Tom Knox has a statement out on prison conditions, which a judge called unconstitutional this week. He hints at something important -- that we need to prevent one-time offenders from committing crimes again -- though he says only in general terms how he'd do that.
“If you improve support services to prisoners – if you make sure they know how to read and write, you give them some kind of career training and you make sure there are enough probation officers to help place them in jobs and keep them on the right path, you won’t have so many of the same people taking up space at $80 a day.”
Others in the city are working on the ex-offender issue, including City Councilman Wilson Goode, Jr., and former City Councilman Ed Schwartz. This is a very important piece of a crime platform; though preventing repeat crimes must be incredibly difficult (not to mention expensive, for proper drug treatment and education), if we could even reduce them, we would solve so much of Philly's crime problem.
We'll keep tabs on what the candidates say about this through the primary.
Comments (2)
Nutter has a whole section in his Anti-Crime proposal dedicated to this exact issue. I guess people missed it, but here is what he said:
"I will expand the Youth Violence Reduction Program throughout the City, bringing its benefits to all the neighborhoods that need it.
We must create meaningful supports and resources for the many young people who may turn or return to crime. Philadelphia is the birthplace of a remarkable program geared toward steering young probationers away from violence and into productive adulthood, the Youth Violence Reduction Project or YVRP. This unique collaboration uses a dual approach to combine intensive supervision used to monitor young probationers with intensive supports designed to stabilize and add resources to the young probationers’ lives. Teams of police officers, “street workers”, and probation officers work together to supervise and support reduced caseloads of participants.
After seven years, YVRP has shown remarkable results.15 The program operates in the 12th, 19th, 24th, and 25th Police Districts and served over a thousand young Philadelphians and their families and communities. YVRP has dramatically reduced homicide rates in the neighborhoods in which it has been implemented. It powerfully demonstrates the benefits of collaboration, bringing together the comparative advantages of the Police Department, Probation and Parole, the District Attorney’s Office, the School District, Behavioral Health, and others. The current YVRP budget of less than $5 million per year is insufficient to address the community’s needs to reduce violence. I will identify and lobby for state and federal funding in order to increase YVRP funding to the level warranted by the extraordinary circumstances we face.
I will invest in a real prisoner reentry program that builds meaningful attachments between former prisoners and employers.
We also need to support the adults who re-enter the community after prison. Recent research by the National Academy of Science demonstrates that employment is the strongest predictor of whether an adult ex-prisoner will return to prison. Yet, finding and keeping a job can be a nearly impossible challenge for many ex-prisoners. Philadelphia is the birthplace of another widely heralded program, this one geared toward helping adults make the transition to employment, often for the very first time.
Philadelphia’s Transitional Works Corporation (TWC) is a leader in the transitional jobs field. Transitional jobs help participants establish a work history, build skills and good work habits, and develop confidence in their abilities. Founded in 1998, TWC’s main program focus has been working with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients who have been receiving assistance for at least twenty-four months. This population faces many barriers similar to those faced by ex- prisoners: substance abuse, mental illness and depression, poor physical health, low skill levels, low educational attainment, and minimal work histories. As an extension of the national prisoner re-entry program known as Ready4Work, transitional jobs can significantly reduce recidivism among participants.
This is an essential step in breaking the cycle of repeat offenders that plague our most vulnerable neighborhoods. By adapting the transitional work model, we can immunize employers from some of the risks and costs associated with hiring ex-prisoners with little or no work history while at the same time providing ex-prisoners with immediate and rewarding employment in real jobs.
In the first year of my administration, I will create job opportunities for at least 500 former prisoners through this program. The cost of this will be approximately $3 million. Possible funding sources include federal and state workforce development funds and private foundation grants, in addition to the City’s general fund.
I will direct the Managing Director to review City personnel practices to balance past crimes against potential employment in order to make City hiring fairer and more common sense.
Chicago and Boston provide another model for support of ex-offenders in their return to the community. Both cities have revised their hiring practices to give former prisoners a better chance to obtain certain types of City jobs. In the words of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, “Implementing this policy won’t be easy, but it’s the right thing to do. We cannot ask private employers to consider hiring former prisoners unless the City practices what it preaches.”
In addition to City hiring practices, I will direct the Managing Director’s Office to review the hiring practices of City contractors and design guidelines to encourage the appropriate employment of ex-offenders. As a first step, I will require City contractors to identify possible jobs for which ex-offenders might be appropriate employees.
I propose a new three-year tax credit against a Philadelphia employer’s Business Privilege Tax for each new certified hire and retention of an ex-offender.
The best outcome for all concerned is when ex-offenders can make the transition to productive and rewarding jobs in the private economy of regular work. The Federal government has two financial incentive programs to benefit employers who hire ex-offenders. One program gives an employer a federal tax break of $2,400 once an ex-offender has been hired and has worked for a certain number of hours. The other program provides fidelity insurance bonds as an incentive to hire an ex-offender who might normally be considered high risk by mainstream insurance companies. These programs are often under-utilized. Some employers have reported that they were “on the fence” about hiring an ex-offender, but the financial incentives “sealed the deal.”
In my first year in office, I will seek a three-year tax credit to provide an additional financial incentive to businesses who hire an ex-offender. The new re-entry program will include funding and supports for the pursuit of vocational and technical training as well as tuition grants at Community College of Philadelphia. These training and education supports will lead to certifications designed by employers to meet real requirements for successful advancement in the labor market."
We all know that this is a major problem. But only Michael Nutter has laid out a specific plan to solve it.
Posted by Esquisite | January 28, 2007 10:38 AM
Nutter has definitely been active in working on this issue. I attended a townhall meeting on crime in West Philly a year or two ago, with Archye Leacock of IDAAY in attendance. When asked if there were any specific people who should be contacted about the city supporting his program, I remember Leacock mentioning Michael Nutter, along with (I think) Blondell Reynolds-Brown and Marian Tasco, as being the city council members who had been most helpful in expanding his program (at the time, it had just started operating in the 12th and was scheduled to begin operation in the 19th).
http://www.idaay.org
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January 28, 2007 12:55 PM