COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC HEARING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY - - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, February 15, 2005 1:22 p.m. - - - - RESOLUTION 040816 - Resolution authorizing City Council Committee on Public Safety to conduct public hearings to examine and analyze the Community Re-entry process of ex-offenders and persons under authority of the criminal justice system... PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN DONNA REED MILLER, CHAIR COUNCILMAN DARRELL CLARKE COUNCILWOMAN BLONDELL REYNOLDS BROWN COUNCILWOMAN JANNIE BLACKWELL COUNCILMAN FRANK RIZZO - - - - V A R A L L O Incorporated Litigation Support Services Eleven Penn Center 1835 Market Street, Suite 600 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103 215.561.2220 215.567.2670 2 I N D E X RESOLUTION 040816 LEON KING, Prisons................ BRIAN CARTER, Defenders Assoc..... 6 ARTHUR EVANS, Behavioral Health... 43 MINNIE MOORE-JOHNSON, Concerned 7 Parents....................... 57 AQIL SABUR, PCDC.................. 64 8 JODIE GRECO, United Maids......... 72 JOHN LIEB, Prisons................ 81 9 LEONA SMITH, Employment Project... 87 MANNY ARROYO, CEC................. 95 10 CYNTHIA MUSE, Re-Entry Task Force.. 108 ED SCHWARTZ, Study of Civic Values. 117 11 MALIK AZIZ, Ex-Offenders Task Force 127 REV. ROBERT SHINE, Coalition of 12 Black Clergy................... 132 ARGO SIMPKINS, ABO Haven........... 155 13 RON CUIE, Corrections Management... 160 BETTY-ANN IZENMAN, Prison Society.. 171 14 DAVID KRAIN, Youth Study Center.... 177 Lori POMPA, Temple................. 179 15 ANGELA CRAFTON..................... 185 DEBRA OREE, Employment Resource.... 189 16 RICK MCKINNEY, REST Philly......... 208 LAFAYETTE GOODING, IYWCC........... 215 17 TIM HUNTER......................... 225 18 19 3 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816
Good afternoon, everyone. This is a continuation of the Committee on Public Safety. We will have the Clerk read the resolution.
Resolution 040816, a resolution authorizing City Council's Committee on Public Safety to conduct public hearings to examine and analyze the Community Re-entry process of ex-offenders and persons under authority of the criminal justice system to hear testimony and collect data on related public, private and community-based program and policy efforts, so as to determine what actions Council may take to help deliver the resources and support required to operate and promote such programs and polices.
Thank you. In attendance, I am Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, Chair of Public Safety. To my right is Councilman Darrell Clarke, who is not a Member of this Committee; however, he is interested in this subject. We're expecting a couple more people this afternoon. 4 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 We have a lot of people that are here to testify and I really don't want to delay the hearing any longer. I'm just going to do a short opening statement. It's basically the same thing that I said last week only in a shorter version. In matters of government, I believe justice is served when we develop and implement policy that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Ex-offender community re-entry programs and initiatives are about that type of policy. When adequate resources, dollars and people are allocated towards the institutions, organizations and systems dealing with all specs of re-entry, we see a dramatic decrease in all aspects of the high cost of crime. The drop in deadly recidivism is the most apparent and most desirable effect of all. These factors are part of my motivation for drafting Resolution No. 040816 and calling for these hearings to hear from those who are most involved and invested in the re-entry process; to also talk to re-entry program 5 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 needs and assessment, what is working, what is not; to legally legislatively in public policy status and evaluation what is helping, what is not; resource allocation, funding levels, what is being delivered and what is not in terms of dollars, personnel and structures. As an elected public servant, I see my contribution to serving justice as making every attempt when it comes to public policy to do the right thing for the right reasons. Help Council achieve these goals on behalf of this critical issue of ex-offender community re-entry and do it the right way. Let us begin now. As we stated last week, we had data on the number of people in Philadelphia that are on probation and parole just from a local level, and we also stated numbers from a state level. We have not finished gathering all that data, but taking a look at it, we have more than 44,000 people on City probation and parole and a number too on state. That impacts on so many, many families because for all that 48,000, there is 6 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 a family out there that's attached to that. So this is really an important issue, not just here in Philadelphia, but nationally. I just found out the other day there's actually a national organization that's taking a look at re-entry issues. You know that our Mayor actually chairs a Committee on the Conference of Mayors dealing with re-entry. So this is important for us here. Re-entry is just a new word, a new term that we're calling how do we help ex-offenders. It's a new term just for an old problem. But it's time that we start addressing that. Also, for the purposes of the record we also have Councilman Frank Rizzo in attendance. We're going to go on and get started. Our first witness is Commissioner Leon King, Philadelphia Prisons and Prison Consensus Group. Good afternoon. COMMISSIONER KING: Good afternoon, 7 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Councilwoman. As you correctly stated, I'm Leon King. I'm the Commissioner of Prisons, but today I am here to testify as part of a larger group called the Philadelphia Consensus Group on Re-entry and Reintegration of Adjudicated Offenders. I'll explain to you what that is. Seated with me are Brian Carter. He's here to my left. He's the director of alternative sentencing at the Public Defender's Office. Mr. John Delaney, who is a Deputy District Attorney working for Lynn Abraham, Bob Malavestuto (ph), who is the co-chief of probation and parole here in Philadelphia. Here seated to my left is one of the representatives from Search for Common Ground that I'm going to get to in the testimony.
Do we have a copy of your testimony? COMMISSIONER KING: I just got it 20 minutes ago.
That's what I was looking for. 8 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 COMMISSIONER KING: It's not as long as it was the other day. I'm here -- we are here today to tell you about a unique process that occurred just over two years ago and to describe some of the findings of that process and the challenges that lay ahead as we all seek to develop a plan to reintegrate ex-offenders into Philadelphia's communities. C. organization called Search for Common Ground came to Philadelphia at the invitation of former Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode, Senior. It was Dr. Goode's feeling that Philadelphia was a City uniquely equipped with well-meaning and hard-working individuals and organizations that could, if they put their minds to it, develop a model for the nation on how to address the seemingly insurmountable re-entry problem. Under Dr. Goode's leadership, the Philadelphia Consensus Group on Re-entry and Reintegration was convened. The group was comprised of a diverse group of individuals and organizations in a City with an interest in assisting men and 9 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 women leaving Philadelphia's prisons while protecting and preserving public safety. Stakeholders in this group represented the courts, the prisons, the defenders, the prosecutors, offender's advocates and faith-based and community organizations. Over the course of a year the group met upon agreed upon consensus ground rules. All parties had an opportunity to participate as equals regardless of organizational influence or status. All interests and concerns were given equal weight and ultimately no proposal was approved without unanimous consent. Before the group was able to reach the point of making proposals, the formidable task of defining the problem of re-entry was faced. In that process, over 60 barriers to successful reintegration were identified. It was during this discussion that the group arrived at the realization that successful reintegration is not simply a goal to improves the lives of men and women leaving jail and prison. It is also a goal to improve the 10 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 health and safety of our communities. When the Consensus Group finally produced its first report in March 2003, that report focused on both the social cost of failed reintegration and the social value of men and women in the reintegration process. Let me speak for a moment about the social cost of failed reintegration, which I think you've heard before and we talked about when I testified last week. The social cost of failed reintegration are both human and financial. On the human side, there is victimization and fear of victimization for communities in our City for the offender. For the offender, the cost is the cycle hopelessness, the limited employability, substance abuse, homelessness and a lack of positive support systems that can lead to continued criminal or anti-social behavior. The financial costs are equally as daunting. Last week I think you heard about the overall prison budget, et cetera. What I want to say now sort of focuses your attention 11 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 on criminal justice agencies as a whole, the cost of enforcement, crime response, protection and prevention and the cost of incarceration. 8 million per 10 year in incarceration costs alone. Today we would estimate that the savings might be greater. The social value of successful reintegration is far more profound and more difficult to quantify, but also easier to appreciate. The value of successful reintegration is to be found in the positive self empowerment and self worth for the offender who learns that they need not victimize another or themselves. It is also to be found in their families, for whom it can be a parent, child or spouse who contributes rather than detracts from their financial and general well-being and for victims. Successful reintegration can mean 12 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES.
040816 freedom from constant fear of victimization. Finally for the City, it can mean an opportunity to enhance the positive aspects of urban life rather than counteract the negative. Another of the more significant discoveries made during the Consensus process was that the progress for these goals is not always financially costly. Sometimes incremental gains can be made by simple coordination, collaboration and communication. As part of the Consensus process, we identified several barriers to successful reintegration that are simply a matter of institutional policy or practice. For example, the courts, the prisons and other criminal justice agencies currently utilize at least three different databases, none of which can be integrated with the others, maintaining different and sometimes contradictory pieces of information about inmates, detainees, probationers and parolees. The result, the Consensus Group found, is limited information sharing, which in turn 13 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 sometimes causes delay, duplication of effort and ultimately inefficient responses to the needs of the offenders and the communities to which they return. Perhaps the most significant thing that the group found early on was that there was not a coherent City-wide strategy in regard to re-entry, and there was not an entity or an agency with an official that had a mandate to set policy or to implement and enforce it. In addition to the Consensus Group, at last count there were three other bodies that attempted to tackle the policies around the re-entry issue and countless other programs and organizations applying a variety of approaches. That's something, as you recall, I touched on in my testimony last week when I talked about the Philadelphia Prison System Re-entry Oversight Board and how we need to coordinate this so we don't waste resources. Let me be clear. The Consensus Group does not purport to have the answer to 14 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 the re-entry problem in Philadelphia. But what we have done is renewed a belief, having gone through a collaborative process ourselves, that by working together to harness the collective wisdom that exists in our City, we can become a model for other communities to follow in dealing with issues. I want to ad-lib again, that really is the truth. I've been all around the country. I think Ms. Williams just whispered in my ear this morning that there really isn't another jurisdiction in the whole United States that has this sort of energy and dedication and people looking at this issue. Even though it's sort of a biased comment, you don't have another prison system in this country that's as involved with this issue and willing to let people come in behind the walls to help people. The fact that you're having Council hearings on this, I think this is also a national model. You don't have this going on in other jurisdictions and other cities. The Consensus Group proposes that 15 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 under the leadership of the Mayor, along with the cooperation of City Council, we should all rededicate ourselves to achieving the three related goals of public safety; offender accountability and the development of the competencies necessary for successful reintegration. To accomplish this, we propose that a broad single coalition be formed to engage with members and leaders of the community to assist them in rethinking and playing a more active role in the reintegration of offenders, explore mechanisms to achieve better, more coordinated services to assist offenders in successfully reintegrating into their communities and be empowered to examine and work toward the elimination of legal and administrative barriers that unduly inhibit successful offender reintegration in Philadelphia. Again, in another aside, this morning I was over at one of these agencies that does job placement and what not.
I spoke to a group of individuals who are looking for 16 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 jobs. When they found out why I was there they had lots of questions. One of the big things that they raised was, you know, I have an arrest record in my past and here I am trying to find a job. What are you all over there at City Council and at the prisons doing about that? That's another issue that I think we talked about last week that we need to move on that issue. Today the members of the Consensus Group present from the Prosecutor's Office, the courts, the prison and the defenders sit here as an illustration of the willingness of our respective agencies to continue to work together and with City Council to address and perhaps even solve the problem of failed reintegration and recidivism. We also invite others to work with us to broaden the already existent coalition represented by the Consensus Group and work to make Philadelphia a better, safer, more financially responsible City, to develop and promote pragmatic and concrete measures to enhance participation in society of the men 17 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 and women leaving the Philadelphia prison system, to encourage accountability, preserve neighborhood safety and ensure that victims of crime are respected, protected and restored. That concludes our testimony. We'll make copies available. Everybody here on the team is available to answer questions if you have any.
Does anybody on the team have any remarks at this time? (No response.)
Okay. Kind of quiet for the DA, the Probation Department, all these departments. One of the things I'd like to know, in your testimony I believe you said that your team has come up with competencies necessary for successful reintegration and also, of course, a list of barriers. Would someone like to just talk about some of those competencies for success? COMMISSIONER KING: I can talk briefly about it. I will just repeat what I said last time. I think broadly speaking in 18 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 regard to reintegration and re-entry in the City, as in elsewhere, some of the barriers that we've talked about are housing and jobs and access to treatment for your drug addictions and your substance abuse problems, as well as what we talked about earlier about having a strategy and a comprehensive way of organizing all the entities and people that are interested in this subject in an organized way so that we can deliver services to offenders in a better way than we do now. For example, when I talked about the group I visited this morning, in other jurisdictions the way it works -- in most other jurisdictions -- if you want to help people who are in prison that need help, need jobs or whatever, you go, you get some money, you put up a sign on the street and you say, I'm here to help ex-offenders. It's not a process where you have some communication with the people in the prison system or the Public Defender's Office or the Probation and Parole Department because a lot of the things that we have going on -- and Mr. Carter can maybe 19 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 comment about this -- that we have going on with inmates, aside from the prison programs, you know, getting them paroled, for example, to treatment centers and jobs and housing, have to do with the public defender and the DA working together with the judges to get these things accomplished. Those are the big picture things. I don't know if anyone else wants to add any details.
