Prison Ministry Network News

President Signs Second Chance Act into Law;
Congress Urged to Support Appropriations

President Bush signed into law the Second Chance Act April 9, making it official – that criminal justice corrections as we know it, should be changed dramatically.

A bipartisan, broadly supported coalition of politicians, prosecutors, law enforcers, public defenders, organizations and faith groups pushed steadily for four years to change the high recidivism statistics; to lower the billions in costs and return ex-offenders permanently to their families and communities.

As he signed the bill, the president said, “The Second Chance Act says we’re standing with you, not against you.”

In the room with him was a man named Thomas Boyd, 53, who volunteered for the Jericho Program in Baltimore, operated by the Episcopal Community Services of Maryland associated with the Diocese of Maryland with a faith-based grant from the Department of Labor. The ex-offenders must volunteer themselves to be considered for the reentry program.

Read or hear the speech; see photos: www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/04/20080409-2.html

The focus now turns back to Congress, which must appropriate funds to pay for the many programs included in the law. It is critically important to push hard for funding with those serving on appropriations subcommittees.

Senate: Mikulski (D-MD), Chair; Inouye (D-HI); Leahy (D-VT); Kohl (D-WI); Harkin (D-IA); Dorgan (D-ND); Feinstein (D-CA); Reed (D-RI); Lautenberg (D-NJ); Shelby (R-AL), Ranking Member; Gregg (R-NH); Stevens (R-AL); Domenici (R-NM); McConnell (R-KY); Hutchison (R-TX); Brownback (R-KS); Alexander (R-TN)

Phone: 202-224-3121

House: Mollohan (D-WV), Chair; Kennedy (D-RI); Fattah (D-PA); Ruppersberger (D-MD); Schiff (D-CA); Honda (D-CA); DeLauro (D-CT); Price (D-NC); Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Ranking Member; Culberson (R-TX); Rogers (R-KY); Latham (R-IA); Aderholt (R-AL).

Phone: 202-225-3121

Personal contact with the Member of Congress by calling is the most effective way to reach them; the next is a letter faxed to the congressional office. If you know supporters of the Second Chance Act in the states or districts of those subcommittees, ask them to contact that member to urge support.

The Second Chance Act includes key elements of President Bush's Prisoner Reentry Initiative, announced in the 2004 State of the Union address, which provides for community and faith-based organizations to deliver mentoring and transitional services. The bill will also help connect people released from prison and jail to mental health and substance abuse treatment, expand job training and placement services, and facilitate transitional housing and case management services.

Why is the Second Chance Act so important? Read about it here.

Read this New York Times Editorial
May 20,2008

A Second Chance

With prison costs soaring, many states are understandably desperate for ways to cut recidivism and increase the chances that newly released prisoners build viable lives. The Second Chance Act, signed into law by President Bush last month, would galvanize the re-entry effort, providing the states with money and guidance. Now Congress must appropriate the promised dollars.

Some states are already leading the way. In Illinois — where the inmate population has doubled since the late 1980s — Gov. Rod Blagojevich has begun a promising re-entry program that could become a national model. The comprehensive plan includes drug treatment, job training and placement and a variety of community-based initiatives designed to help newly released inmates forge successful postprison lives.

Illinois is also revamping its parole system by hiring more parole officers and changing regulations so that parolees who commit lesser violations are dealt with in their community — with counseling, drug treatment or more vigilant monitoring — rather than being reflexively sent back to prison. The state is working with Chicago’s Safer Foundation to provide job training and placement for people just out of prison.

Parole-based reforms are also proving effective in Texas and Kansas. Both states have expanded drug treatment and other services and have seen a drop in parole revocations. Therapeutic programs that help ex-offenders reconnect with their families — while providing them with medical and mental health care — are also important.

A fully funded Second Chance Act would help other states develop their own much-needed re-entry programs. The $330 million cost is a small price to pay to reduce prison populations and give more ex-offenders a better chance to make it on the outside.

Supreme Court Okays Lethal Injection
But Death Penalty Opponents Aren’t Through

The Supreme Court declared April 16 that death by lethal injection in Kentucky is not cruel and unusual punishment. The 7-2 decision moved the governor of Virginia to resume executions despite his personal opposition to the death penalty while Maryland’s governor wants to wait for the work of the commission just approved by the legislature to study the death penalty. But Republicans are clamoring for him to create new regulations.

The debate – and legal action no doubt – is not over. Opponents of the death penalty are angry.

From Mike Stark: “The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Kentucky lethal injection case not only puts the United Stars on the Wrong Side of History, says the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, but also “puts the US in dubious company.”

For more reaction:
http://www. nodeathpenalty.org.

Dem Governors Look For Ways to Manage 'Explosion' Of Prisoners Leaving Jail

ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: A group of Democratic governors warned Saturday that a dramatic rise in the number of prisoners coming home over the next few years is one of four sociological trends that threaten to engulf the

United States

in a new crime wave if steps are not taken at the state and federal levels.

"Each of us here is committed to sounding a national alarm that after a 14-year decline, crime is actually on the rise once again in

America

and each of us as governors is committed to getting ahead of this," said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. The Kansas Democrat made her remarks at a news conference to announce the release of a report by Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank.

