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Learning to Live: James' Story
May 29, 2001 -- James started down the wrong road back when he was 13: "Drugs, alcohol, gangs, crime," he says, "then harder drugs and four different prison bits." By 38, the Chicago native reckons that he had "spent more than half of my life locked up."
When James got out of prison last September, after serving seven years for car theft, he was determined to change - in his words, "to learn how to live." Producer Dan Collison chronicles that struggle in "Learning to Live: James' Story."
In the first public radio documentary to be narrated by an ex-offender, James tells the story of his transition from prison to the free world. He moves into St. Leonard's, a halfway house on Chicago's west side. Over the ensuing three months, James goes through a rigorous education process that includes job training, drug counseling and 12-step support meetings. His recovery is tested when his 18-year-old son, who he hadn't seen in 14 years, is arrested on a drug charge. But he perseveres, lands a "dream job" in customer service for a cable company, and leaves the halfway house feeling "good about life -- better than I've felt in a long, long time."
"Learning to Live: James' Story" is the third in a series of documentaries produced by Collison about what he calls "the revolving door syndrome" in the U.S. criminal justice system.
 Read Collison's update on James, exclusively online.
Listen to Collison's other documentaries on the criminal justice system:
 "A Danger to Self Or Others" portrays everyday life inside Cook County Jail's Mental Health Division, the largest provider of mental health services in the United States. The documentary takes listeners through the various stages of treatment, and finally to the release process which tries to link released detainees with mental health resources on the outside.
"Life on the Outside" tells story of two chronically mentally ill, homeless repeat offenders as they attempt to break the cycle that, for years, has spun them from jail to psychiatric hospitals to the streets and back to jail again. The documentary follows Colbert beginning with his release from Chicago's Cook County Jail; and Richard, who's been arrested 137 times but who's managed to stay out of jail for more than one year.
Listen to Part I of "Life on the Outside" which aired on All Things Considered on May 30, 2000.
Hear Part II of "Life on the Outside" from the May 31, 2000, edition of All Things Considered.
Visit Dan Collison's Web site, DC Productions.org.
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