I'm Brian Carter, Director of Alternative Sentencing at the Defender's. We work closely with the prison's OPTIONS Program, which is drug treatment behind the walls, and then we follow through with the City Health Department in placing clients into drug treatment programs. The statistics show that there's a 66 percent decrease in convictions after two years for the clients that go through these programs. So it's cost effective. We usually early parole the clients to treatment. That saves a lot of money up front in prison costs and then it saves money in the back end through 20 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 reducing recidivism.
So we have to always make drug treatment available? Isn't it true that 80 percent of those people convicted are convicted due to some type of substance abuse problem? Or is the number higher?
That's approximately right. Approximately 80 percent of people that are arrested and brought into the prison system have been using drugs or alcohol within the last few days.
Does anyone else on the Committee have any questions? Councilman Clarke.
Thank you, Councilwoman. Good afternoon, gentlemen. One brief question. Traditionally -- and this is an assumption on my behalf -- individuals who tend to serve time for white collar crime such as CEOs and other types of executive positions, their ability to reintegrate into 21 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 the community is enhanced because they have a certain skill set prior to going into prison. Unfortunately, a lot of the people in the community that I represent don't have such a skill set, therefore their ability to reintegrate into the community is in some degrees virtually nil. The reality is in talking to men and women on the streets, when they go, if they tell the truth on the job application, yes, I served time, they probably don't get that call back. If they lie, eventually it's found out and then they're terminated. Do you have a program that really looks at entrepreneurship? In reality, a lot of these people probably would be better off if they created their own business or they were able to have some sort of plan and strategy that they basically employed themselves. Do you have a program that aggressively looks at those types of opportunities? COMMISSIONER KING: I have a program. It started off in my head and I've articulated it. I wouldn't say it's at a 22 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 point where I would say it aggressively attacks that issue. At the prison we have begun -- and I don't know where it is in the process -- but part of one of our programs, what we said was, that has to be part of it. Not everybody that we train for a job has to be somebody that's cleaning a floor or cutting a tree or doing whatever. Part of what we're doing to expand one of our programs, a jobs project, is to actually have some sort of instruction on what it means to be an entrepreneur, the types of things that you have to do to get things started. We want to do that in the jobs project. Then we have a culinary arts program that we operate in conjunction with Aramark Corporation -- they do the food service at the jail -- where we're incorporating the self employment piece. So we're trying to do that starting out on a small scale. But just like you said, when you have inmates like Martha Stewart, for example, 23 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 she won't have a problem reintegrating into society. She has millions of dollars.
She has a TV show coming out. COMMISSIONER KING: Yes, she does. But if you're a regular sort of inmate, you don't have those resources. In addition, some people just haven't worked. So we have to prep them at the prison so they know how to fill out a job application, they know how to have an interview, they know how to deal with conflict and instruction. Some people haven't even had a checking account. They don't know what that is. The first challenge is just getting them there and maybe getting their GED and then adding this entrepreneurship-type thing to some of the programs is what we're looking to do. I know the Mayor -- I've heard him say that's what he would like to see. So we're working on that. There's a program in Coatesville that has to do with homeless people. The way 24 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 they work that is, they train their homeless folks -- I think they call it environmental scientists or whatever. It just means that you're a janitor. They train you how to do that. Then at the end of the process they have people who donate them equipment so that you can start your own company doing that and they provide you with one client at the end of this process. So then you've got the background. You've got the training. You've got the equipment and you've got one client. Then it's up to you to take the business to the second level. But the challenge you face if you're in the prison system is, you know, I don't have a room full of buffers and mops and buckets. That's part of getting the community together to help us. I would expect the business community, if we set up an entrepreneur-type program at the prison, to help us with those things. So that if we've got five inmates who have gone through the entrepreneurship program and what we need is a client and some basic sort of tools to get 25 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 them started, I would expect people to assist us in getting that without coming to City Council and saying, I need a million dollars to buy mops and buckets because inmates want to start businesses.
Well, we fund agencies that are supposed to provide that type of assistance. Earlier here we had PCDC and we talked about their ability to interact with some of these individuals who are informally employed, you know, cutting hair in the basement, cooking dinners and things of that nature, where they're employed, just not formally, not paying taxes, and don't have a business plan, so to speak. As you're talking about forming partnerships with corporations, the reality is that we do have agencies that work with entrepreneurs. I guess I'm asking, have you interacted with the PCDCs, the Commerce Departments, those agencies that are supposed to provide that service to people? COMMISSIONER KING: Part of the finding was there are some things you can do 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 that don't require budget outlays and some things do. It's just about communication. There hasn't been, prior to the Consensus Group and the current focus on re-entry in the City, that sort of communication with agencies just like you mentioned. It's sort of like the inmates leave the jail and no one knows if there are specific groups that have specific needs. PWDC and others, they fell into the melting pot of everybody. But we do now, with the Re-Entry Oversight Board and some of our other initiatives that we have going, we do have those people now brought into the piece. I even believe PWDC actually now has a dedicated staff person in the last year or so and their job is just to deal specifically with ex-offenders.
I'd like to work with you on that, if you need some assistance.
I actually met with a manufacturer in my district that's looking to expand because he has this big contract, and he's looking for people and he's 27 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 mentioned that he's wiling to take people that were recently released from the prison that have had some experience doing upholstery. So I can get that information to someone later. He makes gym mats and all this other stuff and he's got this really big contract, so he's expanding his business. Certainly when owners of businesses come and talk to Councilmembers, we always talk to them about employment opportunities for our constituents. He is really in need of people. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We do have an upholstery shop at the prison.
He knows that. Evidently he has some employees that have come with that experience when they were incarcerated. He said to me that that's what he's looking for.
The prison also has an excellent work release program, which can work with that manufacturer and start the client in the job before he's actually released. Employers are usually very happy with people coming from the work release program because 28 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 they're very happy to go to work. Employment is the key to prevent recidivism. A client that's working is three times less likely to recidivate.
That's true. COMMISSIONER KING: Part of we're doing at the prison is trying to re-gear ourselves so that hopefully in April when we have this new deputy commissioner, where when you get that call, you'll know exactly where it is you have to call to refer it, one. Two, we have a more formal procedure in place so that people in the City know that there is this pool. They know where to call. We've already screened and identified those inmates who we're going to have people calling about. That's where we want to be.
Make sure we get the information. If you give it to me I'll make sure that other Councilmembers receive who to call. It's important to know who to call. Councilman Rizzo. Also, before Councilman Rizzo, I'd 29 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 like to for the record note that Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, who is also not a Member of this Committee, but she's very interested in this issue also, is also in attendance at this hearing today. Councilman.
Thank you, Councilwoman. Commissioner, could you take a moment to discuss the, for lack of a better word, the situation with your mental health population; how big is it and how do you deal with it? COMMISSIONER KING: That's another, I guess, sub-category to this re-entry issue. The number that I use when people ask me that question, out of about 8,300 people, we have 1,400 people that we say are on the mental health caseloads.
That's inmates now? COMMISSIONER KING: Inmates. That presents a significant issue because when we talk about jobs and we talk about housing, if 30 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 you have a mental health problem -- as a matter of fact, when I was over where I was this morning, if you have a mental health problem, they don't want to deal with you. We've done a lot of pioneering things, I think. I'm always saying that. It's true, though, here in Philadelphia. Collectively, not just the prison system, the Office of Behavioral Health Division of Social Services. We have something called the Forensic Task Force that is a pretty innovative thing that has started here in Philadelphia where all the people who provide services for people with mental health issues in the prisons have come up with a lot of things. I can get you a list -- I can't recite them all -- about how we try to deal with diverting people with mental health problems from the jails, making sure that they get the best treatment that they can get while they're in the prison system and getting them out of them as early as possible. Right now what we're doing is we had the National Institute of Corrections come and 31 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 do a survey of all the mental health services and issues that we have at the jails. We got a grant from the National Institute of Corrections and the Council of State Governments, a technical assistance grant, that's going to help us further refine what we do. But part of the dialog has to be, why are the 1,400 people with mental health problems in the jail in the first place? There was an older lady -- Mr. Carter probably liked this story -- she had to be in her '70s, and I went over to the Detention Center and there she was smiling and laughing and having a good old time because she thought she was in a hospital and all the COs were nurses. I forget what it is that she did. A lot of these people, what happens is, they come to the jail, sometimes because they're not taking the medication they're supposed to be taking on the street, so they decompensate, they commit a crime and they come to jail. They come to jail and we get them all stabilized. They go through the 32 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 process. They're released. They don't have the services that they probably need. They don't take their medication. They decompensate. They commit a crime and they're back in jail. I know of one individual who has been doing that for years. He just 8 comes back, takes up space and it goes on over 9 and over again. 10
Commissioner, one 11 question always leads to another, especially 12 around here. I know that there are people you 13 hear and read in the media that they don't go 14 to the conventional jail environment. Like 15 this lady, maybe she shouldn't be there. Is 16 there a place that you, as the head of our 17 system, can make a recommendation that this 18 person shouldn't be here, that there is a 19 state facility or something else? 20 COMMISSIONER KING: I don't do that. But the other people that are involved in all of this, the Public Defender or the Office of Behavioral Health, they're involved and they are constantly, as I say, massaging the population. When we come across those people, 33 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 we try as best we can to get them where they need to be.
So there is a process where if a person is identified as mentally ill, that there's the potential of an opportunity that they be removed from your environment to a more suitable environment? COMMISSIONER KING: The problem with that is that there isn't enough other suitable environments. That's my thought. Mr. Carter.
I agree. We review all of the mentally ill inmates and try to place them into programs, the Defender Association'S Adult Social Service Department. There is not enough housing for mentally ill clients. Often a client who's incarcerated will have to do his maximum sentence and just be released because there's no place to place that client. Right now that's the biggest resource that we're lacking, is homes for the mentally ill. We have drug treatment, and they're doing extremely well. But if the person is 34 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 mentally ill we don't have the homes for them. COMMISSIONER KING: And, Councilman, at the prison we only have -- I forget how many beds we have. We have 1,400 people on the caseload. We probably have 200 or less beds for people who have mental health problems. So they're there. They're not getting the treatment that they need and it's costing us more money. So the question is, can we find a place for these people that's less than $80 a day that provides the security and the things that the DAs and the judges want so that they're not a threat to the community, that's not up on State Road.
Again, here we go with another as things develop here. I'm sure a person that's mentally ill, it's not good for you to have them in that environment and it's not good for them to be in that environment. Is there a statement? COMMISSIONER KING: I review all the uses of forces in the prison and the vast majority of the times that COs have to put 35 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 their hands on somebody, it's somebody with a mental health problem.
Where do we go from here? What do we do to address the issue that you just described that needs attention? COMMISSIONER KING: I think first we need to bring it to the attention of people like you. But then what we're trying to do, which I think is part of the process we will be going through with this grant, is actually being able to identify in a little more specific fashion who out of the 1,400 people the Office of Mental Health or the prisons think need to be somewhere else. Identifying where that somewhere else is theoretically, how much that is in relation to how much it costs to keep them in prison, and then make a presentation about, this is what we think we should be doing with these inmates. We think it's going to cost cheaper, because you have to do it over here, and then we have to get the government moving forward. We're trying to get those things put in place. 36 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816
What do the state and federal jails do? COMMISSIONER KING: I don't know what the federal jails do and I'm not sure what the state jails do here in Pennsylvania. They have a little different situation because they've got these people, but I'm sure if you talked to Secretary Bear or Deputy Secretary Mary L. Byrd, they would tell you that they have the same sort of issues.
They have similar circumstances. Well, Commissioner, you've planted the seed. If you have some recommendations on what we can do -- obviously we don't have the expertise to develop a protocol. It's always about money, I'm sure, about making additional facilities available. But if you do have a plan, I'm sure this Committee, me personally, would like to pursue making the facility have a better environment. And also you care about the people that are there that have mental health issues that need to be cared for. COMMISSIONER KING: Okay. 37 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816
Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I'd like to put my question in a context in the resolution submitted by my colleague, Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller. There's one paragraph which reads as follows: "Whereas nationwide more than almost half of all incarcerated adults and two-thirds of all adults involved in criminal justice systems are parents to more than 1 million minor children. Over half, 58 percent of those minor children of incarcerated parents, are 10 years of age and under. So my question is related to and concerned about your involvement, connection, relationship with DHS and the children of parents who end up incarcerated. I clearly remember during budget hearings, Mr. Prison Commissioner, that 38 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 there's been some progress. I ask because shortly, I, along with DHS and the Black Clergy, will be announcing a major initiative -- and let me be more specific -- an initiative designed to look into and do a better job at foster care. We know that many of the children in foster care -- I don't know the numbers as I sit here -- their parents are incarcerated. So the question becomes, are you okay with the relationship, the linkages with DHS as it relates to the care of the children whose parents are incarcerated? What suggestions or recommendations would you offer to a pending initiative that is about foster care and children in foster care? COMMISSIONER KING: I think that the relationship that the prisons have with DHS is a very good one. I think it's been a good one. I just think it's continuing to evolve because it needs to be a better one. We do have a new director of social services that we hadn't had for a few months. There was a lull there. Julia Danzy came in. 39 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Estelle was the last one when there was a gap and now Julia is there. Part of what we're doing in the Division of Social Services is going through a process to make things more formal so that the agencies in the division of social services, which are prisons, recreation, DHS, the homeless agency, all those social service-type agencies are better coordinated. Right now the way it works is, you know, there's an informal relationship with prison social workers and social workers at DHS. So there's that sort of communication, but there isn't anything that's written down in policy so that everybody knows.
