Tune In! Rethinking Reentry on the Air Tomorrow

Tomorrow, the Brian Lehrer Show will re-broadcast an interview they did with two representatives of the New York State Division of Parole some time ago. You can tune into WNYC FM 93.9 or AM 820 -- or track it online at WNYC's website.

Time: 10:00 am

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Health Care and Criminal Justice Involvement

Family Justice in partnership with the NYU Wagner Graduate School for Public Service is hosting a roundtable discussion on health care and criminal justice involvement. The discussion will address the current state of health care for people leaving prisons and jails and potential strategies for improving health care delivery. The event is open to students, professionals, and the public. It will take place at:

9-10:30 a.m.
Wednesday July 8, 2009

Family Justice
625 Broadway, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10012

To RSVP please contact Lily Brent at lbrent@familyjustice.org or (212) 475-1500 ext. 223.

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Fines, Fees, and Child Support Payments

The Reentry Policy Council of the Council of State Governments has been working with states to improve the assessment and collection of court ordered fines, fees and child support payments. As states struggle to operate with lower revenues in the current fiscal crisis many are increasing their efforts to collect court ordered fines and fees. In some states jail is increasingly being used to punish delinquent litigants, many of whom are poor. For persons returning from prison or jail failure to pay parole/probation fees, child support arrears or fines can lead to further incarceration.

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Are Drug War Cost Driving Change?

The Nation magazine has an interesting article by Sasha Abramsky entitled, "The War Against the War On Drugs."The article describes the dilemma many states are facing in paying for prisons resulting from the crime control policies of the last 30 years. Ms. Abramsky focuses on the fiscal crisis California is facing which may result in reductions in prison treatment and education programs and the release of thousands of non-violent offenders with very little investment in reentry services. She cites research by the Pew Charitable Trust indicating that California and several other states are now "paying as much or more on prisons than on college."

California, according to Abramsky, might be a model for how not to do reform. While many advocates have long sought changes in drug control policies that invest more in prevention and treatment based on the evidence, in many states the need to reduce cost is emerging as the driving force.

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Women & Reentry

Yesterday's National Public Radio's Tell Me More segment hosted by Michel Martin focused on the challanges faced by women leaving prison. To hear the segment click here.

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Reentry News Round-Up

We noticed several recent news items on prisoner reentry that we thought might be of interest to readers.

Parolees Face Challanges Paying Child Support
St Joseph News-Press, Missouri
http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2009/jun/21/parolees-face-challenges-paying-child-support/?local

Employer's Encouraged to offer Ex-Cons Second Chance
The Providence Journal, Rhode Island
http://www.projo.com/news/content/CORRECTIONS_REENTRY_06-21-09_VNEPMOV_v12.328c5aa.html


CCI Reentry Dorm Aids With Job Training and Other Skills (video)
Chillicothe Gazette, Ohio http://www.chillicothegazette.com/article/20090621/NEWS01/906210306

Re-Entry Coalition Helps Ex-Prisoners

Lynden Tribune, Washington State

http://www.lyndentribune.com/node/4540

Women Who've Done Time Guide Those Newly Released

Arizona Daily Star, Arizona

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20331982&BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=222087&rfi=6

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NY Times Finds Murders Higher In Warmer Weather

According to a New York Times' analysis of homicide data from 2003-2008 murders rise in the warmer months. Perhaps this is not news to most New Yorkers, but the article is interesting. Click here to read the article. We also liked the interactive map.

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New Jersey Parole Chair Visits Harlem Reentry Court

Chairman Yolette C. Ross of the New Jersey State Parole Board visited the Harlem Community Justice Center's Parole Reentry Court this week. Chairman Ross, pictured here with Justice Center Director Chris Watler, is seeking to improve outcomes for parolees in her New Jersey. Begun in 2001, the Reentry Court, a collaboration between the Justice Center and the State Division of Parole, manages parolees during their first six months of parole. Reentry Court participation has led to lower rates of recidivism and technical violations for graduates of the six-month program. Through a collaborative case management approach the Reentry Court increases accountability while providing wrap-around services to parolees. An evaluation of the Reentry Court is currently underway with results expected in the fall of 2009.

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Stopping Gun Violence

Recent shootings in upper Manhattan have again raised concerns about gun violence. Just this week two bystanders were hit by stray bullets, including an 11 year-old boy. Last summer a shooting spree injured eight in West Harlem. The sad fact is that children are too often victims of gun violence. The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence’s fact sheet, Children and Guns a Lethal Combination, presents a chilling picture of gun violence in America:

• The rate of firearm death in the U.S for children under the age of 14 is 12 times higher than in 25 other industrialized countries COMBINED.