She was joined by Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen. The "reentry explosion" is one of four trends identified in Third Way's report. The others are the "lengthening shadow of illegal immigration," the "sprawling parentless neighborhood of the Internet," and the surging youth population.

The enormous increase in the number of ex-cons coming home over the next five years is an outgrowth of the tough-on-crime policies followed over the last two decades. "Twenty years ago, fewer than 700,000 people populated the entire state and federal prison system," says the report. "Next year, 700,000 people will be released from prison and 3.5 million will be released over the next five years."

To address the "reentry explosion," Third Way recommends replacing "idleness with improvement" during each prisoner's incarceration, reconnecting prisoners with the community when their time behind bars winds down, and reconceptualizing parole.

The report recommends that an individualized 40-hour per week curriculum be developed for each prisoner to address barriers to success. Components of such a curriculum would include things such as literacy education, acquiring a GED, English as a second language, earning a two-year or college degree, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, parenthood training, and work designed to increase marketable skills on the outside.

For prisoners in the final 12 to 18 months of their prison sentences, the report recommends a series of measures to initiate a productive return home. Those measures include prison savings accounts, employment certificates, and state ID cards for those who have no other form of identification. The report also suggests connecting prisoners with employment opportunities and the expansion of family reunification programs.

Finally, the report recommends rethinking parole from "a culture of 'gotcha' to one of case management across state agencies and risk assessment and reduction for the community." At the federal level, the report calls on Congress to pass the Second Chance Act, which would provide states with more resources to reduce recidivism.

The report also calls for expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (E.I.T.C.) for single males without children. At present, the maximum EITC benefit for a single person without children is approximately $400 per year. It is over $4,000 for a single person with two children. "This gap needs to be narrowed," says the report, "to encourage single males to enter the workplace and choose a productive, rather than destructive path."

In her home state of Kansas, Sebelius has been at the forefront in addressing prisoner re-entry. After she was elected governor in 2002, it was anticipated that Kansas would have a prison population going up about 15 percent over a six year period of time, costing the state about $80 million in beds that it would have to add to its correction system.

"Because of the steps that we have taken both in terms of training in prison, looking at drug and alcohol programs, and partnering with communities' re-entry programs in big cities, where most of the inmates are returning, we have now been successful in flattening our prison population," said Sebelius. "We actually have fewer inmates today than we did when I came into office five years ago."

Similar to the think tank's work on issues such as national security and abortion, Third Way's anti-crime proposals are designed to put progressive goals in a new centrist framework.

"This is not about blaming society. The direct question we are trying to answer is what to do in the here and now about the 700,000 prisoners coming out right now every year," Third Way's Rachel Laser told ABC News. "And the answer there was turning prisons from idleness to productivity, a 40-hour work week ... with class and counseling and the like, and a parole system that changes from 'I gotcha' to more of a graduated system that reacts appropriately and doesn't just try to put people back in prison but strives towards a different goal. It strives to put people back in the communities."

California Gov. Schwarzenegger wants to release 22,000 inmates
Supreme Court asked to look at 30-year sentence for 12-year-old criminal
Suicides and mental iIllness in prisons

These and more updates at: www.realcostofprisons.org

Thanks to Sara J. Patemi of the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments:

Crime rates, prison costs
spur programs for ex-cons

USA TODAY’s Charisse Jones cites some of the many reentry programs under way around the country. Money talks, it seems, where protests about warehousing have not. In 2004, it is estimated, corrections cost $61 billion and are climbing. So are the number released – in 2005: 698,000 -- and recidivism, now estimated at 68 percent returning behind bars within three years.

"We are seeing really an unprecedented number of governors, state legislatures, mayors and county executives launching comprehensive prisoner re-entry initiatives," says Michael Thompson, director of the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a national non-partisan policy resource center. "Returns to prisons are as high as they've ever been. … And that has a huge public safety impact and cost."

States and cities taking action:

• New Jersey next month will launch "Another Chance" to provide job training, health assistance and other services to 1,300 men and women who are newly incarcerated, within nine months of release or on parole and returning to Camden, Newark or Trenton.

•California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation in May that will create at least 32 prisoner re-entry facilities, allowing inmates to spend the last 12 months of their sentences receiving anger management training, help finding jobs and other services.

• Orlando will provide job training to ex-offenders on three public works projects, including the refurbishment of the Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium.

• Michigan has increased funding for its Prisoner ReEntry Initiative from to $33 million from $12 million, allowing it to expand from 15 metropolitan areas to the entire state by September 2008.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-13-excon_N.htm

In Durham, N.C.,
another reentry program...

The program requires participants to check in daily and meet monthly with an "interagency team" comprising members of law enforcement and center staff. That regimen begins while inmates are still in custody. The structure is important, said the center's director, Gudrun Parmer, because many aspects of an inmate's release (such as obtaining ID cards) can take weeks and should start as early as possible.

Dem Governors Look For Ways to Manage 'Explosion' Of Prisoners Leaving Jail

Court: Prison Program Unconstitutional