By the time he was released from prison for the last time in December 2007, Canser had spent about a third of his life behind bars for crimes ranging from drug dealing to armed robbery, and had become familiar with 14 different Illinois correctional facilities.

Canser said St. Leonard's helped him turn his life around.

“I did wrong,” said Canser.

Canser credits St. Leonard’s Ministries, a program devoted to rehabilitating offenders, with getting him on the right track in life. With the help of  $6 million in federal stimulus funds set aside by Gov. Pat Quinn, Illinois recently launched a program with the same goal in mind.

Adult Redeploy 2010, a program developed out of the Illinois Crime Reduction Act of 2009 (Public Act 96-0761), allows offenders convicted of minor crimes that could be eligible for probation to bypass prisons and began the rehabilitation process in the community — a move meant to prevent ex-offenders from recidivating, or going back to their lives of crime.

Those incarcerated for violent and/or other non-probationable offenses like rape, murder and aggravated battery, are ineligible for the program.

According to the latest data from the Pew Center on the States, nationwide spending on corrections has gone from $11 billion to more than $50 billion over the past two decades. The center estimates about one out of every 100 adults is behind bars.

Each year, about 40,000 people enter and leave Illinois prisons — many for nonviolent, low-level crimes, according to Chicago Metropolis 2020, an organization with the mission of improving the global image of Chicago by combating the issues facing the region.

The estimated yearly cost to incarcerate each prisoner is about $21,200. More than half of those prisoners cycle through the prison system multiple times — leaving the state paying for crime in more ways than one.

So far, about a handful of the 102 Illinois counties have taken the first steps to incorporating Adult Redeploy in their communities by applying for non-competitive program start-up grants ranging from $10,000 to $30,000, said Mary Ann Dyar, Metro 2020 program manager.

“It’s a lot cheaper to provide treatment in the communities than in the criminal justice system,” said Dyar. “State funds are just so tied up right now. Adult Redeploy couldn’t be more critical.”

Rep. William Burns (D-Chicago) mentioned Illinois’ $13 billion deficit as a definite reason to encourage the creation of programs like Adult Redeploy. “We’ve got to figure out a way to balance our state spending priorities,” he said.

Burns, one of the initial sponsors of the legislation that led to Adult Redeploy 2010, said using community programs is a more cost-effective way to deal with low risk offenders.

“Prison is counterproductive” for low risk offenders, said Burns. When a low risk offender is put in community programs for rehabilitation, he said, “the odds of the person recidivating decreases.”

A main goal for Adult Redeploy, said Dyar, is to cut prison expenses by 25 percent. “It not only uses taxpayer dollars wisely — you have safer communities,” she said.

Lindsay Bostwick, research analyst for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, said communities are often also able to provide more assistance to an ex-offender than that of prison rehabilitation programs.

“If you keep them in the community, it’s better,” said Bostwick. She said she hopes Adult Redeploy will be as successful as the first version of Redeploy Illinois that was developed for juvenile offenders.

That program, she said, had been loosely based on Reclaim Ohio, another rehabilitation program for juvenile offenders with strong emphasis on community support.

Ryan Gies, Ohio Department of Youth Services subsidies bureau chief, has been involved with Reclaim Ohio since its 1994 pilot launch in nine Ohio counties.

The program went statewide in 1995 and since then, said Gies, a lot of things have changed — one being the number of juveniles being put in state institutions.

Gies said that when Reclaim Ohio first launched, there were more than 2,000 youths in state custody. Now, he said, that number has been cut in half. The program has also had an effect on the state as a whole, he said.

“We’ve seen a huge array of programs develop across the state,” said Gies. “There are [now] a lot of options for kids,” he said.

A 2005 evaluation of Reclaim Ohio found that juveniles in the program recidivated at less than half the rate of juveniles placed in state institutions.

It’s evidence-based programs like Reclaim Ohio, said Bostwick, that Adult Redeploy will be funding. Much of the evidence, she said, shows incarcerating low risk offenders creates worse offenders.

Canser agreed.

He said there is “no doubt about” a person learning worse crimes in prison. “You learn about better crimes and how to do them,” he said.

Leaning back in a chair in a quiet conference room in one of St. Leonard’s Ministries’ buildings, Canser reflected on his first experiences with the criminal justice system.

Canser grew up in Rockwell Gardens, the now-demolished housing project, in Chicago. He said he witnessed a lot of crime while living there.

“I could see the criminals chasing the cops — all of that had an influence on me,” he said.

