Phases and Stages:

The First Three Years of a Local Halfway House

by Burk Foster and Jay D. Jamieson

(1983)

As a correctional alternative, the halfway house is most closely identified with the reintegration model that was popular in American corrections from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. The halfway house--a small, local facility designed to work with offenders in the community, to use Vernon Fox's definition--was to be everything the American prison was not: a humane, reintegration-oriented form of correction, capable of reducing recidivism at a reasonable cost. Although the halfway houses created during this boom period in community corrections were designed to house a great variety of target populations, the most common model was that of the aftercare facility, serving the needs of ex-offenders, mandatory releasees, parolees, and other prison inmates very near the end of their sentences. The typical house was operated as a private, non-profit organization. Decidedly non-institutional in nature, its small size and home-like living arrangement made for a more normal, supportive environment. Through the work of the house's professional staff, residents were to be eased back into the community--to work and family contacts--while their problems were solved through counseling and treatment. This, then, was to be the function of the halfway house in the correctional process: The halfway house accepts ex-offenders released from prison, provides the basic necessities of room and board, and attempts to determine each individual's reintegrative problems, plan a program to remedy these problems, and provide supportive staff to assist the resident in resolving problems and returning to society as a law-abiding citizen.(1)

The halfway house, with its aftercare services, was to be a key element of the period Bartollas calls the "Golden Age of Corrections," what many advocates believed would be a new era of community-based corrections.(2) Unfortunately, when it came to translating theory into practice, the operators of halfway houses would make an unpleasant discovery: a good idea was not the same as a good program, and good intentions were in themselves no guarantee of success.

Halfway houses suffered many problems--inadequate funding, staff turnover and burnout, rundown facilities, lack of services, uncertain treatment programs, community skepticism, poor neighborhood relations and an inability to show effectiveness--that weakened their credibility as agents of change in corrections. Many independent house were not adequately prepared to solve the multitude of problems which arose during their establishment an operation, and were forced to close.(3)

Halfway houses collectively fell victim to a hardening public mood in the late 1970s, what Clear calls the "public backlash" against helping criminals.(4) Rehabilitation was out (halfway houses had never been much able to show that they were better at it than prisons were, anyway), punishment, as part of the Neoclassical Model, was in. The ideological shift had undercut the halfway house's reason-for-being.

The result was that, as the 1980s began, halfway houses were stuck off somewhere on the margins of criminal justice. Their operations affected by the drying up of funding sources, their ability to help offenders hampered by high unemployment and by general lack of public support, halfway houses were facing difficult times.

Many of the operators of halfway houses as aftercare facilities would probably agree with John Blackmore's now-prophetic statement, in Corrections Magazine in 1980, that "the 1980s promise to be a decade of pragmatism and increasingly mean-spirited competition for decreasing public and private resources."(5) They have a right to pessimism. It may be that their kind of operation is based on an idea whose time has come and gone, at least for this go-round. Only the strongest, best-established aftercare facilities, those with solidly-based sources of funds and resident referrals, are likely to endure this lean period in good shape.

This does not mean, however, that the halfway house in general, as an alternative between freedom and secure confinement, is in danger of extinction. As Blackmore points out, there are more than 3,000 residential community corrections programs in the U.S. today.(6) The traditional (if 15 or 20 years cam be said to constitute a tradition) aftercare role of the halfway house may be out of style, but among these many programs there must be other roles, other ways of adapting to the nature of the times while continuing to try to serve the interests of both community and criminal. In this article we looked at one of the "new form" halfway houses--the Lafayette Community Correctional Center (LCCC). This organization was established in 1979 in Lafayette, Louisiana, to operate a work release facility for local jail inmates. We described the problems the organization faced in its early years and indicate how it was different, in program and philosophy, from the reintegrative model of the 1970s.

In its early phases, LCCC was not a traditional halfway house. It housed no state pre- or post-release offenders, having been unable to reach a contractual agreement with the Louisiana Department of Corrections to house any inmates coming out of state prisons. The inmates it housed were serving local jail terms of various lengths, from one month to two years or more, for non-violent, non-sexual offenses. (Convicted criminals may be sentenced to serve up to five years in a parish jail in Louisiana.)

All residents were required to work full-time. From their earnings they paid a daily room fee, an amount which in the aggregate provided the bulk of the Center's operating funds. Residents were subject to supervision on the job and spent their non-working hours in the house under supervision. Rules of conduct applied to all residents, at work and in the house; residents violating the rules were subject to being returned to jail.

LCCC's approach was distinctly punitive ("Make the criminal pay!" could be its motto.), and the emphasis was on protection of the community through control of the offender. At the same time, the offender was allowed to work, to maintain family contacts, to keep most of his earnings to support himself and his dependents, and to earn passes of progressively greater length if he behaved himself.

We traced the development of this halfway house throught its first three years of existence. We have divided this period into three phases--creation, crisis, and confidence--to better explain how this development occurred. The problems of each phase are described in some detail, as are the organization's responses in dealing with the problems.

We have tried not only to explain the organization's philosophy, which remained fairly constant throughout the three-year period, but also to emphasize those administrative and operational changes that were important to LCCC's survival and eventual growth. In a closing review, we discuss those elements that have made the Lafayette Community Correctional Center such a great local success. It is a most interesting operation, one that may have significant value for other local halfway houses across America.

Creation

The opening of the Lafayette Community Correctional Center in the summer of 1979 took most members of the criminal justice system and the public by surprise. The creation of LCCC was due to a persistent local problem--overcrowding in the Lafayette Parish Jail--but the creative act was accomplished so quickly that many people, even those working in corrections, found out about the Center only after it was open for business.

