No one ever thought that changing an entire statewide corrections culture would be easy.

One of many plans to overhaul what most dub a dysfunctional system is the Michigan Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative.

Its goal: to aid parolees with housing, jobs, drug treatment and other services. But parolee integration into the neighborhood requires a cooperative community, and that’s been hard to come by in Ingham County.

It’s becoming clear to the Michigan Department of Corrections that agencies contracted to implement the re-entry program are slow to share information and even worse at working with local governments and citizens, according to an April evaluation of the program. In the works for five years, the program went statewide a year ago. There’s a description of the program at www.michpri.com.

Even so, some early signs are hopeful. Statewide, preliminary estimates show a 26 percent reduction in returns to prison, said Paul Elam, the state program spokesman. Capital Area Michigan Works!, contracted to implement the re-entry program here, however, has not kept data, said Nancy Oliver, community coordinator for Michigan Works.

The lack of numbers became an issue when Oliver and three people representing the Department of Corrections attended the Oct. 2 meeting of the Genesee Neighborhood Association, the area just west of downtown Lansing.

At-Large Councilwoman Carol Wood, a neighborhood resident and treasurer of the neighborhood association, said Department of Corrections representatives asked, “Will you help us persuade another neighborhood to welcome a MPRI halfway house?”

“No we will not,” Wood said was the association’s response. “You have no data to convince us this program is working.”

“The statewide folks don’t understand the principles of collaboration and coalition building,” Elam said. The agencies contracted to carry out the program know little better.

Michigan Works is paid $730,000 annually to implement the prisoner reentry program in Clinton, Eaton and Ingham counties. It hires the community coordinator, and pays subcontractors to do drug counseling, job preparation, locate housing and more for 300 men. The parolees who returned to prison and have been discharged are placed in unsupervised houses for special assistance. One halfway house is in the Fabulous Acres neighborhood, and two were in the Genesee neighborhood. But neither neighborhood was forewarned or given guidance about the new program. Neighbors in both areas were upset.

Now, the small West Shiawassee Street house that two months ago lodged six — whom some say are unlikely to succeed — prison parolees is vacant. It is unknown where the men who had lived there are now because Michigan Works did not respond to inquiries. A second house, two blocks away on North Lapeer Street, continues to harbor men enrolled in the state’s program, but the sign that formerly identified the building as a Department of Corrections property now simply reads “No Trespassing.”

But change is coming. On Oct. 20, program officials directed all its contractors to convene advisory councils “to create a strong base for community support and to act as a vehicle for public education.”

Further, a small group of people in the neighborhood is taking the issue into its own hands, doing the work that Michigan Works is paid to do. The NorthWest Initiative and Advocacy Re-entry Resources Outreach two weeks ago hosted what the groups call “a coalition-building forum.” ARRO is dedicated to easing transition for men and women returning from prison, financed with grants from Morehouse School of Medicine and Ingham County.

The Power of We Consortium, a countywide collection of organizations assisting with social needs, will be asked to include prison re-entry in its priorities and a coalition will be formed in December to begin working from the bottom up, Maria Zavala, director of ARRO, said. Meanwhile, Wood and Council President Brian Jeffries are planning a November (date-to-be-determined) citywide evening neighborhood meeting to begin discussing the issue of keeping the community safe while saving the estimated $30,000 the state pays yearly when a parolee fails and is returned to prison, the case with half of all Michigan parolees in the year 2000, Elam said.

Wood has a list of changes she wants made dealing with halfway houses and those who oversee them: implement license requirements; make regular reports to the neighborhoods and to the city about the number of police calls; stop clustering houses in one neighborhood; avoid putting prisoner re-entry houses in already fragile neighborhoods; and place full-time monitors in the houses. She also wants to hear the success stories.

“I’m sure there are some,” she said.

But the re-entry advocates’ group has a list too, much broader in context: stop stereotyping all parolees as bad people; allow felons to qualify for low-income housing; give parolees identification when they leave prison; stop sending parolees to the communities where they committed crimes; establish a telephone hotline for people just returning from prison who need help; and stop labeling 18 year-yearold boys who had sex with 15-year-old girlfriends as sexual predators.

Since the grassroots work was never done in Ingham County, the views of the parolee advocates and the neighborhood associations reflect the schism between those wanting to keep the community safe and those striving to salvage human capital. Some neighbors are angry that the public continues to be left out of the massive overhaul. Others believe the system is stacked against people who have taken their punishment and are now trying to get straight with their lives.“These are good people. Just give them a chance,” Monica Jahner, released a year ago from a 28-year prison sentence, and working with the re-entry advocates, said.

But Wood had other thoughts.

Wood’s mother, Genesee Neighborhood activist Ruth Hallman, and two other women are suspected of having been killed by Mathew Macon, now in prison for killing two other women a year ago. Macon was enrolled in the re-entry program.

Why is it our responsibility to love and embrace these people?” she added, “Our life experience colors how we see things. I can’t help that.”