Currently, statistics show 70 percent of all inmates released from the California prison system returning to prison within three years. If 70 percent of products sold at Safeway were returned, the stores would be clogged to the rafters. Well, the prisons are clogged to the rafters, and it’s no mystery why.

In contrast to the California prison system, only 3 percent to 5 percent of all juvenile hall wards in San Mateo County ever show up as adults on probation in San Mateo County. Sure, some of this success is due to factors beyond our control — a few kids move out of San Mateo County after they get older and they may still be getting into trouble. But remember, if our juvenile hall operated like the California prison system, we’d see the vast majority of these kids in our adult jail within just a few years. We don’t.

Something is very different in San Mateo County.

Our new $152 million Youth Services Center was built with a vision. We wanted to make sure that kids and their families would be helped as a result of the kids being sentenced to the center, not made even more angry and resentful as so often happens in other facilities around the nation. Our focus has never been on warehousing kids. Instead, we provide youths and their families every treatment opportunity possible in order to get their lives back on track.

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In San Mateo County, our district attorney, judges, sheriff, probation department and board of supervisors are united in offering mental health and drug and alcohol treatment, literacy training and vocational education programs. According to our probation department, these types of programs reduce recidivism by up to 60 percent over the strategy of simply locking someone up and giving them no treatment at all.

Recently, San Mateo County received a financial contribution to help defray the costs of our juvenile hall. The check was written by someone who was a ward in our juvenile system in the 1970s. He noted that his treatment changed his life from one of crime into that of a law-abiding and responsible member of society. He’d since had some success in business and he wanted to share that success with the people who rescued his life.

Can you imagine a former state inmate sending a check to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger?

San Mateo County’s Youth Services Center/Juvenile Hall has nearly every feature recommended by the experts examining California’s prison system. Unfortunately, we still don’t provide the same level of support in our adult facilities. We have a large effort under way to make changes in our women’s jail. We’ve already added to a successful program in our men’s jail.

Short-term strategies for both will be announced soon, in time for our end-of-September final budget hearings. Longer-range changes are being evaluated and will be adopted.

On Sept. 28, a regional forum will be held in San Mateo County. Officials from the corrections department and local law enforcement will be exploring how to create successful re-entry programs for parolees. We have the answer at our juvenile hall: access to mental health services, vocational training and job placement services, drug and alcohol treatment, plus a firm commitment to rescuing a life.

The bottom line is San Mateo County isn’t successful about 3 percent to 5 percent of the time; the state’s present way of doing business fails about 70 percent of the time.

Clearly, the state could learn a lot from our juvenile hall. Throughout California, we could build character, not more prisons.

Will we have the wisdom to do it?

Adrienne J. Tissier is vice president of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, and serves on the board’s Criminal Justice standing committee and the Jail Crowding Task Force.