Jail overcrowding was a problem that everyone was familiar with. In June 1975 federal Judge Gordon West had ruled that the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola was overcrowded by about 1,600 inmates. His order to reduce Angola's population, effectively closing the prison to new admissions, caused a huge buildup of state prisoners in Louisiana's parish jails.

The population of the Lafayette Parish Jail grew steadily through the 1970s, topping 220 at one point. (The maximum population would later be set at 88, then raised to 98, when Judge West's successor, Frank Polozola, did to the parish jails what Judge West had done to the prisons.) In mid-1978 the average daily jail population was about 170 inmates. These were felony offenders sentenced to state time, relative felony offenders doing up to five years in the parish jail, a few misemeanor offenders serving short jail sentences, and dangerous offenders in pre-trial status. Counsellors in the jail's rehabilitation unit were diverting most pre-trial detainees into reduced bail or release on recognizance programs.

Several members of the congregation of the First Baptist Church of Lafayette approached the Sheriff, Carlo Listi, with a suggestion to further alleviate overcrowding: their idea was to move the small work release program, then operating from the jail on the seventh floor of the parish courthouse, to a location separate from the jail. In this suggestion the Lafayette Community Correctional Center was born.

Jail officials, especially Stanley Bourque, the jail's administrative director in charge of work release and rehabilitation programs, and Nick Lane, the chief deputy, who was then running the jail, were in favor of the idea. It would ease overcrowding, and it would solve the security and contraband problems associated with work release inmates.

Bourque's enthusiastic support for the separate work release facility was crucial at this point. He organized a couple of meetings of local people involved in corrections reform, talked up the facility to some political and criminal justice officials, and wrote a draft proposal describing the operation of the "Lafayette Parish Community Correction Center." This 55-page proposal, long on rules, forms, and discipline and short on staffing and finance, provided the model for the facility Bourque would soon open.

His central idea was the essence of simplicity: Parish jail inmates eligible for work release would be housed in a separate facility and would be charged a daily fee ($7.50 per day, to start with) to pay for the cost of their housing and supervision. If enough inmates were working and paying rent, and if expenses were kept to a minimum, the halfway hose could be self-sufficient. His proposal estimated expenses for the first year at from $61,300 to $81,000, and income at a minimum of $63,000. Thirty to forty inmates could be housed in the facility, working and earning money to support themselves and their dependents, at no cost to the public. The proposal notes, "It is clear that with a minimum of twenty-five (residents) the house can support itself, while with a maximum of thirty-eight, the house will be beyond its needs and have surplus funds available for extra services."(7)

Finding no real opposition to his proposal, Bourque plunged ahead. He and Lane incorporated the organization as the Lafayette Community Correctional Center on May 25, 1979. The affairs of the corporation were to be managed by a five-member board of directors, recruited by Bourque and initially made up of Lane, an attorney, a member of the Lafayette Parish Police Jury (a local governing body, like a county commission in other states), a local architect, and Bourque himself. Bourque would also serve as the "Project Director," the organization's executive director.

He rented a house at 120 South Chestnut, on the fringes of downtown Lafayette next to the train depot, and set a crew of parish jail inmates to renovating the house for its new occupants. The house he selected was an old, two story, wood frame building then in use as a rooming house. The neighborhood was one of mixed commercial and residential buildings, the residences mostly rental properties, along with some warehouses and several private social agencies--the AIDE House, a drug treatment center, the Salvation Army, and the Turning Point, a small halfway house for alcoholics. Many of the residents were poor people, transients, or college students, and property values were low, about half the city average.

The house had been selected more for its size and central location than for the characteristics of the neighborhood, but Bourque could hardly have made a choice less likely to cause trouble. The Parish Police Jury had been trying to settle on a location for a new parish jail for five or six years, attracting the ire of property owners every time a specific site was announced. The halfway house slipped into this neighborhood without publicity, encountering no organized opposiion, settling in as just one more "helping" agency on "Social Problems Boulevard."

One elderly woman living near the house, told by her son that convicts were moving in, came over to give everyone a good cussing. Assured by a staff member that only non-violent inmates would be living there, and told of LCCC's benefits she went away mollified. When she reappeared the next day, she came bringing home-baked pies for the "boys" working on the house.

At the completion of the hasty renovation, the halfway house consisted of eight bedrooms, five up and three down, two offices, three bathrooms, two storage rooms and a meeting room. The small kitchen would not be used, as no meals would be provided on the premises. Residents would be given extra time, before and after work, to eat at home or at one of the nearby restaurants. This alternative proved more practical than trying to meet licensing standards to serve food in the house. The building was designed to

house up to 38 or 40 work release inmates, averaging three to six per bedroom.

LCCC was declared officially open for business on June 10, 1979. A local newspaper article titled, "Half-way House Plan Eyed Here," appeared the week before the opening. In the article Nick Lane, the sheriff's chief deputy, said he had 25 inmates in the parish jail who had volunteered to move to the halfway house to serve the last 90 days of their sentences. Lane said he had assurance from local employers, particularly oil field companies, that jobs could be obtained for the inmates.(8)

A mostly part-time staff, directed by Bourque (who kept his full-time job with the sheriff's department), was assembled to supervise the residents. The operation was very basic. Bourque transferred practically every inmate sentenced to parish jail time to the halfway house for a shot at work release. If he worked, more-or-less followed the house rules and paid his $52.50 a week room rent, he stayed in the house. Residents on good behavior during the week earned weekend passes of varying lengths, at the discretion of the director. If a resident was unemployed for more than two weeks, if he broke the rules, or if he fell too far behind in his rent, he went back to jail.

