Thomas MacMillan Photo
After an embarrassing false start, the Harp administration’s prison reentry program has a new chief, a new name — and a new mission directly behind bars.
Jason Bartlett (pictured), Harp’s former campaign manager and her current youth services chief, has stepped into the role of director of the city’s effort to help the 50 to 100 inmates released back into New Haven each month reintegrate into society.
And the program has a new name: “Fresh Start.”
In his role, Bartlett has started visiting inmates in jail to meet with offenders about their plans once they return to the city. The program will enlist “mentors: to do that on a regular basis, assessing and advising prisoners as many as six months before they are released, then trying to link them up to jobs or housing or social programs and steer them away from old habits of criminal behavior, Harp said at a City Hall press conference Monday.
Harp herself visited inmates at the Whalley Avenue jail last week to discuss the city’s desire to help them start fresh lives.
The retooling of the city’s prison reentry program comes just days after Sundiata Keitazulu, the former re-entry director, resigned under pressure when he was discovered to have outstanding criminal cases.
The police department, a key part of the reentry effort, had inexplicably not been invited to Monday’s press conference.
Harp said the program’s new name — Fresh Start — “symbolizes the hope we want to instill in every returning resident.”
Beyond the name, Fresh Start will ensure successful reentry by meeting with people as they approach their release date, Harp said.
It has been proven that released prisoners who are mentored and given resources are more successful, said James Dzurenda (pictured), state commissioner for the Department of Correction.
In the past, said Bartlett, prisoners were simply dropped off from state prisons right onto Whalley Avenue, with no advance notice to the city. The state has begun emailing the city ahead of time. The new Fresh Start initiative will go further.
Part of the plan includes the collection of new “metrics” on returning prisoners — whether they have gotten a GED or an vocation skills while incarcerated, how many family members they have in New Haven, if they have any housing options available to them.
In addition to metrics, the city will be working with faith-based and community groups to send mentors in to counsel prisoners before their release.
One of those mentors will be Maverick Jacobs (pictured), who stepped to the podium at Monday’s press conference to share the vital role that supportive people played in his life when he returned from prison in the late 1980s.
Bartlett said he will not be paid extra for his work as Fresh Start director. He said he will continue his full-time job running the city’s youth services department in addition to overseeing Fresh Start.
Bartlett said Fresh Start has three staff: two interns and the recently vacated director position. A grant that was paying the salary of Keitazulu — the departed director — will run out in September. Bartlett said he is looking into more grants and hiring more staff.
Several dozen people attended Monday’s press conference, a catered event. The crowd included state Department of Correction staff, street outreach workers, and formerly incarcerated men.
“That was a little bit of an oversight on my part,” Bartlett said of the failure to include cops in Monday’s event. He said he’d been focused on “workforce development” and collaboration with the Department of Correction. He said Fresh Start will work closely with cops. “Obviously we coordinate on everything.”
Harp said after the press conference that she was invited to the Whalley Avenue jail last week, where she met with a group of about 40 or 45 inmates and spoke to them about black history and her personal experiences. Staff from Easter Seals Goodwill gave a “pep talk,” Harp said.
“It was really very interesting and inspiring,” she said.