For Julius Walker, success is defined by small moments. Like the time one of Walker’s students called his cohort his “family.”
The significance of such a moment might escape the notice of some people working in the criminal justice system. But not Walker. He knew right then that his student was going to be all right. “When [students] know they have a support system to latch on to, it gives them a lot more confidence to face the world,” Walker says. “Our goal is to get the young people to know that we are in this with them.”
Walker is the program coordinator for Arches Transformative Mentoring, a New York City-based program that works with youth on probation to change, in sustainable ways, the behaviors and attitudes that can lead to criminal activity.
The key to this program is an initiative called the credible messenger approach to restorative justice. It pairs at-risk and justice-involved youth, who are individuals who’ve been involved with the criminal system, with people who have had comparable life experiences, such as ex-convicts or ex-gang members. “When you think of a credible messenger, you think of those closest to the problem are closest to the solution,” says Jason Clark, the program manager at King County Credible Messengers Initiative in Washington.
These credible messengers, who are paid and trained for their work, support and guide 16-to-24 year-olds in every aspect of life. Whether it’s explaining how probation works or answering a text message at 2 a.m., credible messengers provide tools, strategies and personal experience to keep the youth out of the criminal system.
A credible messenger approach not only prevents young adults from reentering the penal system, it also has the potential to save money. In 2011, 43 percent of people released from incarceration were rearrested, according to Pew Center on the States. According to Vera Institute of Justice, in 2015 the average cost of an inmate was $33,274 a year. In places like New York, it can cost around $247,000 a year to house a single inmate, according to A More Just New York City.
Credible messengers sit at the intersection of education, government and community, and the approach is designed to work holistically. Program officers work directly with government employees, like law enforcement and teachers. For example, the Arches Transformative Mentoring program relies on probation officers referring young adults to the program, whereas many mentorship programs do not have those same connections.
Programs in Jackson, Mississippi and Staten Island, New York, have benefited from credible messenger initiatives. And they’ve been proven to work.
These communities are seeing reductions in rearrests, violations and antisocial behavior. Beyond that, youths are more engaged in their community, and often become credible messenger alumni themselves.
Recidivism rates have fallen drastically among youth participating in the Arches Transformative Mentoring program. Those youths had a 69 percent lower recidivism rate within a year as compared to youths who did not participate in the program. And after two years, it was 57 percent lower than their peers, according to an evaluation by the Urban Institute.
In New York, where more than 2,500 justice-involved people have been paired with credible messengers, that translates to large numbers of youth staying out of prison.
These results are inspiring other communities to adopt a credible messenger approach.
Across the country, at the King County Credible Messengers Initiative, Clark is implementing a credible messenger program for all young adults living in his county.
“Not only are we able to provide opportunities that can help previously incarcerated leaders grow in their professional leadership,” Clark says. “But we keep our young people out of the system, and we keep our communities safe.”
Clark believes credible messengers have the potential to work in every county, every city and every jurisdiction. “There are huge opportunities for this to be taken on nationwide,” he says.
More: This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline
Tag: recidivism
At This Prison, Puppies and Inmates Give Each Other Purpose
At this women’s prison in upstate New York, puppies are proving to be more than just woman’s best friend.
“They make you feel like you’re worth something,” says Dunasha Payne, an inmate at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. “And they make you wake up every day, that you have a purpose in life and that you’re not just a prisoner.”
Payne is part of Puppies Behind Bars, a program that teaches inmates to train puppies as service animals for veterans and first responders suffering from PTSD. Not only do the dogs bring comfort to the people they serve, but the inmates participating in the program are “the most well-behaved” in the prison, according to one guard. Watch the video above and read our full article to see how Puppies Behind Bars is making a difference for people in and out of prison.
These Dogs Are Giving Inmates a Paws-itive Path Forward
Charlene Mess was having a bad dream. At least, she was acting like she was.
As she rocked back and forth, screaming and moaning, her dog, Champ, shot his head up and leapt into action. He pulled off Mess’ sheets and flicked on the room’s lights with his wet nose. It took him a few tries, but when he finally switched it on, there was thunderous applause.
Champ was demonstrating his latest trick in front of a room of dog trainers, who also happen to be inmates at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison for women in New York, about an hour north of Manhattan.
“Good boy!” Mess said, jumping up from her makeshift bed, which in reality was a long table, as she fed Champ treats from a kibble pouch that she had belted over her prison uniform.
The flipping-on-the-light trick was just one of many that Champ showed off during a recent class at Bedford Hills, where he and Mess participate in Puppies Behind Bars (PBB). The New York–based nonprofit, which operates in six correctional facilities and works with about 140 prisoners, trains inmates to raise service dogs for wounded veterans and first-responders suffering from trauma-related disorders. They also raise and train explosive-detection canines (EDCs) for law enforcement.
The benefits of the program are circular: Not only do the dogs go on to serve those who need help, they also positively impact the inmates who raise them from 8-week-old puppies, providing them with a sense of purpose and redemption. According to PBB, many of the puppy-raisers go on to work professionally as dog trainers and groomers after they’re paroled.
“Craig makes me feel whole,” says Dunasha Payne, fighting back tears as she speaks about her 2-year-old black lab, which is expected to graduate from PPB and start life as a service dog within the next few weeks. “And I love him so much, and it’s like, I tried my best with my dog, and I put all my personal feeling aside to raise him to the fullest potential that I could. But they make you feel like you’re worth something, and they make you [feel] that you have a purpose in life, and that you’re not just a prisoner, that you’re not just here to do some time.”
