Monday, April 14, 2008
The License Debate
Under new licensing guidelines, future social workers with previous convictions may not pass the necessary background check required for licensing. Should social workers be conviction free, no exceptions? Should there be a process for exceptions? Should a background check even come into the licensing equation? What do you think?
Criminal Justice Lecture
Hip Hop Culture: Lessons in Injustice?
a Lecture by George Washington University Law Professor Paul Butler
April 16; 5:00 p.m.
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Moot Court Room
One Free CLE Credit
What can criminal prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys learn from Hip Hop? Does Hip Hop culture teach us something about punishment and the nature of criminal behavior? And might it expose profound injustice at the core of the criminal justice system?
George Washington University Law Professor Paul Butler believes that Hip Hop has lessons to teach about developing "a theory of punishment that is coherent, enhances public safety, and treats every human being with respect." On April 16 at 5:00 p.m., he will discuss his conclusions in a free public lecture, "Toward a Hip Hop Theory of Justice," in the Moot Court Room of the law school on East 18th and Euclid Avenue.
Professor Butler is the law school�s 2008 Friedman & Gilbert Criminal Justice Forum Lecturer. The Ohio Supreme Court has approved his lecture for one free hour of CLE credit.
Professor Butler is the Carville Dickinson Benson Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. His undergraduate and law degrees are from Yale University.
Before beginning his teaching career, he served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice. Among many provocative articles are When Judges Lie (and When They Should) in the Minnesota Law Review (2007), Rehnquist, Racism, and Race Jurisprudence in The George Washington Law Review" (2006) and Racially Based Jury Nullification: Black Power in the Criminal Justice System in The Yale Law Journal (1995). In Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment in the Stanford Law Review (2003), Professor Butler challenges Americans to study Hip Pop as political commentary�a powerful indictment of the criminal justice system "by the people who know it best."
**
For more information visit www.law.csuohio.edu or call 216-687-6886
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Group Paper

Second Chance Act of 2007
Implications for Society and Social Work
Brady Beziat, David Brown, Laura Lewis, and Carl Motley
SWK 350 • Anderson • April 9, 2008

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Scope of the Problem of Recidivism
The United States has a huge problem that much of our society has seemingly ignored for far too long. Recent estimates are that there are over 16 million current or ex-felons in the United States (Uggen, 2000). This number represents a population larger than many states; this population is also at risk. Each year approximately 650,000 people are released from prison, and nearly two-thirds of offenders released will be arrested and possibly returned to prison, causing grave economic and social reprisal. These numbers clearly show that the re-entry of ex-offenders is a crisis that our current system is not successfully meeting. Ex-offenders must be armed with the proper community living skills necessary to reintegrate into the community (Eggers, Munoz, Sciulli, et. al, 2005).
Upon discovery of how profoundly the criminal justice system had been impacted by the overcrowding of prisons, solutions were sought to alleviate the problem. Out of the search for solutions was born the authorization of grants to fund re-entry of ex-offenders to their communities which over time led to the introduction of the Second Chance Act.
Overview of the Second Chance Act
The Second Chance Act (SCA) is a bill that has recently passed in both houses after being debated in several different forms over the last four years. This legislation is a response to the terrifying numbers of repeat offenders and reflects our society’s understanding that previous policy is not effectively meeting the needs of ex-offenders. Passage of the bill demonstrates society’s affirmation of the need to move away from locking up offenders and toward preventative programs to curb recidivism.
Some of the major concerns facing ex-offenders include housing, employment, mental health problems, and substance abuse. Many ex-offenders fail at or fall short in these areas, leading them to seek illegal alternatives which often lead them back to imprisonment. The key provisions of the SCA would authorize a $65 million reentry grant program administered through the Department of Justice for state and county reentry initiatives and a $15 million reentry program for community and faith-based organizations to deliver mentoring and transitional services to ex-offenders who seek positive re-entry. It allows for funding of employment services and job training, housing programs, drug treatment programs, and mental health services. Another key provision of the SCA is that it will create the National Adult and Juvenile Offender Reentry Resource Center which will serve as a tool that other workers in the field can use to gain information about programs and training available to those trying to reenter society as well as what practice methods have been successful (or unsuccessful).
“The Second Chance Act will provide an opportunity for realistic rehabilitation for the more than 650,000 inmates who return to their communities each year," said Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA). "The bill's focus on education, job training, and substance abuse treatment is essential to decreasing the nationwide recidivism rate of 66 percent.” (Specter, 2008) Total annual funding of the SCA’s programs will be $150 million.
Past Policy
In the last ten years, the doubling of the U.S. prison population due to the enactment of stricter drug laws and the rigid enforcement of those laws is an injustice that affects the quality of life for both communities (at the macro level) and ex-offenders and their families (at the micro level). These stricter policies have filled state and federal prisons with a significant number of non-violent offenders.
Legislative Timeline
Introduced in 2004 in the 108th Congress as H.R. 4676, the Second Chance Act reauthorized the establishment of a task force to research implementation of programs and activities to facilitate the reentry of non-violent ex-offenders back into society. The original bill outlined provisions such as substance abuse treatment, family based programs, educational programs, employment programs, training programs, and housing programs to assist non-violent ex-offenders in the transition from prison to society. It passed in the House of Representatives in 2004, and the bill moved on to the Senate.
