In Chesapeake, helping repeat offenders stay straight

CHESAPEAKE

When Bertha Lee Forbes gets out of jail in January, she'll leave with no high school diploma, a drug addiction, mental health issues, no home, no job and 48 criminal convictions going back to 1977.

Over the years, Forbes, 54, had nine children, all of whom eventually were taken from her. Her first child was born when she was 17 and in a mental hospital. Six sons have gone to jail, two for murder.

"I have made some bad choices," Forbes said from behind thick glass in the Chesapeake Correctional Center visitor's room. "I was always the problem child."

Her hair tightly braided and pulled back, Forbes looked healthy as she talked about her troubled life.

She says she is doing well in the structured environment that jail provides and that she wants to get out and make changes. Her chances of staying out of trouble are not good, however.

In Virginia, two out of three offenders are re-arrested within three years of release, according to the governor's office. Of the 1,223 inmates locked up in Chesapeake Correctional Center on a recent weekend, Undersheriff Col. Jim O'Sullivan estimated that 800 or more were repeat offenders.

"We're never going to out-build the inmate population," O'Sullivan said, noting that the jail's rated capacity is 543.

Often, prisoners are released with no family waiting for them and no connection established with agencies willing to help, he said.

"We let them out the door when their time is up and we see them walking down Albemarle Drive with a bag in hand and the same clothes they had on when they came here," he said.

That could change soon. This month, Chesapeake joined other Virginia communities in beginning to organize a local council of Gov. Bob McDonnell's prisoner re-entry initiative. Programs abound for people seeking help: public agencies such as Human Services and the Chesapeake Community Services Board, faith-based groups such as A Place of New Beginnings, in Chesapeake, and others such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

For the first time, all of them can be coordinated using the governor's re-entry program and a local council that includes law enforcement, counselors, other professionals and former inmates who avoided recidivism, said Doris Palacios, director of the city's Department of Human Services. The program should be up and running by early next year.

People like Forbes will get a customized re-entry plan before they leave prison, Palacios said. Forbes could get a place to live and job training with a real chance for work, she said.

"Her former condition does not dictate what her future will be," she said.

Forbes acknowledged that given her troubled past, it will be hard to stay straight. Two things she needs most are a good place to live and help with buying the medicines that keep her on an even keel.

Her earliest memories are of her alcoholic mother and an absent father who traveled for his construction job.

"I remember being left in the house all day by ourselves hungry," she said. "I also remember me rocking, which I do right today, saying I'm hungry and I want momma to come home."

She was moved to a foster home by age 5. Forbes admitted she was a bully in school and would "snap" if crossed, a behavior that has led to assault charges over the years. Her first of 55 charges over more than 30 years was for a 1977 assault in Norfolk, according to records provided by her Chesapeake public defender, Kimberly Karle.

"I was mean," Forbes acknowledged. "I just wasn't right like a child should be."

By 14, she was in a mental hospital and remained there until she escaped four years later. A year before she escaped, at age 17, she had her first child after she was impregnated by a fellow patient. The child was put in a foster home.

She began dating a friend's 40-year-old brother and had four children with him in five years. By 25, she had left him and was smoking marijuana and going out to clubs.

"When I got a taste of the street, then it was over," she said.

"I just wasn't the same, after I started smoking the reefer and taking the drinks. It made me feel like I was beautiful."

She said she married in 1984 - the first and only time - to James Forbes. When she discovered he was cheating on her not long afterward, it hurt as much as anything in her life, she said.

They were divorced in 1987 but not before she had a daughter with him. After she and her husband split up, she spiraled further, developing an addiction to cocaine.

"Drugs were like medicine to me," she said.

Between 1985 and 1987, Forbes was charged with 16 crimes, including grand larceny, public drunkenness, assault and her first felony: a forgery charge. Her first cocaine charge came in 1992.

Most of her prison sentences were suspended. During her prison stays, she received counseling and therapy but was never deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial, Karle said.

Most recently, on Sept. 27, Forbes was in court on drug possession charges and violating probation, stemming from a Feb. 8 arrest involving a crack pipe.

After 11 months in jail, she will leave in January. She will be handed a bag of her belongings and the clothes she was wearing when she was booked in February.

This time, she hopes, maybe things will be different. With the right intervention, the right support, perhaps she will not be back.

Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com