Ta-Nehisi Coates on Criminal Justice

Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic and Ross Douthat (soon to be of the New York Times) have been having an interesting exchange on criminal justice over the blogs. See it here.

And check out this article (with video) about the Dallas Police chief apologizing to an NFL player for the conduct of one of his officers. I think the video explains a lot about the lack of trust that many urban citizens have with respect to law enforcement entities. There is something to be learned from the way the Dallas Police department responded to the incident. Perhaps the best outcome from this incident is the following: "Department officials say the now-infamous video will likely make its way into the police academy's training curriculum."

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Meet Your Neighborhood Parole Officer

"Ms. O," as her parolees call her, is a parole officer at the Harlem Parole Reentry Court. We interviewed her for the blog so that our readers could "meet" an actual parole officer. Many of us have heard of parole, but don't know much about who makes it happen. Here's what Ms. O had to say about being a parole officer.

Please describe your role here at the Reentry Court. What do you do and how long have you been with the Division of Parole?

Parole officers meet with their parolees once a week for the first two months that they’re out and then once every two weeks thereafter. Once they’ve been out for a year, it’s a monthly visit, in addition to the home visits we have to complete. Parole officers have the right to go into a parolee’s home and search, which is meant to be a protection to family members and the community. Before somebody gets out, his parole officer reviews a packet of information about him and then investigates his living situation to see what the layout is, where the parolee will sleep, who lives in the home, who will support the parolee, whether there are any weapons or dangerous pets in the home, whether there are other individuals in the home who are on parole or have a criminal background, etc. The most important thing is for an individual on parole to be upfront about their living situation, since Rule 5 of the conditions of parole is that you can’t lie to your parole officer.

Being a parole officer is not a 9-to-5 job: in order to be an effective parole officer, you have to get most of your work done in the early morning or late at night (making visits, confirming that parolees are abiding by the conditions of parole). During the day, I take care of the social work part, visiting programs, touching base with family members. I can only work 37.5 hours a week, so I have to structure my time appropriately and I live my life around my job.

I’ve been with the Division for 10 years – I started out in Queens, where I supervised parolees in the 103rd, 105th, and 109th precincts. Out there, I had a caseload of anywhere from 45 to 70 cases at any given time. Where I was, there were private houses and not that many buildings. Most families come from professional backgrounds – they work for the city or in the courts, for example – and their kids just fell by the wayside and ended up with me. In Harlem, it’s different: more of my parolees come from families on welfare or parents who have histories of addiction. Of my older parolees, it seems like their original problem was drugs – not that they were life-long bank robbers or something. For the younger ones, the motivating problem seems to be gang involvement or selling drugs. Fortunately, I have a lower caseload in Harlem at the Parole Reentry Court (about 40 people max). This means that I’m able to visit the parolees’ programs, get updates about their progress, and stay in closer contact with their families. For example, I went to visit the GED program that one of my parolees is supposed to attend. I spoke with the supervisor, saw his grades, and will be going to his parent-teacher conference tomorrow, since his mom can’t go. You can’t do that when you have 70 people to supervise.

What is the most challenging thing about being a parole officer?

The frustration of people not wanting to take advantage of the opportunities offered to them – it’s like mentally they don’t see more to life than the way they’re living. There are lots of smart people on parole who could do so much more for themselves, but they don’t have somebody to guide them or they just don’t believe that there are actually opportunities open to them, regardless of what their parole officer says. Perhaps it’s because their life experiences have been limited, so they don’t realize what else life could hold for them if they got a job or went to school.

What is the most rewarding thing about being a parole officer?

Seeing positive people get out and chase good things. For example, one of my parolees got a job at Applebee’s as soon as he got out and now he’s the manager there – after only six months. You can tell that he’s really motivated to change: he has a nurturing home life with his grandmother and has his own space, which he keeps very clean. When he initially got out, he worked his butt off at two different sites, working about 80 hours per week. He told me that he made a dumb mistake and that he’s ready to move on. He has a child and does not want to owe child support, so he asked about getting a court order to take care of it. He’s very focused and he knows what he wants. Sometimes parolees open up to me – they tell me about their girlfriends, their home lives, their family issues. I like to keep the lines of communication open because this gives me insight into their mindset.

What motivates you to do your job everyday?

I like working with people and I like meeting different people. Every story I hear, it’s like I’ve learned something for myself. This job never gets boring – in fact, this is the longest I’ve stayed in any job, because it’s always changing. You know, life is so wonderful. I want everyone to experience and get the most out of life. The wider your range of experiences, the more fulfilling your life is. It’s the small things: knowing the name of the guy at the corner restaurant, having a weekly conversation with the owner of the laundromat when you do your laundry. I like helping people be more independent in their lives.

