually graduate to dayreporting status and live at home full-time, reporting to the facility as required for drug testing and to review their adjustment and progress under the higher day-reporting level of freedom and responsibility.

Transition to successful community living is the destination of the Rochester program; the route is outside employment with the private sector.

Nearly all inmates transferred to Rochester find jobs within two weeks of their arrival, and they usually stay with the same employer throughout their stay at the facility. Out of their wages (handled by facility staff, per Correction Law), inmates pay taxes, room and board, restitution and child support where applicable as well as all personal expenses. in many cases, inmates' earnings allow their families to leave public assistance rolls, relieving taxpayers of one of the hidden costs of crime.

Another by product of the program is that most inmates are able to put some money aside during their stay, crossing lack-of-funds off the list of hurdles they will have to clear when they finally leave the prison system.

Described by a former inmate as "a second chance at life," the Rochester program has helped thousands of inmates to make the difficult transition from incarcerated felon to law-abiding and productive citizen. The program brings both short-and long-term benefits to the taxpayer Not only do inmate earnings pay taxes and reduce welfare costs, but Rochester's per-inmate budget is less than a third of the cost to operate a standard prison.

Furthermore, anecdotal evidence suggests that inmates released from Rochester are unlikely to offend again - unlikely to victimize innocent people, unlikely to resume eating up the costly resources of the criminal justice system.

All this is accomplished without in any way endangering the law-abiding public. Inmates are carefully screened before they are assigned to the program and their compliance with program requirements is closely monitored for the duration of their stay.

Twenty-seven years' experience has shown that the screening and monitoring process works. Of approximately 6,000 inmates who have entered Rochester's doors, only two absconders remain at large.

Convent remains as neighborhood remakes itself

The Gothic Revival home of the Rochester program has stood for nearly a century. It was constructed in 1906 by the Immaculate Conception Church of Rochester as a "convention residence" for sisters teaching in the parish schools. The property was acquired by New York state in 1965 for a small group home operated by the Division for Youth (DEY). After the DFY center closed in 1972, the property was transferred to DOCS.

DOCS has made a concerted and successful effort to retain the original, stately appearance of the structure, which has a sentimental place in the hearts of Rochester's citizenry. The chapel's cathedral ceiling and stained-glass windows have been preserved, and the stairways and railings have been restored to the natural wood finish. The house and a small wood-frame garage are situated on a large lot with manicured shrubbery, mature trees and well-maintained lawn.

In the 1970's, in terms both of physical appearance and the behavior of the residents, the introduction of a correctional facility represented an upgrade for the neighborhood. The well-kept house and grounds of the former convent stood as a rebuke to the dilapidated buildings and empty lots on all sides.

While the neighbors had nothing to fear from the inmates, the inmates learned to be nervous about the free population outside; several were mugged while en route to or from their jobs.

Later, during the '80's, urban renewal rescued the deteriorating district. The 1840's row houses occupying 10 city blocks around the facility were rehabilitated, complete with trendy carved and gilded wooden signs. New construction included mid-priced townhouses and apartments sought after by young urban professionals. In the last decade, with federal funding for construction and rent subsidies, senior citizen housing (23 single-family houses and a 50-unit assisted living home) was also placed alongside the DOCS facility.

The correctional facility has been no obstacle to the ongoing Corn Hill resurgence. As one district resident says, the inmates are "no problem at all. In fact, we have the lowest crime rate in Monroe County."

"I moved here in 1977," says another "I knew about the facility and it has never bother me or my neighbors because it is nice-looking building and well-maintained. And, it is very quiet there."

New York's first community-based facility

At the end of the turbulent 1960's, politicians, administrators and critics agreed that the correctional system was failing to deliver on the promise of rehabilitation - by then felt almost universally to be the only defensible purpose of corrections. Exhaustive studies were undertaken on the federal level and in New York.

Chief among the problems highlighted in such reports was the dominance - in New York and elsewhere of maximum-security fortresses in rural settings far from the communities from whence the mostly urban, minority inmates hailed and to which they would one day return. It was recommended that the fortresses be replaced or supplemented by smaller facilities in the inmates' home communities. Less emphasis would be placed on security and custody, and more on work release and interaction with local social service agencies - the benchmark of the community corrections movement.

In New York, the 1969 Legislature authorized a pilot work release program allowing selected inmates within one year of parole eligibility to go Unescorted to outside jobs for up to 14 hours a day. The next year, the Legislature added Section 73 to Correction Law authorizing the establishment of "residential treatment facilities" for selected inmates within six months of eligibility for parole.

In extraordinarily broad language, the afore mentioned law permitted each resident "to go outside the facility during reasonable and necessary hours to engage in any activity reasonably related to his rehabilitation and in accordance with the program established for him." Two years later, the Legislature also authorized short-term furloughs of up to three days for various purposes including the maintenance of family ties.

The Department acted immediately on the new work release law, setting up programs out of three maximum-security prisons (Attica, Auburn and Bedford Hills). Action on the residential treatment law was delayed, awaiting the merger of DOCS and the Division of Parole that would facilitate the management of an "extra-mural" program.

