So I'm out of jail... And now what?

He's out partying all day, meeting people, laughing, enjoying himself," says his sister by way of an excuse. "It's really hard to get hold of him these days."

She is talking about Miguel Montes Neiro, 62, who is now a free man after spending more than 30 years behind bars, even though he had committed no blood crimes. Despite media reports to the contrary, he is not really the longest-serving prisoner in Spain, because he escaped on several occasions. But he did remain inside long enough to find himself in a new setting that has changed significantly, and where he is finding it hard to be at ease.

"So how do these cellphone things work?" he asked his lawyer Félix Ángel Martín when he was handed one. "He took a ride on the AVE [high-speed train] and he was freaking out," adds the attorney.

Montes' sisters are his greatest supporters. They headed the successful campaign to get their brother pardoned. Montes is back on the outside, but he is ill and has little chance of finding a job.

Is the man known as the longest-serving prisoner in Spain ready to return to the fold of society? What does the state have to offer him now that he is a free agent?

Nothing - well, not from state penitentiary authority Instituciones Penitenciarias, anyway. "When a person has served his or her sentence, by law the state cannot follow up on the prisoner," explains Montserrat Tohà, president of the prisoner rehabilitation advocacy group the IReS Foundation, who has spent the last 43 years of her life working to improve social conditions for ex-convicts.

According to official figures, 55 percent of Spanish prisoners are recidivists

"This is a pending issue, but often it is so because the prisoner, upon getting out of jail, would rather not know anything more about it," notes Ramón d'Alós, a sociologist and author of several studies on prisoner assimilation into society.

Ex-convicts may consider themselves socially rehabilitated "when they are able to make a living, pay for their house and food, have emotionally satisfactory social relationships and develop their life project," says Julián Ríos, a professor of penitentiary law at Universidad Pontificia de Comillas.

But how many former inmates really fall into that category? The question is hard to answer, since there is no follow-up after they are out. But there is one revealing figure: 55 percent of Spanish prisoners are recidivists, according to Instituciones Penitenciarias. The number - 27,289 out of a total inmate population of 48,951 convicts in December 2011 - only includes those who have committed the same type of crime again. It also does not include figures from Catalan prisons, which are run by regional authorities and keep their own separate statistics.

"There is a lack of coordination between the various systems that come into play: the judiciary, the penitentiary and the social services," complains D'Alós. Adding to the difficulty are the different levels of authority involved: state, regional and municipal.

A person could always walk into the nearest social services offices for help, but experts miss some kind of coordinated follow-up system to provide specific assistance to former convicts.

"It would mean creating a system that we don't have and never did have. There are just a handful of small initiatives that are based on goodwill," says Joan Queralt, a professor of criminal law at Barcelona University.

There is a lack of coordination between the systems that come into play"

"Instituciones Penitenciarias cannot address all the social problems behind a person's behavior," argues Mercedes Gallizo, who was director of the state agency between 2004 and 2011. "We are up against problems that go beyond what the system can do. We get people with difficult, unstructured lives, with an evident lack of education, living on the fringes, addicted to drugs, suffering from mental illness... all of this requires a coordinated effort from other authorities," she says.

Despite this, Gallizo insists that rehabilitation "is what gives prisons a meaning."

"Over the years, we have made an extraordinary effort to expand our range of action, both in terms of training and of intervention and treatment programs. We have launched programs for people who committed crimes relating to gender violence, sexual assault, drug addiction... It's been an enormous effort, but it cannot cover all the needs."

"When the sentence goes beyond seven years, all types of difficulties intensify," says Ríos. Upon walking out of jail, the ex-con often walks into the same world they left behind, one that may have pushed him or her into a life of crime in the first place. That is when experts feel it is essential to get support in the shape of family, housing and a job.

In other cases, a person has been locked up for so long that they consider themselves better off inside than outside the penitentiary walls. This is what is known as an institutional prisoner.

"People who have been in jail for 15 or 20 years, when they get out they reproduce the relationships they had in prison, based on mistrust and hostility. This makes rehabilitation harder," says Tohà, insisting that efforts should focus on reeducation and on creating routines for people who "perhaps never had any."

When the sentence goes beyond seven years, all types of difficulties intensify"

Instituciones Penitenciarias defends itself by pointing out that a prisoner who is illiterate at the beginning of a sentence can walk out with a college degree if they so wish. It is all up to them, although nobody can force them to study.

"Every morning, around 400 people can have access to basic training courses," says José Antonio García, director of the Aranjuez penitentiary, Madrid VI, which holds 1,515 inmates. The center has 14 teachers provided by the regional government of Madrid, and classes have waiting lists of no more than two months, according to García, who also talks about the workshops, the vocational training courses and various private initiatives by around 150 foundations and non-profits that work in partnership with prison authorities.

But D'Alós is critical about the type of training that prisons provide. "It is of little use to find a job afterwards because of the large amount of students in class, because there is no continuity [if a prisoner is transferred to a different center], because sometimes there is no adequate material or the courses are very short, and because in many cases they do not train professionals."

Only 43.6 percent of ex-convicts from Catalan prisons who walked out between 2004 and 2007 found a job, according to a study directed by D'Alós, who adds a different risk: prisoners who are well acquainted with the system can use these courses to score bonus points that will get them releases.

"Professionals evaluate whether convicts are doing it purely out of interest, which is rather unusual because everything requires quite a lot of effort," counters Gallizo.

"Prevention is infinitely cheaper and more effective [than locking people up]," says Paco Cristóbal, coordinator of the Cáritas Inclusion team, a non-profit project. "Many of the people in prison have a very clear background of poverty and exclusion. Prison gradually makes you less of a person; a high wall, a door that shuts with a loud noise... those are very tough conditions," he holds.

"Society has to be aware that prisoners must eventually return to it, and that society needs them. Legal means [releases, parole] must be implemented to facilitate this assimilation and reduce prison stays," says Ríos.

But the latest reviews of the criminal code do not point in that direction. "Penalizing reforms are not the most adequate way of eradicating crime from our lives. It is not the most efficient way, but apparently it's the most reassuring way," argues Gallizo.

"There is social pressure to choose punishment over reeducation and rehabilitation," adds D'Alós.

"All we want is for there to be no filth and no delinquents in front of our house," agrees Tohà.

"The rehabilitation debate gets lost at the political level: all you see there is the need to obtain electoral profit by increasing prison sentences," says Ríos, adding that the crisis brings new problems because of the shortage of resources.

"Awareness is essential. These resources are often viewed as wasted money," notes Gallizo.

Prisoners themselves are no more optimistic. "In a situation like this one, it is not easy to make them believe that they are going to find a job when they get out," admits García.

"Miguel [Montes] was never offered anything," says his lawyer. "So what should he do now? He gets no unemployment checks, has not contributed to social security - he has nothing, and he has young daughters. It seems as if someone forgot that we don't lock people up just for the sake of it, but to re-educate them."