The bill drew strong bipartisan support but was blocked in the Senate. It was reintroduced in 2005 in the 109th Congress as H.R. 1704. Again, the House of Representatives passed the bill and it moved to the Senate, but the bill failed to pass again.
In the 110th Congress in 2007, the bill was reintroduced as H.R. 1593 and passed unanimously in the House of Representatives in November, 2007. It moved on to the Senate, where it was put on hold on December 20, 2007.
Because H.R. 4676, H.R. 1704, and H.R. 1593 had focused on state prisoners, the question of how the bills related to federal prisoners facilitated the introduction on December 5, 2007, of H.R. 623, which would provide federal prisoners with the same opportunities as state prisoners for re-entry to society. But on January 3, 2008, legislation to enact H.R. 623 was blocked due to concern that it would increase federal spending too much on untested programs.
Finally, on March 11, 2008, the Senate finally passed the Second Chance Act of 2007. The bill now sits on the desk of President Bush, awaiting his signature to be passed into law.
Population and Eligibility
Since nearly 650,000 offenders are released from prison each year and two-thirds of released offenders are expected to be rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years of release, the ex-offender population that could potentially be affected by the SCA is immense.
The SCA specifies five criteria that individuals must meet in order to qualify for services. First, there cannot be any convictions for a violent offense nor for a nonviolent offense other than the one they are trying to expunge. Second, all requirements of the sentence must have been fulfilled. Third, the ex-offender must have remained free from drug and alcohol dependency for at least one year and have been rehabilitated to the court’s satisfaction, if that condition were part of their sentence. Fourth, a GED or high school diploma must have been obtained. Finally, one year of community service must have been performed, as determined by the court.
Implications for Social Work
The implications of the Second Chance Act (SCA) for the field of Social Work could - and should - be significant. The SCA embodies the profession’s core values of granting unconditional positive regard, alleviating oppression, and empowering clients via the strengths perspective.
Employment: Social workers are uniquely equipped to be the providers of the SCA’s programs because of their psycho-social perspective. SCA program providers will need to both help clients at their point of interaction with their new environments as well as address the psychological needs of the ex-offender population.
The psychological needs of this population are of particular interest to Social Workers as the primary providers of mental health care in the U.S. Research shows that 64 % of the prison population is coping with some kind of mental health issue (Harcourt, 2007). Treatment of these issues will be vital to the success of ex-offenders.
Recent research shows that the rate of recidivism for ex-offenders is likely linked to their self-narrative, including whether they view both positive and negative events in their lives as internal or external, stable or unstable, and as the result of global or specific causes (Maruna, 2004). Treatment is then geared toward changing the causal thought patterns, often through Cognitive Behavioral Theory, which social workers are equipped to provide.
Education: Given the range of programs and degree of funding entailed in the SCA, there will be an immediate need for more schools of social work to offer concentrations in criminal justice and reentry practice and for all schools to expand their curriculum in this field of practice. A review of the offerings of the top ten social work programs in the United States (as ranked by U.S. News & World Report) shows that none of them offer a concentration or specialization in working with this immense population.
For the programs of the SCA to be successful (and therefore to ensure their continued funding), social workers must draw on more and better research-based evidence to inform their work with the ex-offender population. The failure of schools to immediately and successfully equip social workers will render the SCA useless.
Practice: The practice challenge to the field of Social Work will be keeping up with the demand for services. Given the large number clients who will be eligible for these services - a sizable number of which clients would not have otherwise sought services or been eligible for federally-subsidized services - the demand for social workers will increase significantly. Given the already overwhelming caseload of most social workers, the field will have to recruit and educate great numbers to keep up with the demand - and to prevent the even greater burdening of existing social workers.
Oversight and Knowledge: Due to federal oversight, social workers will have to become familiar with the guidelines of SCA programs in order to ensure future funding. Agencies must evaluate program operations to ensure compliance with federal guidelines.
Social workers should be contributing data about their outcomes with the SCA’s registry to expand the field’s knowledge of effective - and ineffective - practices. Also, they will be responsible for consulting the resource center to ensure they are offering the best services to their clients.
Advocacy: The net effect of returning ex-offenders to the mainstream of society may be the easing of the perpetual stigma of prison time on ex-offenders who have completed their punishment, opening the door for continued improvement in the treatment of this population. The easing of the stigma and increased participation in society should lead to lower crime rates and increased economic advancement not only for ex-offenders but for the disadvantaged groups (minorities, the poor) of which ex-offenders are disproportionately a part.
Social workers will have an ethical responsibility to advocate for the continuation and improvement of the SCA’s service. Also, because the amount of funding entailed in the SCA is not adequate to meet all of the re-entry needs of ex-offenders, social workers must lobby for an increase in funding. The $150 million allotted annually for implementation of the SCA is a drop in the bucket of the $180 billion spent annually in the U.S. for law enforcement, judicial activities, and corrections, and social workers must lobby for shifting such spending from reactive to proactive endeavors.
