Unlocking Opportunity for People Leaving Prison

A recent flurry of articles describe programs that help people leaving U.S. prisons overcome the challenges that confront them. That we are reading so many of these articles in the media today is tribute to over a decade of contributions by visionary policy thinkers, national leaders, government and private funders, dedicated program directors and staff, innovative corrections professionals, and justice reform advocates.

But the articles reflect an uncertain future.

Stephen Greenhouse of the New York Times describes some of these uncertainties in his story “States Help Ex-Inmates Find Jobs.” Nationally, state policymakers have endorsed prisoner reentry and employment as a strategy to reduce a $69-billion annual prison bill. And it can work: with an investment of $56 million in programs, Michigan realized $200 million in prison savings.

But here’s the rub: states lack the money it takes to save money. Deficit-ridden states such as Kansas have cut the very programs which had successfully reduced prison populations. Federal stimulus funds for transitional work programs and incentives for employers to hire former prisoners are drying up. And some observers are predicting that federal funding for reentry programs will be halved in the coming year.

In Tina Rosenberg’s New York Times story “For Ex-Prisoners, a Haven Away from the Streets,” she lauds The Fortune Society’s “Castle” residence in New York, and Delancey Street in San Francisco. Both provide new homes and peer support for people leaving prison. With proven employment and other reentry services, success comes when, according to Rosenberg, people returning from prison are lifted clear of “their old neighborhoods…their old gang … associates who tempt them with promises of easy money or drug-filled nights.” But, as Rosenberg observes, Delancey Street and The Fortune Society have not been widely replicated. Most people leaving prison are bound to return to communities that hold few sustainable job prospects.

Alex Halperin’s Washington Post Sunday Magazine piece “After Prison, Building a New Life Means More than Just Doing Right” profiles Louis B. Sawyer Jr., who, with the aid of a few reentry programs, returned to just such a community. Sawyer had the advantage of a fair education, money from his prison job, a good outlook, encouragement and support from his church, perseverance, and the stamina to endure futile job fairs. After six months Sawyer networked his way into a job as a part-time peer advocate, guiding people with felony convictions through the “reentry labyrinth” he had mastered. But as Halperin observes, two-thirds of the participants in reentry programs fail.

These three writers tell inspiring stories of life after prison. How can we resolve the uncertainties and policy conflicts that are also revealed so that these stories become more frequent? My own project has developed solid proposals. Here are four:

1. To address the shortage of public funding for reentry programming, work-related programs should engage private business in the design, delivery, funding, and follow-up to their reentry programming. Businesses are best equipped to define their future workforce requirements. And as it stands, businesses spend a lot of money on training. If corrections provides training that is a benefit to employers and industries, it seems reasonable that the beneficiaries might share the cost.
2. To be relevant in a highly competitive labor market and to gain public support, reentry programs should target jobs in new and expanding businesses where there is not yet a trained work force competing for those jobs.
3. Because most prisoners have no choice but to return to their old neighborhoods, reentry programs should play an active role in helping to build positive communities. Employment reentry programs should work hand-in-hand with programs that advance community and economic development (and should be funded with a portion of the considerable federal, state, and local funds now spent on community development projects).
4. To replicate the success of people like Louis Sawyer, corrections should put a priority on designing and implementing holistic reentry programs that build on strengths, foster motivation, and substantively prepare and connect people leaving prison to particular jobs in advance of their release.

None of these proposals are self actuating. Implementation will be its own challenge. But the rewards include a continued pattern of success in public policy, in troubled communities and for people leaving prison.