LCCC's operation was that of a small institution, not the home-like atmosphere some halfway houses try to cultivate. Except for Bourque and another part-time staff member called the "Program Coordinator," who worked days and kept up the records and reports, the rest of the staff were part-time proctors--shift-workers who checked residents in and out, made hourly room checks, and kept order in the house. While there were no live-in staff members, a proctor was always supposed to be on duty in the front office.

The approach was decidedly jail-like, but the operating style was far more informal. Policies were hand-lettered signs posted by the director on his nightly visits, procedures were notes passed along from one shift to the next. The part-time staff, hired more for their willingness to work irregular hours for low pay than for their qualifications, came and went with such frequency that no one, not even the director could be sure who was working at any given time. (The turnover rate was extremely high; in 1980, the organization's seven staff positions were filled by a total of 32 different people.)

The board of directors, down to four members once Bourque realized he should not be both a board member and a salaried employee, maintained a very low profile, so low as to be invisible. The board left the management of the organization entirely up to the director, and he tried to make all decisions and oversee everything himself. There were no "channels" of the formal organization. Everyone, residents and staff alike, reported directly to Bourque. LCCC was his show, and the personal managerial style suited him perfectly.

The program had no real treatment element. Residents were sent out to AA meetings or substance abuse counselling if ordered by the courts, and new residents, regardless of educational level, went back to the parish jail two nights a week for remedial reading and math classes (an example of a "have to" rehabilitation program that proved equally unpopular with both the educated and the uneducated); beyond these, and the employment assistance that might be provided by Bourque and the jail counsellors, no in-house rehabilitative services were available to the residents.

That had not been the idea for LCCC, anyway. An early report justifies the creation of the halfway house on the increased supervision of the offenders (who would otherwise be on probation, because of jail overcrowding), provision of a controlled environment, and economic advantage. "The philosophy of the Lafayette halfway house is that an individual shows responsibility through work," the report indicates.(9) The helping or rehabilitative aspects of the operation, the benefits to the offender, were incidental in importance to the benefits to society. The plan was to operate a self-sufficient work release facility, and for a time Bourque did just that. By September the house had 33 residents, and by October is was overfilled with 42. These were heady days, indeed. A financial statement prepared on November 10, 1979, estimated weekly expenses at $1,372 and weekly income at $1,680 or more, with a paying resident population of 32 to 35. At this level of occupancy, the house should be accumulating an excess of $300 or more each week.

The population did remain in this range for most of the rest of the Center's first year; unfortunately, expense did not. Board members would later say that Bourque did not have much of a head for finances. This was only half true. His income projections were generally accurate, but he had failed to allow for many of the expenses, especially non-personnel costs, necessary to keep the house operating.

As 1980 began the halfway house was in financial trouble, unable to pay its bills. The parish jail population, which followed the schedule of criminal court dockets, had dropped off. The number of inmates eligible for work release had declined, as had the number of paying halfway house residents. In January 1980 the board of directors was forced to take out a $1,000 bank loan to keep the Center open.

This sum of money tided the program over through the spring. As summer approached, however, the bills were mounting up again, and several members of the board began to question the basis of LCCC's operation. A status report summarized the first year of operation and raised the issue of financing:

"In the first year of the halfway house's existence, through May 1980, an average of 31 residents a day were living at the house. The house took in $78,185 in room fees charged its residents, a collection rate of about 92% of what the residents actually owed. The average length of stay of residents successfully completing the program was about 60 to 90 days. A total of 211 residents actually entered the program at some point during the year, all of them coming from the Lafayette Parish Jail in sentenced or pre-trial status. Thirty-one of these residents were sent back to the jail as being unsuited to the program, an additional 50 were transferred back for a short time for disciplinary reasons before being allowed to re-enter the house, and 12 escaped (left the house without approval or failed to return as scheduled).

"On the whole the halfway house, which began on an extremely tentative basis, enjoyed a successful first year, successful enough at least to continue into a second year. The majority of its residents completed their stays successfully, paying for the cost of their supervision in the process.

"But this means of financing placed some basic limitations on just how much the halfway house could do. It was operating with a part-time director and a mostly part-time staff. Its program consisted almost wholly of providing in-house supervision of residents, and sometimes, with many residents and only one inexperienced, part-time staff member on duty, lapses in the quality of supervision occurred. The staff was unable to do much in the way of employme assistance, counseling, referral to social agencies for help with specific problems, or anything else beyond the actual on-the-premises control of residents.

"The halfway house, even with its average population increased to around 35 residents per day, simply cannot support a high quality program based entirely on resident's fees. This became apparent at the end of the first year of operation, when the house was operating a minimal program barely keeping its doors open, and was still $4,000 in debt."(10)

Thus the creation phase of the Center's existence came to a end. The optimism of the previous year was gone, and many board members and other persons interested in the program were wondering just how far into the second year LCCC would get before it had to be closed down. Reality had set in with a vengeance: the good motives behind the Center's founding were not enough, it needed outside help if it was to survive.

Crisis

The crisis period in the life of the Lafayette Community Correctional Center lasted from June 1980 through May 1981. It began with the board of directors' realization that the existence of the organization was in jeopardy, and with their response in making a basic decision: either improve LCCC or kill it. If it should be forced to close, some of the board members wondered privately, would anyone outside of the organization seriously regret its passing?

The halfway house had failed to develop a good reputation among legal and potlitical officials or out in the community. No real effort had been made to enlist public support, either before or after opening. It might be called a "community corrections center," but the community knew next to nothing about the operation.

Many people still thought LCCC was part of the sheriff's department, or part of the AIDE House or some other agency, or that it was being operated for the profit of the director and his friends. While it had escaped any truly damaging negative publicity or embarrassing incidents, such as a resident committing a violent crime in the neighborhood, no one had many kind words for it, either. As far as most people in Lafayette know, LCCC was making no real contribution to the community's crime control effort.