Then, in September 1971, the many plans of the new administration were disrupted by the deadly riot at Attica. Soon after the riot, the Senate Select Committee on Correctional Institutions renewed the call for establishment of the new type of residential treatment facility. During this time, DOCS continued preparation of a Master Plan (published in 1973) that would call for seven 50-bed "community correctional centers," four in upstate cities and three in New York City.

In 1972, DFY closed its group home in Rochester DOCS acquired the property, and in January 1973 the Rochester Community Correctional Center accepted its first inmates.

DOCS then began to open community-based facilities in New York City (by the end of 1974, there were not three per the Master Plan but six). The planned establishment of additional facilities upstate, however, was blocked by community fears unappeased despite the positive experience at Rochester It was not until 1992 that a similar institution opened near Buffalo.

Rochester opened with beds for 40 work release inmates. A director and assistant director oversaw a staff including a general mechanic, two cooks, clerical workers and three parole officers who were DOCS employees. Security was provided by five Community Correctional Center Assistants (CCCAs) who wore civilian clothing and did not have peace officer status. Several years later, the CCCAs' achieved peace officer status. The position today is a one-grade non-competitive promotion for Correction Officers who have completed two years of college. Vacancies are filled by statewide postings. The CCCAs still do not wear uniforms.

In 1979, Rochester doubled its single rooms and convened a conference room to a six-bed dormitory, increasing its capacity to 60. Ten more beds were added in 1989, and the beds were double-encumbered through the use of the furlough program, allowing the facility count to exceed 100 inmates.

Rochester becomes first day-reporting center

When Rochester opened in 1973, the residential treatment facility law was on the books, but DOCS did not take full advantage of its broad language permitting an inmate to leave the facility "during reasonable and necessary hours to engage in any activity reasonably related to his rehabilitation." Instead, it used the more restrictive work release law.

Rochester's inmates, like those in work release programs at Attica, Auburn and Bedford Hills, could be absent from the facility for no more than 14 hours in a day. The same rule prevailed in the numerous minimum-security work release facilities later set up in New York City.

By the late 1980's, the inmate population boom was forcing unintended applications of the temporary release law. Designed to ease the transition to full release from custody, the law was reluctantly used to relieve overcrowding. Furloughs were now used at Rochester and other work release facilities to double-encumber beds, with inmates rotating between nights in the facility and nights at home on furlough.

Day-reporting was a later turn in the creative interpretation of old laws to tackle new problems. The germination of the program began during 1989 budget negotiations. DOCS' plea for more beds had been countered by a demand from the Legislature to come up with new ideas for treating drug abusers. The Department dusted off the forgotten residential treatment facility law to find authority for selected work release inmates to spend seven nights a week at home, while checking in at a designated DOCS facility at scheduled intervals to review their compliance with program requirements.

Rochester, which had paved the way for the state's embrace of community-based programming, was selected as the initial site. Within four days of the authorization from Albany, the new day-reporting program was up and running.

Soon after, the Department responded to the Legislature's interest in drug programming by also using the residential treatment law to start a new Comprehensive Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment (CASAT) program.

Rochester in the new millennium

Rochester today is a fully-accredited facility with a capacity of 110 work release inmates. As a result of Governor Pataki's Executive Order Number 5 that barred violent felons from work release, the actual population has declined from the early 1990's, and now stands at approximately 75 inmates. Rochester is also the day-reporting center for nearly 100 additional inmates.

Rochester's inmate program is, in a word, employment. New inmates are expected to initiate the job search; facility staff assist if necessary. Most find jobs within a week.

Over the years, nearly 500 different firms have employed Rochester inmates. The area's major employers - Xerox, Kodak and the University of Rochester and its subsidiary, Strong Memorial Hospital - all hire inmates. One inmate worked as a porter in a bank, another as a car salesman, another as a computer programmer for Kodak. A former inmate is now the custodian of the new senior citizen complex next door to the facility. One former inmate was a surgical nursing assistant at St. Mary's Hospital; he was on call, and it was not unusual for the hospital to send a cab for him in emergencies. One inmate left Rochester with $24,000 saved during his stay.

Earnings by work release and day-reporting inmates in 1999 totaled $917,124. From that, $125,051 was withheld for state and local taxes, with another $54,928 withheld for social security. Deductions for room and board were $68,992, and dayreporters offset program costs by $13,840 through payment of participation fees.

The residential inmates spend an average of two nights a week in the facility. The facility provides a mattress, a pillow and a locker; the inmates supply their own bedding. They are responsible for cleaning their rooms and share communal housekeeping duties.

The facility has no commissary and no laundry. Inmates prepare their own breakfasts and lunches. Dinner is served every night, but-if an inmate's work shift runs past the meal hour-he might want to send out for a pizza.

The primary mission of this community-based correctional facility is the successful reintegration of temporary release inmates into the community. Overall, Rochester and other temporary release facilities provide a cost-effective means of housing non-violent felony offenders without jeopardizing community safety.

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