Failure of Passage
Should President Bush veto the SCA, it will still have an impact. The legislative activity around the SCA has brought greater attention to the issues surrounding ex-offenders; legislators, activists, and practitioners will be better informed in their efforts to improve the lot of ex-offenders as well as their impact on society. The success of the current version of the bill to this date will embolden the legislators of the next congress to reintroduce the SCA after the next presidential election. The process of the SCA will continue to influence the national dialogue.
Conclusion
The SCA can be one of the most influential acts within the last ten years aside from the welfare reform bill. It will help to employ over 650,000 men and women per year - 6.5 million taxpaying citizens over the span of ten years. The SCA is not the complete answer to our nation’s overcrowded prison population and rate of recidivism, but it is a starting point that shows that there are other ways to help this population. The programs that will be funded by the SCA are a significant step in the right direction.
Bibliography
Eggers, M., Muñoz, J., Sciulli, J., Crist, P., & I, I. (2005). The Community Reintegration Project: Occupational Therapy at Work in a County Jail. Occupational Therapy in Health Care. 20 (1), 17-37.
Harcourt, Bernard E. "The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars." The New York Times 15 Jan. 2007.NYT
Maruna, Shadd. "Desistance From Crime and Explanatory Style; A New Direction in the Psychology of Reform." Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 20.2 11(2004): 184-200.
Specter, Arlen (2008 mar 11). U.S. Senate Passes Second Chance Act. Retrieved April 7, 2008, from www.achsa.org.
Uggen, C. (2000) Work as turning point in life course of criminals. A duration model of age, employment, and recidivism. American Sociological Review 67:529-546.
Second Chance Act of 2007
Implications for Society and Social Work
Brady Beziat, David Brown, Laura Lewis, and Carl Motley
SWK 350 • Anderson • April 9, 2008

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Scope of the Problem of Recidivism
The United States has a huge problem that much of our society has seemingly ignored for far too long. Recent estimates are that there are over 16 million current or ex-felons in the United States (Uggen, 2000). This number represents a population larger than many states; this population is also at risk. Each year approximately 650,000 people are released from prison, and nearly two-thirds of offenders released will be arrested and possibly returned to prison, causing grave economic and social reprisal. These numbers clearly show that the re-entry of ex-offenders is a crisis that our current system is not successfully meeting. Ex-offenders must be armed with the proper community living skills necessary to reintegrate into the community (Eggers, Munoz, Sciulli, et. al, 2005).
Upon discovery of how profoundly the criminal justice system had been impacted by the overcrowding of prisons, solutions were sought to alleviate the problem. Out of the search for solutions was born the authorization of grants to fund re-entry of ex-offenders to their communities which over time led to the introduction of the Second Chance Act.
Overview of the Second Chance Act
The Second Chance Act (SCA) is a bill that has recently passed in both houses after being debated in several different forms over the last four years. This legislation is a response to the terrifying numbers of repeat offenders and reflects our society’s understanding that previous policy is not effectively meeting the needs of ex-offenders. Passage of the bill demonstrates society’s affirmation of the need to move away from locking up offenders and toward preventative programs to curb recidivism.
Some of the major concerns facing ex-offenders include housing, employment, mental health problems, and substance abuse. Many ex-offenders fail at or fall short in these areas, leading them to seek illegal alternatives which often lead them back to imprisonment. The key provisions of the SCA would authorize a $65 million reentry grant program administered through the Department of Justice for state and county reentry initiatives and a $15 million reentry program for community and faith-based organizations to deliver mentoring and transitional services to ex-offenders who seek positive re-entry. It allows for funding of employment services and job training, housing programs, drug treatment programs, and mental health services. Another key provision of the SCA is that it will create the National Adult and Juvenile Offender Reentry Resource Center which will serve as a tool that other workers in the field can use to gain information about programs and training available to those trying to reenter society as well as what practice methods have been successful (or unsuccessful).
“The Second Chance Act will provide an opportunity for realistic rehabilitation for the more than 650,000 inmates who return to their communities each year," said Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA). "The bill's focus on education, job training, and substance abuse treatment is essential to decreasing the nationwide recidivism rate of 66 percent.” (Specter, 2008) Total annual funding of the SCA’s programs will be $150 million.
Past Policy
In the last ten years, the doubling of the U.S. prison population due to the enactment of stricter drug laws and the rigid enforcement of those laws is an injustice that affects the quality of life for both communities (at the macro level) and ex-offenders and their families (at the micro level). These stricter policies have filled state and federal prisons with a significant number of non-violent offenders.
Legislative Timeline
Introduced in 2004 in the 108th Congress as H.R. 4676, the Second Chance Act reauthorized the establishment of a task force to research implementation of programs and activities to facilitate the reentry of non-violent ex-offenders back into society. The original bill outlined provisions such as substance abuse treatment, family based programs, educational programs, employment programs, training programs, and housing programs to assist non-violent ex-offenders in the transition from prison to society. It passed in the House of Representatives in 2004, and the bill moved on to the Senate.
The bill drew strong bipartisan support but was blocked in the Senate. It was reintroduced in 2005 in the 109th Congress as H.R. 1704. Again, the House of Representatives passed the bill and it moved to the Senate, but the bill failed to pass again.
In the 110th Congress in 2007, the bill was reintroduced as H.R. 1593 and passed unanimously in the House of Representatives in November, 2007. It moved on to the Senate, where it was put on hold on December 20, 2007.