The four members of the original board of directors, other than Bourque, were part of the courthouse crowd, not community leaders active in corrections. The small size of the board seemed designed to close out non-club members. After a few months the maximum size of the board was increased to twelve members. As the original directors dropped off one by one, they were replaced by a more diverse group of people--four businessmen, two university professors and a staff employee, an attorney, a Catholic priest, and two Lafayette corrections activists, Sally McKissack and James Kelly--who shared a stronger interest in this type of community-based program. McKissack and Kelly had played an important part in founding the Center.

Their inclusion as board members was an indication that the "founding spirit" was being rekindled as the board's make-up changed. This changeover took several months to accomplish; it was not until June 1980 that the new, more broadly-based board was complete.

The new board was inclined to a more dynamic role than the old. Flexing their policy-making muscles, the board members determined to chart a new course of the organization, a course that they would select for themselves, rather than have set for them by the director. They accepted the fundamental role of LCCC as it had been defined by Bourque--a work-release alternative to secure confinement for non-violent offenders--but they felt that LCCC, after a year of existence, was isolated, disorganized, and too closely identified with its creator. The day-to-day operation did not satisfy anyone. "Sub-minimal" was the evaluation of one board member.

In board meetings and informal discussions held in June, at the start of LCCC's second year, the members decided to spend the next several months strengthening the program and combating the Center's image problems. What should be their priorities? The board members agreed to the pursuit of three main goals:

1. They needed to establish the credibility of LCCC as an entity separate from the sheriff's department.

2. They had to take a more professional, business-like approach to operating LCCC.

3. They needed to better articulate LCCC's role and needs to the community, especially to those legal and political officials most in a position to help improve the operation.

To move toward these goals, the board set a dozen specific objectives to guide the halfway house through the remainder of 1980 and 1981:

1. To put the halfway house in a stable financial condition.

2. To improve the quality of supervision of residents.

3. To improve the selectivity of the intake process through which residents are brought into the house.

4. Through the person of the full-time executive director, to provide stronger administrative direction of the program.

5. To attract and retain a full-time staff by offering a personnel plan

providing for reasonable salaries and stable working conditions.

6. To improve the physical condition and appearance of the house.

7. To increase the average daily resident population to 35.

8. To increase the comfortable capacity of the house to 45.

9. To seek state funds to hire a work release coordinator to deal specifically with job placement and the employment problems of residents and to provide on-the-job control.

10. To develop a basic counseling and referral program to deal with residents' social problems.

11. To diversify the resident population by reaching agreements with local judges and with the Department of Corrections to place offenders in the house.

12. To continue to work very closely with the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Department in giving priority to the needs of the local community and local offenders.(11)

Thus armed with a basic plan of attack, the board members began their campaign to "rehabilitate" the halfway house. They could not have anticipated how difficult this would prove to be, in this crisis year. The next several months were an object lesson in just how many things could go wrong with this kind of operation--problems with administration and staffing, population instability, resident behavior, deteriorating physical facilities, and, worst of all, critical funding needs--the effects of one set of problems often seemingly compounded by those of another.

The halfway house was left without a director when Stanley Bourque resigned abruptly in August, apparently in opposition to the board's decision to move to a full-time staff and to disassociate itself from the sheriff's department, where he remained employed. Under two interim directors, the Center drifted through the remainder of 1980. The number of residents declined, to an average in the mid-twenties, and the incidence of rules violations by residents increased. The jail's overcrowded condition made it next-to-impossible to send a resident back for any act short of new criminal offense. Discipline in the house fell to a low level. The physical structure of the old house was falling apart, too, the roof leaking bad enough to flood the rooms and the plumbing almost inoperative.

Money was always short. The facility's budget for the year was based on a resident population of 35. With a average population closer to 25, the Center was falling $2,000 a month short of its anticipated income. Even cutting expenses to the bone, self-sufficiency was an impossible dream.

Although probably none of the board members believed the house was going to close, they discussed this in public as a very real possibility, always being careful to point out that the operation would continue if adequate funds were forthcoming. "Halfway House May Close," read one newspaper headline in June,(12) and "Halfway House Facing Trouble," read another the next month.(13) The articles following both headlines dealt with efforts of board members to get a funding commitment from the Lafayette Parish Police Jury.

The board's appeal for public funds was based on the jury's responsibility for paying the sheriff a maintenance fee of $3.50 per day per inmate to house prisoners in the parish jail. The board members kept pointing out that the halfway house was performing a quasi-public function, housing prisoners who would otherwise be in jail, while the public officials kept denying that they had any special obligation to support the facility.

Individual police jurors, from their own discretionary funds, gave the Center $4,000 in July 1980, the first public money it had received after thirteen months of operation, an additional $1,900 in September, to help pay for emergency plumbing repairs, and $2,400 in December, but the jury as a body continued to put the halfway house in the same category as other private, non-profit social agencies--what in the local government vernacular were called "external agencies." The board agreed to accept funding as an external agency--this was no time to be picky about labels--and settled in to wait out this process.

Anticipating that eventually conditions would improve, the board had selected a new director, David Botchin, who started work January 1, 1981. With his previous management experience in local Boys' Clubs, his external relations (especially fundraising) capabilities, his knowledge of the local political environment, and his enthusiasm for turning the program around, Botchin was cast in the role of savior of the halfway house.

Board members began to wonder, however, as the new year progressed, if they had not had the wrong analogy in mind; perhaps they had invited Botchin to be captain of a sinking ship instead. The population continued to decline, to an average of 20 for the first quarter of 1981. It dropped to a low of 13 in late March, before beginning to climb again.

