The Law: Jaycees in Prison

Remember the Jaycees, those youngish strivers with Middle American enthusiasm for beauty pageants, Mother's Day corsages and business success? Well, these days one chapter president is serving ten years on a rape conviction and another is doing 20 years for assault and robbery. In all, some 9,000 members of the organization are in prison, and another 8,000 dues-paying boosters are ex-cons.

The reason is not that the community pillars have suddenly gone wrong en masse. On the contrary, the Jaycees have never been more responsible or achievement-oriented. In fact, a keen awareness of civic duty has led the organization to focus on new causes. In Philadelphia last month, Jaycees met with Black Panthers to rap on drugs and a sickle-cell anemia testing program; a group in Seattle is hoping to help set up halfway houses for parolees. The most important new approach centers on an aggressive drive to attract members in the nation's prisons. There are now 130 prison chapters, all formed for the same reason as chapters on the outside: to provide community-development and leadership training. While only a tiny minority of convicts participate, those who do bring the fervor of new converts to the organization. Says Luther Gosby, 22, who is serving 20 years for attempted robbery in Washington State Reformatory at Monroe: "I'll never forget what I got from the Jaycees; they taught me that I can better myself by being responsible to others."

Trees and Fire Trucks. With new goals, confidence and valuable contacts with the outside world, inmate Jaycees fight their old self-image. They organize blood drives for leukemia victims, send money to children in underdeveloped countries and plant trees in prison courtyards. One chapter even raised $2,500 to buy a used fire truck for an impoverished Indian reservation in Nebraska. An Illinois chapter has developed a highly successful ex-offenders employment service. In North Carolina, Jaycee convicts have toured nearby schools to warn students of the dangers of drugs, and inmate Jaycees in Washington State and Maryland have helped push prison-reform bills through the state legislatures.

The prison program's main booster is Gary Hill, 31, a Lincoln, Neb., metals-company executive, who took command five years ago, after the first prison chapter was established in West Virginia in 1962. Hill got hooked on the concept after he noticed that ex-convicts, long hired for his family business, made exceptionally good workers. He organized a Jaycee prison chapter and set up a referral service for convicts that now spans the country and guarantees ex-cons assistance with jobs, housing and counseling. Says Hill: "The Jaycees allow inmates, who historically have had all their individuality taken away from them, to look around and make changes instead of bitching."