Because H.R. 4676, H.R. 1704, and H.R. 1593 had focused on state prisoners, the question of how the bills related to federal prisoners facilitated the introduction on December 5, 2007, of H.R. 623, which would provide federal prisoners with the same opportunities as state prisoners for re-entry to society. But on January 3, 2008, legislation to enact H.R. 623 was blocked due to concern that it would increase federal spending too much on untested programs.
Finally, on March 11, 2008, the Senate finally passed the Second Chance Act of 2007. The bill now sits on the desk of President Bush, awaiting his signature to be passed into law.
Population and Eligibility
Since nearly 650,000 offenders are released from prison each year and two-thirds of released offenders are expected to be rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years of release, the ex-offender population that could potentially be affected by the SCA is immense.
The SCA specifies five criteria that individuals must meet in order to qualify for services. First, there cannot be any convictions for a violent offense nor for a nonviolent offense other than the one they are trying to expunge. Second, all requirements of the sentence must have been fulfilled. Third, the ex-offender must have remained free from drug and alcohol dependency for at least one year and have been rehabilitated to the court’s satisfaction, if that condition were part of their sentence. Fourth, a GED or high school diploma must have been obtained. Finally, one year of community service must have been performed, as determined by the court.
Implications for Social Work
The implications of the Second Chance Act (SCA) for the field of Social Work could - and should - be significant. The SCA embodies the profession’s core values of granting unconditional positive regard, alleviating oppression, and empowering clients via the strengths perspective.
Employment: Social workers are uniquely equipped to be the providers of the SCA’s programs because of their psycho-social perspective. SCA program providers will need to both help clients at their point of interaction with their new environments as well as address the psychological needs of the ex-offender population.
The psychological needs of this population are of particular interest to Social Workers as the primary providers of mental health care in the U.S. Research shows that 64 % of the prison population is coping with some kind of mental health issue (Harcourt, 2007). Treatment of these issues will be vital to the success of ex-offenders.
Recent research shows that the rate of recidivism for ex-offenders is likely linked to their self-narrative, including whether they view both positive and negative events in their lives as internal or external, stable or unstable, and as the result of global or specific causes (Maruna, 2004). Treatment is then geared toward changing the causal thought patterns, often through Cognitive Behavioral Theory, which social workers are equipped to provide.
Education: Given the range of programs and degree of funding entailed in the SCA, there will be an immediate need for more schools of social work to offer concentrations in criminal justice and reentry practice and for all schools to expand their curriculum in this field of practice. A review of the offerings of the top ten social work programs in the United States (as ranked by U.S. News & World Report) shows that none of them offer a concentration or specialization in working with this immense population.
For the programs of the SCA to be successful (and therefore to ensure their continued funding), social workers must draw on more and better research-based evidence to inform their work with the ex-offender population. The failure of schools to immediately and successfully equip social workers will render the SCA useless.
Practice: The practice challenge to the field of Social Work will be keeping up with the demand for services. Given the large number clients who will be eligible for these services - a sizable number of which clients would not have otherwise sought services or been eligible for federally-subsidized services - the demand for social workers will increase significantly. Given the already overwhelming caseload of most social workers, the field will have to recruit and educate great numbers to keep up with the demand - and to prevent the even greater burdening of existing social workers.
Oversight and Knowledge: Due to federal oversight, social workers will have to become familiar with the guidelines of SCA programs in order to ensure future funding. Agencies must evaluate program operations to ensure compliance with federal guidelines.
Social workers should be contributing data about their outcomes with the SCA’s registry to expand the field’s knowledge of effective - and ineffective - practices. Also, they will be responsible for consulting the resource center to ensure they are offering the best services to their clients.
Advocacy: The net effect of returning ex-offenders to the mainstream of society may be the easing of the perpetual stigma of prison time on ex-offenders who have completed their punishment, opening the door for continued improvement in the treatment of this population. The easing of the stigma and increased participation in society should lead to lower crime rates and increased economic advancement not only for ex-offenders but for the disadvantaged groups (minorities, the poor) of which ex-offenders are disproportionately a part.
Social workers will have an ethical responsibility to advocate for the continuation and improvement of the SCA’s service. Also, because the amount of funding entailed in the SCA is not adequate to meet all of the re-entry needs of ex-offenders, social workers must lobby for an increase in funding. The $150 million allotted annually for implementation of the SCA is a drop in the bucket of the $180 billion spent annually in the U.S. for law enforcement, judicial activities, and corrections, and social workers must lobby for shifting such spending from reactive to proactive endeavors.
Failure of Passage
Should President Bush veto the SCA, it will still have an impact. The legislative activity around the SCA has brought greater attention to the issues surrounding ex-offenders; legislators, activists, and practitioners will be better informed in their efforts to improve the lot of ex-offenders as well as their impact on society. The success of the current version of the bill to this date will embolden the legislators of the next congress to reintroduce the SCA after the next presidential election. The process of the SCA will continue to influence the national dialogue.
Conclusion
The SCA can be one of the most influential acts within the last ten years aside from the welfare reform bill. It will help to employ over 650,000 men and women per year - 6.5 million taxpaying citizens over the span of ten years. The SCA is not the complete answer to our nation’s overcrowded prison population and rate of recidivism, but it is a starting point that shows that there are other ways to help this population. The programs that will be funded by the SCA are a significant step in the right direction.