What direction would you like to see our justice agencies move in to improve the process of return from prison to community?

I would say that there are three things: first, I think parole officers should have more leverage to get people to go find jobs and get engaged in programs. Right now, with the changes in violations, it’s hard to really push somebody to become employed. And we know that employment is one of the key things that keeps them out.

Second, the employment programs themselves are problematic. It’s very hard to find effective employment programs that can accurately assess what an individual’s need is. The majority of guys in my caseload find jobs for themselves, either through friends, family or talking to people in the community.

Finally, not all social service programs are equally effective, either because they have too many clients to serve or because the staff is not as professional as possible. Almost all of my parolees have good experiences with a particular counselor at HELP (Harlem East Life Plan), for example. They are always calling this woman, and get excited talking about how she helps them – and it’s because she’s a professional with a lot of experience. I think it’s good for the parolees to interact with this kind of a person – there’s certainly a place for people who have been through the system or who are ex-addicts, but you don’t have to have been in the system to help make a difference.

Is there anything else you want people to know about parole officers?

Most parole officers are people with lots of experience and dual degrees – people who enjoy the social work aspect of the job. They don’t get joy out of putting people in jail, they get joy out of seeing people be successful. The negative view of parole officers is not the only view. Recently, I called the Department of Motor Vehicles to get some information for one of my parolees and the guy on the phone was floored that I was a parole officer attempting to help my parolee. I guess his perception is that we only want to lock people up. We’re approachable – family members should reach out to us and know that we’re open to relationships with them.

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New Parole Lookup Feature

We just discovered that the NYS Division of Parole has a new internet feature that allows anybody with internet access to lookup an individual on parole. The database tells you what the individual's parole status is, who his parole officer is, how to contact that parole officer, and what the crime of committment was.

For a while now, the NYS Department of Correctional Services has had an inmate lookup that allows the public to track the whereabouts of individuals who are or ever have been incarcerated in DOCS facilities.

These kinds of tools seem to have a balance of pro's and con's:

On the one hand, those who have been the victims of crimes can know what the incarceration or parole status of their offenders are. For family members of parolees who have lost control of their actions, the phone number of a son's parole officer is an important piece of information. The Division takes allegations of domestic violence, for example, very seriously -- and this kind of publicly available information can empower those who feel the need for protection.

On the other hand, as a parole officer pointed out to us, anybody with a grudge against a parolee can now find that parole officer's phone number and report any variety of violations (substantiated or not). As workforce development experts have said for some time now, employers who know about the inmate lookup feature have used it in evaluating job applications, often disqualifying candidates based on information online. Sometimes, a simple name search is not sufficient -- there are many people with similar or identical names and, absent a NYSID number, no way to be sure that the individual who has come up in the database is the same person applying for a job.

We'd be curious to hear your thoughts about these tools -- please comment!

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For the Blog Nerds: Google Analytics is Awesome

For those of you that operate your own blogs, we highly encourage you to use Google Analytics. This free software gives you an incredible amount of detail about who is following your site, how they are getting to your site, what they do when they get there, and how long they spend doing it.

Just as an example, we know the following information about our blog followers:

• They come frome 18 different countries, including: the US, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Australia, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany, Egypt, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Thailand, Brazil, France, and the Philippines.


• More specifically, for those entities whose networks are registered with an agency name (for example, the "City of New York," or "The New York Times"), we know when they visited! We also know how many visits they made and how long they looked at the site.


• We've had 483 different visitors look at the site since the end of February, with 32% of people returning to the site regularly for updates.


• For the past month or so, an article about green jobs at STRIVE, one of our Task Force partners, has the topped the list of most-viewed pages, right after the blog homepage.

Google Analytics also tells us where we have more work to do:

• People spend, on average, about 2 minutes and 35 seconds on thes site. Hmmm, maybe we need some flashier pictures?


• Most people visited the site only 1 or 2 times -- what do we need to do to keep them coming back for more?

Thanks for indulging a non-reentry nerd-out moment. And check out Analytics!

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Squash in Harlem

This past week, members of the Task Force had a chance to meet an impressive group of young people who are squash champs and academic stars in Harlem. They are part of a program at StreetSquash, an after-school youth enrichment organization that combines academic tutoring with squash instruction, community service, and one-on-one mentoring.