A NEED FOR SUPPORT
In 1997, the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility became the first prison in New York to implement Puppies Behind Bars. The program, which is funded through outside donations, initially focused on raising and training seeing-eye dogs. But then came 9/11 and the subsequent conflicts in the Middle East.
“Being a New Yorker, living in New York, being there on September 11th, I’ve always thought that those first responders were thanked and thanked and thanked initially, and then they kind of weren’t,” says PPB founder and president Gloria Gilbert Stoga, who once worked on a commission to find employment for low-income New Yorkers under former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. “They kind of blended into the background, [but they] had a lot of health issues.”
It was at that point that Stoga widened PPB’s mission to include the training and deployment of explosive-detection canines and, later, service dogs for traumatized first responders and wounded veterans.
“With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raging, I kept thinking, ‘What can I do? What can I do?’” she says. “The answer was that I can help these [inmates] raise service dogs that we can donate to wounded war veterans.”
Along with a handful of other instructors, including former inmates who have gone on to work for PPB, Stoga teaches prisoners how to raise service dogs. She also conducts several group training sessions a year, in which veterans are paired with dogs and learn from the inmate-trainers how to work with them. The program puts 2-month-old puppies, most of which are labrador retrievers, under the watchful eyes of inmates. These devoted doggy caretakers live, sleep and work with the pooches 24/7 until they’ve mastered an industry-standard 85 commands, like opening doors for wheelchair users, plus five more that specifically help sufferers of PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury).
Most dogs are able to complete the training program in 12 to 24 months. To date, PBB has put more than 250 to use as guide, service, therapy and companion dogs, plus another 437 have gone on to work with law enforcement as bomb-sniffing dogs.
Though the Department of Correction does not track recidivism rates of parolees who have participated in PBB, a DOC spokesperson says it measures success in the soft skills gained by inmates who care for the dogs.
“Part of [DOC’s] mission is to prepare individuals for their transition back to the community,” the spokesperson says. “[Puppies Behind Bars] incentivizes good behavior in the facility, as well as giving individuals the opportunity to do something positive for someone else, while learning patience, pride and accomplishment — all of which will benefit them when they reenter society.”
‘WE MANUFACTURE BEST FRIENDS’
The walk through Bedford Hills Correctional Facility — the only maximum-security prison for women in the state — is brimming with reminders of exactly where you are. There may be a few pretty flowers here and there, sure, but it’s all against a backdrop of barbed wire and high fences.
“I’ve been here for years,” says a prison security guard. “And let me tell you, this is like no other program. It really works. They are the most well-behaved inmates.”
It’s 8:30 in the morning, and Payne is on a turfed field playing fetch with her dog, Craig.
Payne has changed her life around since entering prison in 2013. Originally from Queens, she was well-known in local tabloids as “hell on wheels” after mowing down and killing her ex-boyfriend in a jealous rage.
She says that everything is different now. She has been part of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, an in-prison arts program that has been shown to dramatically reduce recidivism rates, and is now a trainer with Puppies Behind Bars, which — according to the organization’s mission statement — aims to help those living in prison learn to sacrifice for a bigger cause. Another perk is that inmates who take part in the program can shave six months off their sentence.
“I’ve had Craig since he was 8 weeks old. I also have a child at home who is 8 years old, and I left her when she was 3,” says Payne. “And not to compare the two, but for me, I really got my confidence in proving to [the PBB staff] that I can indeed take care of a dog. I felt that my purpose was way more important than just me being a regular average inmate.”
Other inmates say the program has fostered in them a passion for helping others. When a first responder was paired with the dog Alice Trappler had raised, she saw it as an opportunity to help a man fighting deep depression.
“He shared with us that he felt broken. He didn’t feel at all like he was worthwhile. And he had tried to commit suicide, which to me is heartbreaking,” says Trappler, who’s serving a 25-year-to-life sentence. “My comment to him was that his dog did not think he was broken. She thought he was great, and she thought he was the best thing ever.
“We manufacture best friends, because they’re infallible and they love you no matter what.”
In These Prisons, Former Offenders Find Healing in Theatre Arts
Omar Williams is an actor — a deadly one, he jokes. Having spent 21 years in prison for kidnapping and attempted murder, the Fishkill Correctional Facility inmate says he’s been acting his whole life to get what he wants.
“I know exactly how to play you,” he tells me from one of the counseling offices at the prison, which is located about 60 miles north of New York City. “I could tell you anything to bullshit you, to rob you, to kill you. I’ve been acting my whole life.”
Minutes later, Williams — known as “Sweets” to his fellow inmates — stands in a classroom and recites lines to the 19th-century French play Cyrano de Bergerac.
In the scene, de Bergerac joins his friend Le Bret — played by Williams — among sleeping soldiers and talks about how he just cheated death, again. The director, Charlie Scatamacchia, stops the scene halfway through to give Williams a basic lesson in being a thespian: You gotta emote.
“You’re just reading the words,” Scatamacchia tells him. “Actually say what they’re saying.”
As the scene starts up again, Williams is animated and expressive; his whole body is in movement. It’s not exactly a Tony Award-winning performance, but Scatamacchia approves. He nods emphatically. Williams is nailing it.
The rehearsal is part of a program run by volunteers with Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), a New York nonprofit that provides workshops and classes in a myriad of disciplines, from theater and music to creative writing, painting and dance, in men’s and women’s prisons around the state. The goal: to facilitate the social, emotional and cognitive skills needed to succeed on the outside.