A formal procedural policy, I should say. COMMISSIONER KING: Exactly. Part of what Ms. Danzy is working on is this IDIS system. I don't remember what it stands for. So that when people who have been on the caseload in DHS or they've been on the caseload in the Office of Mental Health or they've been in prisons is that there's a 40 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 computer linkage between the information that we all share so that we're not duplicating service plans. If the social worker and DHS says, parent, you have to do X, Y and Z. Parent gets arrested and now my social worker is saying, well, parent, you have to do X, Y and Z, but they may not be talking to the DHS people. And there have been situations, for example, where the parent is required to show up at court or visit the child. But the parent gets locked up. The DHS people don't know what's going on, so the parent doesn't go to court or they don't do what they're supposed to do. Then there is an issue with their parental rights. So those are the things that we're formalizing on. There's a core planning team and a few other things going on, and hopefully in the spring we're going to have some more formalized policies. Because all of this fits into prisoner reintegration and all of that. Because if you get out, if your issue is 41 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 housing, jobs and your family, what we need to do as a criminal justice system is be able to address those things and not just leave it up to people to sort of wander around getting services.
Internally is there a professional on your team that is in the business or has the responsibility of ensuring that the children of parents who are incarcerated have the opportunity to interface with them, or does that duty rest purely with DHS? COMMISSIONER KING: It doesn't rest purely with DHS. Like I said, it's more of an informal relationship, sort of social worker to social worker because people have been around and they know what's going on. There's no formalized something written in writing. But that's what we're working toward because we recognize it's an issue. The Mayor recognized it was an issue. That's why he has the Division of Social Services. We just hadn't had a leader for a little while there. We're working on all those things and we 42 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 realize that it's an issue and it's a problem. There's some talk. We did have a meeting with Commissioner Ransom when she first was elevated and we talked about the possibility of actually stationing some social worker or two from DHS up on the prison campus, more so in the female facility I think is the way we were talking, so that there's more formal connections.
Hands on, yes. At whatever juncture you pull together your recommendations, to the extent you think it helpful to Madam Chairwoman, could you just submit them to Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller so that that can become a part of the big picture recommendations that we then submit to the Administration? COMMISSIONER KING: Okay.
Thank you. Commissioner, I'd like to thank you and your panel for testifying here today and also for your testimony last week. We can probably just sit here and just go on with 43 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 this all day. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming. COMMISSIONER KING: You're welcome. Thank you.
Commissioner King, last week I believe you had a few staff people stay around for questions. If you can do that today, it would be most helpful. COMMISSIONER KING: Okay.
Thank you. At this point I guess we'll bring two people up at a time. We have Dr. Arthur C. Evans, Director of the Office of Behavioral Health and Mental Retardation Services. Dr. Evans, please make sure you speak directly into the mike and state your name and whatever affiliate for the record. Thank you. You can proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon, Councilwoman Reed Miller and Councilman Rizzo. I'm Dr. Arthur Evans. I'm the newly appointed Director of the Office of Behavioral Health and Mental Retardation Services. That's a 44 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 newly created office within state government that combines the Office of Mental Health, the coordinating Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs, the Office of Mental Retardation Services and CBH, which is the managed care company, into a newly formed organization. I'm here to present testimony on the work that we've been doing with the prisons. To my left, is Mary Jordan, who is the clinical director of our Office of Behavorial Health Specialized Operations here to answer questions. You should know that I am fairly new in my position. I started on November 1st, and that is one of the reasons that I have Mary here. But I am here to talk and I'm actually very honored and pleased to be here to talk about this issue. One of the reasons that I was interested in coming to Philadelphia in the first place is that this is a City that is known for its collaboration. It has a very strong behavioral health system, probably one of the strongest in the country. 45 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 You heard Commissioner King mention the collaborative efforts that are going on in the prison, which I can attest to this, coming from Connecticut, that this is unique in terms of the level of collaboration that is happening within the system. So I'm very pleased to be now a part of this in a leadership role. You heard Commissioner King mention the Philadelphia Forensic Task Force, which was developed several years ago. This is a partnership that includes several agencies, including mental health and substance abuse providers, the Police Department, Pretrial Services, Social Services Unit of the Defender's Association, prison administration and treatment staff. Other partners are probation and parole advocates, state prison re-entry programs, homeless services, and the Veterans Administration. The major objective of the Forensic Task Force is to improve access and the quality of services to persons with severe mental illnesses and often concurring 46 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 substance abuse disorders involved who are at risk at involvement in the criminal justice system. The task force meets monthly and has been actively involved in enhancing the re-entry process from jail to the community. Successful re-entry from incarceration is one of its major goals. We believe that re-entry efforts need to begin very early after a person is incarcerated. The task force uses the sequential model to explore many ways in which individuals with behavioral health conditions are involved in the criminal justice system. I'm going to briefly describe this intercept model because it's again, I think, quite unique and quite innovative in terms of using that to guide our efforts. There are five points at which we try to intervene. The first being with law enforcement and emergency services. Secondly, at initial detention or initial court hearings. Thirdly, at the point of jails, courts, forensic evaluations and 47 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 hospitalizations. Fourth, re-entry, which I'm going to focus on. And fifthly, in terms of community corrections and community support. The model really tries to intervene and divert people out of the criminal justice system, if appropriate. If someone does become involved in the criminal justice system and they have a behavioral health condition, that's a primary issue to try to move them out of that system, as Councilman Rizzo was talking about a little earlier. At all points of the interception for persons with behavioral health issues an opportunity presents to either prevent incarceration, shorten the jail time, guide the person while incarcerated and facilitate transition back into the community.
Again, I'm going to briefly describe each one of these, but really focus on the re-entry work that we're doing. Intercept One is an opportunity for law enforcement to recognize mental illnesses 48 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 and substance abuse. To this end, we are training and have trained almost all of the police supervisors and we will begin training 3,000 police officers in March. Intercept Two. We are working with and training warrant officers. This training is provided by our Family Training and Advocacy Center. Intercept Three. We have many opportunities for behavioral health to work closely with the prison system, the Commissioner and his staff, as well as with the prison health and behavioral health providers. We've worked to create data links at admission and discharge to the Philadelphia Prison System in order to facilitate continuity of care and provide us with a much better understanding of behavioral health populations in jail. A new method on maintenance program began in 2004 and will enhance inmate continuity of treatment upon discharge to his or her community program. Again, a very unique way to address the needs of people who 49 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 have opiate addiction. A release of information form at intake was implemented to facilitate continuity of care. This is extremely important because, as you heard the example that Commissioner King mentioned, people who have behavioral health conditions often have chronic conditions. There is a known history. One of the major challenges for some health care is to make sure that we have the information that we can treat people appropriately and intervene appropriately. In collaboration with Drexel University and Villanova Law School we've worked to develop and fund a new training program to improve the quality of forensic evaluations, which will ultimately lead to timely and appropriate treatment and evaluation. At Intercept Four, which is the re-entry point or the re-entry activities, there are several things that we are currently doing. I want to highlight some of those interventions. 50 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 First, we have worked with PPS, or Philadelphia Prison System, and health and behavioral health vendors at the prison to systematically assure after care medication -- and this is something that is now occurring. Again, if someone who is off medication or there's an abrupt change in medication, that person is more likely to be decompensate and end up back into the prison system. Secondly, we continue to support the Forensic Intensive Recovery Program, which has been in operation since 1993. FIR provides community-based behavioral health treatment and support services through early parole of the sentenced population. That program works quite closely with a program that was mentioned earlier, the OPTIONS program, which is focused on helping people to prepare to come out of the prison system. The FIR program really tries to engage people as they are going into the community, make sure that they're connected with appropriate treatment services. Thirdly, we support the Mental 51 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Health Association Prison to Communities Project, which provides education, group mental health classes in case management, both in the jail and through the first two to three months after release. Fourth, we provide funding and training to the Consortium Community Mental Health Center for an intensive case management unit specializing in behavioral health services to consumers who are being released from incarceration. Fifth, we've obtained a Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency grant, which is now in its final year, to provide behind the walls intervention, obtaining benefits and continuity of care through case management. And sixthly, we have worked with PPS to obtain a technical assistance grant from the National Institute of Corrections.
This is specifically to provide guidance and improve corrections' behavioral health collaboration on re-entry efforts. We're pleased to note that we were 52 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 recently told that we've been awarded a second round of that. I think we were one of very few projects in the country that got that honor. The last intercept point is in the community, and we provide support to probation officers, training to those officers and crisis intervention. We've developed a handbook for families whose loved ones are incarcerated, and we are working closely with the Veterans Administration. While we have many successes, there is still much work that we need to do. In my closing comments I'd just like to highlight a few of the things that we think are areas that we need to continue to work in. First, although we have funded literally thousands of residential placements, there's still a severe shortage of housing. That was mentioned a little earlier. It continues to be a problem. And I can tell you, coming from another state and talking to colleagues from around the country, this is 53 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 probably the number one problem in behavioral health services, for the provision of behavioral health services, in practically any system in the country, and it's particularly acute in urban areas. Secondly, we need to expand our ability to rapidly engage people into treatment and the obtaining of benefits. When a person comes out of the prison system and they do not have entitlements, it makes access to care much more difficult. And if we can get those people connected as we've been working with the prison system over the last few years, we're much more likely to get people into treatment. Thirdly, we need to expand treatment resources in the community to specifically meet the needs of people with behavorial health conditions. I mentioned the program at the Consortium. We need to do more services that are tailored specifically for the criminal justice population. Fourthly, we need to improve the coordination of discharge planning. 54 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Commissioner King mentioned that my department as well as his department, the Department of Health, and other City agencies which are focused around health and human services are part of the Division of Social Services headed by Julia Danzy. We're all working on ways to collaborate much better. Many of the people that we work with are common across many systems and the information systems and our management systems have to be much better integrated if we're going to serve these people effectively. Fifthly, we've looked at a program called SPAN Program, which is modeled after New York Rikers Island, which would be located near the courthouse and available to released behavioral health consumers to assist them in obtaining benefits and other needed services. As in New York, anyone released can go to the clinic within 30 days of release. Lastly, we want to strengthen our academic connections, our academic center, to expand research on re-entry efforts. Again, another important priority for us. 55 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions, along with Mary Jordan.
Thank you, Dr. Evans. Have you done an assessment to figure out why there's such a housing shortage? Is it fear? Is the issue fear?
Well, there are a number of issues. As I said, I'm trying to understand the issues specific and unique to Philadelphia. I think it comes down to a number of things. Affordable housing is a problem in the general population. That's a given. When you talk about specialized programs to help people who have behavioral health conditions, and if you add to that the issue of people having a criminal justice history, it makes it very difficult to site those programs. Providers will tell you here and in most systems that even when they have the funding to do rehabilitation to build, that there is often community opposition, which is usually exercised through zoning. 56 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 That just makes it difficult. I can say that we do have the potential to have some additional funding for housing services, support of housing, and we've made that a priority. If we are approved on our plan we should be able to expand that, but we will need the help of Council and others to help us locate those services.