As part of the Task Force's outreach efforts on reentry, this forum was an opportunity to hear from some of Harlem's finest. After a brief overview of reentry statistics uptown, these high schoolers engaged in a pairs activity where they discussed their own perceptions of "ex-offenders." Justice Center staff charted their responses and discussed the challenges facing ex-offenders who return to the community needing work, housing, and treatment.

The reaction from participants was actually quite balanced. While some people felt that reentrants should "get a second chance," others mentioned their fears about reentrants committing more crime -- robbery in particular -- when they come home. What was useful about this kind of dialogue is the opportunity to think out loud about these issues, to question the assumptions we hold, and to hear a variety of perspectives. Hopefully, the conversation doesn't end at the Justice Center -- all of the young people left with a packet of information to share with their family members and, ideally, an experience that will inform their thinking as they grow into the next generation of leadership.

Check out StreetSquash's beautiful new squash facility here.

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Budget Troubles Affecting Corrections Nationwide

An article in today's New York Times charts the trend in alternatives to incarceration as states face unprecedented budget challenges.

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Prison Closures in Upstate New York

The Washington Post did a great article on the challenges of closing prisons in small towns. See it here.

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Parole Links in the News

There were a few articles in the past few days highlighting the challenges of parole.

Sadly, 4 police officers in Oakland were shot by an individual on parole and the state is considering enhanced monitoring strategies as a result.

In New York, a part-time elevator mechanic with a sex offense background was found to be working in a Manhattan public school.

Unfortunately, these are the stories that stick out in the public mind and in the news. It is tragic that the four police officers were killed, but it should be noted that the majority of parolees in California -- as in other states -- are appearing for regular parole supervision, are gainfully employed, and are living crime-free lives.

Part of our strategy on the Task Force will be to try and communicate these stories of success more broadly, so that there is a more balanced perspective in the public mind. We envision a mobile speaker's bureau -- consisting of individuals who have successfully completed parole and have been trained in public speaking -- traveling to various consituencies to inform the public about what it takes to return sucessfully to one's community after incarceration.

We would be curious to hear other strategies from the field as well: what have you done to combat negative stigmas about parolees? How have you been able to reach mass audiences with this message?

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A Different Kind of Parole

Caitlin Flanagan, in an op-ed piece today, highlights the release of Sara Jane Olson, a.k.a. Kathleen Soliah, who was released onto parole supervision this past week. Ms. Soliah -- who participated in a bank robbery that left one woman dead and another (pregnant) woman with a miscarriage when a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army -- and her lawyers successfully persuaded California officials to let her complete her year of parole supervision in her home state of Minnesota. As Flanagan notes, only 1 percent of those currently serving parole ordered by the California Department of Corrections are doing so out of state.

Some other thoughts about Soliah's release are available here.

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A Mighty Interesting Night

This article in today's New York Times talks about an event held at a Brooklyn bookstore upon the release of a book about policing graffiti artists. The author -- a retired cop -- plus two other retired officers sat down for a conversation about graffiti with three well-known graffiti artists (including one previously arrested by one of the officers). A new take on using the arts to enhance police-community relations .....

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"A Healthy Parolee is a Compliant Parolee"

This post comes to us from Christopher Watler, Project Director, Harlem Community Justice Center.

This catchy quote from Angela Wilson, Director of Field Operations overseeing the New York City Department of Health’s Transitional Health Care Coordination, summed up nicely the theme of a meeting I attended today. The NYS Division of Parole’s Region 1 Reentry Services Unit brought together treatment and health service providers and government partners to share information on available services.

Robert Mitchell, Regional Coordinator for Parole Region 1, led the meeting and highlighted Parole’s commitment to fostering greater collaboration. Vanda Seward, Executive Director of ComAlert at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, discussed the importance of collaboration in addressing the needs of the reentry population.

With an increasingly older reentrant population, local collaboration is a critical factor in addressing the health needs of parolees. It is fair to say that the availability of health services for persons returning from prison and jail has improved over the years. However, the group highlighted some ongoing challenges, chief among them services for the mentally ill and dually-diagnosed reentrant population. Housing was also highlighted, especially for hard-to-place populations -- i.e. homeless, mentally ill, and sex offenders. Securing a good paying job remains very difficult for many reentrants, as is access to vocational services for the disabled. Angie Jimenez, Director of Downstate Operations at Parole, highlighted the work of the Upper Manhattan Reentry Task Force on the employment issue.