Canser was put behind bars for the first time at the age of 13 for refusing to give police officers the names of men he saw murdering a drug dealer. Canser said the reason he didn’t tell the officers anything was because the men who’d murdered the dealer had threatened to harm him and his family if he told.

After that first jail experience, said Canser, things went downhill fast.

Canser got involved with the drug trade and although he was never put in prison for it, his dealing impacted him in another way: two years after he started selling drugs, he started using drugs.

Then Canser went from using drugs to taking money from the drug dealers and from taking money from dealers to robbing stores. A Walgreens robbery had Canser serving 4 ½ years at Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison in Joliet, Ill.

“It was pretty hard,” said Canser. And even harder, he said, was the adjustment to post-prison life.

Canser said he was fortunate to have his family members and friends for support when he was last released from prison because many offenders, he said, don’t have that support.

“Once you get out of jail, you have nothing, and if you’re going back to a poor neighborhood, they already have nothing,” said Canser. For an ex-offender used to having “three meals a day and getting a place to sleep,” he said, that can be a recipe for disaster.

In 2005, 82 percent of Illinois’ formerly incarcerated returned to regions of the state that suffer some of the highest poverty and crime rates, according to the 2009 IDOC Governor’s Reentry Commission Report.

The report outlines five important factors for successful transition from prison to the community: public safety, employment and education, health and behavioral health, housing and faith, family and community —  key areas emphasized at St. Leonard’s Ministries.

Victor Gaskins, program director at St. Leonard’s, said Adult Redeploy would be a good way to “prevent further damage” from happening that might keep an offender from being rehabilitated.

“We have a tendency to want to deal with the problem after it’s already occurred,” said Gaskins. But the thing to do, he said, is to “catch them while they are still low risk.”

Canser said he wished programs like Redeploy Illinois had been around when he was first incarcerated.  “Your past always seems to haunt you,” he said. But Canser’s outlook on life seemed little affected despite the years he spent behind bars.

With help from St. Leonard’s, Canser was able to get a job at the Chicago Medical Examiner’s Office and get his barber’s license. He’s also involved with Smart Decisions, a program geared toward encouraging at-risk youths to stay on the right track.

“Life comes full circle,” said Canser. “I’m just blessed to still be here.”

Chicago Public Radio’s “Inside and Out” series reports on Illinois’ s juvenile justice system.

“Here, anything is good,” said Naama. “It’s a good life—a nice one.”

Naama is one of an estimated 2,400 Iraqi refugees to resettle to Illinois over the last 2 ½ years, one of 18,000 who have resettled nationwide. The resettlement process, experts say, isn’t easy. But for those like Naama who fled a world of chaos, resettlement is the crisp red apple on the tree of freedom.

Naama, who had fled Iraq for Lebanon, arrived in the United States on July 27, 2009. His wife, Bernadette, 28, came with him. The two met in Lebanon where Bernadette Naama, originally from the Philippines, had originally gone to find work. But because she had been working without proper paperwork, her husband had to pay a hefty fine to get her out of the country.

“He insisted to pay because he didn’t want to go to America without me,” she said. “When we were inside the plane, we felt very safe.”

Once in Chicago, workers from the Heartland Alliance Refugee and Immigrant Community Services (RICS) met the couple and helped them get in touch with her aunt, who they lived with for about two months. But the tight living situation caused tension in their relationship. Bernadette said she and her husband were fighting all the time.

She said when her husband first came to the United States, he had a hard time getting used to the idea that he was a free person because he had gone from a dictatorial government to a democracy.

“It was so hard for my husband,” she said.

But now that the couple has their own apartment, Bernadette said things have become much more pleasant. Still, she said there is a lot of hurt hiding behind her husband’s broad smile and jovial laughter.

“He’s just pretending to be happy,” she said.

Sattar Naama left Iraq for Lebanon in 2000 in hopes of finding work. He returned for a visit in May 2008 after finding out his brother, Muhammad, had been killed by terrorists. On May 13, when Naama and his sister were in his car, a white car with four men wearing black masks showing only their eyes pulled alongside them. Naama noticed at least one of the men had a gun. The man pointed the gun at him and questioned him.

“They said, ‘Why did you come to Iraq—because your father died?’” said Naama. His father had died recently as well. Then the man said, “’I kill you now.’”

Tires screeched as Naama pulled away from the men and made a U-turn in the narrow street; one of the masked men pointed a gun at him again. As he started driving off, the pop of a gunshot echoed through the air. When Naama looked over at his sister, she was dead.

“I need to forget it, but I can’t,” said Naama. He said his family is the biggest thing he misses about Iraq now and that he has no plans of ever going back. He also misses the perks of his job in Lebanon as a supervisor of a cleaning company.