• Firearm homicide is the second leading cause of death for youth between the ages of 1-19 in the U.S.

• In 2005, firearms were responsible for 52% of African-American teen deaths, and 17% of Caucasian deaths.

In the face of increasing concern about gun violence, we wanted to highlight efforts that have worked to reduce gun violence.

Newark, N.J: The Greater Newark Safer Cities Initiative, led by the Rutgers University Police Institute, has been working to reduce gun violence among the high-risk parole population. The effort uses a collaborative approach involving criminal justice agencies, local service providers and faith-based groups. The Initiative, targeting parolees who are at high risk of engaging in violent crime upon their release, has reduced returns to prison for violent crimes.

Boston, M.A: Boston Ceasefire focuses on reducing gang related youth violent crime through tougher, targeted enforcement and effective intervention strategies. In one year Ceasefire was credited with reducing firearm violence by 68%.

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN): A gun violence reduction effort led by local U.S Attorney’s Office, PSN uses enhanced prosecution for gun crimes and collaborative evidence-based strategies that target chronic and violent offenders returning to the community. PSN also focuses on prevention through public media campaigns and school-based gun violence education.

Key elements of these efforts include: using data to guide decision making; a focus on raising accountability for high-risk offenders; collaborations involving multiple criminal justice agencies, community organizations, and faith-based groups; strong messaging about the consequences of gun violence; and a strong focus on outcomes that holds criminal justice agencies’ accountable for results.

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National Forum on Criminal Justice

The 2009 National Forum on Criminal Justice will convene in Washington D.C August 9-11. The Forum is designed to connect criminal justice professionals to the latest information on cost-effective and evidence-base practices in public safety and crime prevention. This year's Forum focuses on effective ways to efficiently and effectively manage the funding provided to states under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Forum agenda includes workshops on alternatives to incarceration and community support for persons returning from incarceration.

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Yellow Ribbon Project in Singapore

Reentry projects in Singapore? Yes, and how much more advanced they are than our own public outreach efforts!

Singapore launched the Yellow Ribbon Project back in 2000, at the behest of the nation's president. The project is a huge public awareness campaign about the challenges of returning from prison to community. The project got its name from "the popular song 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree'. It's lyrics "I'm really still in prison and my love, she holds the key, a simple yellow ribbon's what I need to set me free" aptly describes the constraints facing ex-offenders after they are released from jail."

What does this project involve?

• Regular citizens purchasing and wearing a yellow ribbon to show their support for offering second chances and acceptance for ex-offenders. The funds raised go toward rehabilitation and reintegration programmes for ex-offenders and their families.


• Film premieres to humanize the stories of ex-offenders.


• An annual "Yellow Ribbon Prison Run" that "aims to encourage inmates/ex-offenders to maintain the pace to face adversities in their reintegration journey while fellow Singaporeans to keep their heads high to ride through rough times together. "


• Community Art exhibitions.

We can take example from Singapore in their success raising public awareness of the challenges of reentry and creating large-scale public support for the idea of "second chances." We'd be curious to hear about other examples, so please pass them along!

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UM Reentry Task Force in the News

Check out this article in today's Gotham Gazette about reentry efforts uptown. In addition to highlighting the Upper Manhattan Reentry Task Force and the Harlem Parole Reentry Court, the articles discusses good work at Exodus Transitional Community, The Fortune Society, and the NYS Division of Parole.

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Art: Reentry Mapping

This weekend, Rethinking Reentry staff had a chance to visit the Museum of Modern Art and discovered some reentry maps hanging on the walls of the Architecture and Design wing.

Since maps are one of the obsessions of this blog, it was quite a fascinating find. The Justice Mapping Center and Columbia University's Spatial Information Design Lab have teamed up on a number of justice-related mapping projects, perhaps the most famous of which are the "Million Dollar Blocks" charts. These are areas of the city where a million dollars (or more) has been invested in the incarceration of individuals on that one city block. The image below (at left) represents an area in Brownsville, Brooklyn where the state has invested $17 million to incarcerate people on these 17 blocks. Although hard to see, there is one individual represented on this map that cost the state about $2,900,000. The image at right represents prisoner migration patters from Brooklyn to facilities throughout New York State in 2003.

