Strategy Unveiled To Keep Ex-Cons Out Of Prison

With the help of $1 million, New Haven is aiming to put itself halfway out of the prison reentry business in five years.

During a workshop of the Board of Alders Human Services Committee Thursday night, Martha Okafor (pictured at the top of the story), city community services administrator, announced that New Haven has received a $1 million Second Chance Act demonstration grant. Not only was New Haven the smallest city to receive a grant it also received the most money, she said. Other cities that received the grant included Seattle and New Orleans.

With that grant, Okafor said, the city’s prison-reentry effort will seek to shut the revolving door back into prison for at least half of the city 18 to 24-year-olds who have been released from incarceration.

Every month, about 100 people return to New Haven from prison, according to Clifton Graves, the city’s prison reentry program administrator. That’s 1,200 people a year who return to a city where it is hard to find a job on a good day for someone without a criminal record, let alone someone with one.

Often times these formerly incarcerated men and women return to their families with chronic physical and mental health conditions. And they often return to families that have been equally traumatized by their absence, and even resentful of their inability to contribute to the household.

And that inability to cope on the outside sends many back into the prison system.

Carlah Esdaile-Bragg (at right in photo), director of community reentry services at Easter Seals-Goodwill Industries, said the city, which for the first time has gotten reentry agencies that previously operated in silos to work together, has been able to secure several grants because outside funders think it is on to something.

Administered by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, the new $1 million grant is aimed at reducing the kind of recidivism that so many convicted felons from New Haven face upon release from prison.

The money will be used to implement the city’s vision for reentry, which Okafor said starts not when a person is released from prison, but before a person is even sentenced. The program is broken down into three phases: pre-entrance/entrance to prison; the incarceration period; and nine months before release to six months or more after release.

Okafor said phase one of the program includes trying to keep people from entering prison in the first place and ​“not messing up that person’s future” over ​“individual use” drug possession. The city is looking at diversion tactics such as Law Enforcement Assisted Diversions, or LEADs, and community courts where low-level offenders can do community service instead of jail time for crimes.

Project Green Thumb

Downtown’s new top cop, Sgt. Roy Davis, said the police department is currently trying out such tactics through an initiative called Project Green Thumb. Davis said the Green is a hotbed for quality of life issues such as public intoxication, people urinating in public and littering. It also has become a marketplace for anyone looking to buy a bus pass or their next high.

“You can purchase almost anything there,” Davis said of the Green. ​“I like to say that it’s like Time Square in the 90s.”

The idea behind Project Green Thumb is to curb the low-level illegal activity and provide an alternative to jail for people who might already have a criminal history. Instead of getting arrested, they are fined and given a court date.

If they show up to court they get community service cleaning up the Green. And because they’re a captive audience, they also get access to a case manager and assessment for the underlying problems that likely landed them in court in the first place, such as a substance abuse, mental illness, unemployment, or even chronic homelessness.

Okafor said if the city has its way, going to court will be as simple as turning up at an abandoned city building that has been transformed into a one-stop shop, accessible by bus or foot, where you’ll have a hearing, and also talk with a caseworker who assess your needs and gets you plugged into whatever services you need.

Since he became the new district manager for Wooster Square and downtown, Sgt. Davis said he’s spent some time talking to a number of people on the Green. He said many people who commit the low-level offenses actually believe they should be held accountable for their actions when they break the law. He said diverting them from jail might curb the activity, but also give offenders a chance to make amends to a place they care about instead of racking up arrest charges at time where they might be facing other social problems and ​“they’re down on their luck.”

A Different Approach

For those New Haveners who find themselves on their way to jail, the city is no longer going to allow them to languish for what Okafor said is, on average, a two-year stay with little to no contact with the outside world until they return home.

Instead, an incarcerated person with a New Haven address will have someone on the inside who will help develop a reentry plan that includes a needs assessment, maintained family ties, and a post-prison strategy.

The city has already secured a $500,000 Regional Workforce Alliance to create a job training center — the first in the state — at the New Haven Correctional Center on Whalley Avenue. In partnership with Easter Seals-Goodwill, which received a $400,000 from the state Department of Corrections to facilitate the development of a reintegration center, the city’s program also will work with prisoners before they are released on the challenges that send so many people back to prison like finding employment and sustainable housing.

But the program doesn’t focus just on the prisoner. It also focuses on those who support the prisoners, their families. There also is a special focus on the siblings of young people who end up in prison with interventions to keep the younger child from following in the older child’s footsteps.

Okafor said interventions addressing younger siblings have been used to help drive down teen pregnancy. The city wants to see if something similar could be used to keep children out of the prison pipeline. The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven is considering a grant application from the city that would help fund a database that would keep track of everyone the pilot program serves and what happens to them over the next five years.

West Rock Alder Carlton Staggers (pictured) raised three challenges that he suggested city officials and local nonprofit agencies look at as they embark on their pilot: doing more to put the services where the people are, helping people get jobs that pay more than minimum wage and encouraging service providers not to be hypocrites when it comes to hiring.

“Why don’t all these agencies just go down to the Green one day,” he said, instead of people having to seek out the agencies services. He said he also has too often seen agencies that are eager to provide services for the formerly incarcerated person, but balk at hiring someone with a criminal record. ​“We turn them away and I feel that’s wrong,” he said.

Don’t Forget Women

Newhallville Alder Alfreda Edwards (pictured) urged the city to make sure that the pilot program addresses the specific reentry of a fast- growing population in prison: women. She also urged members of the community to recognize the city’s need to pull together to address problems around re-entry, and to be mindful of that need when it is time to establish a halfway house, or a single-room occupancy house in a particular neighborhood.

“Everybody needs somewhere to live,” she said. ​“We need to be real about that and we can’t be like ​‘Not in my backyard.’”