Claude Legree of the Brooklyn VESID office discussed the services available to support reentry for persons with a disability. VESID can play an important role in developing vocational skills and connections to work and education for disabled reentrants. However, Vanda Seward suggested that reentrants must first get their housing and treatment needs stabilized before accessing VESID. The VESID process takes time and requires that a person is stable.

Other attendees included: Help/PSI, Inc, Basic Inc, Osborne Association, Bronx Center for Rehabilitation & Health Care, Cabrini Eldercare Consortium.

To learn more about health and reentry see the following resources:

The Health Status of Soon to Be Released Inmates (NIJ, 2002)
http://www.ncchc.org/pubs/pubs_stbr.html

Health and Prisoner Reentry: How Physical, Mental, and Substance Abuse Conditions Shape the Process of Reintegration (Urban Institute, 2008) http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411617_health_prisoner_reentry.pdf

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Evidence for Targeting High-Risk Offenders

Controlling Violent Offenders Released to the Community: An Evaluation of the Boston Reentry Initiative
By Anthony A. Braga (Harvard Kennedy School), Anne M. Piehl (Rutgers University)
and David Hureau (Harvard Kennedy School)
September 2008

Abstract
Despite the high level of funding and policy interest in prisoner reentry, there is still little rigorous scientific evidence to guide jurisdictions in developing reentry programs to enhance public safety, particularly for managing those who pose the greatest safety risks. The Boston Reentry Initiative (BRI) is an interagency initiative to help transition violent adult offenders released from the local jail back to their Boston neighborhoods through mentoring, social service assistance, and vocational development. This study uses a quasi-experimental design and survival analyses to evaluate the effects of the BRI on the subsequent recidivism of program participants relative to an equivalent control group. We find that the BRI was associated with significant reductions – on the order of 30 percent – in the overall and violent arrest failure rates.

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Useful Second Chance Act Toolkit

Toolkit for Second Chance Act Reentry Demonstration Project Grant Applicants

The Council of State Governments Justice Center has developed a toolkit for state and local governments and Indian tribes interested in responding to the solicitation for state and local reentry demonstration projects released on February 27, 2009, by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), U.S. Department of Justice. The toolkit includes materials that can help potential applicants think through the questions asked in the solicitation and design or enhance their reentry initiative.

Those that are currently available are:

A checklist that will help state and local governments and Indian tribes meet application requirements under Section 101 of the Second Chance Act. NOTE: The checklist is intended solely to assist applicants for state and local reentry demonstration project grants. A fact sheet on the grants for nonprofit organizations and Indian tribes for mentoring and other transitional services is available here.

A resource guide listing publications, reports, and tools that may be helpful in developing a successful reentry initiative.

The toolkit materials, as well as other reentry resources and information on the Second Chance Act, are available on the Reentry Policy Council website.

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Working On, Well, Work

One of the focus areas for our Task Force is workforce development and broadening employment opportunities for reentrants.

Back in 2002, Bruce Western (currently a professor of sociology at Harvard University) wrote an article about the impact of incarceration on wage mobility and inequality. As we know, an individual's ability to earn progressively higher amounts of money through their life course depends on stable employment in career jobs. In other words, we are able to build our own and our family's wealth over time when we are continuously employed in jobs that offer advancement over time.

Western's research suggests that "incarceration reduces ex-inmates' access to the steady jobs that usually produce earnings growth among young men. ... Because incarceration is so prevalent [among certain minority groups] ... the effect of imprisonment on individual wages also increases aggregate race and ethnic wage inequality." Not only do those incarcerated experience an earnings loss for the family when they are incarcerated, but the experience of incarceration then affects their ability to secure gainful and career-path employment when they are released.

Scaling up to the community level, Western points out that incarceration rates are so high for particular groups (typically urban, brown and black men) that the effects of incarceration lead to broader wage and race inequalities. As Western says, "the prison boom may have increased inequality by supplying the labor market with low-skill minority ex-inmates who remain mired at the bottom of the wage distribution."

One reason why reentrants have difficulty securing employment post-release is an employer's stigma that somebody with a criminal record would be untrustworthy as an employee. [Other reasons include the erosion of a person's job skills due to time out of the labor market; the fact that incarceration may make pre-existing mental or physical illnesses even worse, affecting work outcomes for somebody who is employed; and the breakdown of social contacts that offer leads on job opportunities.] In fact, previous research has shown that employment is positively correlated with criminal desistance -- in other words, having a job is the best way to prevent future criminal activity.