“I had money, a car—I had everything,” said Naama. He said he’s happy, though, because he just got a job working six days a week at Little Lady Foods, a frozen food manufacturer in Elk Grove Village, Ill.

The job requires him to make a 2½-hour trip each morning, which means he has to leave his apartment by 3 a.m. to make it there on time. The reddish tint to his dark eyes shows how the traveling has affected him. But he has a job nonetheless.

Sarah Cady, senior program officer of reception and placement at the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), said it’s often hard for refugees to find employment once in the country.

“We really want clients to become self-sufficient earlier, and with the economic downturn,” said Cady, “it’s become more of a challenge.”

She said the steps for successful resettlement in the U.S. involve having an adequate amount of culturally competent people on staff to help refugees and the ability for refugees to have access to employment, housing, case management and English language services.

Naama is taking an English class at the Heartland Alliance and though he has progressed a lot, his English still waivers at some points.

“It’s very hard for him to learn English,” said Bernadette Naama. Thankfully, she is relatively fluent in English and helps her husband when she can.

Ed Silverman, bureau chief of Immigrant and Refugee Services at the Illinois Department of Human Services, said learning English is crucial.

“The fact of the matter is, the better your English, the higher your pay is going to be,” said Silverman. “Learning English is a primary survival tool.”

Silverman said refugee resettlement is a long process. He said it takes a minimum of three years before refugee families find economic stability. And in Lebanon, where Naama and his wife had been living prior to coming to the United States, things are very unstable.

“In Lebanon, the situation is challenging,” said Elizabeth Campbell, a senior advocate for Refugees International. She said Lebanon has a history of political instability and division. USCRI estimates there are 50,600 Iraqi asylum seekers and refugees in Lebanon. Those refugees, said Campbell, are “generally viewed with a certain amount of suspicion and fear.”

Bernadette Naama said she and her husband were definitely an oddity to the Lebanese. She said that though the people at first came across as very kind and polite, they would regularly talk about her behind her back.

“The people there are all biting you at the back,” she said.

One afternoon, while Naama was waiting for his wife to come down from getting something in an apartment, a group of about 11 Lebanese men threatened to attack him because he wouldn’t move his car from the side of the road.

They said “’you better move your car or we’re going to kick you.”’ When his answer was no, one of the men came over to Naama and slapped him. What saved him was the screwdriver he had in his glove compartment. He waved the screwdriver around and the group of men disappeared.

Bernadette Naama said she only misses her friends in Lebanon—not the country itself. “If there is worse than hell, we can compare it to that,” she said.

Campbell said the Lebanese government does not recognize any refugees other than those from Palestine. Lebanon, she said, does not regard the 1951 Refugee Convention, which was put in place by the United Nations to protect refugees worldwide. The U.S. is one of the 147 countries the United Nations Refugee Agency lists as compliant to the guidelines set up by the 1951 convention.

Campbell said the U.S. resettles a maximum of 70,000 to 80,000 refugees each year—a number more than all other countries combined. She said Australia and Canada had the next largest numbers, resettling about 15,000 refugees worldwide. European countries, she said, had the smallest numbers, resettling between 30 and 2,500 refugees annually.

Silverman said Iraqi refugees were the most recent to come to the U.S. and that he didn’t expect them to stop coming any time soon. “I expect Iraqi refugees to be coming for the next 20 years,” said Silverman. He mentioned that it took 25 years for Vietnamese and Bosnian refugees to go back to their countries.

What often anchors refugees to the U.S., said Silverman, is having children.

Bernadette Naama said she hopes to have children someday, but right now they are focused on saving enough money to move to a different apartment and escape their noisy neighbors—who are often heard partying through the apartment’s unforgiving thin walls.

Naama said he hopes the move will happen within the next few months. He wants to get a car and move to either Des Plaines or Skokie.

He said coming to America had been his dream ever since he was about 15 years old and saw America for the first time on TV. “I love America,” he said.

Another thing he loves is soccer. Every month or so, Naama and a few other Iraqis play soccer on the street corner. His favorite soccer team is from Barcelona. He rarely misses a game on TV and looks up team scores online.

“That’s his addiction—Barcelona,” said Bernadette Naama, laughing.

“I love Barcelona,” said Naama. “My wife and then Barcelona.”

California, Oklahoma and Virginia already have laws in place limiting registered sex offenders from living or working in nursing homes. West Virginia is considering legislation that would require special arrangements be made for boarding registered sex offenders in nursing homes.