EDITOR’S NOTE — This is the first of a two-part series on the STAR Community Justice Center in Franklin Furnace.

By JOHN CROPPER

jcropper@wnewsj.com

One hundred miles southeast of Wilmington, in a blip of a town on Old U.S. Route 52 along the Ohio River, Eddie Philabaun is smiling.

As director of the STAR Community Justice Center in Franklin Furnace, Philabaun oversees drug offenders, probation violators and non-violent criminals from nine Ohio counties, including Clinton. His minimum security facility is an alternative to prison, where judges send the drug-addled but not the dangerous, the troubled but not the terrible.

From behind his desk here in this Scioto County town, Philabaun explains the philosophy of STAR — short for Structure, Therapy, Advocacy and Rehabilitation.

“This program works for people who want to change their lives,” he said. “Plain and simple. If they don’t want to change, STAR won’t work for them. But if they do, we have the tools to help.”

Tools like community-based rehabilitation, drug counseling, parenting and relationship classes and a state-accredited GED curriculum. Offenders here are known as residents, not inmates. There are no armed guards, batons or pepper spray, or even a pair of handcuffs. Instead of first names, residents and staff alike are referred to as Mr. and Ms., regardless of their seniority.

“We treat everyone with respect, like human beings,” Philabaun said. “Once they get the tools they need here, it’s their job to use them. The answer lies within.”

From Clinton to Scioto

Franklin Furnace, population 1,537, is a relatively small town on the banks of the Ohio River, 20 miles southeast of Portsmouth. It is probably best known as the home of another prison, the troubled Ohio River Valley Juvenile Correctional Facility, which is located next door to STAR. The two facilities are not related.

Founded in 2001 to help ease the burden on overpopulated Ohio prisons, STAR has since become one of the best performing “therapy communities” in the region. A total of 131 residents live there now, 11 from Clinton County. Others come from Lawrence, Ross, Adams, Brown, Highland, Pickaway, Scioto and Pike counties.

“We get residents from all over,” said Nicole Johnson, a treatment specialist who works primarily with high-risk offenders, most of whom have emotional and psychological issues.

“They show up here and we treat them the same way we do everyone else, with respect and dignity,” she said.

Since January of 2009, Clinton County has sent 53 felony offenders to STAR, according to the Clinton County Adult Probation Department (CCAPD). Most are referred for drug convictions, others for non-violent burglaries or probation violations. All are eligible for prison. The CCAPD, which since 2002 has referred offenders to STAR, said it doesn’t know the total number of local men and women who have participated in the program in that time.

Of 131 residents, 85 are male and 46 are female, although that number fluctuates weekly as residents graduate from the 10-week program and new offenders come in. Philabaun said his facility has funding for 120 beds, “But we move funds around to accommodate more.”

STAR’s annual budget of $3,035,919, paid for by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, covers the salaries of 55 full-time employees, food and curriculum costs for residents and other operating costs, Philabaun said.

“We save the taxpayers a lot of money,” he said, noting that the average “cost per diversion” — or price tag of a trip to STAR — costs about $9,000 per resident for the average stay of 120 days, compared to the $25,000 cost of sending an offender to prison for nine months, the state average.

“Plus, while (offenders) are here, they’re learning new skills, they’re learning to think clearly about what got them here, and they’re becoming more productive citizens for when they get out,” he said.

“Luckily for us, judges believe in us. We wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have faith in us. They know that this program works,” he said.

A Friend of the Courts

As it happens, Ohio is something of a leader when it comes to alternative methods for incarcerating and rehabilitating non-violent criminals. One of the first CBCFs in the country, the Monday Community Based Corrections Facility in Montgomery County, was founded in Dayton in 1978.

The Monday model has since been replicated 18 times around the state, and the nineteenth facility is under construction in Cuyahoga County.

In all cases, CBCFs have strong support from county judges, who say they prefer the community-based, intensive treatment methods of programs like STAR to the relatively relaxed environment of prison.

“I’m a huge proponent of STAR,” said John W. Rudduck, judge for the Clinton County Common Pleas Court. “I use STAR more than almost any judge in the state. Invariably, everyone who goes through the program comes out enthusiastic and better equipped. But it’s not a guarantee that you’ll never re-offend.”

That reality is not lost on the staff of STAR. One component of the residents’ treatment plan is a program called the “Relapse Track,” for offenders who graduated from the program but re-offended once they were released. (In tomorrow’s Wilmington News Journal, we talk to a Clinton County resident currently on the Relapse Track.) In most cases, judges will send the resident back to STAR, Philabaun said.

“If the residents are released back into the same environment where they came from, to the same circle of friends and the same family situation, they’re going to have a hard time succeeding,” he said. “Judges realize that, and they trust us to address the issue. It’s up to the residents to change their situation.”

Rudduck said he and his staff are building on the success of local STAR graduates by staying in contact with them throughout probation and other post-incarceration programs. In the end, he said, this method is beneficial for the local community as well as the state.

“We try to lessen the burden of state prisons, which are just too overcrowded,” he said. “If we can deal with these problems on a more localized level, let’s do it.”

Apart from his probation officers, Rudduck says he maintains little communication with the successful STAR residents once they graduate, and he wants to keep it that way.

“I hope, for their sake and mine, that I never see them again,” he said. “Unless it’s just walking down the street.”

“You have to want it”

On one side of a dry-erase board in Kirk Neuenschwander’s office, the names of all the Clinton County residents sentenced to the STAR program are written in green and orange ink.

The Clinton County Adult Probation Officer has six clients enrolled in the program, and Kelly Hopkins, another probation officer, has five.

On the other side of the board, the names of all the men and women who have graduated from the program, 29 in total, are scrawled in blue.

“That leaves 13 people who have dropped out of the program, for one reason or another,” Neuenschwander explains.

“Most of the people who go to STAR get something out of it. They benefit from the program. Others, they just don’t want to deal with it. Some people would rather ride out their time in prison and get ‘off paper’,” he said, using a slang term which means to finish probation.

The majority of the offenders who are given the option of spending their sentence at STAR finish the program, Philabaun said, and most don’t come back. But a certain level of investment is required from the residents, who have to pass a series of tests, complete a panel evaluation from staff members and receive a recommendation to graduate before they can leave.

“I had a female resident tell me the other day that it took her 30 days or so before she was open to the idea of the program,” Neuenschwander said. “She was mad that the court sent her there. But once she realized that there were other girls there in similar circumstances, in the same boat that she was, she changed her thinking.”

Philabaun sees the same thing every day. Typically, he said, residents are skeptical and stubborn when the enter the program. They refuse to participate or do so unwillingly.

“But then, almost always, they see the good. They realize we really do want to help them,” he said.

“In the end, it comes down to this: if you come through this program, you will leave a better person. There’s no doubt,” he said. “But it’s up to you. You have to want it. And once you leave, you have to remember where you’ve been.”

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In Wednesday’s Wilmington News Journal, four Clinton County residents sentenced to STAR discuss life inside the community-based treatment center. Read the full story in print, or read both stories in the series online at www.wnewsj.com