It’s been thoughtful, even enlightened, for a Rhode Island radio station to provide this halfway-house-of-the-air. There aren’t many broadcast outlets that would allow their microphones to be used as a form of community rehab.

But the question arises: Is it really working?

I have talked with men making the hard transition from prison to freedom. They spend their days fighting temptation, knowing that the slightest slip back to their old ways can mean a return to a place where all their decisions are made for them. They know that they have to think differently, react differently and avoid the people and places that brought them down.

I remember sitting around a big dining table at a halfway house on Dudley Street in Providence, listening to stories of theft and assault and drugs. One man told me of how he had made $3,000 while at the ACI, selling the cigarettes he was given as pay for cleaning wise guys’ cells. The men also told me of others who had dined with them just weeks or months before but had messed up and been driven back to prison by the state police.

Of course, none of those former inmates on Dudley Street was given the kind of opportunity that local radio has provided to help one high-profile ex-offender make his way back to life on the outside. None of them was even asked whether he might want to consider talk radio as his particular form of transitional employment. It’s too bad. I have to believe there are people coming out of the ACI who would be naturals. They could use what got them into prison to help keep them out. They could share with Ed in Westerly, Sharon in Scituate and Byron in Burrillville the hard lessons learned and the sometimes funny incidents that can happen only in the harsh confines of prison. They could be interesting.

That is, after all, a big part of making it back — facing up to the past, admitting mistakes. And that is why there is some concern that this current experiment at WPRO, where the ratings are extremely fluid at the moment, is not working out. This attempt to route one man’s return to society through the broadcast booth appears to have hit some nasty bumps along the way.

For one thing, there is serious denial here and it’s being heard from Woonsocket to Westerly. Anyone who counsels ex-prisoners will tell you that denial is one of the real danger signs. Denial keeps a man from coming all the way back. And those who have actually listened to Rehab Radio at midday report that there is no admission of time in the slammer. There is the sly euphemism, the casual reference to “while I was away.”

This is not good. This is not facing up to things.

But that’s not all. There’s the regular on-air lashing out at authority figures. People say it happens day after day, this constant spill of pent-up resentment against those who have been moving ahead and doing their jobs and getting things done.

It is another danger sign, another indicator that the former inmate has failed to realize that time does not stand still while a man does time.

It really is a shame. This bold reaching out by WPRO to a man carrying the hard load of prison time seemed as if it could be an example to others — a light piercing the gloom of limited post-prison opportunities.

But it has ended up instead a sad and sometimes childish exercise in broadcast bullying.

The guys back on Dudley Street would understand, I think. They would probably say the guy on the radio was just one of those guys who couldn’t face up to his long, hard fall.

bkerr@projo.com