Having clinched the world record for imprisoning the most citizens, the United States is now facing another problem -- what to do with the hundreds of thousands of ex-cons released each year. ___________________________________________________ By Atiya Hussain -(Reuters) - August 21, 2002 Men and women, in numbers greater than the population of the United States's capital city, are freed from America's crowded prisons every year. Most of them have had little preparation for life outside prison and end up in communities that offer little guidance. And many -- between 40 percent and 65 percent, depending on how recidivism is measured -- end right back in prison. "The social skills necessary to survive in prisons are the inverse of skills necessary to get a job," says JoAnne Page, executive director of the Fortune Society, a New York non-profit organisation that provides services, including housing, to former prisoners. "This country has made a decision to make a commitment, not in prevention, not in treatment, but in incarceration. There's a huge re-entry problem that policy-makers are just waking up to," Page said. Highlighting the scale of the problem, the U.S. Justice Department last month announced a $100 million initiative to re-integrate prisoners. The effort, which enlists the help of the Departments of Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development and Labor aims to help provide education, job training and substance abuse treatment to violent offenders. Last year alone, 630,000 offenders were released from prison, the Justice Department estimates. That is well above the roughly 572,000 people who lived in the nation's capital, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. U.S. incarceration rates, at 690 convicts per 100,000, now top even those in Russia, which once led the world with its rate of incarcerating 676 of every 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a non-profit criminal justice policy analysis group. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the United States had 1.96 million people locked up in prisons and jails as of Dec. 31, 2001. And according to data collected by Human Rights Watch, more than 60 percent of incarcerated adults are black or Latino, even though blacks and Hispanics make up only 25 percent of the U.S. population. The proportion of black males in prison is nearly eight times that of white male prisoners, according to the statistics agency. 'REVOLVING DOOR' SYSTEM A report prepared last year by the General Accounting Office, the U.S. Congress' investigative arm, highlighted the system's "revolving door" characteristics. Recidivism rates vary, depending on whether prisoners' rearrest, reconviction or reincarceration rates are measured. Historically, recidivism has hovered around 40 percent but a recent study showed two-thirds of state prisoners released in 1994 were rearrested within three years. In part this is because prisons are failing to tackle one of their biggest issues -- substance abuse. The boom in the prison population reflects in large part the U.S. war on drugs, but substance abuse treatment has fallen in state prisons that house 90 percent of all U.S. prisoners. Less than a fourth of state prisoners were treated in 1997, compared to 32 percent in 1991, according to the GAO's report. Critics say Congress' 1994 decision to bar prisoners from federal assistance for education has compounded the problem. Prisoners are eligible for high-school equivalency programs, but cannot work toward college degrees, which specialists say are key to their transition after release. Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, says that decision "flies in the face of everything we know about recidivism." "Just from a crime control point of view it's a very self-defeating program," Mauer said. RESOURCES SCARCE ON THE OUTSIDE The problem becomes obvious as soon as prisoners are released. Most ex-offenders get little more than bus fare and are often dropped off in troubled neighbourhoods. If they are lucky, their families take them back, and they can start adjusting to freedom and to changes in the country and families that have learned to do without them. If not, they can end up on the streets or in shelters for the homeless, with precious few resources to help them stay off drugs or find a job. Shelters catering to ex-prisoners' needs are rare -- housing for ex-offenders is available only in New York and San Francisco. So the Justice Department's initiative is very welcome. "The signs are very encouraging, but we have a lot of work to do. Equally important is the next step -- how do we get the funding streams and how do we get policy support," said Stanley Richards, a former prisoner and now the Fortune Society's deputy executive director. Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A long-awaited report on New York City police and firefighters' response to the Sept. 11 attacks showed serious mistakes were made, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed on Monday that the problems would be solved. The Fire Department's most serious error was sending its senior-most members to the World Trade Center, according to the study by independent consultant McKinsey & Co. released on Monday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - There's now scientific evidence that men really are afraid of commitment. Providing support for what some women may already believe, an American study released on Wednesday shows men are dragging their feet on getting married. Researchers say one of the biggest reasons that men are delaying marriage is that more couples are choosing to live together before marriage.

NEW YORK, May 20 (Reuters) - Finally. The dollar's six-year bull run appears to be over and analysts say America's massive trade imbalance is weakening the U.S. currency and may possibly slow U.S. growth. For more than six years, the dollar has climbed steadily higher, shrugging off economists' warnings that sooner or later it would come under pressure because the United States imports far more than it exports.

Crude oil and unleaded gasoline futures gained sharply at the New York Mercantile Exchange, reflecting concerns over refinery closures and a strike at Shell Nigeria, part of Royal Dutch/Shell Group.