Bibliography
Eggers, M., Muñoz, J., Sciulli, J., Crist, P., & I, I. (2005). The Community Reintegration Project: Occupational Therapy at Work in a County Jail. Occupational Therapy in Health Care. 20 (1), 17-37.
Harcourt, Bernard E. "The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars." The New York Times 15 Jan. 2007.NYT
Maruna, Shadd. "Desistance From Crime and Explanatory Style; A New Direction in the Psychology of Reform." Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 20.2 11(2004): 184-200.
Specter, Arlen (2008 mar 11). U.S. Senate Passes Second Chance Act. Retrieved April 7, 2008, from www.achsa.org.
Uggen, C. (2000) Work as turning point in life course of criminals. A duration model of age, employment, and recidivism. American Sociological Review 67:529-546.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Policy Brief - Second Chance Act
by Brady Beziat, 2007. Copyright, Brady Beziat. Do not use without permission of the author.
“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Introduction and Scope of the Problem
The United States has a huge problem that much of our nation and our government have seemingly ignored for far too long. Recent estimates show that there are over 16 million current or ex-felons in the United States (Uggen, 2000). This represents a population larger than many states. This is also a population that is at a great risk. Each year about 650,000 people are released from prison and nearly two-thirds will be arrested and possibly returned to prison. These numbers clearly show that this is a crisis that our current system is not successful in arming these people with the proper community living skills necessary to reintegrate into the community (Eggers, Munoz, Sciulli, et. al (2005)
Drug addiction, lack of job skills, housing issues, and negative employer attitudes towards hiring ex-felons, all attribute to the types of problems and discriminations that cause the high rates of recidivism. There is a need for our government to increase funding to address this issue or the issue will increase into being an even larger problem. If our prisons are unsuccessful at rehabilitating prisoners, shouldn’t our society step in and try and find ways to fix this? There is not enough money going into preparing this population how to function, instead we spend billions on putting them away and when they come back out, the statistics show that they are not successful. This system is not working.
There has been, in recent times, a new push to spend more on acclimating ex-felons to function positively in our society, rather than to keep spending mega dollars in order not to really deal with this population and their issues. Better job training, better education, better drug rehabilitation, and better attitudes by employers would likely decrease these rates and improve our society as a whole.
Past Policy
While current efforts to improve this situation and develop stronger policies seem to be underway, one must give an overview of past reentry policy and what it tried to accomplish. Current national policies have always earmarked funding/grants to allow for states and local communities to develop and implement their own programs. Each state has its own Department Of Corrections that administers reentry programs. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 supports this in that Congress found that crime is a local problem the must be dealt with by State and local governments. Many different policies exist that differ at the local and state levels.
When one thinks about it, ex-offenders are most likely subject to different levels of reentry services in different states. Past policies have not addressed this nor the fact that the prison population has grown to over two million people who are currently in prison in the U.S today. The federal government has only thrown money and grants at the problem. There has not been any national oversight of how these programs within the states are working. It is like the government is just giving their money away and not checking to see what has happened with that money.
Furthermore, past policies have been created without taking into account the huge drug problems in our society today. For example, in 2002, drug offenders accounted for 32% of felons convicted in State courts (Durose & Langan, 2004). Recidivism rates for these offenders who do not get appropriate treatment and most research rates that one finds, put recidivism rates as high as 67% (U.S Department of Justice). That’s 2 out of 3 people going back to jail upon release.
While there has been some improvement in treatment programs for drug abuse offenders, there seems to be a need for a national oversight group that will monitor how the states are doing to manage program effectiveness.
Current Policy
Current policies in regards to prisoners seem to focus more on locking up offenders and keeping them locked up. The “Three Strikes” and other mandatory sentencing policies focus certain crimes have focused on being reactive and not proactive in the approach towards crime and repeat offenses. Now States are realizing that they cannot afford to keep expanding their prison systems and building new prisons is not the answer. Texas, for example, estimates that it would have to spend over a billion dollars to prevent a shortfall of 17,000 prison beds by 2012 (Justice Center, 2007). So they, like many other states are now starting to feel that they must take a new approach and invest in service that will treat and prevent.
The policies that our states institute currently seemingly show a no concern for cost and program effectiveness. How can we continue to pour billions of dollars into cold, distant prisons that are just going to keep growing and growing. This is an economic and social disaster. Federal and local governments have current policy that is taking away valuable tax payer dollars being spent in the wrong direction. States are spending billions of dollars to put people away, and could cut that number down if we only had to put them a way one time.
Our current prison system does control many people who have committed crimes that are to horrible to let them come back into our society. But as you saw earlier, many of these people are drug offenders, or other non-violent offenders that our policies do not address. Pouring money into actually fixing their problem would most likely be cheaper than to just keep put them away.
Proposed Policy
Congress has recognized this as well. Currently there are bills in the House and Senate that recognize address this situation. It is called the Second Chance Act of 2007 H.R1593/S.1060. The bill was introduced by Representative Danny Davis (D-IL) and The Second Chance Act actually passed in the House of Representatives on November 13, 2007 with a vote of 347-62., it has bipartisan support thus far, and it looks promising. Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) and others have also introduced a version of this bill in the senate. This is a major victory in this arena. Similar legislation has been proposed that last several years but has not made it out of the House of Representatives.