The board members and the director could never fully determine why this decline occurred. The resident population, they knew, tended to fluctuate according to the schedule and size of criminal court dockets. Judges could have simply not been concluding enough cases, or the right kinds of cases, or imposing the right sentences to provide the halfway house with more residents. The house was still in a passive stage, dependent on the sheriff's department for referrals; LCCC officials could only watch helplessly through the winter as the flow of residents into the facility dwindled almost to nothing.

Whatever the cause of the decline, the results were easy to see. The house was in desperate financial straits, over $17,000 in debt, including a $5,000 personal loan secured by the members of the board. Operating the halfway house had become an exercise in persistence and deficit-financing.

Finally, the persistence paid off with good news: city and parish governments had appropriated $20,000 to the halfway house. When the check was received on April 3, 1981, all bills were paid up and the organization was debt-free for the first time since it had opened almost two years earlier.

Unfortunately, this was a condition that could not last. The low population throughout the winter had drained away too much money. The public funds, which should have been the reserve for the next fiscal year, were already almost gone.

The director and the board members tried to stave off this eventuality by promoting the Center to anyone who could help with either funds or residents. This meant, on the one hand, making requests of private persons, local businesses, civic organizations, foundations, and state and federal agencies that might contribute money or support LCCC with grants, and on the other, making contacts with judges, assistant district attorneys, defense attorneys, probation and parole officers, local jail officials, and officials of the state Department of Corrections, who could increase the "supply" of residents referred to the Center.

Most of these contacts proved fruitless, in terms of immediate benefits, but they were good for public relations--increasing the visibility and familiarity of the Center. The director, especially, in his contacts with district judges, was able to develop relationships that would soon prover beneficial in building up the resident population. He became a fixture in the local courts; in arraignments, preliminary hearings, and trials, he was there, reminding everyone of the services the halfway house was providing.

The posture of the house was changing, from taking the residents it was given, to identifying potential residents in advance and approving their entry into the program. This change put the director and his staff in a much better position to control the make-up of the Center's clientele; it also made the organization seem more a part of the working system, rather than an outside resource. A new, aggressive image was taking hold: the resident population was growing steadily, surpassing 30 again before the end of May 1981.

Sometimes the board members' efforts were productive, too, as in a private fund-raising campaign by two board members among local oil companies that brought in $3,000 by May. Sometimes they were not. A letter to area churches, describing the Center's rehabilitative aspects, must rank among the most unsuccessful fund-raising efforts ever attempted. Mailed to more than 40 churches, the letter brought in one donation of $20, from possibly the poorest church of the lot. No other church even responded to the invitation to call for more information or to come by for a visit.

At the end of the crisis year, in May 1981, came good news from another level of government. The Louisiana Department of Labor approved a $17,500 grant to the Center to set up an employment assistance program. About half the residents coming in did not have jobs; the grant would be used to hire two employment and services counselors, who were to assist unemployed offenders in finding jobs, to help them deal with work-related problems, and to improve control over residents during working hours. The Center had always emphasized its "philosophy of work." Now it had a practical counseling program to translate that philosophy into action.

Confidence

One of the halfway house's board of directors, asked what the organization was doing differently to make its third year so much more successful than its first two, replied, "Nothing. We're only better at it than we used to be."

There was much truth in his statement. As the third year began, board and staff members were more experienced, they were more certain of the organization's standing in the community, and they knew better how to concentrate their efforts to produce results. They had developed confidence.

The 1981-82 fiscal year would be time of steady growth and prosperity, absent the constant crises of the previous years. The director's role was changing; he could devote more time to internal management needs, especially those responsible for a high turnover rate and other problems among the full-time staff, and to external relations. He would no longer have to be directly involved with the residents as much as he had in the past. Many of these day-to-day responsibilities--going to court, intake, supervision, discipline, and counseling--could be passed along to new staff members: the resident manager, who was to be in charge of daily house operations, and the counselors.

The board's role was evolving as well. With the development of a more professional staff, board members were no longer as intimately involved with details and routine operations. They continued their fund-raising and lobbying efforts on behalf of the house (with much greater success, as we will see), but their attention began to be taken up more with matters of long-term growth and development, with planning the future of the organization.

The board members would realize that LCCC, at about the middle of its third year of existence, had reached a kind of plateau of stability. The question was, should it remain there or should it set off toward the next higher plateau, lying obscure in the future, somewhere overhead?

The board of directors was confident enough of the Center's present survivability to "put down roots" early in the year. On June 15, 1981, the board completed a ten year lease-purchase agreement to buy the house at 120 S. Chestnut that had been the Center's home since it opened. The mortgage payments would be about $450 a month higher than the rent the organization had been paying, but the executive director and board believed the purchase would indicate that the Center was in the community to stay. They were well-satisfied with the house's size, internal layout, and location; no one had ever found another house better-suited to the operation.

As it turned out, the decision to purchase was a wise one on two counts. First, the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice approved a $17,445 grant in December (the money eventually coming in April) to make the first year's mortgage payments. Second, the city of Lafayette allocated $75,000 of federal Housing and Urban Development urban renewal funds to renovate the building.

The house, dating to about 1910, was in poor physical condition when LCCC took it over, and it deteriorated rapidly. Several thousand dollars had already been spent on stop-gap repairs when a member of the board asked the head of the City's Department of Community Development if some federal funds might be available for other repairs. The board members would have been pleased at that point to get five or six thousand dollars.

Upon further investigation, however, the Community Development staff discovered that the house was located in a neighborhood eligible for extensive urban redevelopment support. The nature of the Center's operation, and the commitment to remain in the neighborhood implicit in the purchase of the house, won the enthusiastic support of the Director of the Community Development, Phil Lank, and his staff.

