Addicted to punishment

Why is the Cellucci administration turning away the people best-qualified to help substance abusers?

by Ben Geman

The tattoo on Bob's right shoulder shows a skeleton riding a motorcycle away from a burst of orange flame. Inside the yellow headlight is the outline of a black triangle, and inside the triangle is the number 12.

The "12" symbolizes a 12-step alcohol recovery program, and Bob (not his real name) describes his tattoo as "coming out of hell on a Harley." For Bob, a lumbering 53-year-old with thinning white hair drawn back in a ponytail, hell was years of abusing drugs and booze. His addiction led to convictions for drug possession in the 1970s and, in 1980, for armed robbery, after what he calls a drunken attempt to stick up a pharmacy by pretending to have a gun. He came away with two tablets of Valium and a stint in the state prison at Walpole .

That was almost 20 years ago. Now, after alcohol rehab and training in human services, Bob is a substance-abuse counselor who's helped design rehabilitation programs for local agencies. In the rehab world, Bob is a success story: a man who turned his life around and now, like a lot of recovering addicts, devotes it to helping others do the same thing.

Remarkably, it's the kind of story that the Paul Cellucci administration doesn't like. Under current policy, Bob's conviction would permanently prevent him from being hired by any state-subsidized rehab center, homeless shelter, or other human-services agency. Massachusetts mandates background checks through the state's Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) database for state human-services employees and workers at private human-services agencies receiving state money. Since 1996, if the check turns up certain convictions from any time in the past decade -- including drug possession with intent to distribute, multiple drunk-driving arrests, or assault -- the applicant must be rejected. And if the check turns up a more serious conviction, like armed robbery, the candidate is barred permanently.

The result causes problems system-wide. For recovering addicts with criminal records, the policy closes a productive lane of mainstream employment. For current addicts, it reduces the pool of qualified counselors. And it's certainly not the best use of taxpayer dollars: it virtually guarantees that state-funded rehab centers and homeless shelters must turn away some of the best-qualified people who apply for jobs.

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The state's policy began with good intentions. In April 1996, the Boston Globe reported that the Department of Social Services was hiring foster parents with extensive criminal records -- including convictions for child abuse and drug dealing. The paper found one New Bedford man with more than 150 criminal arraignments who had been approved as a foster parent. The response by the Weld-Cellucci administration was swift and severe: the day after the story hit, the state announced new background-check rules. Starting one month later, past convictions for really bad stuff -- rape, murder, armed assault -- would carry a lifetime employment ban. So would several serious drug-trafficking offenses. Not-as-bad stuff (larceny, lesser assaults, and possession with intent to distribute) would mandate a 10-year freezeout. Dozens of lesser offenses -- misdemeanor assaults, some more-minor drug possessions -- would be left up to the discretion of the employer.

It wasn't long before the full consequences of the law became apparent. It's well understood in the rehab business that people in recovery make some of the most effective counselors, and many of these people, like Bob, committed crimes to feed their addictions. Shelter and drug-rehabilitation programs quickly began having a tough time filling jobs with the people they wanted.

Why are the ex-addicts, even those with criminal records, in such demand? In the simplest terms, it's a credibility issue. "The guests in a shelter are going to relate much more to people who walk the walk and talk the talk, who can confront them when they are in denial about substance abuse and can also be there in times of incredible pain," says Linda Wood-Boyle, executive director of the Somerville Homeless Coalition, adding that about 70 percent of the coalition's shelter guests have substance-abuse problems. "It's not to say that others can't learn that, but there is a trust level between recovering and current addicts that's irreplaceable." Roxbury activist Haywood Fennel, a recovering heroin addict who did time in prison, puts it like this: "If you come into it [drug counseling] with a Harvard degree and no experience -- well, that's counterproductive. A nine-month internship is not as good as someone who has had nine years of horror and cleaned themselves up."

The problem is, an applicant pool of ex-junkies comes with a lot of criminal baggage. "The role of drug use and/or addiction and criminal behavior is intertwined," says Ann Tafe Graw, executive director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association, a trade association for rehab agencies. Addicts unable to hold regular jobs while using may have peddled drugs, broken into cars, turned to prostitution -- even become violent.

Under the state's policy, organizations are forced -- frequently -- to turn away applicants they believe would make excellent counselors. Wood-Boyle, who calls the policy a "whole lot of trouble," says in the past six months she's rejected 10 applicants for jobs in the Somerville Homeless Coalition's adult shelter system. She was ready to hire nine of them.

