Progress is stalled on two key issues - efforts to secure a $100,000 grant from the state for re-entry funding and to open a parole reporting station in Kingston. The nearest reporting station is in Poughkeepsie, although a temporary reporting site has been open in Ellenville since 2007.

Robert Sudlow, director of Ulster County Probation and a member of the task force, said that although there's a lot of room for improvement, efforts at helping prisoners return to being productive members of society are gaining momentum in the county and state.

"We've got to take those small steps, start putting them together and building a solid foundation," Sudlow said.

"In the past, the assumption was that people went to prison and were gone forever," said Dr. Ivan Godfrey, a psychiatrist who previously worked as a corrections officer and now serves on the boards of both the Ulster and Dutchess re-entry task forces. Now, Godfrey said, communities are beginning to realize that they can't afford to ignore the problem of ex-prisoners coming back - it's a public safety issue as much as it is an attempt to help the prisoners get back on their feet.

Clarke said that re-entry programs can help ensure that released prisoners become "the kind of citizens that you want living next door."

Proper programs have the potential to reduce crime, said Kingston Police Chief Gerald Keller, a member of the county task force.

"If you can help them get back into society from the prison without sending them back into the conditions that got them there in the first place, you won't have the rates of recidivism you've been seeing," Keller said.

Keller approaches the problem as a pragmatist. "My interest in this whole thing is trying to reduce crime, however it can be done," Keller said. "I've seen people that have changed their ways, so I know it can be done ... but I'm not so naïve as to believe that everyone can change."

For evidence that former convicts can have a positive impact on society, Keller mentioned Ronnie Wade, director of Save Them Now, as well as Herbie Rogers, who was an inmate at the Ulster County Jail 86 times before being sent to state prison and deciding to turn his life around. Rogers became ordained as a minister and devoted the last decade of his life to preventing others from falling into the traps of drugs and crime that derailed him as a youth. He died last October.

Drug-free housing and jobs are the most critical elements for re-entry, according to many on the Re-entry Task Force. Other necessities include access to treatment for mental health and substance abuse, medical care, counseling services, financial resources, and help with bureaucracy. Godfrey said that "co-occurring disorders," or mental health problems combined with drug addiction, have been tough for traditional law enforcement to handle, and treatment must be a focus of prison, jails, and re-entry programs.

Sgt. Vincent Fiscaletti, transition coordinator of the Ulster County Jail's new re-entry program, which began in June, said his program makes sure inmates know basic information they'll need upon release, such as where they're going when they leave the jail, where Social Services is and where substance abuse counseling is available.

For now, the jail's program consists of separate housing and counseling for up to 12 adult male inmates who are committed to changing their ways. There are currently eight men in the program, Fiscaletti said. With no money yet secured beyond the paychecks of the housing staff, the re-entry program depends on volunteers who focus on combating substance abuse and compulsive behavior and promoting life skills.

Some of the counseling is available to other prisoners, such as women or minors between the ages of 16 and 18 who are not elegible for the separate housing. When the program gets funding, Fiscaletti said his first priority would be to obtain computers, so that inmates can be trained on basic computing skills, such as word processing and data entry, that would help land them a job.

Sudlow said he'd like to see more state prisons support similar programs, especially since those prisoners face a tougher re-entry experience because of longer sentences and geographical distance between the prison and where they're released. And prisoners are isolated from the passage of time. There is currently a 60-bed, 90-day re-entry unit at Orleans Correctional Facility, a male medium security prison near Buffalo, and three additional programs are in the planning stages, according to a press release from the state Department of Correctional Services, but none of the proposed facilities would affect prisoners returning to the Kingston area.

One resource is the book "Coming Back to Ulster County," distributed free by the Unitarian Universalist church's social action committee. Intensely practical, with useful phone numbers and addresses, the guide covers the essentials like food, housing, clothing, health services and job resources.

Save Them Now focuses on the housing, provided alcohol-free and drug-free supervised living for 17 ex-inmates at their Washington Avenue leased location.

Save Them Now said 26,000 inmates have been released from state prisons across America every year since 2004, of which more than half return to prison within a three-year period. The cost to house an inmate is $35,000 to $100,000 per year. In New York, 32.2 percent of parolees returned to prison within a two-year period for either committing new felonies or violating the terms of their parole, according to state Department of Criminal Justice Services statistics from 2004.

Of the 75 people that went through Save Them Now in the first year, five were reincarcerated (about 6.6 percent); 16 have found their own housing, and 33 have jobs.

"People are motivated by success," Clarke said. "They're waiting to see the level of success that Save Them Now has before they wrap their arms around it."

That recognition is coming. A $10,000 grant, through the Office of Children and Family Services and made possible by a legislative initiative from Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, is a start. It will enable Save Them Now to open a carpentry and construction workshop to provide work skills to ex-prisoners. They are currently scouting locations to rent, and plan to spend about $4,000 on equipment and tools.

On July 23, Adams hosted a meeting to discuss re-entry in Ulster County and how its findings could be translated into statewide legislation. Adams asked Godfrey, whom he knew when Adams was a New York Police Department captain and Godfrey was a corrections officer, to organize it and invite "people with real stakes," Godfrey said. One hundred people reportedly attended the forum at the Ulster County Law Enforcement Center. Godfrey called it a combination of networking and discussion of problems.

"There were a great deal of individuals who were delighted to realize that there were other individuals who were working on the same problem," said Godfrey.

Adams listened, took notes, didn't say much, but said he'd try to turn some of the ideas heard into legislation. He's the ranking Democrat on the Senate Crime Victim, Crime and Correction Committee.

Cohen said Adams was listening and taking notes during the meeting, rather than putting forth his own opinions. "I was very impressed by him," Cohen said. "And I'm not usually impressed by politicians."

The next steps for the task force are to establish a local parole reporting station (Sudlow believes that the old jail would be ideal, although the idea has met with resistance in the county Legislature and community), and increased involvement from the community and especially ex-convicts who can provide an example to their fellows.

Cohen, an ex-convict, said, "People listened to me, not because I was more eloquent, or smarter, but because I'd worn the green. I knew what they were going through."

Rogers and Wade are others. When parolees see Wade working with the same guys that helped lock him up, it helps break down the "us versus them" mentality that prisons encourage, Cohen said.

Despite progress, there's a long way to go.

Sudlow said that while the July 11 reporting date for the Task Force grant has come and gone, the county has not yet heard back from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. He's confident that even if the money is denied this year, it will come eventually. The bigger challenge will be establishing a Kingston parole reporting station. The timetable is now "years out," Sudlow said, "which for us is not acceptable."