The City budgeted $75,000 for renovation in August of 1981. Though it would take fourteen months to get bids, sign contracts, and have the work completed, the delay and the necessary grappling with bureaucratic tangle was well worth it in the end. With the federal funds and $14,000 of the organization's own money, the house was completely renovated--new plumbing, a new roof, electrical rewiring, interior painting and remodeling, and installation of central heating and air conditioning. The work turned LCCC into the nicest old house on the block; residents and staff were much impressed with the improvement in their environment.

For several months, from August until early in 1982, the Center enjoyed remarkable success in generating revenue from outside sources. A temporary cash flow problem, early in the confidence year, required the board of directors to take out two loans, a $5,000 note in June and another in September, but it was no longer that big a deal to be $10,000 in debt.

The banker who made the second loan was reported to have asked if the board members were all crazy; this time they were sure that they were not. Indeed, the halfway house had been approved for $10,000 in funds through the Governor's Interim Emergency Funding Board on September 15, 1981, the day before the second note was signed. The IEB, as it is known in state government, exists to allocate state funds between legislative sessions. The halfway house qualifies as a regional correctional facility, as by then it had several residents sentenced from jurisdictions outside Lafayette Parish, and its financial needs were still deserving of the emergency designation at that point. The support of Lafayette's own state legislative delegation was crucial in getting the appropriation approved by the IEB.

The next month the Department of Labor grant was renewed, in the amount of $24,800, a level of funding sufficient to pay the salaries of a counselor and a part-time secretary and to pay some office expenses. This grant was again based on the Center's role in providing job assistance to unemployed offenders.

The director had discovered another application of federal Department of Labor funds--in paying part of the salaries of some of the Center's new employees. The local CETA office had informed him that new staff members who had previously been unemployed qualified for an on-the-job training program that paid half of their salary for the first 800 working hours. This saved the halfway house nearly $2,000 per employee in salary expenses.

In December 1981 came the Commission on Law Enforcement grant, and after the first of the year the police jury and the city council again funded the halfway house as an external agency, increasing the amount of funding for 1982 to $45,000. The board members and the director, in their numerous behind-the-scene contacts with city and parish officials and in their public appearances before the police jury and the joint city/parish committee that reviewed the applications, repeated the request of the previous year: a per diem reimbursement based on the number of local inmates in the house. The suggestion got no further than it had the previous year. The police jury did indicate, in approving its $30,000 share of the funds, that it was extremely pleased with the halfway house's operation. It even voted to commit an additional $30,000 for 1983, taking the most unusual step of promising funds in advance.

Both allocations, for 1982 and 1983, were contingent on the Center getting at least $15,000 in matching funds from the City of Lafayette. Enjoying an even higher level of support among the city administration and the council that it had among parish officials, the halfway house had no trouble obtaining this approval. It could likely have obtained more money from the city had this been necessary, but it was obvious in early 1982 that no more money would be needed. For the first time ever, the halfway house had more money coming in than it could spend. To ask for more would have been just plain greedy.

The organization's new-found prosperity was in part due to its new-found ability to keep the house full of residents. The recruiting efforts of the counselors, plus increased respect and recognition of LCCC among court officials, brought the population up to 44 residents at the end of September. The number would average between 40 and 45 for the next several months.

By springtime, the Center was being pressured to increase its capacity. Redesign of bed arrangements added a few more spaces, and the population increased to more than 50 in March 1982. This was about the limit; any further increase would leave the house open to the same charges of overcrowding that the public correctional institutions had to contend with.

The counselors were able to keep most offenders working and paying their own way. The local economy, centering on the oil industry, remained strong during this period. The Center had developed many good resources among local employers; an unemployed offender coming into the house could almost always be placed in a new job within a week.

The employment rate of residents through the early summer of 1982, when the oil industry's downturn began to affect other local businesses, was very high, 95% or above, a good four or five percentage points higher than the national rate for all workers. The collection rate, a measure of how much rent money owed by residents was actually paid, remained high also, averaging between 90% and 95%.

The Center was doing everything it needed to, internally and externally, to achieve the stable financial condition that had been its objective at the start of the crisis year. It would complete the 1981-82 fiscal year with more than $32,000 in excess income. Even with almost half of this sum committed to be spent later in the year when renovation of the house was completed, the turnaround was remarkable.

With some of the financial pressures eased, the board members and the executive director had more time to consider ways of promoting the organization's long-term health. One way they agreed on was the formation of a board of advisors, community leaders who could lend their influence to the organization when public support was needed.

The advisory board was put together over a period of three or four months, from a starting list of over a hundred names submitted by the board of directors. Eventually it would number about 35 members--judges, lawyers, and criminal justice officials, ministers, business leaders, heads of social agencies, local and state political officials, and university faculty. They made up a prestigious group, a"who's who of law enforcement and civic involvement," according to a local newspaper.(14) Although they would only get together once or twice a year for a brief meeting and social event, the advisors would be kept informed of halfway house business and would be available to lend a hand if help was needed. They added a new focus to community support for the Center.

Board members began to wonder about the organization's future obligation to the community, in providing correctional alternatives in Lafayette. Off and on, throughout the confidence year, they discussed expansion of the operation. Should the organization remain small, or try to grow? Should the board members and staff use their expertise to offer additional alternatives, or should these be left to other groups of citizens with their own interests?

Another house, two houses, a facility for women, one for drunk drivers, a non-residential program of some sort; the ideas were bountiful and the discussion lively. The executive director submitted a "Proposed Three Year Development Plan" in April. The board reviewed the plan, and decided to let it lie, neither adopting nor rejecting Botchin's model for organization development through 1985. No lack of confidence in the director was implied in this action. Rather, the board felt that local conditions were too unpredictable to chart a precise course that much in advance.