Well, I want to thank you for coming in today. Keep us informed. Let us know what you need. That's why we're here. Thank you
Next we'll have members of the Ex-Offenders Task Force. Ms. Ytina Dudley, Ms. Moore, Ms. Muse (ph) and Ms. Greco. You can just all come in and grab some of those chairs there to the left and to the right. You'll have to share the mike. We'll get ready to start. Please bring the mike up close to you. Speak directly in, state your name and affiliation 57 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 for the record. Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Minnie Moore-Johnson. I'm the executive director for Concerned Parents, Incorporated. I'm also a member of the program committee for the Ex-Offenders Task Force. I think you have a copy of my testimony.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to address you on this very important issue of employment for former offenders. The scope of the problem, advances in technology, increasing globalization and declines in humanization all have taken a toll on the American worker, particularly those without skills or training. Adding to that discouraging picture is the fact that a full-time job at minimum wage no longer guarantees an escape from poverty. The picture is even more discouraging for the person without job skills and training when he 58 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 or she also has a criminal record. Men and women with criminal records often struggle to find work. Their record, their often limited work experience and isolation from the mainstream economy and their lack of confidence in their own skills and ability to contribute places them at a triple disadvantage in the job market. Though men still constitute the vast majority of former offenders, the number of women former offenders has increased at a rate higher than that of men. As these men and women leave prison and return to their neighborhoods, the demand for services that can effectively help these disadvantaged job seekers expand. As a result of the historic 1996 Federal Welfare Reform Act, TANF recipients are required to find work before their 60 month lifetime cap benefits run out. The Department of Public Welfare has found that recipients with criminal records are likely to be the most difficult to place in employment. Meanwhile, the economic downturn 59 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 worsened temporarily due to September 11th, which also had the effect of making employers less willing to hire former offenders and led to several employers going out of business or laying off staff, while other employers adopted the policy against hiring former offenders. There are a great many former offenders who have received skills during their incarceration which would provide them with the opportunity for employment. However, a great many of them have had to seek employment in other fields other than the fields they have mastered due to judicial constraints. For example, the prison system provides training for people interested in becoming licensed employed barbers. Unfortunately, the Department of Probation and Parole does not allow their clients to work in barber shops or beauty salons because they do not have the ability to provide pay stubs verifying their income or proof that taxes are being paid. 60 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Employment is the key to success in lives of families. What does it take to become employed? Many individuals face significant personal and family-related challenges as they try to reach the goal of employment. We should seek to ensure job retention for the long-term success of clients by providing supportive services for the duration of orientation and transitional employment. Support services 90 days after permanent placement is also needed. Skills, education and training top the list, but there are other immediate needs to be addressed in order for a former offender to become employed. Among those are valid identification, social security cards, transportation in the form of monthly public transit trans pass or tokens until the first paycheck, clothing, hair cuts or hair styles, resolution of issues such as hygiene, child care, medical and/or physical limitations, housing and drug/alcohol related issues. These issues coupled with a lack of motivation, low self-esteem, lack of self 61 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 confidence, limited work experience and a criminal history make employment for former offenders a difficult task. While it is rare for an individual to face all of the aforementioned obstacles, it's very important for anyone preparing to assist former offenders with employment to be prepared for resolution of these issues prior to sending them out for work.
Imagine, if you will, the difficulty you and I would have obtaining and retaining employment if we were faced with any one of the obstacles I have mentioned. We must understand that the task we are proposing is monumental. There is no one agency prepared to provide all the services needed. I, too, am in favor of an office established by the City of Philadelphia to deal with the issue of employment for former offenders. We all must be cooperative in our effort to help the former offender. The office would consist of those agencies who have demonstrated the ability to provide the array of services we propose, staffed by 62 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 former offenders who have demonstrated a knowledge of the needs of the former offender. Proficient clerical staff as well as social workers who can refer clients to the appropriate agency to provide the services needed. Some of those services needed are housing. The agencies that have provided those services, such as PEC, People's Emergency Center, or Project Home, DHS, FIR or other agencies and the Veterans Administration should be coupled into this because there are a lot of former offenders who have served our nation who could use the services that the Veterans Administration provides. The City of Philadelphia health centers, to be able to provide those medical services for people who are being discharged who may or may not qualify for public assistance in terms of medical. Clothing is a big issue for people who are going out for work. The agencies like the Workman's Style for Men or the Career Wardrobe for Women who are working to try to 63 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 get those clothing to them so that they can make an interview and be successful in that interview. Transportation, life skills, education, job development and more importantly there should be developed an employer database that consists of ex-offender friendly employers, including those employers and people who have contracts with the City of Philadelphia. You have demonstrated the desire to assist the former offender by holding these hearings to evaluate the need. We can help to realize the dream of successful employment to the former offender if we continue on the road we've embarked. Please give us the tools we need to do the job. Again, those tools are the continued cooperation of Council, a central location office for the services to be provided and adequate staff to get the job done. Thank you so much. I'm available for any questions.
Thank you for coming in. We'll hear everyone's testimony 64 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 and then open it up for questions. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of City Council. My name is Aqil Abdul Sabur, and I'm the vice president for Micro Enterprise Development and Technical Assistance at the Philadelphia Commercial Development Corporation. I also serve on the Economic Development Committee of the Ex-Offender Task Force. I am joined here in the Chamber with Ms. Ytina Dudley, who's the director of our special projects. She's to my left. My colleagues and I here are pleased to present our testimony to the Committee in accordance with the Council resolution. In our testimony we plan to demonstrate how entrepreneurship can be used as one of the major levers in addressing the large number of offenders re-entering Philadelphia communities. Basically what we want to speak very briefly on is the efforts that we've engaged in at the Philadelphia Development Corporation to assist ex-offenders and also the small 65 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 business community within Philadelphia boundaries. Just some general background. PCDC has been in existence since 1974. In that 30-year period we've done about a quarter of a billion dollars in projects for all sectors of the business community and in all neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Small businesses, contractors, franchises, professional firms, micro enterprise venture capital, we run the gamut with respect to the types of businesses that we finance and the type of technical assistance that we provide to those businesses. According to information compiled by the Philadelphia Consensus Group on re-entry and reintegration in March, more than 35,000 men, women and youth are cycled through the Philadelphia Prison System every day, and more than 100 men and women re-enter the prison system -- this is on a daily basis -- and every week approximately 700 individuals are being released back into our communities with unresolved issues such as substance abuse, 66 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 illiteracy and chronic illnesses. Affecting the success of these individuals is the ability to establish an economic foundation for themselves. This is one of the major causes of the recidivism rate because individuals do not have either the basic educational or experience background to re-enter the business community or the job market or they don't have adequate skills to allow them to go into business. For many this task is a difficult one, especially when they don't qualify for public housing or welfare and jobs that are limited and steadily declining. According to the US Department of Labor report on the 4th of February, jobs in Philadelphia decreased most recently. There was an Inquirer report that looked at the unemployment rate in Philadelphia, and the unemployment rate is going down in Philly. It reduced by about a half of a percentage point over a year period. But in that same time frame Philadelphia lost about 11,000 jobs between June 2003 and June 2004. These were 67 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 jobs that left the City. This is a very important factor because when you have jobs that are leaving the City and they're being replaced, they're being replaced by those individuals who qualify, sort of like an employer's market, so to speak, right now. Employers have always had concerns in hiring ex-offenders because of stereotypes that are reinforced by the lack of social support that would facilitate re-entry and transition for ex-inmates. At this point I would like to echo my colleague's call for a central office to facilitate the re-entry into society by ex-offenders. Because if you're looking to attack a problem, you have to have a headquarters, no matter if the problem is social, economic, military, you have to have a central headquarters. You have to have live bodies, information and data where the problem can be resolved. That is not in existence in Philadelphia. That's the first thing that needs to happen. More importantly, we advocate an 68 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES.
040816 entrepreneurial route for the ex-offender because there's some basic data that exists right now that supports our position. 7 percent of all businesses are small. 85 percent of the businesses in American employ between one and nine people. 60 percent of the businesses employ between one and four. percent of 10 the businesses employ between five and nine. 11 During the last decade small 12 businesses have been the net job creators 13 where during the same period, multi-national 14 corporations, large corporations, have been 15 generating net job losses. 16 Small businesses employ half of all 17 the private sector employees and they 18 contribute to about 44 percent of the United 19 States payroll. The small business community 20 is responsible for 50 percent of the gross 21 domestic product in the United States. We can 22 go on and on and on and talk about its 23 contribution, but another important statistic 24 is that 53 percent of small businesses are 25 home-based businesses. 53 percent of all 69 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 small businesses are home-based businesses. Just to clarify my responsibility at PCDC, when we talk about micro enterprise development, people assume that we are talking about these little dinky hole in the wall type of companies that just never really see the light of day. But we take the same position that many of our multi-national corporations took when they got started. Microsoft started out as a micro business with $50,000 in capital. Dell Computers, Michael Dell in 1984 started out with $2,000 and now they're knocking Compaq all over the world. If you look at the gentleman from Wal-Mart, Sam Walton, he started out with $25,000; $5,000 of his own money that he saved from the military and $20,000 that he borrowed from his father-in-law. When he died he left each of his five children an inheritance of $18 billion a piece. When we talk about micro enterprise we're talking about businesses that start out with a small amount of capital. They get their product to market and then they move a 70 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 little later to get additional financing and technical assistance. In closing, we offer the following recommendations that we believe will help reduce recidivism in Philadelphia and create more success stories among the ex-offender population. Again, I would echo my colleague's call for a central office. On the last of our testimony we have sort of a basic outline of an ex-offender's service center. And we can look at a different title. But the center would be responsible for providing intake assessments and referrals for five areas, five critical areas; entrepreneurship, legal, work force development, vocational and social services. In the task force there's been a number of discussions around what causes recidivism. There was one meeting that we had where a member of the task force mentioned that if services aren't provided to the ex-offender within 30 days, quality rapid intense, then you're looking at an individual 71 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 that's going to be going back into the prison system. These five areas of entrepreneurship, legal, work force development, vocation and social services will be the core services that would be provided by the ex-offender's service center. To offset the cost associated with staffing the center, we're recommending that a representative from various City agencies dedicate at least hours of professional 12 services each week. We can get someone from 13 DHS, someone from Commerce, someone from the 14 School District. Pretty much we can pull 15 those. 16 If we look at the statistic that Mr. 8 million savings to the City. If we took 2 percent of that money, $140,000, and just really looking at what the benefit would be in that regard. So essentially what we're recommending, number one, is to build upon the 72 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 trend for entrepreneurship that exists in the City.
Secondly, create this particular service center and also continue to work with ex-offenders who are engaged in micro enterprise and all the other services that they require upon their discharge from the system. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Members of Council. My name is Jodie Greco. I'm the owner of United Maids of America, a local, residential and commercial cleaning company. I am also an ex-offender. I'm am here to ask for City Council's support in seeking City commercial cleaning contracts in order to provide jobs for ex-offenders re-entering the work force. Having been through the federal system and experiencing the struggle to reinstate myself into society, I've made it a point to give back to those individuals that 73 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 need a second chance. After becoming a productive and proactive member of the community I have taken the agenda of the Steering Committee very seriously. I've been working closely with JEVS, the Jewish Employment Vocational Service and its director, John Lieb, in the JEVS Environmental Maintenance Program. At this time sentenced and non-sentenced offenders are trained in the proper use, operation and maintenance of all chemicals, tools and equipment used within the janitorial industry. These individuals are taught the skills that I would like potential janitorial employees to have. Inmates who complete the program will also learn the skills needed to clean carpets, strip and wax floors, upholstery and windows. These new skills offer individuals caught up in crime an opportunity to better their lives and become positive members of society. Upon completion of the program, graduating individuals will receive a 74 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 certificate package including the United Maids of America contact information. Our goal will consist of offering job opportunities to these newly skilled ex-offenders with the help of the City of Philadelphia. Overall we are setting up the transitional mechanism to interview and hire these applicants. The interviewing process will take place inside the institutions where the JEVS Environmental Maintenance Programs are held. These potential inmates are from Philadelphia County prisons; however, they are not only state offenders, but federal offenders too. All of these individuals are re-entering society and need guidance and opportunities. They all have the skills that the City of Philadelphia can utilize and should support. When ex-offenders are employed, they are less likely to commit crime. The goal here today is to decrease the rate of recidivism by offering employment to ex-offenders in need of employment. In order 75 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 for me to achieve this goal, I am asking for the City Council's support and partnership in obtaining commercial cleaning contracts. I am also open to any constructive and creative ideas that City Council can offer me. I pride myself on being an example of an ex-offender that overcame a very difficult situation. I would like to promote the fact that hard work and perseverance can ultimately lead to success and happiness. I really want to share my success with those most in need, ex-offenders. The hardships that I went through are very detailed and too difficult to describe in full. Overall, when I was released from prison, I had no material possessions. I didn't have any money or clothes, and worst of all, I did not have a place to live. My husband was still in prison and wasn't set to be released for a couple more years. The only thing I did have was faith and determination. I had to quickly make many decisions to get my life in order. My three-year-old daughter was still living 76 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 with my parents and my life was very tumultuous. Getting a job is not easy for ex-offenders, let alone starting a business. For this reason I truly understand the difficulties facing these individuals caught up in the system. My story is one of continuing progress and learning. My family is back together and the struggle is lessening. Unfortunately for others it has just begun.
In conclusion I have put together a business that can offer hope to individuals that often only have the unfortunate dilemma of history repeating itself. Together let's make a real difference in the lives of those caught up in the system with little or no way out. Let's think of the families involved and the fact that there should always be a second chance for people. No one is indispensable if they are willing to work hard and understand that hard work can lead to success. Again, I ask for the support of the City of Philadelphia and City Council. Please 77 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 let's make a difference and lower the rate of recidivism. My plan is a comprehensive plan of action. Thank you.
