And it’s a question asked by the hundreds of residents from Wilsonville and outlying communities who devote hours of unpaid time each week to making these programs function. Nearly 700 volunteers in all are currently on Coffee Creek’s “active” list, and virtually all of them got there because they feel strongly that Oregon’s correctional facilities should release a better person than the one it admitted.

“Ninety-eight percent of these women are going to be released back into society at one point or another,” says Tonya Sly, Coffee Creek’s public information officer and the public face of Oregon’s only female correctional facility.

It’s an obvious point. But it’s one that West Linn resident Joan Field took to heart.

Formerly an employee with the Oregon Department of Human Services, Field began volunteering her time at Coffee Creek over five years ago. She worked with the now-defunct Women In Community Service program, helping prepare inmates to obtain housing in spite of having often-serious criminal records. With the discontinuation of the federally-funded WICS last year, Field elected to continue volunteering at Coffee Creek as a leader of the Ready To Rent program, which remained in place.

“Felonies make it difficult to find housing,” she said. “Sometimes the bigger complexes won’t rent to someone with a felony record.”

Seven weeks in length, Ready To Rent is run through the Portland Housing Authority by volunteers like Fields and does exactly what the name suggests.

Women are taught the importance of credit reports, and how to maintain their own credit report. They also learn to question property management companies and landlords about their rental policies, as well as budgeting, spending and rental agreements.

The course is offered to all inmates who are within four months of release. Not all take advantage of the opportunity, but most do.

“They’re definitely using it,” said Field. “Once the women graduate, some are leaving within a week to 60 days. They’re pretty much out the door.”

Pretty overwhelming

Coffee Creek inmate Carolyn Burgan has barely a week left to serve of an original sentence of 33 months for prescription fraud and related drugs offenses. Upon her release, she will have had nearly five months of her sentence lopped off for good behavior.

Before she went to prison nearly 28 months ago, the 42-year-old Burgan and her husband owned their own home and automotive business in Grants Pass. But that was before the snowmobile accident which left both of them seriously injured and dependent upon prescription narcotics such as hydrocodone and oxycodone, more commonly known by the brand names Vicodin and Percocet.

In a situation played out thousands of times across the country, Burgan and her husband steadily became addicted to the narcotics and eventually resorted to forging prescriptions to obtain drugs. Because of elaborate safeguards surrounding the prescription of narcotic painkillers, the couple were ultimately caught and prosecuted by Josephine County authorities.

Burgan was given 33 months in a state correctional facility, while her husband was sentenced to several months in the county jail. As a result, they also lost their home and their business.

That wasn’t the end for Burgan, either. Since being sent to prison in 2005, she has not seen her three girls, one 14, the others 9-year-old twins.

“I always thought that it was meth or heroin, you know, the typical addict,” Burgan said. “But it can look like anybody. I still wonder how I got here sometimes.”

During her incarceration, Burgan has undergone intensive drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and continues to regularly attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She plans to live in an Oxford house for recovering addicts upon her release.

But once she’s truly on her own, Burgan admits, things will be more difficult. This is why she embraced Ready To Rent as her release approached.

“I was a homeowner before, and I lost my house,” she said. “I thought it would be good to know about it (renting.) I had no idea how it would be.”

She praised the way in which Field and other volunteers associated with Ready To Rent worked with her and other inmates.

Far from judgmental, Burgan said, the volunteers treat the inmates as peers and partners as they go through the course.

“They go over every little thing,” Burgan said. “They are great. They’re nice and they’re patient.”

Transitioning

Coffee Creek transition coordinator Ken Hiller is in charge of a whole slew of classes, including Ready To Rent, offered to women nearing the end of their sentences.

The primary aims of transition programming, he says, are to provide inmates with marketable skills they can use to gain employment, as well as the tools they’ll require to locate, apply for and rent an apartment or home upon their release.

“We want to make them competitive,” Hiller said.

Years of confinement away from society have a way of “institutionalizing” an inmate grown used to a highly regimented life with little in the way of personal choice allowed. They may have trouble making decisions upon release, while technological changes also may catch them by surprise.

“When people go into prison things just stop for them. But out there,” he said, gesturing above Coffee Creek’s barbed wire fences, “everything is still going 100 miles per hour. And it’s not going to stop.”

Fortunately for Coffee Creek inmates, Hiller’s efforts have produced a whole series of classes and coursework aimed at making smoother what is usually a very difficult period of time. And most of them would not be possible without the effort of dozens of volunteers, men and women, who share the goals of Hiller, Sly and other Coffee Creek staffers working to ensure that the inmates they work with do not return.

In addition to courses on budgeting, job interviews and working with parole and probation officers, instruction is offered in finance, loans and how to reintegrate into a family.