Reality House provides alternative to prison time

The chore list pinned to the wall next to the front door at Reality House said it was Bob Phillippe’s week to pick up trash. So, on a rainy Friday morning, the 51-year-old Columbia man shuffled around the common area of a double-wide trailer collecting candy wrappers and empty plastic soda bottles. The door to the trailer stood open, and Phillippe placed a few pieces of paper in a small trash can and walked outside to smoke a menthol cigarette.

Rolled razor wire lined the roof of the trailer and barbed-wired fences made the wooden deck where Phillippe smoked seem much smaller.

“In here,” he said, “at least you’ve got free walkin’.”

Phillippe is serving a 90-day sentence in the work release program at Reality House, a nonprofit alternative sentencing facility just north of the Boone County Jail. Phillippe was arrested in August and later convicted for driving while his license had been permanently revoked because of multiple convictions for driving while intoxicated. By serving his sentence at Reality House instead of the county jail, Phillippe can continue his job as a farm hand and earn money for his family.

“That sounds like a real typical person who would do work release,” said Christine Carpenter, the circuit judge who sentenced Phillippe in January. “He needs to do some jail time, but he does have a job.”

Law enforcement officials and Boone County commissioners say Reality House is an important asset. The work release program is just one of 12 alternative sentencing and treatment programs offered by the facility, which can house up to 65 people. It has agreements with Boone County’s drug and mental health courts, and it recently contracted with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to help with the federal inmate transition program.

Reality House relies on contracts to provide financial stability, said executive director Dennis Winfrey. The loss of even one agreement can have a drastic affect on the nonprofit organization, and it has often struggled to make ends meet. In March 2004, for instance, Reality House lost a contract with the Missouri Department of Corrections, contributing to a $155,904 deficit for the year.

“Up until maybe the past year, we’ve been on hard times or close to it,” said Rusty Antel, a member of the Reality House Board of Directors.

Winfrey said he hopes that will change at least a little this summer. By July, Reality House hopes to have a new contract with Boone County that will increase the amount of money it brings in through the work release program, which lost about $65,000 last year.

Right now, participants in the program pay $20 per day while they are at Reality House. But Winfrey said it costs $35 per day to feed, house and offer services to the inmates. He said that while collection rates are high, usually around 90 percent, the payments covered only about 60 percent of the cost of the program last year.

On July 1, Reality House will begin charging work release participants three times their hourly pay rate per day, or up to $35 per day. But that alone won’t make the program solvent.

“The average person makes $8 an hour,” he said. “That’s only $24 out of $35.”

Boone County would make up the difference under the new contract, using funds from Proposition L, a special sales tax set aside for law enforcement projects.

Southern District Commissioner Karen Miller, who called Reality House “a vital part of our corrections system,” said it would be money well spent.

“If we don’t have work release, then those people are in jail,” she said. “So we’re going to pay for it one way or another.”

Reality House has been in charge of the work release program since 1998, when it operated in one of the pods at Boone County Jail. Housing an inmate at the jail costs about $62 per day, said Major Warren Brewer, the jail administrator. When the jail housed the work release program, it was a strain on the staff as well as the prisoners.

“It was a constant search for contraband,” he said. “It wasn’t the best design in the world.”

At the time, Reality House was searching for a new facility, and the jail allowed the organization to oversee the work release program and turn over to the county all fees it collected from participants. When the jail started running low on space, Reality House moved from the jail pod to two trailers behind the jail.

“When we moved out of the jail and into the trailers,” Winfrey said, “(the county) said ‘you can just keep those fees.’”

In 1999, Reality House moved into the renovated juvenile justice center on Prathersville Road, which it continues to rent from the county.

Operating a work release program is not just a matter of making sure the participants check out in the morning and come back in the evening. Reality House has to monitor the work release participants throughout the day to verify they are where they say they are.

“They call to check on me and make sure I’m there (at work),” Phillippe said.

Those who participate in the work release program have to turn in weekly work schedules so the staff knows when they will be coming and going. However, Phillippe’s job as a farm hand calls for strange hours, and his schedule can vary from day to day. Still, he said, the staff at Reality House has accommodated him and allowed him to keep working.

“They’ve been decent about it,” Phillippe said.

Time and money are also spent in making sure the work release participants are sober when they arrive after a work shift; a daily Breathalyzer test is standard procedure.

Many aspects of the work release program rely on a coordinated effort between the staff and residents. But Winfrey said inadequate funding has made it difficult for Reality House to keep trained people on staff. Security workers earn between $8 and $10 an hour at Reality House — much lower than at Boone County Jail and the Columbia Police Department, which compete with Reality House for employees.

When times are tight and staffing is low, administrators sometimes pull double duty and work security, Winfrey said. The funding problems have also cut into employee benefits at Reality House. In order to cut costs, a new medical plan requires a $2,000 upfront deductible.

“The funding fluctuations are difficult, but you get through them,” Winfrey said.

To keep Reality House viable, Winfrey said the search for new contracts is constant. Winfrey said that this year, he hopes to get bigger contracts with the Missouri Department of Corrections and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Antel said expanding the facility is the only way to keep Reality House open and operating.

“We can’t be static about what we do at this point,” he said. “Things are changing all the time.”