CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROFESSOR AT SOUTHEAST WILL TEACH IN CROATIA THIS FALL

Michael Fichter's passport doesn't gather dust. It's used too much for that.

A criminal justice professor at Southeast Missouri State University, Fichter has visited Bulgaria twice in the last three years, viewing prisons. He intends to write a book about that country's penal system.

This fall, he'll be back in that part of the world as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching a course on U.S. criminal justice at the University of Zagreb in Croatia. The country, situated along the Adriatic Sea, was once a part of Yugoslavia.

"We are pretty excited about it," said Fichter, whose wife Marjorie and 29-year-old son Kevin will make the journey with him. "This is the capstone to a very long and rewarding career for me."

Fichter said he'll teach the criminal justice course in Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, from Oct. 1 through mid-January.

The city, which has well over one million people, is in northwest Croatia, about 70 miles from the Austrian border.

Croatia also borders Bosnia, one of the world's hot spots.

Fichter said he's been asked to visit one war-devastated family, now living in Split on the Adriatic Sea, and he hopes to speak to others who have fled the war-torn land.

A former official with the juvenile division of the Illinois Department of Corrections, Fichter remains interested in prisons. "I am the prison mogul," he remarked, adding that he hopes to visit prisons in Croatia.

Fichter said he also wants to foster development of exchange programs between Croatian universities and Southeast.

He originally applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to work in Bulgaria, but was later asked to accept a scholarship to teach in Croatia.

"Fulbright Scholars are selected through a rigorous U.S. screening process, followed by an overseas screening process, which makes this a very prestigious award," said Sheila Caskey, dean of graduate studies and extended learning at Southeast.

Under the Fulbright program, recipients are provided housing and a monthly stipend. Travel expenses are also covered.

Fichter will be teaching in English. "It is probably a good thing too," he said, noting that Croatians, like Bulgarians, use the Cyrillic alphabet.

"I have been fortunate. Every time I have gone to Bulgaria, they have provided an interpreter."

Last summer, Fichter took a group of Southeast students to Bulgaria to tour the country's prison system. The students, mostly criminal justice majors, visited a prison on an island and attended lectures at the police academy.

Fichter will be on the move long before he journeys to Croatia this fall. He plans to take students on a tour of 15 prisons in Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee. The first prison visit occurred Wednesday.

After that, during the eight-week summer session, he will travel to the Ukraine with a group of nine students. His son and wife will also make the trip.

Fichter said the group will leave for the Ukraine on June 29 and return home on July 8. Fichter, however, won't be returning right away. He plans to visit Bulgaria before returning home in late July.

Fichter said his travels abroad began only a dozen years ago. His first journey overseas was to England, with a group from Southeast. "I was over there with a group and we toured all their prisons, and Scotland Yard and the courts."

The criminal justice professor has learned a lot touring foreign prisons. In Bulgaria, for example, the prisons -- in terms of the physical facilities -- don't compare to those in the U.S., he said.

But he gives the country's correctional system high marks in other areas. "They don't have near the physical assaults on (prison) staff that we have here.

"They let most prisoners go home one weekend a month," said Fichter. Inmates who are convicted of violent crimes like murder, however, don't get that privilege.

He said Bulgaria's prisoners generally get furloughed for two weeks a year to visit their families.

Bulgaria, said Fichter, has placed a moratorium on the death penalty, and is now looking strongly at alternatives to prison sentences, such as community service and restitution programs and house arrest.

"I am very interested in international education," said Fichter, adding that his interest mirrors that of the university as a whole.

Southeast's administration, he said, has encouraged student and faculty exchanges with universities in other countries.

In Fichter's case, that requires getting out the passport a lot.