Moving forward, our workforce efforts will include some attempt to address the misconception that hiring reentrants is a risky proposition. What the research shows is that hiring reentrants can actually improve public safety, which in turn generates a better business environment. Some open questions for us include:

• What can we do to help ease this misconception among employers uptown?


• What unique activities will help us humanize the face of reentry to those in the position to hire reentrants?


• What are the best arguments for why hiring reentrants is good for the bottom line?

Stay tuned for more updates on how we'll try to do this -- and please send back feedback if you've managed to do this successfully in your own jurisdictions!

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Rikers Extortion Rings

Today's New York Times has a chilling article today, following up on a story about Christopher Robinson, an 18-year-old young man who was fatally beaten by his peers in Rikers Island recently. New documents point to an extortion ring involving both corrections officers and inmates.

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Upper Manhattan Economic Summit: This Friday

This Friday, March 13th, from 8am - 1pm, the Schomberg Center will host the Upper Manhattan Economic Summit.  Planned by the uptown Community Boards (9, 10, 11, and 12) and co-hosted by the Harlem Community Development Corporation and the Harlem Business Alliance, this event will aim to answer some key questions about the pending stimulus money:

• How will the economic stimulus affect you?
• What will happen to the planned major developments?
• How will the economic stimulus package help small businesses?

It is expected that Harlem's elected leadership will also be present to answer questions, so this won't be an event to miss.

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Second Chance Act Webinar

On Thursday, March 19th, at 2:00pm (ET), the Council of State Governments will host a free webinar to help potential applications respond to the Second Chance Act solicitation.  Intended to promote state and local reentry demonstration projects, the Second Chance Act authorizes federal grants to government agencies and community and faith-based organizations to provide employment assistance, substance abuse treatment, housing, family programming, mentoring, victims support, and other services that can help reduce re-offending and violations of probation and parole.

The solicitation requires that the applicant demonstrate the establishment of a Reentry Task Force -- see this blog post we did for more information about how to get one started!

To register for the webinar -- led by Gary Dennis, Ph. D, Senior Policy Advisor for Corrections at the Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs -- please click here.

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Maps: Neighborhood Happiness (or Not)

The New York Times published an great interactive graphic today -- thousands of New Yorkers were surveyed on their feelings about their neighborhoods, from crime and safety to transportation and education. You can see which community districts had more favorable perceptions of city life than others.

A few interesting trends popped up:

1. While a majority of people in Upper Manhattan rated citywide crime control as good or excellent, they didn't feel that local crime control (in their own neighborhoods) met the same standards.

2. Central Harlem is an outlier on a couple of different measures -- differing even from its Upper Manhattan peer districts in some important ways.

• In response to the question "How would you rate New York City's services protecting children at risk of abuse and neglect?" only 15% of people in Central Harlem rated it as good or excellent. This is the lowest rating of community districts in Manhattan.


• In response to a question about the quality of public substance abuse services, only 14% of people rated them as good or excellent. By comparison, 60% of people in its East and West Harlem peers rated those services as good or excellent.


• Even on snow removal, only 34% of people found that the removal of snow from city streets was good or excellent. Adjoining neighborhoods saw 40-50% of their population give good or excellent ratings to snow removal.

These kinds of community surveys are helpful because they paint a broad stroke over city neighborhoods -- and help us to compare resident perceptions in interesting ways. What our research on the Task Force has shown is that even within these community districts, there are important micro-areas that feel the effects of city issues very differently.

It would have been great, for example, to have some more specific questions on crime and safety that gauge residents' perceptions of reentry trends, even block-by-block. This coming year, the Task Force will pilot a "Community Reentry Scorecard" that does just this: tracks the number of people returning to prison, the reasons for their return, their connections to social services and family supports that keep them out of prison, and community perceptions of change on this issue. This data will originally be collected in one neighborhood as a pilot and will be made available as soon as it is collected for public review. Eventually, we'd like to have Community Reentry Scorecards for each neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, as a way of promoting transparency and tracking success.

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Invincible Cities: See How Harlem Has Changed

We just discovered a beautiful compendium of time-lapse photos (dating back to 1982!) compiled on a website called Invincible Cities. Click on "Enter Harlem, NY Database" at left to travel back in time to the Harlem of the 80s, 90s, and recent 2000s. The site has an accompanying map, so you can scan a whole block, or just focus on one specific address.

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At the Root of the Problem, Literally

Some of the most successful and meaningful reentry services come out of unlikely places. Government and non-profit providers are often looked to for solutions to housing and employment issues for reentrants -- and sometimes the best solutions are literally found in the barbershop down the street.