I have a question. Thank you for your testimony. I'm sitting here and I'm saying to myself, do I really want to ask this question, but I think I really need to even though there's something pulling inside saying that I shouldn't. I want to be realistic for a minute. When you talk about janitorial service, I need you to tell me about how difficult do you think it will be -- and maybe you are already experiencing -- I can see me trying to be helpful knocking on the door of a corporation and asking that corporation or a contractor that works for a corporation to employ an ex-offender. And I want to stop there. PR-wise, it's going to be very difficult, I think -- correct me if I'm wrong -- and I'm not adverse to challenges -- but I think that it's going to be very, very 78 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 difficult for a subcontractor, unless it's in an environment that is -- I hate to say it like this. I remember working in the corporate world. If a piece of candy was missing from the desk that somebody actually ate, it was the cleaner that ate the candy. Or my umbrella is missing. The cleaner, it's got to be the cleaner who took the umbrella. I think you got a real tough PR job here to convince subcontractors and corporations. I can just hear it. All of a sudden the word gets out that there are two ex-offenders working in a janitorial force in a large corporation. Not that that's bad. It's good. How do you deal with that?
Well, of course it would be an order offense, non-violent offenders, most likely, and we'll investigate that further. People that don't have a theft background, really, again, non-violent -- the fact is obviously something that -- you have bonding issues, even. And I do understand. Bonding would be an issue. 79 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Retail theft for example, they would not be able to be hired. It would have to be people with really small --
Very, very minor. Because I remember it seemed as though if you didn't get a report done on time you blamed the cleaner for throwing it in the trash.
However, they're being taught things in prison and it can be utilized. Floor jobs. It should be utilized outside.
I honestly can't talk a lot about it because I don't have it yet where I want to be with this project. But I'm working with the prison right now on trying to get some jobs for people that are already on the work release program. I understand we have 80 inmates sitting there that have been processed and approved for work release and there's no jobs. 80 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 That's not a good situation. But we're working on that. I didn't want you to think I'm trying to throw a blanket on your proposal here, but I'm just using my background to try to have a further discussion on this.
I think it would work in certain environments. In other environments it would not, and we're fully aware of that.
I use it as an example right here. If they needed, like you mentioned, people with the expertise for carpet care, there's a tremendous amount of carpet in this building, and being supervised, in my opinion, probably would not be an issue, especially if you had like a team leader to oversee --
Thank you. I'm just trying to go to remember my 81 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 question. To Councilman Rizzo's question, when you move to place -- it's not young people -- these adults in employment opportunities, is your program structured in such a way where they can first do what might be called internships, on-the-job training, if you will, prior to full gainful employment?
Right now they're being trained through JEVS. The director, John Lieb, is in the audience, if you'd like to ask any further questions of him. However, as far as job training, I know that there are funds available, and if that is something that we need to do, then it will be done.
My name is John Lieb, and I run all of the vocational training behind the walls of the Philadelphia prisons. Your point is one that we have dealt with for the last 15 years, the point about the janitorial. One of the things that we have to remember is that the Philadelphia County Jail is a jail and not a prison. There's a whole 82 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 group of men and women that come there that are not sentenced. These are probably the best candidates for these kinds of jobs because the offender, whether state, federal, they're all thrown into the same basket. What we do is we have two janitorial programs, one as part of the Jobs Project, and the other one is in D.C. these people, they're trained for six weeks in residential, commercial cleaning. We also have three other companies that do work with us.
Three other companies. I wish it was 300. Three other companies, and they actually can come behind the walls and meet with the men and the women because they're already being trained. It's a little stark, Councilwoman, but it is a viable community need. And if it's done in the right way, can help an awful lot of people who are detainees. The sentenced ones, you have a little more difficulty with because of what you just described, a history of maybe lifting 83 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 candy or whatever. But it is a county jail, and the county jail is probably the best place to attack this whole problem that we're trying to deal with, and that is jobs. I know about 40 or 50 that are actually out there working now. But it is a valid point. The way the prison is structured, the companies that come in there can work with the detainees that will be there and they somehow are more vulnerable coming out without something, but also the ones that you can do more with once they are out. Then, of course, it's a selling thing. It's getting certain companies that have the protection, crews that are supervised, that type. But it can work and it is a place where many, many people in this City have raised families on.
I would suggest, given your perspective on the issue, it would be very useful to the Chairwoman of this Committee and Members to know just that. Reduce what you just shared with us in writing so that that can become a part of the ultimate 84 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 report that's submitted to the recommendations on things we can do better and opportunities that have not been fully explored yet. To the on-the-job training, you say that that is a practice, that is a part of the overall program, correct?
Well, there's three companies that work with us in the two programs that are behind there. They actually can come in and talk to the inmates while they're being trained. When they leave they get a certificate from JEVS, which is the Jewish Employment Vocational Service that has the technical school on Rhawn Street. That certificate is a ticket to them getting an interview. Of course, the employer is the ultimate who can hire them. It gets them in the door. It also sensitizes to the employer to the kinds of people that are behind there that are being trained. And that's important, that public/private partnership, where the employer starts to dictate to the prison system the kinds of things it needs and the kinds of training that's needed behind the 85 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 walls.
Let's take that a step further. They get a certificate to take with them to an employer. What about the possibility of creating a bridge when they leave the prisons; they have the certificate, but then immediately connect them with, if necessary, an off-site City related or non-profit in the business of training people so that they're then in the pipeline, if you will, so there's not a gap between leaving the prisons with the certificate? They leave the prisons with the certificate and a bridge, a listing, if you will, of other entitles like ABO Haven or OIC or others who are in the business of training. That way it reduces the isolation, if you will. Has that been considered, talked about, explored?
We use our technical institute on Rhawn Street, the Orleans Technical Institute. That becomes a bridge. Like you said, there's many other bridges and we're always looking for them. 86 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 But behind the walls there are things that are happening that Ms. Greco caught onto and wanted to be in partners with us and see what we do and becomes a supply of people power for her jobs.
You speak of janitorial services. That is one skill. It's an honest living. Are there others like landscaping, if you will, and the fundamentals that come with that? Is it just limited to janitorial types of skills on the inside?
No. We have a building maintenance program to where the men can put together a house when they're done. Those types of skills. That's part of the Jobs Project. These folks are referred to that bridge, which is the Prison Society, and to impact services when they leave. That's part of the Jobs Project. So they learn a skill and they're picked up there and they're placed at those agencies.
Well, the women have a 87 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 very fine program. Leona has a program, the CEP program, that works with the women over at RCF.
She's right here. She's the partner on the other side. Thanks a lot.
My name is Leona Smith. I am the executive director of the Camber Employment Project (ph), which we deal specifically with women of low level offenses. We also have a training program where we also train for janitorial services. Also, we have a computer lab where we teach computers. Most importantly we have the life skills component of our program, which is very important, that deals specifically with the needs of the women while they are incarcerated. I must say for the record that we also had what was called an after care component of our program once the female inmate was released. We did the social service while she was incarcerated, so we knew 88 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 what that person needed before they even left the facility. And I think it really needs to be restored back because it was taken away from our program, the after care component, which really was the meat flavor of our program. When a person was released they would come into our office and then we became a referral agency, be it housing, the DNA, legal, connecting with DHS. We dealt with all aspects of what that person needed in order to keep them from returning back to the prison system. Unfortunately, I was told due to cuts that that after care component of our program was eliminated.
So the items that you just mentioned, those program segments that you just mentioned, can or do they happen on the inside prior to release?
Yes, prior to release. What is also important, we have on Saturdays 89 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 -- and I think it should be adopted and modeled. On Saturdays we have a presenter that works with us, whom you may all know, Mrs. Martin Connolly, who has all the connections the world. On Saturday, she was able to bring in employers that would guarantee specifically to hire the women that we had trained. So when we talk about finding employment, we were able to do that very successfully because of the connection between the employer and the inmate and the services that we had fulfilled and trained that individual for the employer. That really worked out very well. Again, it was quite disturbing to me to have the best part of our program to be eliminated. I think that we're sitting here talking about recreating the wheels, as far as I'm concerned, even though we know that we need the office, the re-entry office, most definitely we need that. I've been here for two days listening to testimonies and I was here last Monday. I'm not saying that the PPS 90 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 system is not doing all that they can do. However, what I am saying is that it's not enough. It's not enough when you look at the amount of people that are incarcerated and being released. It takes a collaboration of all agencies to get involved. The other thing, for the record, since I'm here -- I was going to be with my colleague, but since I'm here, I might as well address it. Far too often I think that we're left out of the process. I think that decisions are being made and policies are being made. I sit on the Legislative Policy Committee, and we have experts that -- every time we go to the meetings, we are the experts. We've lived it. We experienced it. We can tell anybody better than anybody what our people need; however, the problem is we don't get the opportunity to sit around the table to give our experience and expertise to the policy makers. I think as far as we're concerned and the people that we meet and represent, that's something that really, 91 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 really needs to change. I know that there's an Oversight Committee. We don't know who that Oversight Committee is because we're not invited to even know anything about it. So again, we're all for the entrepreneurship. No question about that. PCDC, all of these here folks we're talking about, Men United, the Nicetown CDC. When you want to talk about the housing -- and my sister is here in the audience today. She has a track record for housing. But what we need is the tools in order to get the job done. When you look at all of the resources that have been spent, $35,000 a year to incarcerate a person on a yearly basis, we're saying we can take that same $35,000, give it to the agency. If you need housing, we got housing. People that can do the job too. Take that same $35,000 for one person. And if you're talking about two, now we're talking -- give our organization some leverage of getting some of those people their houses. Take that same money that you 92 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 would pay to incarcerate that person, flip it, give it to the agencies utilizing the expertise that our people have, because they're the most skillful people that God ever put on the face of this earth. I hear about people not having an education, and that may be true for some, but it's certainly not true for all. I think that we underestimate the educational level of our people because they're not given the opportunity, and that myth and that stigma still continues, that they're the low level people in today's society. I challenge that, and I say that that is not true because I work with them each and every day and it's a lesson to be learned for all of us that's coming from them.
There's no 20 doubt about it. To the question and concern around social services on the inside, you mentioned a number of different areas where counseling takes place. Is the offer of parenting workshops -- I mean, those of us who think 93 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 we're so-called educators, like myself, is trying to get it right with regards to parenting. So when we have those who were incarcerated now returning to the real world and want them to be responsible parents, are there parenting workshops offered on the inside? You do what you can do, what, in six, eight, weeks prior to re-entry? Even that 10 isn't enough, because, like I said, we're 11 trying to get it right over many, many years. 12 But is that a service offered as part of the social service curriculum, if you will?
Yes, it is. There are many agencies within the PPS system that come in and offer parenting. They come in and they have OPTIONS, have the drug and alcohol recovery program. That is an excellent program. So I mean, the services are within the inside. That's all well and good and fun, but what we've got to look at and think about is what happens to that person once they are released. We can train and train and train and tell that person, don't return back. But 94 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 when you look at the overall picture, the doors are constantly being closed. The doors are constantly being shut, and then we sit here we talk about why a person returns. They're not eligible for any federal subsidy. They're not eligible for public housing via Section 8 or a voucher. Then you have a City policy that follows the same policies that the federal government follows in terms -- OESS, if you're a convicted felon you still are not eligible -- if you get shelter, you're still not eligible for any subsidized housing because they follow the same rules and guidelines of the federal government.
That becomes, Madam Chairperson, a potential recommendation or at least a policy that needs to be re-examined because it's a barrier to adequately arming those into re-entry so that they can become successful when they return to the real world.
My partner, she has a lot of information. She also has a lot of 95 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 statistics that we worked on and collecting data, and we also have some recommendations that we think and feel that needs to be changed. Hopefully when she comes up and she testifies, City Council would certainly take our recommendations into consideration. I think in doing so, then we can say that, for all of us working together, that perhaps we have made a difference in that family life as well as that individual. I testified ahead of time.
Thank you for your testimony. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I've lost track of who was next. I don't know who's next.