Similar art-as-therapy programs are found only in a handful of states, despite the fact that they’ve been proven to be effective in reducing disciplinary infractions and improving anger management. One 2012 study found a nearly three-fold increase in inmates pursuing college-level academics after participating in RTA. Inmates have also shown enhanced speaking skills and self-esteem. But perhaps most impressive: RTA boasts a nearly 5 percent recidivism rate, meaning almost 95 percent of people who go through the program don’t reoffend after their release. That’s a genuinely remarkable percentage, as the national recidivism rate is close to 77 percent after five years.
Unfortunately, arts programs are also usually the first to be cast aside when a prison has a need for more beds or security. And not everyone is a fan, either: Critics, including corrections officers and victims, claim that “cold-blooded” killers and hardened criminals don’t deserve prison-arts programs. But the flip side, argue prison-reform advocates, is that, eventually, most will be released back into their communities, and so it’s to everyone’s benefit that they be rehabilitated in whatever way works before that happens.
“Do we want them to be better criminals when they get out, or to make better choices,” asks Craig Cullinane, director of programming for RTA. “These people who commit crimes, they should have the ability to go back to the world better than when they come in. Isn’t that what we want?”
OUT OF THE DARKNESS
Fishkill’s prison is a visual tease. The all-male medium-security prison boasts a prepossessing Gothic façade set against the bucolic backdrop of the Hudson Valley’s lush greenery. In early spring, a mist envelops the grounds, making it impossible to see that the prison is surrounded by over 20-foot-high chain-link fences wrapped by barbed wire.
Every day at 6 p.m. the men weave their way through the complex, walking down paved streets in between fences and buildings for their allotted nightly recreation time. Twice a week the dozen or so men that participate in RTA meet to go over lines, stagecraft and scene construction.
For those who have bad days — and there’s no denying there are a lot of those in prison — RTA is a welcome escape.
“The first thing we do is we go around and share one word about how we feel that day. I want them to share honestly, but in reality they’re dealing with a lot of crap,” says Scatamacchia, who has been directing plays with RTA for two years as a volunteer.
Williams had one of those bad days about two and half years ago. His twin children were stillborn. Out of rage and sorrow, he threatened to stab another inmate in the neck.
“I could’ve killed someone that day. Thank God for RTA at that moment,” he says. “They really helped me through it.”
The program is not intended to remake prisoners into professional actors. It’s not designed to help them find a career in the arts after release. Rather, says executive director Katherine Vockins, who founded RTA in 1996, it provides inmates the opportunity to tap into emotions and develop the soft skills that can help them deal with tough situations.
That’s not to say it’s easy.
“We are all looking for the ‘fix’ that will take people — often badly damaged by life experience — and put them through some magical program that washes, dries and folds, ending with neatly functioning citizens,” says Vockins, adding that progress is hard to measure in terms of before and after. “Deep, lasting change in cognition and behavior does not work that way.”
California was one of the first states to bring the arts to correctional facilities. In 1977, the Prison Arts Project, a program run by the nonprofit William James Association, was introduced at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. A few years later, its success led to a new administrative office, Arts-in-Corrections, within the California Department of Corrections.
The University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), launched in 1990, started out by teaching painting to less than 50 female inmates. Today the program is available at every prison in the state, and PCAP hosts one of the largest prisoner-art exhibitions in the world.
“For the incarcerated, the fact that somebody on the outside is reaching out to make connections and to see people beyond their prison numbers, in itself, has value,” says Elaine Chen, PCAP’s events and exhibits coordinator. “Even just to connect with people without a reason or a shield of social justice — just to do art together — brings a lot of therapeutic value.”
Research into Michigan’s program has shown that inmates who take part in the arts report an 86 percent higher quality of life while in prison than before they joined PCAP, and 93 percent self-reported learning new and better ways to express themselves, according to Chen.
“We can transform our lives, even in here,” says Ronald “Bach” Jarvis, a Fishkill inmate and RTA participant who has been serving 17 years for manslaughter. “[RTA] helped me find myself. It’s easy to get lost in here in the mist and darkness. But to find that light? That’s what this program is for me.”
A FUNDING FAILURE
Despite numerous studies showing that arts education works inside of prison — as well as outside, in terms of reoffending once released — programs continue to be cut from state budgets across the country, with more expected in the next few months.
California’s Arts-in-Corrections, for example, was almost eliminated in 2003 when the state was in the depths of a financial crisis. The program was saved by private investors, including members of California Lawyers for the Arts, who donated heavily to the program.
Other state-run arts-rehabilitation programs might not be so lucky. In the Trump Administration’s latest budget proposal, funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, which only makes up less than 1 percent of the national budget, would be cut from $150 million to $29 million. The NEA funds, in part, almost every prison-arts program in the country.
Though RTA does not receive direct funding from NEA grants, it does get money from the New York State Council on the Arts, which has received over $3.5 million from the NEA since 2013, according to the endowment’s archives. Money from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) is also at risk.
“The shakiness of the economy has affected the NYS budget,” Vockins says. “[We have been told] that while the DOCCS budget is huge, the allocation to programs is quite small. Even vocational programs have been severely cut.”
Outside of funding, there is also a problem with capacity. RTA, for example, operates in five prisons throughout New York but relies almost wholly on volunteers.
“Until a year ago, we [had been] four people for 20 years,” says Cullinane, the director of programming. “It comes down to leadership and what [our state leaders] care about. We get very little from the state; we raise almost all our money ourselves.”
THE MEN BEHIND THE BARS
“Cyrano is an interesting choice of a play,” Scatamacchia says. He’s sipping coffee at the NoMad Library Bar in Manhattan, telling me about his background in theater and how he came to volunteer with RTA.
The task of teaching the art of acting to prisoners wasn’t something that he expected to be so fulfilling, he says, adding that, initially, he was afraid of what he would encounter. Instead, he was pleasantly surprised at how easygoing and intelligent the men were.