They were under no obligation to do anything, of course; they could simply stick to the one facility, now in good shape, and maintain its operation at a consistent level. But most of the board members, including the six who remained from the "new board" of June 1980, were looking beyond the status quo. Whatever had motivated them to contribute their time and effort to build up the halfway house now provided the impetus to move toward expansion--the opening of a second facility.

What should be the target population for this facility? Men only, as a kind of step up for residents who had done well in the original house? Or both men and women, in separate wings of a dual facility, a proposition several board members could not easily accept.

This was the nature of the internal debate, among the board of directors and the executive director, as the year came to a close. Growth seemed natural and inevitable. Everyone had accepted the idea of expansion, with its attendant risks, financial and otherwise, and the increased complexities of managing an organization with a staff of fifteen and a budget in the range of $350,000 a year. At issue was the form expansion should take. When this question was resolved, the board members and the staff would be ready to enter the next stage of the Lafayette Community Correctional Center's development, ready, in effect, to start all over again.

The First Three Years-A Review

"Lucky to be alive." This phase, often applied to accident victims, seems equally appropriate to the Lafayette Community Correctional Center after three years of operation. The problems encountered in the creation phase of LCCC's existence might have killed off many less fortunate houses.

The serious problems of the first and second years have been common to many other operations, without regard to the nature of the model the facility is trying to apply. Securing adequate funding had been the foremost concern; in one survey, funding was cited by halfway house operators as their most severe administrative problem. Private houses, in particular, have suffered from funding problems.(15) Other problems, such as building up the referral network and maintaining a competent staff, have also been typical of halfway houses elsewhere.

These common problems, that any halfway house could expect to face in the beginning, were aggravated in this instance by the mistakes of a precipitate start. The Center owed its existence to Stanley Bourque's creative energy. He was the organizer, the one who set out the idea and put together the pieces of a program around it. Yet in striking when the iron was hot, to take advantage of local conditions, he and the other founders of Lafayette's halfway house acted in haste. They were in too big a hurry to open up, and they gave too little thought to what they would do afterward.

Many aspects of LCCC's operation were left unplanned; improvisation was the order of the day. The creators were also too much of a mind to go it alone. The public and the legal and political community were not adequately informed about the halfway house's opening, creating a block of ignorance that would take time to break down. All the Center's eggs were in the basket of self-sufficiency; no stand-by sources of support or funds were lined up if self-sufficiency proved impossible.

In its crisis and confidence years, the Center was able to overcome these initial problems and attain a state of relative credibility and respectability. We have identified a number of elements, in the community and in the Center's own operation, important in this evolution:

1. Jail overcrowding. The persistence of this condition put the halfway house in a strong bargaining position. It was the only real alternative to turning a large number of felony offenders loose on the streets. Board and staff members found they could always get public attention by asking, "What will you do with these thirty (or forty or fifty)

criminals if the halfway house shuts down?"

2. The strong local economy. Lafayette had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country through 1982. The halfway house had no trouble finding employment for its residents. There was no visible opposition from local labor organizations.

3. Absence of organized opposition. The halfway house did not encounter any serious, group-sponsored opposition to its existence in its first three years. It may not have pleased everyone, but apparently it did manage to avoid making people angry enough to actively oppose it.

4. Favorable media coverage. The local newspapers and television stations were very helpful in bringing the Center out into the public light in its second year. The halfway house received the strong editorial support of the local daily in its campaign to obtain funds from the police jury and city council.

5. Support of public officials. The house was able to build a solid base of support among local politicians, and to build it faster than expected; recurring problems with the jail may have helped here. The cooperation of certain officials in different branches of state government--the Labor Department, the Commission of Law Enforcement, the Governor's Office, and the state legislature--was important in obtaining state funds.

6. Support of the courtroom work group, especially judges. The halfway house was able to improve its referral network only when its staff were able to spend a lot of time in the parish courthouse, attending court sessions and visiting informally with assistant district attorneys and judges, and with city court officials, who process many drunk-driving cases. The strong support of the city judge and three or four of the district judges was crucial in building up the resident population. Three judges would serve on the original halfway house board of advisors.

7. The make-up of the board of directors. The board's membership was of critical importance in improving the halfway house's public image and in obtaining public funds. This diverse and hard-working group of people believed in the Center's potential and were willing to use their influence to build support for its operation.

8. The avoidance of negative publicity. No residents were arrested for sensational crimes. No internal problems were newsworthy enough to attract the critical attention of the local media.

9. Improved administrative and support staffing. In the crisis phase, the selection of the full-time executive director and the hiring of the two counselors were milestones. The work of these staff members made it possible to vastly improve the external relations and employment assistance capabilities of the organization.

10. A good working relationship with the parish jail. This relationship, formalized by contract with the sheriff's department in September 1980, was the key to smooth movement of residents into and out of the halfway house. The sheriff and other high-ranking officials of his department continued to show a cooperative spirit in dealing with halfway

house officials. Jail and halfway house counselors worked out an efficient process for moving residents back and forth. The only persistent problem in the relationship was delay in putting residents back in jail for disciplinary violations, on those occasions when the jail was full.

11. The absence of neighborhood relations problems. No effort was made to keep the halfway house out of the neighborhood, or to impede its operation after it opened.

12. Physical suitability of the house. The building was well-suited to the operation; renovation made it an ideal facility.