City Limits has a nice article today about a Brooklyn barber who is a beacon of support and inspiration for his neighbors returning from prison. Al Gleaton-Mathieu has had his own experiences with the justice system and uses his barbershop -- Black Success Unisex II -- as a point of connection for friends and neighbors with similar experiences.

Building these kinds of social networks in places with high rates of incarceration (Gleaton-Mathieu's neighborhood is one of the "million dollar blocks" areas, so famously noted for the price tags associated with incarcerating all of the individuals in that zone) is a really good idea. One of the recommendations that the Upper Manhattan Reentry Task Force has put forward is to develop volunteer opportunities, in partnership with faith-based groups, for reentrants to utilize their talents and experiences to address issues of importance to the community. Such projects might include youth dialogue events, providing assistance to other persons reentering the community, organizing education efforts and fairs around health issues like HIV/AIDS and substance abuse, and projects that address conditions of disorder in the community. While Gleaton-Mathieu's approach takes root in the power of small business, there are multiple ways to build civic engagement -- and ultimately, those networks help to guard against future criminal activity, building stronger communities.

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Hiring Reentrants is Good for Business

As any reentrant will tell you, it can be really hard to get a job right out of prison. Obviously, the stigma of a criminal record can be a huge obstacle, in part because employers are not always well-informed about hiring laws. Organizations like the National HIRE Network have done a lot of good work to address this issue and there is still work to be done.

In Upper Manhattan, even in the current economic context, there are jobs to be had -- and reentrants with desireable skills to fill those jobs. One of our goals moving forward is to expand employment opportunities for reentrants uptown, in part by helping business understand how they could benefit from hiring pools that include qualified candidates with a criminal record.

Two little-known incentives for hiring people with criminal records are federal bonding programs and work opportunity tax credits. This post will briefly describe what these incentives are and point the way toward more resources.

What is federal bonding? (From this website)

• Insurance to protect employer against employee dishonesty


• Covers any type of stealing: theft, forgery, larceny, and embezzlement


• In effect, a guarantee of worker job honesty


• An incentive to the employer to hire an at-risk job applicant


• A unique tool for marketing applicants to employers


• DOES NOT cover ‘liability” due to poor workmanship, job injuries, work accidents, etc.


• Is NOT a bail bond or court bond needed in adjudication


• Is NOT a bond needed for self-employment (contract bond, license bond or performance bond)

The bonds issued by the Federal Bonding Program serve as a job placement tool by guaranteeing to the employer the job honesty of at-risk job seekers. Employers receive the bonds free-of-charge as an incentive to hire hard-to-place job applicants as wage earners. Federal bonds apply to individuals with criminal histories and other high-risk job applicants who are qualified, but fail to get jobs because regular commercial bonding is denied due to their backgrounds.

For those readers in New York State, click here for info on how to contact the state federal bonding representative. Readers from other states can find their state bonding coordinators here.

What is the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC)?

The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) is a federal tax credit to reduce the federal tax liability of private for-profit employers to be used as an incentive for employers to hire individuals from eight different targeted groups: TANF recipients, veterans, ex-felons, high risk youth, summer youth, Food Stamp recipients, SSI recipients, and vocational rehabilitation referrals.

The consolidated WOTC for hiring most target group members can now be as much as:

• $2,400 for each new adult hire;


• $1,200 for each new summer youth hire,


• $4,800 for each new disabled veteran hire, and


• $9,000 for each new long-term family assistance recipient hired over a two-year period.

In terms of criminal records: an individual who has been convicted of a felony and has a hiring date which is not more than one year after the last date on which he was so convicted or released from prison is eligible for consideration in target groups.

For more information on tax credits, see this directory of state WOTC coordinators.

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NYC Justice Corps Making Headway

Persons returning from prison often lack a rich social network of relationships that support desistance from crime, sobriety, gainful employment and access to services. This state of diminshed social capital limits reentrants' ability to address their needs. Civic engagement and education through community service is a powerful way to encourage the development of productive social capital for reentrants.

Today's NY Times has an article about the newly established NYC Justice Corps, which is one such way of engaging reentrants in service work at a living wage. What is unique about this service corps? First, it is specifically designed to engage people with criminal records in employment opportunities; second, those individuals are serving in the very communities they live in, so their labor directly benefits their families and neighbors; and third, there are case management services to help participants address other challenges they may have upon return from prison to community. So far, NYC Justice Corps has seen an 85 percent retention rate through the first five months and, as the program continues, we're looking forward to hearing more about its effect on recidivism.

