NursingLink

Here we go again. Giving me trouble with pasting in here.

With her youthful face and mellow disposition, 22-year-old Corrie Pallone doesn’t come across like someone who should be in prison.

But there she was, her long thick hair covering her shoulders, sitting at a table inside a cinder block visitors room wearing a state-issued uniform. An armed guard stood outside the door.

Pallone is not one of the many felons who say, “I didn’t do it.”

To the contrary, she apologized for getting hooked on methamphetamine and involved in an auto theft ring.

“It was a big mistake in my life,” Pallone said.

Her biggest regrets have to do with her toddler daughter. “I feel so guilty for doing this to her,” Pallone saidsaid. “I want to do good for her.”

Pallone, sentenced to 16 to 48 months behind bars after pleading guilty to burglary and possession of stolen vehicles, is an example of a nonviolent offender who Clark County Deputy Public Defender Brigid Hoffman thinks should have been put on probation with intensive supervision or sent to a short-term minimum security boot camp.

“What are we accomplishing by locking up someone like that for up to 48 months?” Hoffman said.

A high-school dropout whose one prior offense was a misdemeanor petty larceny, Pallone said she would have benefitted from a program that offers drug treatment and job training skills.

“I had a drug problem, I really did, so a more structured program would have helped,” she said. “I go to Narcotics Anonymous here, but it’s more group stuff. I would take one-on-one counseling more seriously because it would be addressed to me personally. Just give me a chance.”

Pallone didn’t get that chance. After more than five months at the county jail in downtown Las Vegas, she was transferred to the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in North Las Vegas.

The public defender’s office says the prison system has many nonviolent Nevada inmates like Pallone who would have benefitted from alternative sentencing, particularly addiction treatment.

Terrance Thomas, a 34-year-old father of three and former janitor, for example, is in prison, for the fourth time since 1993, on bad check and drug charges.

Thomas pleaded guilty March 6 to possession of crack cocaine, but was given a suspended sentence of 19 to 48 months and placed on probation with the conditions he attend counseling and do community service.

Two days before he was to meet with his probation officer on March 18 and make plans to enroll in a drug-treatment center, he was arrested by a Metro Police officer for jaywalking. The officer found a bag of marijuana on Thomas, which led authorities to revoke his probation.

“I did what I did so I’m no angel, but I deserve a chance to get treatment,” he said. “I want to get my act together. I’m not a violent offender. I don’t go off robbing people. I’m not a mass murderer or a child pornographer.”

Though he has smoked marijuana since he was 14 and became a repeat drug offender, Thomas has never been in any treatment program since he began drifting in and out of the penal system 15 years ago, he said.

In hindsight, Thomas said, he wished he had been able to make that appointment with his probation officer and enroll in a treatment program.

“I would have taken it more seriously because I didn’t want to come back here,” he said. “But they just put me on a back burner and I took it like that. I didn’t know that getting caught with marijuana was going to send me back to prison.”

The public defender’s office’s other examples include:

• A 21-year-old Mexican man who came to this country illegally with his family as a teen. Sexually abused as a child, he began drinking alcohol at age 11 and turned to cocaine and methamphetamine as a teen. He voluntarily entered a drug-treatment program and did well for awhile, but relapsed and this year was arrested for auto theft and burglary.

A first-time offender who had worked as a house painter, the defendant was sentenced to one to three years in prison.

“After he is out of prison he will most likely be sent back to Mexico,” Deputy Public Defender Amy Johnson said. “He had mitigating circumstances because of the sexual abuse, the fact that he tried to get help before the relapse and because it’s a nonviolent crime and a first-time offense. His wife is from here and his kids were born here. But now his family is gone. It’s shattered. He has lost any chance of having a united family in the United States.”

“If it were up to me, I would have ordered him into a drug-treatment program. We’re just paying for his prison time before we deport him.”

• A 42-year-old U.S. citizen, originally from Mexico, who worked in construction. He had no record until he was arrested in 2005 on arson charges after an apartment blaze that started after his shirt and later his bed caught on fire. Having been under the influence of both methamphetamine and alcohol, he was hospitalized for mental health issues, charged with first-degree arson and later granted probation.

Chief Deputy Public Defender Jason Frierson said the defendant received mental health counseling and was drug-free for two years before a 2007 arrest for possession of a meth pipe.

That arrest resulted in additional probation conditions, but his probation was revoked late last year after he admitted to his probation officer that he again had used drugs. He wound up sentenced to 12 to 32 months behind bars

This is a good topic. I think that it is sad that such an issue needs to be addressed.

I think that sometimes, jail or juvenille detention can really make a positive effect on someone.  Not all teenagers or young adults will reep the benefits like others but I think we must hold them accountable just like adults. 

