As seen in The Columbia Journalist.
When a prisoner is released on parole, he could use a little more than a rumpled suit, a couple of bucks and a hardened pack of chewing gum.
Like an apartment. Or a college degree. Or a job.
Or somebody to help him figure out how to get them.
That’s what experts said yesterday at Brooklyn’s second Prisoner Reentry Conference, where elected officials, university experts and members of aid groups came together to discuss how some pre-release education and post-release guidance can go a long way towards turning a prison sentence into a better learning experience than staring at a concrete wall.
“If we’re really concerned about this whole idea of prisoner reentry, we need to think about it from the standpoint of ‘How do we make this person successful?’ ” said George Alexander, chairman of the New York State Division of Parole, to applause and audible agreement from the audience. “All of us have a role in the success of a person back into our society.”
Stability was the buzzword of the conference, held at the New York City College of Technology, and panelists agreed with the parole chairman and Lt. Gov. David Paterson that housing, education and job assistance – as well as a little flexibility and understanding on the part of the parole system – is needed to help formerly incarcerated New Yorkers find solid ground after they are released.
But it was Harvard sociologist Bruce Western who shocked a sleepy audience of corrections officials, students, social workers and former prisoners when he presented research showing that a black man without a criminal record is less likely to be called back for a job interview than a white man with one.
“Over half of very low-education African-American men will go to prison,” Western said, adding that they make up a considerably higher population within the prison system than white men. “There are more African-American men going to prison than getting a four-year-degree.”
On top of that, many newly-released prisoners have difficulty finding affordable housing because landlords perform background checks and refuse to rent to them, said JoAnne Page, CEO of The Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization that provides education, counseling and housing to prisoners re-entering society.
“[Housing] is one of the greatest unmet needs of incarceration,” Page said, adding that the competitive New York City real estate market makes finding housing more difficult. “We’ve had people go back to their parole officers and say, ‘Lock me up again, I don’t feel safe in those shelters.’ ”
An education beyond a G.E.D. could help get former prisoners back on their feet, said Glenn E. Martin, co-director of the Legal Action Center’s National H.I.R.E. Network, an information clearinghouse and assistance organization that deals with former prisoners.
“As a person who went to prison and got a college education while I was there, it’s really not rocket science,” Martin said. “Not to disparage anyone’s work – and that includes my own – I really feel like we’ve been putting a lot of Band-Aids on cancer.”
Thanks to the strictest drug laws in the nation, nearly half of New York prisoners are nonviolent drug abusers who should be sitting in rehabilitation centers rather than prison, Paterson said.
“You cannot contain human misery,” he said. “It leaps ghetto walls.”
Vanessa Brown, a substance abuse counselor for the New York Department of Corrections who came to hear the speakers, expressed concern that some of the ideas presented will be killed by budget constraints.
“For higher education, there are no more funds for that,” she said, adding that current funding only provides for high school equivalency diplomas. “What kind of job are you going to get with no education these days?”
Paterson said informed decisions can fix the mistakes of the past.
“No matter how long you make the sentences, people are still coming out on the other side,” Paterson said. “What are we going to do when these inmates come out?”
The conference was sponsored by the Kings County District Attorney’s office and the American Bar Association.