"There are things people do when they are drinking or using drugs that they have not done since recovery," she says. "Often, it's people we absolutely want as a model but can't hire because eight and a half years ago they distributed pot or operated under the influence."

Adds Bob, who -- after earning several counseling certificates and qualifications -- now works in administration as well as in direct care, "You have a lot of people who don't even bother to apply. The pool of resources has shrunk."

And at the street level, the policy has another, less quantifiable effect on the morale of addicts trying to get clean, says Graw. "We say, come into treatment, make an effort to change your life and get it together -- but, by the way, when you get there, you can't work for us. That's a conflicting message. [It's saying] you are damaged goods."

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At last count, the number of people who got rich being substance-abuse counselors or working with the homeless at publicly funded agencies was approximately zero. At Meridian House, a recovery home in East Boston, the starting salary is about $21,000 per year, which is about par for the course and better than that of many places. Something stronger than cash pulls recovering addicts into the field. Counselors often speak of their profession in almost spiritual terms.

"I feel like I was kept alive to do this work," says Holly Bradford, a substance-abuse counselor at a Boston drug-rehabilitation program who, as a runaway youth and eventual heroin junkie, racked up several convictions for drug possession, including the intent to distribute that now carries the 10-year disqualification. "So many of us don't make it. I buried a lot of my friends from AIDS, from suicides, from overdoses."

"Helping others has just nurtured me," adds Bob. "Spiritually, I am inspired by this work, as are tons of other people in my field. It's a feeling that you just can't duplicate."

To critics, the state's policy is yet another manifestation of the Weld-Cellucci administration's customary emphasis on punishment over rehabilitation. "We used to say that when people get out of prison, they have paid their debt to society," says Philip Mangano, executive director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance. "What the Weld-Cellucci CORI policy does is extend that debt that used to be paid behind the walls and extend it to the community. We are going back to 18th-century, primitive corrections."

Says Steve Saloom of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition, which monitors state-corrections policy: "When you consider the real impact this is having on people who . . . have done time and got out of prison and want to rebuild their lives and play by the rules, I can't imagine why you would want to prevent them from being able to enter the very field or fields [where] in many cases they may be able to effectively give back to their community."

For a couple of years now, Mangano and others have lobbied William O'Leary, Cellucci's health and human-services secretary, to change the policy -- without results. O'Leary was not available for comment, but spokesman David Ball says the state's position has not changed and likely won't anytime soon. "The most important thing to the administration is that services provided to the clients are provided in a safe setting," he says. "We have a policy designed to protect our clients and at the same time set a reasonable standard for working in the human-services field."

Ball points out that agencies do have the discretion to hire some ex-convicts; dozens of offenses, including some drunk-driving and drug-possession charges, carry no minimum disqualification. But where more-serious drug offenses and other crimes are concerned, he says the state would "rather err on the side of caution."

The thing is, the providers feel much the same way. Mangano says people who run agencies have as much interest in the safety of their clients as anyone. Wood-Boyle, for example, agrees with the state policy as it relates to the family shelter run by her agency. Yet when it's adults working with adults, she says, a different and more relaxed set of rules is in order.

The Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance has drafted proposed changes to the regulations that would do away entirely with lifetime disqualifications. The proposal calls for mandatory 10-year disqualifications for many sex offenders and people who have otherwise assaulted children, and five-year disqualifications for a slew of other offenses; it would also allow individual agencies to use their discretion in hiring people who have committed drug-related offenses. Mangano has supplied the state with a draft of this proposal.

The administration's reaction? Nothing. "They have not even said, `We reject the policy,' " says Mangano. "They have been comatose in response."

At this point, pure politics may well have backed the administration into a corner; even if he saw the benefit of a revised policy, the tough-on-crime Cellucci would have to summon an awful lot of guts to make an about-face on this issue.

Still, critics intend to keep the pressure on. Last year, Haywood Fennel helped co-found an advocacy group, the Stanley Jones Clean Slate Committee Project, to help prisoners re-enter society. Stanley Jones, now deceased, was a convict who turned his life around and became a celebrated counselor. One of the group's key issues, Fennel says, is the softening of background-check laws in order to allow agencies to hire at their own discretion.

Fennel hopes the group can build a long-term strategy to help recovering addicts coming out of prison find jobs. He and others in the field feel that people who have done time or who have successfully fought addiction deserve another chance.

It's an idea echoed in the corner office at Meridian House. Last week, in preparation for a harbor-cruise fundraiser for the program, one of the house's clients drew a picture of a boat sailing on a blue-and-green sea that was to be signed by guests on the cruise. "All we ask for," says a line written along the bow, "is a new beginning."

Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.