“It’s totally different from television,” he says of his experience.
The participants in the program get to decide which play to put on — for his first RTA gig, Scatamacchia directed them in The Odd Couple — and the choice of Cyrano de Bergerac set him aback. “It’s not like we teach theory or anything like that, but there is an interesting lesson to be taken from this play. You can’t look at [the character of] Cyrano and know everything about him,” he says.
The feeling of constantly being judged is something that many of the men at Fishkill experience. They say that those on “the outside” just don’t care to know about the lives of people on the inside. It’s easy to feel forgotten.
But RTA has helped them feel remembered and recognized, even in a small way.
“This makes me feel special,” says Jarvis. “Attention is positive. If I can strike people positively in this form, it makes me feel human again.”
October 8, 2018 3:20 p.m.: This story’s headline has been changed.
How to Build a Better Jail
Rikers Island, the infamous and isolated jail complex located off the coastline of New York City, is officially being shut down. And in its place is the possibility of new community jails that are designed, specifically, for better treatment of inmates.
Improving the city’s jails, and especially Rikers — which critics have long charged is inhumane, unsafe and dysfunctional — has been a top-line agenda for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Since taking office, his administration has focused on curbing the jail population; reducing the use of solitary confinement; and easing the transition back to society for the formerly incarcerated.
In conjunction with closing Riker’s 10 jails, an independent commission last year recommended the city open smaller facilities — called “justice hubs” — that would be located next to local courts and integrated into existing neighborhoods. The vision for this modern system of jails includes built-in amenities that would be shared with local residents (think exercise facilities, community gardens and art studios).
“Our understanding about design and incarceration has evolved significantly since the jails on Rikers Island were built,” says Elizabeth Glazer, director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. “Light, sound and the arrangement of space are important in creating a safer, calmer environment for the people residing and working there.”
There’s evidence prisoners’ surroundings can affect their outcomes. In upstate New York, for example, camplike facilities that are embedded among pristine lakes and trees, and where inmates sleep in barracks, not cells, have seen markedly low recidivism rates.
The idea of using design and architecture to influence behavior is not a new one for New York City. In August of last year, officials partnered with the Center for Court Innovation and the social-impact design firm Zago to overhaul the interior spaces of Manhattan Criminal Court. Changes included installing new, visitor-friendly signage and erecting a defendants’ bill of rights.
“Manhattan Criminal Court is a pretty foreboding and intimidating place, especially for those who are there for the first time,” says Emily LaGratta, director of procedural justice initiatives at the Center for Court Innovation. She notes that many courts across the country evoke similar negative feelings. “Courthouses were built years ago, when the justice system was addressing a different scope of problems. That, plus new innovation, has imposed additional needs on these spaces. So a lobby that was built to be grand and open is now accommodating security lines and magnetometers.”
Just as the needs of courthouses have changed, so too have the needs of New York’s jails. The city has announced a plan to reduce incarceration numbers to 5,000 in 10 years, and officials are exploring the possibility of eliminating the cash-bail system.
But incorporating the proposed justice hubs — and the prisoners within them — into residential neighborhoods might be a hard sell for the city.
Still, officials are pushing for jails that could address community needs, similar to a public library’s social outreach programs, that would help reduce the stigma of incarceration while building stronger, healthier communities.
Initially, the effort seemed purely physical — move inmates to jails that are closer to their lawyers, courthouses and neighborhood resources. But it also got city officials thinking: Can correctional facilities be designed in a way that’s safer for inmates and guards, while also engaging the communities in which they’d be built?
“Over the past few decades we have learned, and commonsense informs, that when those who are incarcerated have regular contact with their families and lawyers, it improves both the atmosphere inside, the relationships with officers and staff, and the transition back to neighborhoods,” Glazer says. “This is especially important in jails where most people stay for a short period of time.”
The city issued requests for proposals last year on designs for the new jails and in January chose the firm Perkins Eastman, which was awarded $7.5 million and given 10 months to finalize a blueprint.
“Buildings are not static things … they work with or against the people that are intended to be within them, and there is no better example than a prison,” says Michael Murphy, co-founder and executive director of MASS Designs in Boston. “Even in the most well intentioned prisons, they are intended to separate or to torture people who are incarcerated and restrict access to freedoms.
“There’s almost an intentional lack of design,” he adds.
In reimagining what tomorrow’s prisons will look like, firms like Murphy’s are turning to the past, when other historical institutions left their aesthetic imprint.
“A great example are public libraries,” says Murphy. “You have the Carnegie libraries largely built with foundation dollars from the Carnegie family, which are these beautiful, opulent temples to books.”
Compare that to the “Lindsay boxes” of the 1970s, when New York Mayor John Lindsay had pushed for a library branch in every neighborhood. The results were quickly constructed, one-story buildings made of cinder block.
“It’s a stark difference in imagination,” Murphy continues. “We’ve lowered our expectations of what we deserve. That’s what prisons identify.”
And what we know about design with the greater good in mind is that it works, says Brad Samuels of SITU, an architectural research and design firm in New York.
“These [kinds of designs] are already happening; they’re not speculative,” Samuels says, adding that his firm has worked with low-wage immigrant communities to build housing in Queens, where families are often stuffed into cramped quarters. “We found the best way to build is through community groups and organizations who understand what their needs are.”
The Hero of Kansas City
Robert Frazier was incarcerated at age 22 for selling crack cocaine. Years later, Anton’s Taproom gave him a second chance.
Frazier now works as a dishwasher at the local Kansas City, Mo., steakhouse and butcher shop. He calls his boss, Anton Kotar, a hero.