Good afternoon. How are you? Thank you for having me here, Madam Councilwoman and Members of City Council. My name is Manny Arroyo, A-R-R-O-Y-O. The first thing I need to do is, I need to indicate to you that I'm wearing two 96 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 hats today and I'm actually going to be presenting to you twice, if time permits. I've just completed a career with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. I worked for them for almost years. About 7 half of my experience was behind the wall at 8 Graterford Prison and the other was working in 9 community corrections. 10 I started out as a social worker. I 11 came out to work in Philadelphia for about 13 12 years running halfway houses; first male 13 halfway houses and then I ran the women's 14 halfway house. Then I ran all the halfway 15 houses as the regional director. Most 16 recently I finished my career as the deputy 17 superintendent for centralized services at 18 Graterford. 19 The other thing that I think I want 20 to provide you with is, I guess, a caveat, and 21 that is that I do not represent the 22 Pennsylvania Department of Corrections before 23 you today, but certainly I believe that my 24 25-and-a-half years of experience within the 25 DOC is available to you. 97 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 I'm reminded of the words of, I think, a bright, although maybe controversial at times, corrections and parole leader, a fellow named Marty Horne (ph) who ran the Department of Corrections quite a few years ago. Horn came up in the New York system, in the state system. He left Pennsylvania. He went back to run the corrections and the parole services for the City of New York. I remember Mr. Horn many times saying, we're never going to build our way out of this problem. He meant the problem of helping people who are coming through the correctional system. When I saw the flyer for today's hearings and last week's hearings, I thought, gee whiz, re-entry is tied into what Marty was talking about. If we can't buy our way out of our problems because of how we're incarcerating people, how are we going to buy our way out of re-entry? We've heard from a lot of interesting, committed and intelligent people here today and last week. There's no shortage 98 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 of good people in Philadelphia. No shortage of good services in the community of Philadelphia, behind the walls of county prison. I can say the same thing about many of the state prisons that I have worked in. Re-entry, though, is like an octopus with so many tentacles. When I saw the flyer, the first thing I said was, thank God that somebody had the strength and the conviction to even say, let's have a public hearing about this. I think that took a lot of guts. Last year we saw that Senator Kitchen and Representative Oliver did the same thing when they sponsored bills that were going to provide a quick turn-around for nonviolent drug offenders who historically might have looked at long prison sentences in Philly and Pennsylvania, and now they may get the opportunity to go into the Department of Corrections, get some good, therapeutic community treatment, and then be moved back into the community as quickly as possible. The issue of incarceration affects us in so many ways. The older I get I think 99 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 the more I start to look at the issue of incarceration and re-entry from a personal perspective. I remember as a young man coming into the corrections in the late '70s being very idealistic, being very committed to human services, and I'd like to believe that I'm still committed to human service, but thinking, gee whiz, these, by the grace of God, are people just like me. I have many people in my family who have gone through the Department of Corrections. Fortunately, I have not, except in my employment. But who knows what separates me from the other members in my family who are less fortunate than me.
I remember that in the beginning of my career it was real easy and fashionable to talk about helping inmates -- basically that's what we called them -- just for the sake of helping people. I remember when it was easy for someone to get a college degree at Graterford Prison. I know many men from Graterford who have received associate's degrees, bachelor's 100 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 degrees and even master's degrees, and many of them never stepped back into Graterford. They were successful people. Unfortunately, because of economics, public opinion and then public policy through legislation, a lot of that's changed. Today it's difficult to talk about providing services to offenders for the sake of helping people. We have a lot of people that are competing for the same dollars. I know that it's very difficult to look at a family who's striving to send people to college and they say, we've been law abiding, tax paying people. My children are doing well. They hurt nobody. Why should somebody at Graterford Prison get a grant when my son or daughter can't get a grant? I understand that. But I also understand we cannot afford to not look at the issue of re-entry in Philadelphia. Period. Bottom line. And if we don't want to do it for those folks, we have to do it for ourselves. We have to look at it because of the economics in this City. We have to look at it because of the 101 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 infrastructure. We have to look at it in terms of the impact on the economy. Trade here in the City. Tourism in the City. Just the sense of, where do you feel safe or not safe in this City. But certainly we should never lose track of the fact that we are our brothers' keepers, and we do have a commitment to helping the less fortunate folks who somehow got caught up in this business. The other thing that I think that I'd like to leave you with today is that if we're going to be looking at this issue of re-entry, part of it has to go to how we market this. I think that Councilman Rizzo was very accurate when he indicated that it's going to be a very difficult sell to a corporate structure to try to get people with criminal backgrounds to go in as cleaners, and I don't know, whatever jobs they get in those kinds of places. I think that part of what we need to ask corporate Philadelphia is, can you afford not to be part of the process of bringing people back into our fold. 102 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 I think that there are a lot of ways that we can bring the business community, if you will, into the picture. Someone here indicated that there is a bonding program. That is correct. There are also taxing centers that we might be able to pass on to businesses if we ask them to hire a certain percentage of offenders. I think we were successful decades ago doing that with women. We established certain criteria for businesses that had a certain percentage of women, and I think that has slowly started to evolve. We're not where we need to be, but certainly we're a lot better off than where we were decades ago with that. So I think that that's something we can look at for offenders. I think we need to get away from this us and them kind of mentality about ex-offenders. Ex-offenders are us. They're our sons. They're our daughters. They're our fathers. They're our nephews. I mean, I can go on and on. I think Ms. Smith is accurate and I 103 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 sense her frustration in talking here. A lot of the legislation that we pass, we think it's helpful in one way. It hurts in so many other ways. How can you tell people that they can't go into Section 8 housing because they have drug and alcohol convictions and their family lives in that house? In one sense we're saying you can't do that because of these reasons over here, but the greater issues are being bypassed. We're breaking up families.
We're asking people to continue to do things that are illegal so that they can live as family units. You know, we keep throwing around this business of janitorial services. Janitorial service is fine. I've got people in my family that have been in janitorial services all their lives. Great work. I've done some myself. Not as well as some other things that I do. 50 an hour. No medical benefits. These are people who already have socialization 104 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 problems. They have self image, self esteem problems. Now you're going to have them competing against 22-year-old men and women for jobs. They may be supervised by people who are significantly younger than them and don't understand things about life. They can't make ends meet. They simply can't do it. They can't come home and try to be proud and take their positions in our communities making that kind of money. It's just impossible. There's been a lot hoopla in the media about this Comcast building. Has anyone thought that along with all these tax breaks that we're going to give Comcast, that we say to them, hey, we want you to hire 5 percent ex-offenders, certified ex-offenders, and that there be some screening process to do that? We can do that throughout the City with industry. One of the truths is that ex-offenders do get jobs. They don't always hold onto their jobs. They're not always the jobs that they want, but they work. 105 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 One of the things that you'll hear me talk about in a while is I work for a halfway house now. Every able-bodied person in my halfway house is expected to work. So they work in these places and they're successful. But they're under the radar. They're off the screen. I think we need to remove that stigma from corrections and re-entry and all that kind of stuff. We need to be able to tell folks it's okay. Learn from your past. The path to success is paved with failure. If we constantly have a ball and chain around people and that's all their reminded of is their failure, they're never going to be successful. That's not going to happen. I want to echo the sentiments that a few of the people that took the mike before me said. We need a coordinating office here in Philadelphia for ex-offenders. We need it to be an office that is not mitigated by any other interests.
We have some model that you know exists in other major 106 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 urban areas across the country. Often times it offers a blueprint and a road map on, A, it can work and, B, it does work because it's happening in some other major metropolis.
No, I do not, Councilwoman. Malik and I have been talking about that. He may know more.
That information, Madam Chair, would be very, very helpful because it becomes a part of the persuasion that's required when you want the City or any entity to devote dollars or redirect dollars in any type of way. The background homework research model is very, very, very, very helpful and instructive. So I would ask that you submit that to the Chair as well.
I just want to wrap up. I just want to give you these two scenarios.
Okay. Before you do that, we have 13 more people that need to testify. At this point, I'm asking people to condense their written testimony.
Madam Chairperson, if 107 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 I'm a businessman coming here from Arizona and I want to establish a business here in Philadelphia, I'll bet I can get on the Internet or go into your telephone directory here and there will be a dozen groups of people that will welcome me with open arms, that will pave the way, that will do a lot of the preliminary work for me to be successful in Philadelphia. If I'm a traveler coming in from China and I want to visit Philadelphia I can call a handful of agencies, some of them government agencies, which are going to provide the same kinds of services and make my stay here successful. We need to do that with ex-offenders. Thank you.
Anything that you have we would like to get recommendations written. You can just feel free to forward it. Ed Schwartz and Reverend Robert Shine. After him will be Ron Cuie and 108 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 William DiMascio. Please proceed.
Good afternoon, Chairperson. My name is Cynthia Muse and I'm on the Mayor's Task Force on Re-Entry assigned to the Legislative Committee. I just want to go over a few statistics. I'm going to condense what I had to say.
3 million children under the age of 18. Out of 52 states, Pennsylvania ranked 8th highest in the amount of citizens it incarcerates yearly, with 29 correctional facilities across the state, and they're still building. The collateral consequences of imprisonment include barriers to housing, restriction of voting rights, public assistance, employment, loans and grants for higher education, driver's licenses, as well 109 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 as laws to keep their families intact. The American Bar Association has established standards seeking to limit the impact of collateral consequences or sanctions and ensure they are used appropriately. According to the New York based Legal Action Center, people with criminal records seeking re-entry face a daunting array of counter-productive, debilitating and unreasonable road blocks in almost every important aspect of life. No matter how exemplary their subsequent lives, people who have a criminal record bear modern-aged scarlet letters or a new civil identity that they cannot shed. Some startling facts about existing legal barriers. Most states allow employers to deny jobs to people who were arrested but never convicted of a crime. This is also done in Pennsylvania. Most states allow employers to deny jobs to anyone with a criminal record, regardless of how long ago or the individual's work history and personal circumstances. 110 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Most states ban some or all people with drug felony convictions from being eligible for federally funded public assistance and food stamps. Most states make criminal history information accessible to the general public through the Internet, making it extremely easy for employers and others to discriminate against people on the basis of old and/or minor convictions; for example, to deny employment or housing. Many public housing authorities deny eligibility for federally assisted housing based on an arrest that never led to a conviction. All but two states restrict the right to vote in some way for people with criminal convictions. A report card on Pennsylvania from the study by the Legal Action Center. Road blocks are defined as unfair and counter-productive barriers to the re-entry into society of people with criminal records. So the fewer the road blocks, the better the score. 111 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 In employment, for Pennsylvania, they found that employers can ask about and use arrests that never lead to conviction. Employment for Pennsylvania had five road blocks barring ex-offenders from employment. For public assistance there were none. Pennsylvania opted out of the federal ban on food stamps and public assistance, and thus these benefits are available to individuals convicted of drug felonies. But that just recently started. Access to criminal records. Records of arrest that never lead to conviction can be expunged. Records of convictions for the most part cannot be expunged. Records of those currently incarcerated are available on the Internet. There were five road blocks given to Pennsylvania for access to criminal records. For voting, incarcerated individuals may not vote. If not registered prior to incarceration, individuals with felony convictions must wait five years after release to register to vote. You can also see the 112 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 impact that has in our society when we have a block of people that cannot vote. We lose a lot of federal money. We got five road blocks for that voting piece -- that was overturned. I'm sorry. Public Housing Authority makes individual eligibility determinations based on relevance of criminal history, but considers arrests that never lead to convictions. Adoptive and foster parenting. We have 10 road blocks for this. No 13 individualized determinations about suitability to be an adoptive or foster parent. Driver's licenses.
Licenses are automatically revoked or suspended for at least six months when individuals are convicted for a wide range of drug and alcohol offenses, not just those related to driving. No opportunity to obtain restrictive licenses to attend work, school or treatment. We got a total of 35 road blocks out of 50 for Pennsylvania. To promote and guarantee the public 113 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 safety, the US government in the 50 states should adopt policies and practices that facilitate the successful reintegration into society of people with criminal records. Each person should be judged on his or her merits and not stereotypes, prejudice or stigma, and have a second chance to establish him or herself in a law-abiding life with the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. The state and federal government should enact legislation that protects public safety by making sure that people with past criminal records are able to reintegrate successfully. We therefore recommend maximizing the chance that people with criminal records can successfully assume the responsibilities of independent, law-abiding citizens and is a critical component of guaranteeing and reinforcing the community's legitimate interest in public safety. Arrest alone should never bar access to rights, necessities and public benefits. Doing so denies the presumption of innocence, 114 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 the core value of our legal system, to millions of Americans. Employers, housing authorities and other decision makers should not be permitted to consider arrest records. A conviction should never bar access to a citizen's right to vote or to basic necessities such as food, clothing, housing and education. Eligibility for employment, housing, adoptive and foster parenting or driver's licenses should be based on the community's legitimate interests in public safety and the particulars of an individual's history and circumstances. Blanket bans of entire categories of people, such as everyone convicted of a felony, are neither wise nor fair. They do not take into account such important factors as the nature or circumstances of the conviction and what the person has done since the commission of the offense, including receiving an education, acquiring skills, completing community service, maintaining an employment history or earning awards or other types of recognition. 115 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 States should enact legislation to provide for the automatic sealing or expungement of any arrests that never led to conviction. And of conviction records, that after an appropriate amount of time has elapsed, states should also issue certificates to qualified people with criminal records that acknowledge rehabilitation and lift up automatic bars. I'll close with this. Given the potential for misuse, conviction information should not be publicly accessible on the Internet. Access should be restricted to those agencies such as law enforcement that need to retrieve criminal records to perform their duties. I would also like to say that with the Legislative Committee, we also would like to see a coordinated office through an office of re-entry that will coordinate and facilitate all aspects of ex-offenders' release, someplace where they can find a safe haven. They can come directly to us and say, we have 30 days. We will give them an IEP. 116 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 We will see what their skills and needs are. We'll resource them to the correct bodies of agencies and organizations that are handling different components of their needs. With that, I'll just say thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for coming here to testify. I would assume that your Legislative Committee is doing work to address some of the issues that you raised here today.