13. Economic attractiveness. The partial self-sufficiency of the operation was a strong selling point. In a community as fiscally conservative as Lafayette is, the notion that criminals should pay for most of the cost of their supervision had a lot of public appeal. The organization's ability to cultivate diverse funding sources, as indicated by these figures showing sources and amounts of revenue in the 1981-82 fiscal year, was also important:

Source Amount

Client Fees $112,543.20

Concessions 5,501.64

General Donations 6,012.60

Interest 700.97

Miscellaneous 952.44

Governor's Emergency Funds 10,000.00

Parish and City Funds 22,500.00

CETA (OJT Funds) 7,109.78

Department of Labor Grant 30,421.29

Commission on Law Enforcement 17,445.00

Total Income $213,186.92

The organization was not dependent on any one external source, and no one source was bearing a disproportionate burden.

14. Constancy of purpose. While board and staff members changed, the idea responsible for the Center's creation stayed the same. The issue, throughout years two and three, was improving the house's administration and operation, not rethinking its basic purpose.

Some of these elements were reflective of careful planning and hard work; others were plainly fortuitous or given in the environment. This kind of halfway house operation, emphasizing work as an alternative to jail, is particularly subject to the condition of the local economy, as an environmental influence. The Lafayette Community Correctional Center would not have opened when it did, as we have already noted, had it not been for the problem of overcrowding in the parish jail. It would never had survived had it not been able to maintain nearly full employment and to collect the rent it needed to keep operating.

The operators of Lafayette's halfway house were able to play on these local conditions in building a strong operation. They have moved the Center, even as a private facility, into the mainstream of the local criminal justice system. Violent and habitual offenders go to prison, less serious, first-time offenders are put on probation, intermediate and some repeat offenders, who would have gone to jail or prison until a few years ago, go to the halfway house. The first halfway house status report, in discussing the facility's potential value, points out, "Its basic value lies in the new dimension it adds to the local corrections system. As an intermediate alternative in corrections, the halfway house seems well-suited to those lesser offenders who are capable of holding down a job."(16) The Center has found its place in housing and supervising these offenders in their own community.

Three years into its operation, the organization rested atop a tenuous peak. Its financial situation had never been better, but it still had no commitments from city or parish governments to provide recurring funding. The house remained in the position of trusting the annual generosity of local political officials, who would search through unobligated funds to see what they could afford to give. This was no way to run a stable organization, and certainly not one intent on expansion. The halfway house's operators would make one of their highest priorities seeking agreement with the city and parish on a service contract to provide per diem funding for local offenders housed in the facility.

Other problems remained--the turnover rate and lapses in the performance of the resident supervisors, the inability to solve the bureaucratic jumble of the state Department of Corrections to reach any kind of referral agreement--but on the whole the organization was doing well. Its operators remained confident that administratively the Center was quite sound.

The house's success as a rehabilitative facility had not been comprehensively measured. It could point out that over 80% of its residents had completed their stays successfully (by not escaping, being rearrested, or being sent back to jail), but it had not evaluated the long-term success of its program in terms of recidivism. One preliminary study of a group of 49 residents who served their sentences in the first six months of the house's existence showed a rearrest rate of 25% within two years. Other studies will be conducted in the future to determine what has happened to a larger group of residents over a longer period of time.

LCCC's operators do not expect to find that their program has performed miracles in eliminating criminal behavior and changing lives. The most purposeful help most residents are given is in finding a stable job, which many of them probably quit as soon as they are no longer accountable to the legal system. (Continuity of employment is another area for further research.)

What are the Center's expectations, then, after three years of operation? Todd Clear has suggested, in discussing reform of community supervision of offenders, that, "Any change attempt in community supervision must be realistic in the promises it makes. . .The primary intent of reform must be reasonable progress toward useful social ends."(17) The Lafayette Community Correctional Center had manifested that intent; where it differs from halfway houses of the recent past is in its definition of useful social ends.

As a product of a larger era, a harder, more punitive time, the Center never intended to try to reintegrate offenders into the community. It pursued two other ends instead:

1. Protecting the community through close supervision of offenders.

2. Punishing offenders through the imposition of economic sanctions and of controls on residency, behavior, and freedom of movement.

What this halfway house represents, in the minds of the people who run it, is a practical alternative to confinement, when the number of people in confinement overwhelms our capacity to keep them there. As the American people, bent on punishing criminals, draw nearer to the point of utter saturation of our jails and prisons, the Lafayette Community Correctional Center's form of community supervision of offenders should look more and more attractive. Its "realistic promises" could make it a model for the future.

Notes

1. Richard P. Seiter et al., Residential Inmate Aftercare: The State of the Art (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University, 1976), p. 56.

2. Clemens Bartollas, Introduction to Corrections (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), p. 24.

3. Harry E. Allen et al., "Halfway Houses" (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, November 1978), p. 2.

4. Todd R. Clear, "Three Dilemmas in Community Supervision of Offenders," Prison Journal 59 (Autumn/Winter 1979): 9.

5. John Blackmore, "Community Corrections," Corrections Magazine, October 1980, p. 5.

6. Ibid., p. 8.

7. Stanley Bourque, "Lafayette Parish Community Correctional Center," photocopy, n.d., p. 10.

8. Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, Louisiana), June 6, 1979, p. 1.

9. Lafayette Community Correctional Center, "Status Report," photocopy, August 1, 1980, p. 1.

10. Ibid,. pp. 2-3.

11. Lafayette Community Correctional Center, "1979-80 Annual Report," photocopy, December 11, 1980, pp. 3-4.

12. Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), June 24, 1980.

13. Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, Louisiana), July 16, 1980, p. 1.

14. Times of Acadiana (Lafayette, Louisiana), December 3, 1981, p. 3.

15. Allen, op. cit., p. 10.

16. Lafayette Community Correctional Center, "Status Report," op. cit., p. 4.

17. Clear, op. cit., p. 13.