“I’ve got family who won’t do what he did for me,” says Frazier.
Since opening his farm-to-table restaurant in 2012, Kotar has employed approximately 23 former inmates, but his service to others doesn’t stop there.
Watch the video above to see additional ways that Kotar invests in his community.
A Prison Sits Empty. A Nonprofit Moves In
As a social worker accustomed to prodding the minds of adjudicated youth in the juvenile justice system, Noran Sanford has long been an inquisitive kind of guy. So when he discovered that six prisons had closed within a 50-mile radius of his home in rural Laurinburg, N.C., including one in the nearby town of Wagram, he began asking questions. Lots of them. “It was in that moment that I began putting together the idea that somebody should do something with these large sites,” Sanford says.
Enter the concept behind GrowingChange. The organization launched in 2011 to help reform and empower young ex-offenders, some barely into their teens, as they work to turn the abandoned prison in Wagram into a community farm and education center. The first group of 12 participants recruited by Sanford had all been arrested, expelled from school and kicked out of their homes — a combination of risk factors that Sanford calls the “unholy trinity,” especially when living in one of North Carolina’s poorest counties.
The Wagram site, which partially opened to the public for tours in October, has worked with 18 formerly incarcerated youth since its inception, with seven active participants today. The group was able to secure the property from the state’s Department of Public Safety, who agreed to donate the land after Sanford and two of his youth leaders pitched the idea. Sanford hopes they will eventually be able to sell the soil amendments and organic produce they’ve cultivated. So far, participants have grown food for needy local families, and are working to repurpose jail cells into aquaponics tanks and guard towers into climbing walls, among other initiatives. GrowingChange also provides intensive group therapy for its youth leaders.
Analyzed over a three-year period, the prison-to-farm program was 92 percent effective in preventing recidivism among participants, Sanford says.
As the program has matured, so has its group of original participants, some of whom have stayed on to act as mentors to new recruits. Other young ex-offenders have been working to expand GrowingChange’s reach with a graphic-novel series, called Prison Flip Comics, that chronicles their troubled past; the goal is to use the comics as a learning tool distributed throughout North Carolina’s system of juvenile justice offices.
There are also teens who have embraced a more public-facing role, speaking at outside events and otherwise “sharing their stories about a personal experience of change,” says Simon Stumpf of Ashoka, which awarded Sanford a fellowship last year for his social entrepreneurship. Ashoka also provided funds to help scale GrowingChange. Sanford’s long-term goals include flipping 25 former prisons by 2025; currently, he estimates around 300 prisons sit empty across the U.S.
Despite GrowingChange’s small number of participants, other organizations have taken notice, reaching out from places as far away as the Netherlands, where Sanford traveled to present his model. And students from schools including the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have helped in areas like designing site plans and mapping the area with 3-D technology to share with the public what the site — which will eventually include housing for veterans and a counseling center — will look like once fully completed.
Sanford hopes to inspire prison authorities, government leaders, nonprofits, universities, foundations and others to think differently about unused prisons, taking an open-sourced approach by sharing what has, and hasn’t, worked at the Wagram facility. And that has him dreaming big.
“Our hope is to create a federated system of independent sites,” he says.
This Nonprofit Has Hit on the Way to Keep Ex-Offenders Out of Prison
On a gray morning earlier this year, former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey was talking with Omari Atiba, a convicted felon, in Newark when they were interrupted by Atiba’s phone. As the recently released prisoner’s cell blasted the ’70s disco staple “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” McGreevey couldn’t help but nod along, full white-man-overbite style.
Few could blame the former politician for feeling upbeat. For the past three years, McGreevey — no stranger himself to controversy, having resigned his governorship in 2004 — has been working to remove the obstacles that face ex-inmates once they’re released. On the morning they met, Atiba was just two days out of a New Jersey state prison, where he served 30 years for murder.
Transforming ex-convicts like Atiba into responsible, engaged civilians is a project that has earned McGreevey the support of Chris Christie and four other former Garden State governors. It also led him to John Koufos, a former criminal defense lawyer whose own fall from grace after a drunken hit-and-run accident in 2012 resulted in disbarment and 16 months in prison. Today, Koufos is second-in-command at New Jersey Reentry Corporation (NJRC), the nonprofit founded by McGreevey in 2014.
NJRC has five outposts in the state, including Jersey City, Kearney, Newark, Paterson and Toms River. Its mission is to overhaul onetime prisoners’ lives by overseeing their sobriety, and training and placing them in meaningful jobs. The ambitious project carries an annual price tag of $3 million, which is funded largely by the state.
With a roster of around 1,600 clients, NJRC’s success rate has been praised by the Manhattan Institute as among the best of the New York City–area reentry prison programs. According to a recent analysis by the think tank, U.S. prisons release approximately 650,000 inmates every year. Within the first 12 months, more than half are unable to secure identification and jobs that earn them enough legal income to survive.
But certain programs, like NJRC’s, are proving successful in preventing such scenarios. From January to July 2016, NJRC placed around 1,000 former prisoners in jobs spanning sales, transportation, food services, manufacturing and public works, many with on-ramps to more lucrative positions with building-trade unions.
That 62 percent job-placement rate likely helped NJRC achieve its low 19.7 percent recidivism. Though that figure is impressive, it spans just six months; the true measure of success will be where these former inmates are five years from now. As the most recent national survey by the Department of Justice found, an estimated three-quarters of ex-offenders are arrested for a new crime within five years of release.
