PREVENTION Anti-crime program highlights a glaring need BY BEN YASTER

Like many other rising high school seniors in her class, LaToya Thompson is using her summer to begin the college application process. When I spoke with Thompson last month at Bishop Keough Regional High School, the small Pawtucket Catholic school she attends, her expressions noticeably brightened while talking about her ambitions to study business at Johnson & Wales or Bryant College after graduating next year.

While applying to college may be the next expected step on the academic path for other students at Bishop Keough, it has been closer to a hurdle for Thompson. Thompson, a resident of Providence’s South Side, is the child of a former inmate, meaning that like other such children, she faces a significantly higher risk of poverty, drug addiction, and according to Denise Johnston, founding director of the California-based Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents, incarceration.

"Incarceration is a marker of high-risk children," Johnston says. "Incarceration brings together a lot of the factors that we know cause children to have poor outcomes because parents are not there. The children of prisoners have a higher risk than any other group of children for future imprisonment."

Thompson has attended Catholic schools since the fifth grade and avoided the trappings of prison, in large part, because of the sponsorship and support of Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education (RISE), a Providence nonprofit started in 1997 by two Brown University physicians in response to the high rates of incarceration among children of prisoners.

For children whose mothers are either incarcerated or have a history of incarceration, RISE offers scholarships to attend smaller, more intimate schools where the problems of parental imprisonment, like alienation and lack of discipline, can be more ably addressed than in larger public classrooms. "RISE takes someone who would be lost in a big sea of kids and puts them somewhere smaller where they will learn," says Jennifer Shimkus, RISE’s associate director. RISE has sponsored students to attend area private and parochial schools, and select public schools like CVS-Highlander Charter School and the Met.

According to Shimkus, Thompson has become a model RISE student, committing herself to her studies and community service in her neighborhood. Loretta Brown, Thompson’s mother and a manager at Echo Valley Apartments in West Warwick, credits RISE’s scholarship program for her daughter’s promising efforts. "I see the difference in her behavior," Brown says. "Her maturity level is totally different because the school expects more."

Thompson is emphatic about the quality of the education she has received as well. "Catholic school education is better for me because I get a lot of one-on-one attention and it’s easier for me to concentrate." Thompson adds, "If it wasn’t for RISE, I wouldn’t be here right now."

But while Thompson is a success story for RISE, the nonprofit still faces challenges. In addition to its scholarships, RISE offers a mentor program for its students. A shortage of mentors, however, has prevented RISE from matching each of its students with an adult for advice and support outside of school. Thompson, for example, currently lacks a mentor.

On a broader scale, RISE lacks the resources to address the full problem of children with incarcerated parents. RISE provides its students with scholarships through donations from individual sponsors. The sheer number of children with incarcerated parents, however, outnumbers available sponsorships. "We get at least two calls a week, and they’re all usually eligible," Shimkus says, noting how many potential students ask for a RISE scholarship. According to Rhode Island Kids Count, a nonprofit children’s advocacy organization, there were more than 4000 children of incarcerated parents in the state in 2003, the majority of whom were minors. Out of those thousands, RISE can only accept 30 new students a year.