The hardest issue to resolve was the most basic: What do we call these people?

What do we call these men and women released from prison and correctional facilities every year - more than 630,000 adults and an estimated 100,000 children nationwide, 35,000 in Philadelphia alone?

The Philadelphia Consensus Group, a diverse assemblage of public- and private-sector organizations involved with the criminal justice system, asked itself this question when it began deliberations a year ago. It was convened by former Mayor W. Wilson Goode to see whether a wide range of folks - from the district attorney to the Defenders Association - could find some common ground on how the city can deal better with the tide of bruised humanity released from prison every year.

But what to call them? Are they still "inmates" if they've served their time? Are they "ex-offenders" if most of them remain on probation and parole? How long must they be tagged with the crimes of the past? And yet, for the sake of their victims, how long can they escape full accountability for their actions?

"We were trying to make sure we had a balance," Goode recalled yesterday at a City Hall press conference. A balance of expectations: What government should do, what community and clergy should do, but also what the individual should do to accept responsibility for the past and assume responsibility for the future.

In the end, the group decided on plain old "offender."

Don't minimize this accomplishment.

Whenever a diverse group commits to a process like this, it's a victory for talking it through rather than fighting it out, whether in the streets or on the political stage. And the issue of America's growing recidivism is a hot one: Not only because of the wasted human capital and deep harm to communities, but also because of the cost.

The Philadelphia prison system spends more than half a million dollars a day to house its inmate population, and most of those who leave will be rearrested within three years. Imagine the savings to a city in budget crisis if more offenders could successfully join society and fewer showed up again at the prison gates.

We don't have to imagine how a drop in recidivism could help cash-strapped states, because several are dealing with the issue backward. Oregon, Kentucky, Montana and Utah have already released inmates early from county prisons to cope with budget shortfalls.

Trouble is, slowing down the revolving door costs money, too. While Mayor Street warmly received the consensus group's report yesterday, he pledged no funding to implement its more sweeping recommendations, and there was no cost estimate attached to the report.

The group identified more than 60 barriers to reintegration - including lack of education, employment, substance abuse treatment and housing - and urged the prison system to begin planning for reentry from the inmate's first day, not his last. Also envisioned is a more energetic role for the city's faith communities, in mentoring offenders and the children they have left behind.

Otherwise, as Street said, "they go back to the same corner to the same people doing the same thing that got them in trouble in the first place."

The mayor eloquently said we should consider all offenders "family members." But in fact, the vast majority who enter prison will eventually return home to the city's most impoverished neighborhoods. This revolving door captures generations of families in a spiral of decay reinforced by the poverty, joblessness, crime and irresponsibility of the streets.

Press Grooms, the prison's deputy commissioner for policy, is now seeing the grandchildren of the men he first encountered on the job more than three decades ago. Breaking that cycle will take more than a well-meaning report, but it's not a bad place to start.