Understanding McGreevey’s and Koufos’ backgrounds helps explain their strategy. McGreevey, as former governor, knows New Jersey influencers, like the chair of the state DMV, and has persuaded them to do things like untangle knotty driver’s records to clear a path toward regaining the right to drive, often essential to maintaining a job. And Koufos, who handled hundreds of pro bono cases for the NAACP before he went to prison, has recruited close to 70 young lawyers to clear up unresolved past infractions such as traffic tickets that can, and often do, return former inmates to their cells.
“It’s incredibly sad,” McGreevey said. “So many of our clients have a sense that catastrophe is right around the corner.”
Sadder still is that often they’re right. Koufos says missteps like missed child support payments can easily secure ex-offenders a return ticket to prison. “A lot of times folks don’t participate in family court” because they’re scared of the outcome, which may include fines. “When they have a lawyer holding their hand, they’re no longer afraid.”
Though they are both the heroes of their own second acts, Koufos and McGreevey are an odd couple. McGreevey studied to be a priest after resigning his Trenton post. Koufos’ wobbly relationship with religion surfaces only at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. “More jobs, less Jesus,” Koufos often reminds McGreevey when they’re talking to clients. But ultimately McGreevey is less concerned with helping clients find God than with helping them find footing in a social landscape built to topple them.
He meets weekly with prisoners across New Jersey to explain NJRC’s mission as well as his own rocky road to redemption. He was the closeted gay governor who left in disgrace, he reminds prisoners. What if it had taken him until his deathbed to come to the realizations that have helped him move forward?
Both men see every day as a chance to stub out others’ doomsday narratives. Atiba, the convicted murderer, now weighs fish in the seafood department at Newark’s ShopRite.
And Patrick D’Aiuto, who once lived in the cell across from Koufos and was released from prison in 2013 after 18 years for armed robbery, is now a commercial roofer with a union. He makes in the high $20s per hour and recently bought a condo.
“I spent pretty much my whole adult life in prison, and I knew that a lot of these programs can be tongue-in-cheek. I always wondered, Why doesn’t the media go to these people who claim to run these great programs and say, ‘If you actually helped someone get a good job, produce that person.’ They’d never be able to produce anybody.”
NJRC, D’Aiuto says, is different: “They’re not just getting guys jobs at Burger King. They’re getting them jobs with benefits that will get them a middle-class existence, so they can lead a productive life.”
Not that they succeed every time. A healthy percentage of clients, most of whom are addicts being treated through NJRC’s recovery channels, relapse. If a client is using, he gets a warning. If there is a second infraction, he’s out. Koufos is generally the one who does the kicking out.
He doesn’t mind, though.
“I dedicated myself to a life of service because of the pain I caused when I was addicted,” Koufos says. “If we can help the next guy recover, we stop the next victim from happening.”
Continue reading “This Nonprofit Has Hit on the Way to Keep Ex-Offenders Out of Prison”
A Prison With No Walls
This isn’t Thomas DiSilvestre’s first stint in prison. At 23 years of age, he’s already been inside New York’s Rikers Island and the Ulster Correctional Facility for felony drug charges. His arms are scarred, and his almond-shaped eyes are downcast on the table in front of him.
“You have to always worry about people running around, cutting you,” he says, talking about his previous times in prison. “You don’t feel safe.”
DiSilvestre is incarcerated again. In May 2016, he was caught breaking into someone’s home stealing, according to the police report. Being his second offense, he took a plea deal with the Queens County, N.Y., district attorney for attempted burglary and received another three years in jail — a terrifying prospect.
But DiSilvestre didn’t end up in the same prison environment as before. He’s currently held about an hour south of the Canadian border near Lake Placid at the Moriah Shock Incarceration Facility.
To be clear, inmates at Moriah do not receive shock therapy, as its formal name seems to infer. Rather, non-violent felons, like DiSilvestre, are “shocked” by therapeutic social programs and military-style schedules designed to lower recidivism rates.
At their height, shock programs were in more than 50 prisons nationwide, but most have been shut down over the years due to inefficiencies and poor outcomes.
Still, there are two shock programs in New York that have proven effective and have drawn praise from state department heads, academics well-versed on military-style prisons and inmates. The prisons boast both lower recidivism rates and lower costs. Advocates say it’s because of their focus on social programs and therapy, rather than just military drills and discipline.
Luis Tena, a 43-year-old Bronx, N.Y., resident, was caught dealing drugs in 1994 and sent to Lakeview.
“I actually learned about the people I was hurting. The same people I was selling to, I was hurting, and I was victimizing my own people,” he says, adding that the boot camp training is what gave him the discipline to walk into a job interview post-incarceration.
NEW YORK’S UNIQUE SHOCK INCARCERATION PROGRAM
At a time when there’s bipartisan support for the overhaul of America’s prison system, alternatives to traditional incarceration are being examined — especially for low-level drug offenders. Last year, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vowed to reform the state’s prisons by providing more education and keeping youth offenders out of jail. But little attention was given to New York’s shock program.
Two prisons in New York house shock programs: Moriah, in Mineville, and Lakeview, in Brocton. The facilities can serve more than 1,000 inmates combined, including women. During sentencing, judges give some felons a choice to go to Moriah or Lakeview in exchange for a shorter prison sentence.
“Before I went in, I couldn’t hold a job, I was an ignorant prick,” says Mike Semar, a former inmate at Lakeview’s shock program. “But when I got out, I wasn’t the old me I was before. That guy is dead and buried, he’s in the past.”
Cheryl Clark, a doctor in health and human services, developed the shock program in New York in 1987. By the early 1990s, its popularity increased as the crack epidemic (similar to today’s widespread addiction of opioids) swept through poor cities and neighborhoods across America.
NationSwell repeatedly asked to speak with Clark about shock incarceration and New York’s program, but she was unavailable for comment.