[For many years, the Center for Court Innovation has relied on the dedication of AmeriCorps volunteers to forge important connections between courts and communities. See here for more information on how this has worked in Red Hook, Brooklyn.]

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"Ideas in Practice:" Using Data to Build Your Program

The Ideas in Practice series offers transparency to practitioners on the process of starting and implementing reentry projects in your own area. By no means the only model for this kind of activity, our Task Force initiative has yielded some interesting results so far, and we thought we'd share some of the key components of our process. [Check out the Problem-Solving Factsheets available from the Center for Court Innovation.]

Because problem-solving justice initiatives are designed to build stronger connections between citizens and the justice system, performing a community needs assessment is usually a top priority for any new problem-solving program. Both quantitative data (rates of arrest, most common criminal charges, etc.) and qualitative data (results from focus groups, surveys measuring community perceptions of safety, etc.) can be useful to planners. Only when a community’s problems, strengths, and resources have been clearly defined can planners start
generating solutions. Consulting with as many relevant stakeholders (e.g., elected officials, local police, and clergy) as possible right from the start can also help build support for new approaches.

There are six steps to make this happen and they can be found in the Center for Court Innovation's factsheet on gathering data.

1. Gather quantitative data.
Planners need quantitative data to sharpen their understanding of community problems. Relevant numbers are available from an array of sources, including the United States Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov), state administering agencies (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/saa/), state and local court systems, police departments, district attorneys’ offices, correction agencies, welfare agencies, departments of education, health and social services, housing authorities, and other government agencies.

At the Reentry Task Force, we found that getting the right people on our task force was really the most important step. Once we had the investment of key agency stakeholders, it was much easier to make data requests and to receive the data in a timely manner.

2. Observe court processes or other justice system activities.
Some data isn’t readily available. In that case, planners might be able to gather the raw data themselves. Planners can also collect valuable information by:

• Observing court proceedings and recording dispositions over a week
  or two weeks to understand how judges, prosecutors, and defense
  attorneys respond to particular cases.
• Polling defendants to find out what kinds of problems they
  have—drug use, homelessness, and any other issues.
• Talking to system insiders who might be able to accurately
  estimate numbers that are otherwise unavailable, or who can explain
  how things operate and the logic behind current approaches.

With respect to reentry, our site visits to correctional facilities, parole programs, and even out-of-state reentry projects provided some key qualitative data about discharge planning and reentry programming.

3. Interview stakeholders.
Stakeholder interviews are structured interviews designed to get feedback on a set of questions. These interviews help planners to gain an understanding of how a neighborhood works, as well as its strengths and weaknesses, assets, and concerns. Interview subjects can include, for example: elected officials, local police, clergy, school officials, block association representatives, social service providers, merchants, and social and civic groups.

During our needs assessment process, the Task Force conducted ten stakeholder interviews from January through July of 2008. A series of key questions were developed to guide the interview process. These questions included queries about perceptions of safety, reactions to the current state of reentry policy, and ideas for change. Interview subjects included elected officials, law enforcement officers, 7 parole staff, formerly incarcerated persons, service providers and advocates. Interviews lasted approximately 1.5 hours and were conducted in person or via phone.

4. Convene focus groups.
Focus groups are facilitated discussions around a pre-determined set of questions. Planners should convene focus groups to get input from community members who are part of underrepresented groups or members of important constituent groups.

In Upper Manhattan, a total of five focus groups were conducted. Focus group participants included persons on parole, parole officers, and community residents. Similar to the stakeholder
interviews, a set of questions was used to facilitate the conversation. The Justice Center’s
Researcher and Planning and Operations Manager, working with the Task Force Coordinator, led the focus groups. Focus group participants were recruited from community board and precinct council meetings where staff members made presentations about this assessment process and solicited feedback about the issue. Community focus groups were assembled from sign-in sheets circulated at these meetings and took place at the Harlem Community Justice Center over a two-hour period. Parole officers and parolees were convened with the assistance of the Harlem Parole Reentry Court and similarly met for two hours at the Justice Center.

5. Administer surveys.
Community surveys can give planners a detailed picture of a community’s priorities,
expectations, and self-image. A well designed survey gathers information from hundreds and potentially thousands of stakeholders and crystallizes information into quantifiable data.