That is some very interesting stories the sad part about is the only way anyone can try to make a difference in the lives of people like that is to change our feild of work become a lawyer or a judge and try to help get better sentences for peolpe that we believe don't deserve some of the time they get for the crimes they commit

The problem is that the  "War on Drugs" is all about punishment and not about treatment. Addictions need to be treated, not punished.

I agree with you Ginny. I think that treatment can help, but only if they are willing...sometimes they aren't.

deb: yes, yes, yes. LIfe skills training is so improtant for this group.

This topic is very personal to me.  I have a brother now 26 who just got out of prision in April and went when he was 17 for meth related charges non violent 1st time offender.  At 17 he was given 20 yrs serve 10.  He has 2 girls which were babies and I raised up until this past year. How can you take a 17 year old boy and throw him in a prision and let him out and thats it other than the parole officers monthly payment.  He is now angry and bitter cant find work nor get assistance with the girls.  There are no programs or assistance once these guys/girls get out to get them ready for the outside world.  I know he is lost and just sits and wonders what he is going to do next because he has to provide for his kids but has no H.S. or training so whats left?  I think many prisioners are faced with this problem.  Now I think there are different levels of crimes even when dealing with murder, so the only way to fix the system in my opinion is the same as we do care plans with goals and expectations which should continue even after being released, so that they are not thrown right back in the same situation.  As far as paying for it the tax payers are going to end up paying one way or the other so wouldnt it be smarter to invest from the begining and be done instead of paying forever?  Thats just my opinion.  Good Topic

Well I think a couple billion dollars, going to a war we have no business of being in, should fund all this quite nicely.  Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I support the troops, I do not support the war.

This is a really good topic.  I also think that there should be some kind of plan, one where the people see that there are consequences for their actions or decisions, but also rehabilitation that fits their needs to help them to realize the other options that they have.  The people also have to be willing to receive help and work at it afterwards though, making it difficult.

Ginny, I believe you're one of the few who can get through to someone. Remember, they have to sincerely want help before they accept it. You can only do as much as you can do. It's a two way street. This is one of the problems that state and local government prefers to sweep under the rug along with homelessness and every other thing that doesn't meet their "profile of the day". There are programs that will feed you, educate you and get you a job making more money than we do. All for free. And did I forget to mention free housing? My step daughter is a case in point. She received all of the above from her state and ended up in a supervisory position w/out graduating HS. I guess success was too much to handle. Now she's trying to get disability in order not to work. It's a travesty and a tragedy. I can't get enough money to buy a postage stamp, much less go back to school. Just because I'm separated and not divorced, I am deemed to be making too much money to qualify. Kiss the back of my scrubs after doing an 18 hour shift when everyone got suppositories before I arrived!!! Prison can be a double edged sword; it can rehabilitate or make a bad situation worse. Young people going into the prison system are at risk from the ones who have been there and will remain there. Nightly sexual assaults sort of diminish a young person's self esteem, ambition and emotional well being. There has to be a separation of these cases from the regular penal system in order for any good to come of it. If the US would cease and desist from sending money to countries who hate us anyway, let them fight their own battles and for crying out loud, stop out sourcing our jobs, there would be funding to help the ones who need it and want it. The only way I see to help anyone in this position or any other for that matter is change the people who make the decisions. It requires involvement, commitment and voting in or out the ones who either help or hinder the greater good. How would anyone feel, if after serving their time, they were released back to the street with nowhere to go, no family, no friends, no money. They're only going to do what they know how to do. Alot of kids don't have a snowball's chance in hell these days.

I think that a lot of people who are put in prisons for a long time forget what it is like to be in the real world.. To them behaving badly gets them to the one place they know after so long.  I think that if we want offenders to benefit we should offer more programs that help them, including transitional programs from prison to the real world. How do you let a person out of prison after a 10-20 year sentence and expect them to be able to cope with all that has changed.  I would be afraid.. Imagine how much changes in one year. mulitply that by ten and besides drug addictions and mental health problems you have a time warp.  They fall back on what they know. 

So many good responses here....  I would think to take a young person, especially first-time drug offenders, to a rehab instead of prison.  It has been my experience in such a situation that if you catch them while they are young, quite possibly good things can be done.  Through rehab and counseling, most could find the folly of their ways and get a second chance at trying at life again.  Too often, once labeled as a felon will only create more distress for the person with even more obstacles to overcome.  Although most obstacles can be overcome, some are still a "life sentence".  On the other hand, if someone goes through drug rehab, most often times they replace the one addition with another.  Therein lies the problem of getting to the root problem why someone is addicted or chooses to self-medicate.  I still believe in the saying.. "To really want help, you have to hit rock bottom" in some cases, but not all.  I do agree with Ginny that sometimes being scared straight works well, especially with younger adults.   

I have mixed feelings about this topic.