Interviews with current Moriah inmates, people formerly held at Lakeview and Moriah, and incarceration experts reveal that there are several factors that make New York’s program different. For one, the facilities themselves are unique. Unlike other prisons with towering three-story-high walls and guard posts with armed corrections officers, there’s very little of that at Lakeview — and none at Moriah.
“At other prisons, you’ll see a more physically hands-on policy with inmates when they act up or misbehave or throw them in a cell,” says Kim Schaefer, program administrator at Moriah. “We don’t even have cells here.”
Secondly, the New York prisons operate what are considered “second generation” shock programs, according to a report by the Department of Justice. New York shifted the focus from boot camp prisons, which were proven ineffective in the mid-1990s, to incarceration facilities that focus on therapy and education. Moriah and Lakeview’s success, even when others have failed, seems to be how they merge discipline with education and “self-based treatment,” which is different from typical prisons, which offer very few — if any — therapy programs.
According to shock’s prescriptive routine, a quarter of inmates’ time is spent in boot camp-style training and discipline. The remainder of their schedule is divided as follows: 25 percent on education, about 33 percent on therapy and group programs and the remainder on hard labor.
“When you teach people about self development, self knowledge and self awareness, you build those cognitive skills that are imperative to go back to employment and be part of their community,” says Katherine Vockins, founder and executive director of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, which uses art in prisons to teach felons how to make better decisions upon release.
Research shows that programs focusing on education are more effective in preventing felons from committing crimes in the future.
“It’s not a matter of contention among the department, this program works,” says Martin Horn, executive director of the New York State Sentencing Commission and a distinguished lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “The program has proven its utility and is now integral to New York’s prison system.”
LIFE BEHIND (NONEXISTENT) BARS
When inmates look out their windows at Moriah, where the prison has taken occupancy of a 19th-century former iron mine, they see ponds filled with geese and mountains in the distance.
It feels more like a camp, says Boyce “Bud” D. Rawson II, who at 5:15 a.m. is barreling through Moriah’s front door gleefully.
“Hey boys!” he hollers to the staff. The man is enormous; he stands above six foot and has the build of a linebacker.
Rawson jaunts up the hill behind the administrative building passing by a flock of geese that he calls the prison’s “jailbirds.” He walks into one of the prison’s barracks where more than 40 felons are sleeping and picks up a touch dial phone.
“Ready,” he says, and within a minute, the speakers blast a crackled version of “Reverie.” The inmates jump out of their beds, count off and rush to the shower. They’re given 15 minutes to shave and get dressed before lining up outside for the morning drill, which is a grueling two hours of military exercises followed by a two-mile run.
The boot camp format isn’t for every inmate — even Rawson admits to that. “You have to really buy into this. You have to make that connection that what you learn here you can use outside this place.”
Schaefer, who was hesitant about working in corrections before seeing the atmosphere at Moriah, acknowledges that it’s unique. “It’s still a prison — we never forget that — but the goal here is different than other prisons. At other prisons upstate, they carry batons. Our officers carry whistles.”
A SUCCESSFUL MODEL
Other states have modeled the shock program, focusing heavily on the boot camp aspect, but prison advocates regard those as detrimental.
“Some of the people who are in prison have suffered a tremendous amount of abuse in their past, be it physical or mental,” says Vockins. “I can’t imagine these military programs could work for everyone because it could reacquaint them with that old trauma.”
Dave Allen, an officer at Moriah, says that the boot camp portion of shock is simply a way to get inmates focused. “The point isn’t to degrade them — that’s not why we’re here. But we need to make everyone understand that you can’t talk back, and you can’t be disrespectful, and if you do that, you can really do well in everything else we have here.”
Older studies conducted by the Department of Justice have also found that boot camp prisons aren’t effective in reducing recidivism rates. In June 2003, the department released a report that found boot camps — though effective in the short term — didn’t have positive effects in the long-term with inmates reoffending.
And recidivism rates are tricky to analyze, says Vockins, as there are a handful of ways to cherry pick data, which can produce different results. Agencies, for example, can track recidivism as re-entry into the prison system after three years due to a new crime, but could also not take into account parole violations that would put them back in the system after they are released.
Moriah and Lakeview stand apart from other programs that have seen cuts in funding or closures. The facilities cost less to operate than other New York state prisons — about $20,000 less per inmate per year. And they have some of the lowest recidivism rates in New York, according to data from the New York State Department of Corrections. Recidivism rates for New York prisons average around 65 percent after three years. For the shock program, they hover around 31 percent every year during the same time period.
But a change in New York’s harsh Rockefeller drug laws (which required mandatory minimum jail sentences) also means that fewer people are filling beds at Moriah.
“There really aren’t many low-level offenders in New York’s prisons anymore,” says Horn. “Because of [the changes in the law], those who are in prison are those with fairly serious crimes.
Currently, Moriah houses just under 200 inmates, but could accommodate around 100 more.
“If we ran at full capacity, we could save the state $90 million a year,” Rawson estimates.
The problem comes down to exposure to the shock program. Interviews with department officials say that many judges and district attorneys are unaware of Moriah.
“People say we’re the best kept secret,” says Schaefer. “Problem is, we don’t want to be a secret.”
Horn, for one, is skeptical of this and says that he goes to attorneys’ offices regularly to speak about the program.
LIFE AFTER SHOCK
It’s been almost 20 years since William Schoch was released from Lakeview, yet he still remembers the five steps to make better decisions that he learned while incarcerated.
“See your situation clearly, know what you want, expand your possibilities, evaluate and decide, and act,” he rattles off over the phone. “It’s become second nature to me.”
