EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S ANNUAL MEETING REPORT

Every day the Prison Society opens for business is a day that brings hope to thousands of men and women across Pennsylvania. That's a powerful way to start anybody's day. But after 217 years, that's hardly enough for an organization as vigorous as ours.

At our last meeting, I said the year ahead would be one of great challenges. Indeed, it has been. The most difficult of those challenges was financial - as you heard from our Treasurer. Reductions in program funding and a seemingly unending demand for building improvements played major roles in this area. We have addressed these problems in a number of ways and are now looking forward to a year in which we can resume the growth of the agency. In fact, we are anticipating conservatively that our revenue growth for the coming year will be in the range of 10 to 15 percent over the current year. That would push us back over the $2 million mark.

Finances aside, however, the past year has been one of great progress and, in some respects, of long-term renewal.

• We've had a 7 percent hike in official visitors - up to 470.
• We've increased our constituent contacts by 13 percent, reaching more than 31,000 men and women across the state.
• And, despite turnover of almost 50 percent, we've actually made significant improvements in the quality and strength of the staff overall.

Our service programs have grown in different ways. Here are just a few important examples:

Re-entry, for one, now consists of four separate and expanding initiatives. This program once involved life skills education and job readiness training, but now it also includes extensive case management, job development, and in some cases, mentoring. And, where we once counted clients in the hundreds, our current caseload is in the thousands with a forecast for the coming year in the range of 3,000 to 6,000.

Re-entry is a hot program area, garnering attention of criminal justice professionals and a growing number of funding sources. The New York Times referred to "re-entry" earlier this week as the politically acceptable substitute for rehabilitation. The Prison Society's re-entry efforts are underwritten by United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the state Department of Public Welfare, the Jackson v. Hendricks court administrators and private sector donors contributing through Search for Common Ground.

Another one of our programs, SKIP, Support to Kids with Incarcerated Parents, is a much smaller but equally rapidly growing program. I mention it here for a special reason, because of the unique plans currently underway.

SKIP is a 12-week after school program that helps children from 8 to 12 years of age to deal with the loss to imprisonment of their fathers or mothers. For the past two years, we have been running at about capacity with groups held every day of the week. But even at capacity - about 20 groups a year - we can accommodate at most fewer than 200 children a year. This is from a population estimated to be upward of 25,000 in the Philadelphia area.

To address this demand more effectively, we are developing a franchising-like arrangement. Under this plan, we will make our curriculum and program materials available and provide instructor training and support to any appropriate agency interested in conducting SKIP sessions.

Our first partner is Philadelphia Society for Services to Children which hopes to field a force of 20 instructors in September. With that many instructors, you can see how the level of service escalates rapidly. And, we already have expressions of interest in this program from social service providers in Altoona and other parts of the state, as well.

Lastly, I want to mention Restorative Justice which is right now bringing the A Body in Motion production to prisoners and communities around the state. Those of you who attended the Convener's Conference had a chance to see the play there; others may have caught it elsewhere. It is a powerful depiction of the pain and suffering of crime victims and their survivors. It evokes intense feelings among inmates who have themselves been victims and who react to the realization of the damage their crimes may have caused.

I mention this project because it is novel and worthwhile, but also because it is an example of our proactivity in reaching out to organizations with whom we have not traditionally had warm relations. Our aim is not to convert them to our way of thinking or exchanging our views for theirs; it is simply to find common ground with others of influence in the hope that it will help us succeed in advancing our mission.

What is important about these three programs - and is true of all our programs - is that with creativity and proactivity they are growing to meet expanding needs of the populations we seek to serve.

I hope it is also apparent that these programs help our advocacy efforts. And that's what I want to turn to now. Again, I'll use just a few examples of the areas in which we have been especially active during the past year.

The board has been deeply involved in pressing the Rendell administration and the Board of Pardons on behalf of commutation recommendations for lifers. The system for handling applications for commutations is woefully inadequate. They are so far behind in processing applications that if you were to file today, it would take more than a year before the board gave it first consideration.