Jus to add on, I think my colleague kind of left out a couple of recommendations that we had submitted.
We can get them in writing. Submit them to us in writing due to time. If you have written testimony that you want submitted for the record we can also do that. Thank you. Next we have Ed Schwartz and Reverend Shine. Good afternoon. Malik, are you here to testify?
I'm Ed Schwartz, 117 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 President of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values and former chairman of the Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission, which is somewhat relevant to what I have to say today. The most disturbing aspect of the prisoner re-entry hearings being conducted by the Public Safety Committee of City Council is the discernable lack of interest on the part of many Councilmembers and the press in what the Committee is doing. Over the next six weeks Council will be debating whether the City can afford to cut business taxes more aggressively than the Mayor proposes without jeopardizing City services. Having chaired the City's Tax Reform Commission, I remain convinced that this may be the most important issue facing the City of Philadelphia today. But the answer to that question revolves entirely around what we must spend as a City to preserve our quality of life, and the area of spending that we should be examining most is crime. That is where most of the City budget goes. If we don't come to 118 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 grips with this problem, we will face the difficult choice between reducing taxes and maintaining needed City services indefinitely. The numbers speak for themselves. 2 billion from local taxpayers to support the entire City budget. The rest comes from other governments. 1 billion goes to the criminal justice system, not even counting the benefits that the police, correction officers and court employees also receive. That's 50 percent of our budget. 1 billion goes to everything else. How can we possibly cut the cost of government significantly without reducing the fiscal cost of crime? That's where we are now, and the results speak for themselves. Moreover, crime accounts for the major increases in City spending over the past eight years. The combined police and prison budgets jumped from $496 million in FY '98 to $667 million projected for the coming year. We are now spending $171 million a year more 119 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 to support the police and the prisons than we did eight years ago. The $187 million we spend on the prisons alone is greater than the budgets of Licenses and Inspections, the libraries, the Recreation Department and Fairmount Park, the Streets Department, the GEAR Up Scholarship Program, Community College, the MOCS, the Art Museum, our economic stimulus package and, dare I say, at City Council combined. That's what the Philadelphia prison costs us today. To be short, the crime rate has gone down in Philadelphia and people recognize and appreciate this. But is turning people in and out of our prisons the only effective way to insure that crime to stays down? If it is, then we can count on staggering budgets for the criminal justice system for years to come. What then would happen if we were to set a new goal, not merely to reduce the crime rate, but to reduce the number of people who commit crimes in Philadelphia? What if we were able to say five years from now Philadelphia has found new ways to reduce 120 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 recidivisms so that we no longer need huge budgets for the police and the prisons in order to keep us safe? This question is at the heart of the prison re-entry debate, and it affects all of us, not just the people in prison. Here's what we've learned about the Philadelphia prison from these hearings and from the many other reports about the prison that the Commissioner has released over the past year. We've learned that the daily prison census has jumped by 70 percent over the past 10 years, from 4,800 in FY '94 to 8,100 this year. We've learned that approximately 60 percent of the people in prison sit around for weeks waiting for trial at our expense, and that the average length of stay in the prison is about three months, at our expense. We've learned that nearly 40 percent of the people in the Philadelphia prison are there for drug related offenses.
We've learned that what the prison re-entry means now is re-entry back into the 121 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Philadelphia prison. I quote from the City's Five-Year Plan. 58 percent of sentenced inmates return to PPS custody within two years with a new sentence or a probation/parole violation. And at this hearing, Prison Commissioner Leon King tells us that out of approximately 35,000 admissions per year, quote, it is impossible for the prison to provide adequate re-entry discharge services to at least 21,000 of those admissions. Imagine if this were a City-run hospital that admitted 35,000 people with infectious diseases every year only to have 20,000 of these patients return in less than two years. Moreover, the hospital itself would tell us that it can't treat 21,000 of its patients adequately, just about the number who keep coming back. And the budget for this hospital keeps climbing to the point where it becomes the third most expensive City department, after the police and the Department of Human Services, also charged with dealing with different forms of crime. Wouldn't we be demanding that the City find a 122 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 way to treat these other 21,000 people who keep coming back so that they can leave the hospital once and for all? I submit that this is precisely what we need to be demanding in relation to the Philadelphia prisons. Moreover, since 40 percent of the people in prison are there for drug-related offenses, the hospital metaphor isn't even a stretch. These people are sick. They need to be cured. They need to be helped to find jobs that will pay them so that we don't have to take care of them anymore. Maybe if we put our collective wisdom and energy to work in solving this problem, then we'd be able to reduce our business taxes over the next five to 10 years without cutting City services. This is certainly what we call a win/win, if only we decided to play the game. Is this an impossible dream? It is not. There were 5,200 people in our homeless shelters in 1987. They cost us more that $32 million. There are only 2,500 people in homeless shelters today. The budget is 123 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 only $18 million, even in the face of inflation. We've cut the caseload in half and the budget by more than 40 percent. Here's another example. There were 67,000 households on welfare in Philadelphia in 1997. There are only 26,000 households on welfare today. Instead of having to spend $600 million just to keep TANF recipients alive, now the City receives $600 million in TANF funds from the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare for after school programs. Moreover, in each of these situations there were people who said that enabling thousands of people to achieve self-sufficiency was impossible, that we were doomed to take care of huge dependent populations forever. They were wrong. The people who say that a serious, sustained commitment to helping people in the Philadelphia prison overcome their addictions and become constructive members of our community are wrong as well. How then did we manage to reduce the homeless and welfare populations? First, in 124 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 each case we made achieving self-sufficiency the goal of the program, not just nice work if we could get it. Jane Malone, the City's first homeless czar, was mandated by Wilson Goode to reduce the number of people in City shelters by 300 per month. She had to do it and she did. The TANF law required Pennsylvania to make a significant reduction in our caseload or lose federal support. We did. We succeeded by investing significant dollars into programs with proven track records in helping people achieve self sufficiency. Programs like Project Home and the People's Emergency Center and Arbor Education and Training in relation to welfare reform. We held them accountable for the performance standards needed to achieve our overall goal.
That is precisely what we need to do now in relation to the people in the Philadelphia prison. We need to establish as a goal for the City to reduce the annual prison sentence 125 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 by 10,000 inmates over the next five years, to the point where the daily census is back to around 6,500, where it was in the mid '90s. Fiscally this could cut the prison budget by $50 million over the next five years, bringing it down to $130 million its budget in the year 2000. If we could cut the budget for homeless shelters by 40 percent through investing in self sufficiency, then we can cut the prison budget by at least percent through 12 investing in self sufficiency. 13 It's clear that we can do this if 14 we're willing to try. The OPTIONS FIR Drug 15 and Alcohol Treatment Program, as an example, 16 has cut the rate of recidivism by 66 percent 17 for inmates who completed at least six months 18 of the program. Every year it has had to 19 fight for its funding. We should be tripling 20 its funding and then holding them accountable 21 to a performance standard that program says it 22 can achieve. And if we make it known that new 23 funds are available for prison re-entry 24 programs, a host of social service agencies 25 will show up at the door, just as happened 126 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 with the homeless and welfare reform. Groups like Project Home and the People's Emergency Center in relation to the homeless and Arbor Education and Training and the Transitional Work Corporation in relation to Welfare to Work are not only helping thousands of people improve their condition every year, they are saving Philadelphia taxpayers millions of dollars every year by reducing the number of people dependent on public funds. That's what we need to do now for drug dependent inmates in the Philadelphia prison. Cut the prison caseload in half and we can save at least $50 million a year. Cut drug dependency by 35 percent in Philadelphia and we start getting safe streets without having to put dozens of patrol officers at every corner. Reducing homelessness and ending welfare as we knew it were the challenges of the '90s. We met them. Reducing drug dependency and incarceration are the challenges that face us now. We can meet 127 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 these challenges as well. Are we willing to try?
Thank you. Reverend Shine or Malik, who wants to go next? Malik.
Thank you, Madam Chair. There was a gentleman that is a member of our task force, because of his medical condition, he's not able to sit still for a long time. He had to leave. But because of my medical condition I can sit still for a long time. I asked him if I could read his testimony. This is from Thomas Sims. He's a master of health services with NuJuice Foundation. He states that entering the year 2005, the status of the ex-offender's return to society from punitive incarceration in the City custodial prison facilities remains consistent with the status allotted those returning in the year 1988, especially when we view employment, training and educational 128 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 opportunities. Nowhere in the annals of incarceration in Philadelphia County has the lack of progress been so evident as we view offenders' transition. Sure, it has become popular to allude to the new catch phrase, re-entry, when describing approaches now in effect, so much so even the Philadelphia prison professes expertise in the area of re-entry. Because of the embracing of the concept re-entry, which even the President of the United States has embraced, we now have custodial experts developing and implementing policies surrounding one's returned to the hood. What a farce. Continuously excluded for important discussions and planning surrounding this topic are the real experts, the ex-offender who has successfully made the transition from prisoner to productive member of society. Instead of being more open-minded, we still find criminal justice professionals grabbing the whole pie, leaving maybe a crumb for the token successful reintegrater. 129 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 As we look at programs that are developed to aid in the offender's transition, it borders on insanity, that again, the ex-offender's input is not requested or considered. We continue to utilize the same historic organizations who supposedly are experts in preparing the offender to succeed educationally and vocationally. Where are the measurable outcomes? Why are the standards for success for traditional programs that are allowed continue to be minimal? My recent experience attempting to secure funding for a fiberoptic technology program reassures me that concern for the success of the returned ex-offender is so genuine. How could you not fund a program that not only trains ex-offenders in the highly profiled field of fiberoptics, but also ensures employment at a livable wage? Instances such as this reinforce what I felt since the days of my testimony before the Jackson and Harris versus Reeves Courts. Even though these cases were high profiles of casual factors of confinement, 130 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 along with conditions, they were only smoke screens to appear as if major efforts were being made to better prepare and equip those returning to society. Now we have the same folk, prison officials taking up the banner of re-entry, while still ignoring the horrible conditions of confinement that never have been adequately addressed. As an ex-offender with a master's degree, presently employed as the director of one of the largest behavioral health systems in this City, I ask that you allow those of us who have been impacted, but have overcome the stains of incarceration to help lead the march for successful re-entry, not as a token participant, but as a leader and genuine participant. Respectfully yours, Thomas R. Sims. This is me. I'm going to be real brief. My name is Malik Aziz, the project manager for the Philadelphia Ex-Offender's Task Force. As I see it, many ex-offenders face barriers upon return. If Pennsylvania 131 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 re-entry barriers lead to a felon's failure to put together a new life, this individual incurs a huge personal cost. In the end these hidden punishments also have real hidden costs for taxpayers and a society that is always concerned about their safety.
In Philadelphia County where more of these residents are incarcerated in state correctional facilities than any other county in Pennsylvania, the "yes, but" behavior of society has become a larger, bigger problem recently. I believe that once a person completes a term of incarceration, the state should help the ex-offender rebuild their lives. Be aware that once a person is released back to society and that person encounters barriers and closed doors to jobs, housing, medical assistance, driver's licenses, mentoring and tutoring, drug and alcohol treatment upon demand and many more services needed to rebuild their lives, the prospect for a return to crime is very great. If that person is sent back to prison for a 132 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 violation of parole or probation or a new crime, the taxpayers pick up the daily cost of room and board. We, the residents of Philadelphia County, have a huge task at hand, to make a sincere commitment to help an ex-offender, break the cycle of crime and become a law-abiding, productive citizen. The more who succeed, the more who will see and follow suit. Let's all work together on this one.