This bill is designed to provide funding to help strengthen or develop programs for released offenders to successfully reenter their communities. It really addresses funding towards drug & mental health treatment, job training services, and housing services. These constitute some of the major barriers that this population faces after “serving their time”. Also, it provides for a level of federal overview of these programs that seem to be lacking in dealing with this crisis.
Housing programs are a major cornerstone of the Second Chance Act. It helps to provide funding for stable living situations for those when released. Obviously this is a basic needs concern and the proposed Act will allow states to offer housing in state-run or find help in securing private sector housing.
The proposed funding for these types of services total about $230 million over two years with appropriations of $65 million/year from the House and 50 million/year from the Senate respectively. While this does not seem like a huge amount a funding, it is a start in the right direction. It addresses many problems and shows that our government is acknowledging them while possibly trying to change them. The Second Chance Act also provides more funding to provide incentives to people who have been incarcerated before by providing federal bonding money to those employers. This is just more evidence that our government is starting to recognize the problems faced by citizens who have spent time in prisons around our country.
It is supported not only in our congress, but it is supported by several outside groups. NAMI, the National Alliance for Mental Illness supports the legislation. They feel that linking prisons to better reentry programs and mental health care in the community will greatly help in the problem of recidivism that we are facing. The American Bar Association, The National Alliance to End Homelessness, and dozens of other groups who deal with this population and their problems regularly all support this bill.
With the passing of the bill in the House of Representatives, and hopefully soon in the Senate, we may now want to think about actually increasing the funding. A more radical idea may be to go a few steps further and to take money that is earmarked for building new prisons, and put that money towards the goals of the Second Chance Act. This would allow for the powers that be to really see how social programs, if funded properly, could really help people. This bill could improve by adding programs that could further help with things like the expongement of records for non-violent criminals, increased federal bonding, and provide for better employment opportunities to this population at risk as well.
Key Organizations/People
American Bar Association -Legal Group supporting this legilislation
740 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
Phone 202.662.1000
www.abanet.org
Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) - Introduced the Act in the Senate
Wilmington Office
1105 N. Market St. St 2000
Wilmington DE, 19801
Phone 302.573.6345
Representative Danny K. Davis (D-IL)-Introduced the Act in the House of Representatives
Washington Office
2159 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone 202.225.5006
FAMM- Families Against Mandatory Minimums- Strong supporters of the Act
National Office
1612 K Street NW Suite 700
Washington, DC 20006
Phone 202.822.6700
www.famm.org
NAMI-National Alliance on Mental Illness- Mental Health group who supports Act
2107 Wilson Blvd. Suite 300
Arlington, VA 22201
Phone 703.524.7600
www.nami.org
National Institute of Corrections
Administrative Offices
320 1st St, NW
Washington, DC 20534
Phone 800.995.6423
Rehabilitated.org
The Rehabilitated Project
PO BOX 1355
San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693
Phone 949.493.6000
Glossary of Terms
Discrimination: 1 the act, practice, or instance of discriminating categorically rather than individual
Expongement: having criminal records removed from permanent record
Federal Bonding: a program by which our government insures companies who hire workers who have felony convictions in order to help them in case the employee commits another crime
Recidivism: a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior; especially: relapse into criminal behavior
Reentry: a second or new entry, a playing card that will enable a player to regain the lead
Rehabilitate: 1. to restore to former capacity: Reinstate 2. to restore to good repute: reestablish the good name of
Bibliography
Durose, M.R., Langan, P.A. (2004) Drug Policy Alliance 2004 State by state. Retrieved from http://www.drugpolicy.org/statebystate/.
Eggers, M., Muñoz, J., Sciulli, J., Crist, P., & I, I. (2005). The Community Reintegration Project: Occupational Therapy at Work in a County Jail. Occupational Therapy in Health Care. 20 (1), 17-37.
FBI Stats http://www.cor.state.pa.us/stats/lib/stats/BJS%20Recidivism%20Study.pdf
Harrison, B., & Scher, R.C. (2004). Offenders and post release jobs: Variables influencing success and failure. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 39(3) 35-68.
Justice Center. “Recent and Projected Growth of the Texas Prison Population.” The Council of State Government. January 30, 2007.
Kethineni, S., & Falcone, D.N. (2007). Employment and ex-offenders in the United States: Effects of legal and extra legal factors. Probation Journal 54 (1), 36-51..
Kurlycheck, M.C., Bram, R., & Bushwa, S.D. (2007). Enduring risk? Old Criminal records and predictions of future criminal involvement. Crime & Delinquency 53(1), 64-83
Lam, H., & Harcourt, M. (2003). The use of criminal record in employment decisions;The rights of ex-offenders, employers, and the public. Journal of Business Ethics 47(3), 237-252.
"Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968." Major Acts of Congress. Ed. Brian K. Landsberg. Macmillan-Thomson Gale, 2004. eNotes.com. 2006. 4 Nov, 2007
Pager, D. (2003). The mark of a criminal record. American Journal of Sociology 108(5), 937-975..