Our advocacy in this area led the Pardons Board to make a 50 percent increase in the number of merit review cases heard each month. That's still inadequate, but certainly a step in the right direction. As you know, the clemency appeals of two lifers have been recommended by the Pardons Board and now sit on Governor Rendell's desk. Let's hope this is just a beginning of a more reasonable and compassionate form of justice in Pennsylvania.

In a somewhat related cause, an ad hoc group of board members and other interested parties have been working on something we call the PEP or Pennsylvania Equity Project. The goal is to achieve fairness for lifers who were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and were convicted before it was formally recognized as a mitigating factor. That recognition occurred in 1980 with the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III, but by 1980 dozens of Vietnam veterans - many suffering from PTSD - were entering our prisons with life sentences.

PEP supporters believe that once PTSD was recognized in the DSM, the charges levied for certain crimes changed. Some incidents for which life sentences were issued were far more likely to have been given charges that would have resulted in sentences of 10 to 20 years or less. We think these cases deserve a second look.

The Prison Society succeeded in getting the House Judiciary Committee to hold a public hearing on this issue two years ago. Now, after six years of trying, we have been successful in getting the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America to support the cause. We estimate there are between 20 and 50 lifers in the state who have already served more than 25 years who might be eligible for some form of relief. We simply must keep trying.

The next issue I wanted to mention has to do with the dreadful state of our county prisons. Criminal indictments have been handed down in Scranton for the former warden and deputy warden of the Lackawanna County jail. In Northumberland County, prison staff have been arrested for drug dealing. In Dauphin County, staff are suing staff. And, there are other problems in Adams County, Bucks County, Allegheny County and elsewhere.

Under Title 37, the state Department of Corrections has the authority to conduct inspections of the physical plant and operational procedures of county prisons. And, the DOC does this - annually.

But the findings of the inspectors are turned over to the local county commissioners and other members of the prison board. In many cases, these reports are largely ignored. Title 37 has no teeth in it, or so everyone says. But I believe a lot of these problems would be handled if these inspection reports were made public.

That's right, I'm suggesting the results be unveiled at local news conferences so the press and the public can hold these officials accountable for shortcomings before they turn into major scandals. In the case of Lackawanna County, for example, the abuses at that prison might still be going on if it were not for the outrage expressed by local visitors and the aggressive reporting of the local media.

The Prison Society has been meeting with the state leadership of the NAACP and is developing strategy to launch a grassroots campaign for public disclosure of the findings of these inspections. We invite your assistance. Leaving this situation in its current state is simply unconscionable.

We also need help with a movement in which we are involved to find community housing for parolees convicted of sex offenses. The Board of Probation and Parole asked us for help with this because they are clogging up the community corrections facilities.

It seems we have done such a brilliant job of demonizing all sex offenders that now all of them will have to max out. In effect, we have ensured that sentences for these folks will be twice as long as originally intended, and that they will be released with no community supervision at all. How bright is that?

Episcopal Community Services, the Quakers, Catholic Social Services and some members of the Black Clergy in Philadelphia have been working with us on this. We are planning to have a strategy session next month, and hope to ind ways of placing these individuals in the community.

As the work we have been doing continues into another year, we are looking forward to convening another strategic planning retreat as we did in 2002. It's time to take stock of where we have been and here we are headed.

Personally, I believe one of our single biggest accomplishments of the past year has been in interconnecting the agency with the people for whom we advocate and the people to whom we must advocate. I'd like to believe that has helped to build mutual understanding and respect.

The humanitarian principles that cemented our cause 217 years ago remain solid today. Our values are clear, our purpose is sound. The staff is strong, and our sense of determination, unwavering.

Let's continue our journey with confidence and resolve because - and this is truly the bottom line - the quest for social justice is the hope of humankind.

Thank you.