These maps have appeared in full exhibitions in the MoMA (see "Design and the Elastic Mind" -- under "Mapping," click on "Architecture and Justice") and at The Architectural League of New York. You can view full discussion of the connections between mapping and prison admissions in this document, published as guide to accompany the exhibit at The Architectural League.

The Spatial Information Design Lab has also done some interesting work in collaboration with Columbia's Sociology department to map out the employment geography of reentrants when they come home.

That analysis has shown some interesting findings. From the report: "the majority of existing canonical research hypothesizes that illegal activity happens closer to the homes of those performing that activity. In contrast, our maps revealed that those engaged in illegal work, such as selling drugs, tend to navigate through more neighborhoods in the city and perform the activity farther from what they consider their home base. They are much more mobile than their counterparts who have legal jobs or no work at all, and leave their neighborhood more often. Our spatial analysis is surprising in that it establishes that illegal activity does not isolate formerly incarcerated people in their neighborhood, but rather, in some ways offers them the opportunity to leave. ... It is clear that the formerly incarcerated person who describes their work as “illegal” traverse a much larger portion of the city. Another preliminary finding of the spatial analysis is that it appears to be showing that formerly incarcerated people have strong ties between two or more neighborhoods. In other words the formerly incarcerated don’t just think of their neighborhood as where they live, but rather, as just one in a series that bonds them to several neighborhoods in the city."

There seem to be two main benefits in the ability to map these trends: first, you literally see patterns that you may not have seen. Beyond just points on a map, these mapping groups have inserted additional information in attaching budget dollars spent on each data point. How might we have realized that the state is spending $17 million on incarceration for 17 blocks of Brownsville without mapping it out? Second, the visual dimension of this medium helps make a strong point -- and the red, black, and white color choices don't hurt either -- about the depth of this problem. There are so many public sector issues that deserve our attention; strong graphics help stakeholders focus on the key problem at hand. If we discover, for example, that the state is spending millions of dollars on one apartment building in Brooklyn, we have a very localized phenomenon that can be addressed through targeted service provision, law enforcement efforts, and community action.

We'd be curious to hear how others out there have used mapping technologies to enhance their own reentry efforts? Did you learn something you may not have seen otherwise? Did you create some nice art in the process? Fill us in!

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Youth Justice Board: Improving Alternative to Detention Programs

The Youth Justice Board, a group of city teens, has issued 10 proposals for how the city could approve its alternative detention programs for young people charged with crimes. The group, which was organized by the Center for Court Innovation and spent a year studying the issue, recommends creating temporary shelters for teens who cannot go back home after their arrests, screening programs participants for possible mental health problems, and better links between the schools and the alternative programs.

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Customer Service Training at the Workforce 1 Career Center

From our partners at the Upper Manhattan Workforce 1 Career Center:

"The Upper Manhattan WF1CC will be partnering with Community Training & Employment Resources (CTER) to hold its second three week Customer Service Training. CTER provides job readiness and job search training for adults seeking to improve their employability skills and successfully compete in today’s job market. For each training, they collaborate with business leaders from various industries to craft a customer service curriculum customized to the needs of participating companies. The combination of customer service and targeted job readiness skills develops candidates who are diligent workers, willing to accept challenges, and eager to contribute to the success of their employer’s business. CTER also engages the resources of community partners to provide career coaching and mentors to help job seekers prepare for employment and succeed in the workplace.

The training will begin July 20, 2009 and ends August 6, 2009. We are seeking to recruit candidates for this training, which will be held here at the Upper Manhattan WF1CC.
Candidates must meet the following basic requirements:

Requirements
v High School Diploma or GED
v Previous customer service experience
v Can read and write at an 8th grade level

If you identify individuals who meet the above criteria and have an interest in building a career in customer service within one of the following fields:

· Communication
· Healthcare
· Utilities
· Food Service & Hospitality
· Retail
· Financial Services

Please have them call the number on the attached flyer for a pre-screening. If they are deemed appropriate, they will be scheduled for a final screening by CTER on Friday, June 12 or Friday June 26, 2009."

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Failure and Criminal Justice Reform

Our colleagues at the Center for Court Innovation had an interesting conversation about failure and policing innovations with R. Gil Kerlikowske, who was selected by President Barack Obama to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Prior to being named drug czar, he was the chief of the Seattle Police Department. This article seems particularly relevant now, as the New York Police Department is confronting its own recent training and diversity failures in the wake of Officer Omar Edwards' death.

"The old joke is that in policing, there are no failures. If you know of a failure, please let me know."

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