Pogarsky, G. (2006, August). CRIMINAL RECORDS, EMPLOYMENT, & RECIDIVISM. Criminology & Public Policy, 5(3), 479-482.
Ruddell, R., & Winfree, L.T. (2006). Setting aside criminal convictions in Canada: A successful approach to offender reintegration. The Prison Journal 86(4), 452-469.
Uggen, C. (2000) Work as turning point in life course of criminals. A duration model of age, employment, and recidivism. American Sociological Review 67:529-546.
U.S Department of Justice Website http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/reentry/recidivism.htm
“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Introduction and Scope of the Problem
The United States has a huge problem that much of our nation and our government have seemingly ignored for far too long. Recent estimates show that there are over 16 million current or ex-felons in the United States (Uggen, 2000). This represents a population larger than many states. This is also a population that is at a great risk. Each year about 650,000 people are released from prison and nearly two-thirds will be arrested and possibly returned to prison. These numbers clearly show that this is a crisis that our current system is not successful in arming these people with the proper community living skills necessary to reintegrate into the community (Eggers, Munoz, Sciulli, et. al (2005)
Drug addiction, lack of job skills, housing issues, and negative employer attitudes towards hiring ex-felons, all attribute to the types of problems and discriminations that cause the high rates of recidivism. There is a need for our government to increase funding to address this issue or the issue will increase into being an even larger problem. If our prisons are unsuccessful at rehabilitating prisoners, shouldn’t our society step in and try and find ways to fix this? There is not enough money going into preparing this population how to function, instead we spend billions on putting them away and when they come back out, the statistics show that they are not successful. This system is not working.
There has been, in recent times, a new push to spend more on acclimating ex-felons to function positively in our society, rather than to keep spending mega dollars in order not to really deal with this population and their issues. Better job training, better education, better drug rehabilitation, and better attitudes by employers would likely decrease these rates and improve our society as a whole.
Past Policy
While current efforts to improve this situation and develop stronger policies seem to be underway, one must give an overview of past reentry policy and what it tried to accomplish. Current national policies have always earmarked funding/grants to allow for states and local communities to develop and implement their own programs. Each state has its own Department Of Corrections that administers reentry programs. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 supports this in that Congress found that crime is a local problem the must be dealt with by State and local governments. Many different policies exist that differ at the local and state levels.
When one thinks about it, ex-offenders are most likely subject to different levels of reentry services in different states. Past policies have not addressed this nor the fact that the prison population has grown to over two million people who are currently in prison in the U.S today. The federal government has only thrown money and grants at the problem. There has not been any national oversight of how these programs within the states are working. It is like the government is just giving their money away and not checking to see what has happened with that money.
Furthermore, past policies have been created without taking into account the huge drug problems in our society today. For example, in 2002, drug offenders accounted for 32% of felons convicted in State courts (Durose & Langan, 2004). Recidivism rates for these offenders who do not get appropriate treatment and most research rates that one finds, put recidivism rates as high as 67% (U.S Department of Justice). That’s 2 out of 3 people going back to jail upon release.
While there has been some improvement in treatment programs for drug abuse offenders, there seems to be a need for a national oversight group that will monitor how the states are doing to manage program effectiveness.
Current Policy
Current policies in regards to prisoners seem to focus more on locking up offenders and keeping them locked up. The “Three Strikes” and other mandatory sentencing policies focus certain crimes have focused on being reactive and not proactive in the approach towards crime and repeat offenses. Now States are realizing that they cannot afford to keep expanding their prison systems and building new prisons is not the answer. Texas, for example, estimates that it would have to spend over a billion dollars to prevent a shortfall of 17,000 prison beds by 2012 (Justice Center, 2007). So they, like many other states are now starting to feel that they must take a new approach and invest in service that will treat and prevent.
The policies that our states institute currently seemingly show a no concern for cost and program effectiveness. How can we continue to pour billions of dollars into cold, distant prisons that are just going to keep growing and growing. This is an economic and social disaster. Federal and local governments have current policy that is taking away valuable tax payer dollars being spent in the wrong direction. States are spending billions of dollars to put people away, and could cut that number down if we only had to put them a way one time.
Our current prison system does control many people who have committed crimes that are to horrible to let them come back into our society. But as you saw earlier, many of these people are drug offenders, or other non-violent offenders that our policies do not address. Pouring money into actually fixing their problem would most likely be cheaper than to just keep put them away.
Proposed Policy
Congress has recognized this as well. Currently there are bills in the House and Senate that recognize address this situation. It is called the Second Chance Act of 2007 H.R1593/S.1060. The bill was introduced by Representative Danny Davis (D-IL) and The Second Chance Act actually passed in the House of Representatives on November 13, 2007 with a vote of 347-62., it has bipartisan support thus far, and it looks promising. Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) and others have also introduced a version of this bill in the senate. This is a major victory in this arena. Similar legislation has been proposed that last several years but has not made it out of the House of Representatives.
This bill is designed to provide funding to help strengthen or develop programs for released offenders to successfully reenter their communities. It really addresses funding towards drug & mental health treatment, job training services, and housing services. These constitute some of the major barriers that this population faces after “serving their time”. Also, it provides for a level of federal overview of these programs that seem to be lacking in dealing with this crisis.
