Former inmates still running for their lives

A jail cell. Photo Credit: Andrew Garn

Thousands of inmates are released through the front gates of New York State’s correctional institutions every year. Most were paroled. Others finished maximum sentences.

The state, however, hardly has a plan for these men and women, many of whom return to New York City and its neighboring communities. Those on parole will be given a list of rules which, if violated, could lead to re-incarceration. As they leave the prisons, they get $40 and a sandwich.

Once they hit the streets, they will be of little concern to the state. Those who have no family will immediately join the ranks of the homeless, usually directed to the drug-filled shelter system — or halfway houses, many of which are under federal investigation.

Employment, like housing, is an immediate necessity. In the search for a job, many will not have the identification papers needed and will waste days pursuing those forms. They will need funds to travel by subway or bus for interviews. Jumping turnstiles, if caught, could be a parole violation.

More than 100,000 formerly incarcerated persons will hit the streets of the metropolitan area this year, released from city, state, and federal penal institutions. At The Fortune Society in Long Island City, we will provide services to some 5,000 of these men and women.

Little or nothing happens in prison to prepare people for re-entry. There are scattered programs, often effectively run by volunteers. Any with success, like the state-financed college classes or the long-ago aborted Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Dannemora, are canceled. Lack of funds is the usual reason given, even though those programs had low recidivist rates, saving taxpayers money.

The prison experience is a major factor of recidivism. The obsessive use of solitary confinement is the Department of Correction’s tacit admission that it is incapable of or disinterested in preparing inmates to function in a civil society. Any inmate exhibiting violent behavior or just ignoring a rule can be placed in isolation, exacerbating anger and self-hatred.

In New York and around the country, the notion of re-entry historically has not been a government concern.

New York State Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott is conducting an inquiry on policies and procedures following the escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. Perhaps she should widen her inquiry, to include the plight of those who walk out of the prisons after years of having decisions made for them and then arrive home ill-prepared for what’s ahead. We lock up too many people, many of whom have significant mental health problems; on average, we hold them far too long in a brutal, violent environment; and we do painfully little in terms of programs and services to help them make the difficult transition from incarceration back to society.

We see how hundreds of former prisoners each week reach out for guidance in housing, jobs, health care, family counseling, personal and group therapy, and education opportunities, all survival components that were virtually ignored while in prison.

Returning to society from prison is an exhausting challenge. Former inmates report on the tension of riding on a crowded subway car, being embarrassed for lack of familiarity with changing technology, or just learning how to make decisions, a process that had been taken away from them.

If you really want to reduce recidivism and crime, you can begin with the state, its prisons and its archaic priorities.

David Rothenberg founded The Fortune Society in 1967. He is a Fortune volunteer and an activist for criminal justice reform.