Two years ago, Semar, of Perry, N.Y., had a wife and child. On his 37th birthday, he was jailed for drug usage and ordered into Lakeview’s shock program.
“About three months in, I got served divorce papers. When those papers came in,” he says, “my [corrections officer] came over said, ‘Look, I’ve been there. A divorce isn’t something that you look forward to. But everything you’re doing right now will make you better, stronger. You’ll be able to deal with a lot more stuff,’ he told me. After that, I bought into the program.”
Rawson receives numerous letters and calls from former inmates and their parents with positive feedback about the shock program. He says that it’s those messages that convince him it’s working.
DiSilvestre, who was caught stealing, is less than a month away from graduating from Moriah. When that time comes, he and his platoon of inmates will dress in their best. Then, in front of their family and friends, they’ll walk in formation across the grounds to receive a diploma listing their achievements.
“There is a lot of pride from the guys that leave this place. They’re changed men,” Rawson says. “It’s a great feeling, knowing that these moms and dads have their kids back.”
The Visionary That’s Getting Everyone to the Table to Talk About Social Good
This February, on the exact same day, two governors from two very different states — Nikki Haley, a Republican in South Carolina, and Dan Malloy, a Democrat in Connecticut — both announced social impact bonds to promote family care: one for low-income moms, the other for parents struggling with substance abuse. Both of these bonds (also known as “pay for success”) deployed private dollars to fund the scaling of a social program. If the project succeeds in meeting specific, predesigned metrics, the private backers will profit from their investment; if not, taxpayers don’t owe a penny more. Behind both of these innovative, cross-sector partnerships was Tracy Palandjian, CEO of Social Finance, a nonprofit intermediary between all the parties, who helped bring the “pay for success” model to the United States after seeing it first implemented in England in 2010.
NationSwell spoke with Palandjian by phone from Boston about the daily obstacles and excitements that come with rethinking how American social services can reach more people in need.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
I have two. The first one is an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go with others.” Just because one has a great idea and one could often accomplish a lot more, going at it alone is often insufficient if you really want to deliver a movement. That’s hugely evident in our work here. Imagine these very funky public-private nonprofit partnerships with so many stakeholders with very divergent motivations. What motivates a private investor? A sitting governor or mayor? The executive directors of these classic human service providers? We have everyone sit around a table to articulate a common goal — in this case, delivering results to our communities — when they have often conflicting frameworks and very different languages they speak in and very different world-views. Bringing them together around a very common goal among very uncommon stakeholders is something that we have found, yes, it’s challenging, but if we can rally this forth, we see enduring, powerful results coming out of those partnerships.
By way of background for my other one: I didn’t grow up in this country. I’m Chinese, and I grew up in Hong Kong. My grandfather whom I was very close to, his favorite quote was (translated to English): “Distance tests the strength of forces, time tests the hearts of men.” It really is a message about patience. A lot of things take time, and the people who can stay steadfast on that vision could achieve the most. My grandfather was born in 1903 in China. He took his courageous wife — my grandmother — and, at that point, four children, and literally fled the Second Wold War on foot, by boat and by train out of China into Hong Kong and then to Taiwan ultimately. He was a chemical engineer, completely self-taught. He left everything behind when he fled. Along the way, he lost two children. After they made it to safety, he started all over again. He made consumer batteries and completely rebuilt himself, his family and his business. I always think about their lives and what they were able to overcome and what they were able to accomplish. Sometimes, we take three steps backward to take five steps forward.
What’s your favorite book of all time?
One of my favorite books, which I’m proud to say is the namesake of our eldest daughter: a Chinese classic, “Tao Te Ching.” It’s just so poetic and so poignant about how one should live. And it’s full of these non-intuitive sentences like, “It is through being effortless that you can achieve the most.”
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
Taking a step back, social impact bonds are probably the latest and the most recent comer to this broader investing landscape. I agree there’s been a lot of hype, but the reason why people are excited about it is that the impact is so direct. When our investors get their money back and then some, it’s because somebody’s life has been improved. This very articulated, metric-driven all-around life improvement, whether it’s recidivism or job attainment or education attainment or improved health outcomes, these are the metrics of each of our deals. Someone’s life improvement is the source of the return back to the investor, and that connection is really powerful. While the field started off in criminal justice (and still a lot of projects are focused on reducing recidivism), we’re excited to see there are a lot of projects in early education, in early childhood, in health and in workforce development.
How do you try to inspire others?
I just try to be who I am. I believe, as a person, I’m best when I’m aligned as a human being and I’m 100 percent authentic. I don’t try to say something because it will inspire others. I don’t try to do something because, well, that’s what I believe a good leader should do. I try to model good behavior for my colleagues. I’m not perfect, I have lots of limitations. I try to be a good parent and model good behavior for our children. I feel very strongly about this; I feel like there are too many lessons and advice that people give. People just need to be authentic.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I am probably most proud of the fact that I really think that I understand two cultures perfectly well. Obviously, I grew up in my own [Chinese] culture. My whole family’s still in that part of the world. You never forget your own culture and your native language. But I also think I’ve worked in America long enough and I’ve worked with enough different sectors and different kinds of people that I really understand how this country and this culture works, too. I think that’s just a huge skill to be able to be empathetic, to be able to step into the shoes of others. I think it’s a really important skill to have, especially for our work, which requires us to talk across sectors and work across disciplines.
What don’t most people know about you that they should?
I’m an artist at heart. That’s what I did as a young kid, all throughout high school and college, I painted a lot, I drew a lot, I experimented with all kinds of mediums. I miss that part of my life. I haven’t done much since I graduated from college. Now, I watch my kids do it, and it makes me very happy.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.