Housing programs are a major cornerstone of the Second Chance Act. It helps to provide funding for stable living situations for those when released. Obviously this is a basic needs concern and the proposed Act will allow states to offer housing in state-run or find help in securing private sector housing.
The proposed funding for these types of services total about $230 million over two years with appropriations of $65 million/year from the House and 50 million/year from the Senate respectively. While this does not seem like a huge amount a funding, it is a start in the right direction. It addresses many problems and shows that our government is acknowledging them while possibly trying to change them. The Second Chance Act also provides more funding to provide incentives to people who have been incarcerated before by providing federal bonding money to those employers. This is just more evidence that our government is starting to recognize the problems faced by citizens who have spent time in prisons around our country.
It is supported not only in our congress, but it is supported by several outside groups. NAMI, the National Alliance for Mental Illness supports the legislation. They feel that linking prisons to better reentry programs and mental health care in the community will greatly help in the problem of recidivism that we are facing. The American Bar Association, The National Alliance to End Homelessness, and dozens of other groups who deal with this population and their problems regularly all support this bill.
With the passing of the bill in the House of Representatives, and hopefully soon in the Senate, we may now want to think about actually increasing the funding. A more radical idea may be to go a few steps further and to take money that is earmarked for building new prisons, and put that money towards the goals of the Second Chance Act. This would allow for the powers that be to really see how social programs, if funded properly, could really help people. This bill could improve by adding programs that could further help with things like the expongement of records for non-violent criminals, increased federal bonding, and provide for better employment opportunities to this population at risk as well.
Key Organizations/People
American Bar Association -Legal Group supporting this legilislation
740 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
Phone 202.662.1000
www.abanet.org
Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) - Introduced the Act in the Senate
Wilmington Office
1105 N. Market St. St 2000
Wilmington DE, 19801
Phone 302.573.6345
Representative Danny K. Davis (D-IL)-Introduced the Act in the House of Representatives
Washington Office
2159 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone 202.225.5006
FAMM- Families Against Mandatory Minimums- Strong supporters of the Act
National Office
1612 K Street NW Suite 700
Washington, DC 20006
Phone 202.822.6700
www.famm.org
NAMI-National Alliance on Mental Illness- Mental Health group who supports Act
2107 Wilson Blvd. Suite 300
Arlington, VA 22201
Phone 703.524.7600
www.nami.org
National Institute of Corrections
Administrative Offices
320 1st St, NW
Washington, DC 20534
Phone 800.995.6423
Rehabilitated.org
The Rehabilitated Project
PO BOX 1355
San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693
Phone 949.493.6000
Glossary of Terms
Discrimination: 1 the act, practice, or instance of discriminating categorically rather than individual
Expongement: having criminal records removed from permanent record
Federal Bonding: a program by which our government insures companies who hire workers who have felony convictions in order to help them in case the employee commits another crime
Recidivism: a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior; especially: relapse into criminal behavior
Reentry: a second or new entry, a playing card that will enable a player to regain the lead
Rehabilitate: 1. to restore to former capacity: Reinstate 2. to restore to good repute: reestablish the good name of
Bibliography
Durose, M.R., Langan, P.A. (2004) Drug Policy Alliance 2004 State by state. Retrieved from http://www.drugpolicy.org/statebystate/.
Eggers, M., Muñoz, J., Sciulli, J., Crist, P., & I, I. (2005). The Community Reintegration Project: Occupational Therapy at Work in a County Jail. Occupational Therapy in Health Care. 20 (1), 17-37.
FBI Stats http://www.cor.state.pa.us/stats/lib/stats/BJS%20Recidivism%20Study.pdf
Harrison, B., & Scher, R.C. (2004). Offenders and post release jobs: Variables influencing success and failure. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 39(3) 35-68.
Justice Center. “Recent and Projected Growth of the Texas Prison Population.” The Council of State Government. January 30, 2007.
Kethineni, S., & Falcone, D.N. (2007). Employment and ex-offenders in the United States: Effects of legal and extra legal factors. Probation Journal 54 (1), 36-51..
Kurlycheck, M.C., Bram, R., & Bushwa, S.D. (2007). Enduring risk? Old Criminal records and predictions of future criminal involvement. Crime & Delinquency 53(1), 64-83
Lam, H., & Harcourt, M. (2003). The use of criminal record in employment decisions;The rights of ex-offenders, employers, and the public. Journal of Business Ethics 47(3), 237-252.
"Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968." Major Acts of Congress. Ed. Brian K. Landsberg. Macmillan-Thomson Gale, 2004. eNotes.com. 2006. 4 Nov, 2007
Pager, D. (2003). The mark of a criminal record. American Journal of Sociology 108(5), 937-975..
Pogarsky, G. (2006, August). CRIMINAL RECORDS, EMPLOYMENT, & RECIDIVISM. Criminology & Public Policy, 5(3), 479-482.
Ruddell, R., & Winfree, L.T. (2006). Setting aside criminal convictions in Canada: A successful approach to offender reintegration. The Prison Journal 86(4), 452-469.
Uggen, C. (2000) Work as turning point in life course of criminals. A duration model of age, employment, and recidivism. American Sociological Review 67:529-546.
U.S Department of Justice Website http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/reentry/recidivism.htm
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