6. Use data to identify key problems.
Once planners have gathered data in these various ways, they need to sit down and synthesize
the information to define the key problems facing the community and pinpoint the community’s assets. By this stage, many good ideas for solutions have probably already surfaced; others can be harvested by talking to local members of the criminal justice system, and by turning to other jurisdictions that are handling similar problems in creative ways. Questions to ask include:

What are the problems in this community?
What is currently being done to address these problems?
What resources are available to help solve these problems?
How could these problems be better addressed?

In Upper Manhattan, these conversations took place at our stakeholder interviews, focus groups, and full Task Force meetings. It was also helpful to have the Justice Center's research associate sort through all of the information we had gathered -- and to run our findings past experienced experts as a double-check.

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1 in 31: A New High for Correctional Supervision

According to a report released today from the Pew Center on the States, 1 in 31 Americans is under some form of correctional supervision (which includes probation, parole, prison, and jail). New York State fares only slightly better, with 1 in 53 adults under correctional supervision.

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Green Jobs at STRIVE

One of the most interesting areas for development in reentry is around "green collar jobs." Promoted by folks like Van Jones, Thomas Friedman, and Majora Carter, green collar jobs are middle-skill jobs that both help the environment and offer a living wage to the worker doing the labor.

As many have noted (including the current president), green collar jobs can be a pathway out of poverty for many low-income people, including those with criminal records. In its recommendations for workforce development, the Upper Manhattan Reentry Task Force has suggested utilizing Department of Labor information to identify growth sectors in the New York
City economy, including “green collar” jobs. On the ground, some of our colleagues uptown are already doing the work.

STRIVE, which stands for Support and Training Result in Valuable Employees, is a recognized innovative leader in job-readiness programs combining attitudinal training with fundamental job skills, and long-term participant follow-up.

In East Harlem, they've just launched a Green Construction Training Program, a unique course that prepares participants for careers in the construction and green energy building and maintenance field. This 12 week training program introduces students to electrical, carpentry, and plumbing, as well as to hazardous materials handling and green energy efficiency building retrofitting.

They're accepting referrals now -- call them toll free at (877) 787-4834 or at (212) 360-1100 for more information.

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Congratulations to our Reentry Court Graduates!

Last Tuesday, twenty men and women graduated from the Parole Reentry Court at the Harlem Community Justice Center. They were honored by their families, peers, parole officers, and the larger Harlem community for their accomplishments in securing employment and stable housing, reconnecting with their families, and maintaining crime-free lives upon return from prison.

In fact, this is quite an accomplishment. As one of the graduates said, "This is the first thing I've ever completed in my life." Upon receiving his completion certificate, he described how he has reconnected with his fifteen-year-old daughter (for whose birth he was absent due to his incarceration) and met a "special woman to replace my mother in my life." His daughter, beaming at his remarks, gave a hearty applause for her dad when his parole officer publicly noted his determination to maintain his job, attend his programs, and reconnect with his loved ones.

In East Harlem, 1 in 20 males have been incarcerated along a reentry corridor from 126th Street to 119th Street (seven short blocks), representing the highest concentration in New York City (Justice Mapping Center, 2006). An additional 900 people who live in the area were admitted to the City’s jail system at the same time. Typically, about half the people who are released to parole supervision in New York State successfully complete parole.

A comprehensive approach to this issue, the Harlem Parole Reentry Court – located at the Harlem Community Justice Center -- helps parolees from the Harlem community make the transition from life in prison to responsible citizenship in the first six months of their release. Working in cooperation with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services and the Division of Parole, the Reentry Court provides ongoing judicial oversight to new parolees, linking them to a wide range of social services, including drug treatment, health care, mental health treatment and education. Wherever appropriate, these services are also offered to family members as well to help increase stability in the home. To promote increased accountability, participants are required to return to the Justice Center frequently to meet with case managers and parole officers and appear before an administrative law judge, who closely monitors their compliance with court orders. The goal of the program is to stabilize returning parolees in the initial phase of their reintegration by helping them find jobs, secure housing and assume familial and personal responsibilities.

A recent analysis of Reentry Court graduates showed that only 14% of graduates were actually convicted of a new crime within one year of program completion, and only 4% had their parole revoked for technical violations. The Reentry Court approach really works to help participants get their lives back on track.

The evening was not without a little prison humor. One of the graduates, a poet, closed the ceremony with some of his work, offering an anecdote about his arrival at the prison facility. As he was doing his laundry at the facility, he was approached by a large, imposing fellow prisoner. The man said "Do my laundry." As our graduate recounts: "I wanted him to know that I wasn't going to be pushed around, that he wasn't going to be able to control me. I paused for a minute and then said, 'I'm not going to fold it.'"

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