Madam Chairwoman, I have a statement of the black church perspective on this issue before us. Thank you for the opportunity to share this statement, I want to, first of all, say that, as president of the state-wide Coalition of Black Clergymen, and chairman now of the New United Majority, comprising members of the Latino American, Asian American, African and African American and Caribbean American communities, and as you know, the immediate past president of the Black Clergy of 133 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Philadelphia and vicinity. This organization, the New United Majority, was founded to embrace under a singular banner and to join our resources together to advance and progressively improve the quality of life for the combined growing minority population. We view the human, social and civil rights of all people as the foundation of our organization. We have a motto. If you want a better state made up of better counties, composed of better cities, inhabited by better neighborhoods, illuminated by better churches, made up of better families, then we need to become a better people. And that all starts with personal responsibility, and we hold fast working together to achieve just that goal. Having said that, let me proceed to the subject before us. To begin with, I quote that remarkable female abolitionist, Sojourner Truth, who in an address at the 1851 Women's Rights convention in Akron, Ohio said, "What's intellect got to do with women's rights or black folks' rights? If my cup won't hold but 134 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full, end of quote. In a sense, on ex-offenders striving to get their half measure full. Sometime in May 1999, I had the privilege of reading the For Review, an analytical paper on the subject of ex-offenders' rights to vote. It was a paper written by Dawn K. Thompson, a candidate for degree of master of public administration at the University of Delaware. So impressed was I, that I spoke to the informal organization known then as the Alliance. It was a group of clergy, lawyers, businessmen, women and professionals in other civic leader types. I raised a question as a possibility of changing the then existing law that prohibited ex-offenders from exercising their right to vote. The rest is history, as the saying goes. Now today we are faced with the matter of what to do when ex-offenders return having, quote, paid their debt to society. 135 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 It's about time that some serious and progressive and moral thought be given to this issue, and we applaud you, as the convener of this hearing, for giving it all the attention it rightfully deserves. Of course, there are some serious considerations, and one by one they must be explored. You are addressing hard questions about the criminal and the criminal justice system and what and how should this issue be dealt with. How can our society respond to crime and to its causal factors? If our present responses to crime are ineffective or unjust, then new responses must be generated. How should we deal with the stereotypes, conceptions, subjective attitudes and feelings concerning crimes, victims and offenders held by the members of the criminal justice system? Scrutiny of our institutions reveal that injustice is built into our social system of justice and can be seen in the unequal way sentences are meted out and the way that we distribute the resources needed to return ex-offenders to a full measure of life. 136 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 There is still little hope, as we have observed, that the poor person will be represented as well as the more affluent person. I submit to you that the most frequent cause of crime springs from alienation. In other words, alienation is deprivation associated with poverty and discrimination.
Greed is the psychic and emotional deprivation associated with misplaced values. This is something I feel that we have to address just as much as the crime and the offender and the victim. I stated elsewhere minorities, African-Americans in particular, who make up 12 to 15 percent of the population, make up more than 50 percent of the prison population. Most studies of the cause of crime in the past decade, whether contained in sociological texts, high level governmental commission reports or best selling books, lament the disproportionately high arrest rate for African Americans and other poor people and assert with wailing monotony that criminality 137 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 is a product and of all its attending hazards and deprivations. There is injustice in the system. History offers few examples of worst injustice than what the Israelites confronted in Egypt. Other than the slavocracy (sic) in America, no 8 system has been more cruel to its people, and whether we like it or not, slavery and its vile condition has conditioned African Americans ever since, particularly among the poor. What measures you take through these hearings I trust will be helpful, but they will not be enough. These hearings have an inherent hope built in them, a hope that all can be done will be done. But never again will we lose our measure of biblical intolerance for the evil of injustice. The men and women being released back into our society must not be so disenfranchised as to wander about with no 23 place certain to go. Such an experience, as that was the case of many who are released from slavery, and thus a recidivist mentality. 138 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 You're on the right track. Now maybe the means will be found to get and keep the ex-offenders on the right track. The way the system is, it responds more frequently and heartily to crimes which the poor and powerless persons commit. But there are other persons committing crime, the white collar crimes, the world crimes and the Martha Stewarts of the world. Why then is there so little outcry against this unjust double standard? On the other hand, should the penalty fit the crime? What if the law is unjust? What if the law is unjustly applied? What if the defendant is falsely accused and imprisoned? When discovered, shall he be made whole? There are, as well as we all know, cases of any or all of these types. Does the ex-offender have any rights? If so, what are they? And will all of his rights be restored having paid his debt to society? One thing I am thankful for, and that is President Bush recognizes, quote, from long experience, that if he, the ex-offender, 139 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 cannot find work or a home or help, they are much more likely to commit more crimes and return to prison. In his 2004 State of the Union address, he called for a major re-entry program to help offenders return to society. America is the land, he says, of the second chance, and with the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life, end of quote. That sounds to me like he is advocating that all rights and privilege be restored to the ex-offender upon his release. I say to that, we cannot be in full community with God unless and until we also identify with and seek the good of all persons, ex-offenders included. This year more than 600,000 inmates will be released from America's prison system, having served their time. That is over 1,600 offenders per day returning to the neighborhoods across this country. These men and women are coming out, like it or not, and they are human beings like we are. Hearings such as this are, in my view, very compassionate and demonstrates your 140 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 desire to deal with this issue with urgent immediacy, and we thank God for you. Let me quote another noted writer, Andrew L.
Shapiro, who said, disenfranchisement is the harshest civil sanction imposed by a democratic society when brought beneath its acts. The disenfranchised is severed from the body politic and condemned to the lowest form of citizenship. We're voiceless at the ballot box. The disinherited must sit idly by while others elect his civic leaders and while others choose the fiscal and governmental policies which will govern him and his family. Such a shadowy form of citizenship must not be imposed lightly, end of quote. The black church does not accept that any citizen, ex-offender notwithstanding, should have to live a disenfranchised existence, debt paid, and still the ex-offender is a disenfranchised member of society. Has being in prison rehabilitated the offender? The rate and current data 141 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 regarding recidivism makes a strong argument that prisons do not rehabilitate those who must spend time in them. Of those who are in prison, more than 70 percent have been there before. Frequently, when a person leaves prison, that person is more embittered against society than when he or she entered. Prisons have been called graduate schools for crime. Poor persons and members of minority groups are those most in prison and those most likely to return unless and until we as citizen stakeholders in our communities and neighborhoods, which they will be returning to, find a way to make these men and women transition from a life inside to a life outside, to a safe and successful return to society. Given the fact that most of offenders will be returning from years in overcrowded prisons where they were exposed to the horrors of violence, including homosexual rape, isolation from family and friends and despair, most will idle while in prison warehouses with little preparation to make 142 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 better choices when they reach the outside. From what I've gathered, just more than one-third of all released prisoners will have received vocational or educational training in prison. It is also fair to say that the number of prisoners released is now four times what it was years ago. Yet fewer are being 9 prepared to return to a normal life in the 10 neighborhood. 11 It is also being stated that 12 approximately three out of every four inmates 13 released from prison have a substance abuse 14 problem, and only one in five have received 15 drug treatment. These men and women face 16 additional barriers, often called invisible 17 punishment. They are frequently denied 18 parental rights, driver's licenses, student 19 loans, the right to vote and residency and 20 public housing, which is often the only housing they can afford. Stating all of this bleak data, we add to it that little was done to change the moral perspective of these offenders. Most offenders do not leave prison transformed into 143 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 law abiding citizens. That's perhaps the role the church could give assistance in. Is there a reason for that? Yes, there is. He or she is blackballed from employment that pays a decent wage enough for him or her to get on their feet and live productive lives as a restored citizen. Too many are denied the opportunity to prove themselves. Full restoration of rights is what the black church calls for. It is essentially society's debt has been paid. We do not prepare these ex-offenders for their return to the community. For although great that they will return, what does an ex-offender have to look forward to after criminal sentence has been served? He is stripped of privileges such as not being permitted to serve on juries, hold public office. His record follows him to potential places of employment, et cetera. How far and how long is disenfranchisement going to be allowed to further demoralize these ex-offenders? The black church in Philadelphia is opposed to any further delay in 144 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 re-enfranchising ex-offenders.
There are two prominent theoretical justifications for the disenfranchisement. The first insists that ex-offenders have betrayed the social contact of the community and should therefore be ostracized. The second is the notion of only the virtuous are morally competent to participate in governing society. How mistaken that is. Each of these, from a biblical perspective, is lacking validity because the Bible says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I've used the phrase, paid his or her debt to society. If this is a correct assertion, then it's a guess that when an individual is convicted, he or she serves the mandated time. And once that sentence is completed, the individual is allowed and encouraged to reintegrate back into society. Then how come this lifelong ostracism? I hold and advocate that whatever is appropriate in proportion to the transgression, once the time is served, once the debt to society is paid, then the ex-offender ought to no longer be 145 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 held in ostracism or disenfranchisement. Disenfranchisement for life fails to meet the standard. Permanent expulsion from participating as a productive and beneficial member of society imposes on the ex-offender, in my belief, an unjust hardship once his debt paid. Are there risks? To be sure. And I'm equally sure that a progressive course, a plan, policies can be devised to strengthen existing safeguards and create additional ones to ensure harmony and civility in a given community or neighborhood. There is and can be improved safeguards. Support groups, whether ministries in the church or para-church groups, should be invited and encouraged to come on board to lend their help when prisoners return to society. I believe that in our nation public opinion, which was voiced here today, is almost omnipotent, and to a great extent, that's true. Laws can be made and unmade, defined and redefined. Public opinion can establish and overturn the customs of society that are now known to be unjust. For while we 146 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 as Americans claim to be the most enlightened, the most learned and the most free-ist upon the face of the globe, we have systems that are still insensitive, but must be made to yield to righteousness that dispenses equity and justice and equality in judgment. I hope that the weight of powerful public opinion becomes so effective that it bears heavily upon the heart and contents of this system run by men and women that need changes will be not long in coming. I ask you in the name of humanity. I ask you in the name of Christianity. I ask you in the name of God. I ask you in the name of all you hold dear on earth and in heaven to be earnest in your sacred trust. Finally, there are resources available and perhaps funds that can be made available through any faith-based initiatives to address this growing problem I conclude by mentioning only a few, but there are so many more. There are such programs as Prison Fellowship, The InnerChange Freedom Initiative, Justice Fellowship, The 147 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 National Religious Affairs Association, The Office of Justice Programs, Re-entry National Media Outreach Campaign, Restorative Justice Ministry Network of North America, Transition of Prisoners, The Urban Institute, the Vera Institute of Justice, Catholic Charities, Champions For Life, Coalition of Prison Evangelists, Crossroads Prison Ministries, Going Home Initiative, Good News, Life Change Ministries. These and many more that are specialist in various fields that are available to support and offer help to the ex-offender. There is an organization here called New Wave. It is a training provider for this population. And we are available to discuss our entire program. It is the mission of New Wave to provide the support, the training opportunities and incentives to this population.
In cooperation with the communities of faith, we cannot leave the ex-offender to live in undesirable conditions, undesirable 148 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 housing, going to the worst schools, the most overburdened agencies, then condemn them again to a life back in the streets in crime. We remind ourselves that we have a special debt of justice owed to this ex-offender population, and we stand ready to serve this vitally important need. God bless you and thank you.
Thank you, Reverend Shine, Malik and Ed Schwartz. I was wondering if when President Bush was talking about the re-entry issue, he also talked about funding it, Mr. Schwartz?
Yeah. He's got a great rhetoric and a tiny little bit of money. I don't remember the exact amounts. Somebody just articulated it. Let me tell you, we can use all of whatever the dollar I heard in Philadelphia and it wouldn't solve the problem. If the President had the same commitment to re-entry as he does to Iraq then we would get whatever money is needed to solve the problem. But we all know that that commitment is not the same. 149 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 It's rhetoric. We should probably run after it as a precedent and try to get more money in whatever line item he's created. I'm going to look into that. But right now, of course, the line on him is just to persuade the country that he really is compassionate and conservative when we know that he isn't.
Madam Chairwoman, I think through the faith-based initiatives that have been already espoused perhaps there could be some revisions made to the allocation of those dollars. If there is the will and those responsible for those funds or those dollars, I'm sure that given what we've heard in testimony here today, that there ought to be the inspired enlightenment on those responsible for those dollars to now revisit the use of those dollars. I think now that with Council support, perhaps an invitation to those faith-based community holders and then to discuss some form of resolution to this problem. I think the kind of experts that you have had here, it would be most meaningful. 150 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816
That funding came through the federal government's faith-based initiative funding stream?
Malik, I want to ask you, I think I've been to the Steering Committee meeting or the Oversight; which Committee meeting did I --
Okay. And I know that that's made up of a lot of public agencies, correct?
The one I attended at the prison, which one was that?
That's made up of a lot of City agencies, correct? 151 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816
And then the other one that you chair, that's a lot of the community-based groups?
I just wanted to know that for my information. I have more people that need to 10 testify. I think that this actually deserves 11 further discussion, and maybe we'll all think about some other format. That's one reason why I was wondering who was on various committees and who's not so that we can figure out how to keep this going. I don't want to reinvent something that's already been invented, but there does need to be further discussion. For the record I want to note that Councilwoman Blackwell is also here. She is not a Member of the Committee, but she's interested in this issue. Thank you.
Madam Chair, thank you. For this final remark, there are a 152 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 number of advocacy and activist groups that are run by professionals and ex-offenders or committed persons. What we've discovered is that the level of bureaucracy prevents the money. When money does comes down, it comes in a trickle down fashion. I would recommend strongly and urge that these advocates and groups such as the organization that Malik heads and others that are here, that they be given an opportunity to sit with equal opportunity to re-divert those funds. Once that money reaches certain hands, if it's not a favored group, then other groups seem to go neglected. I'm just raising that question because that is evident that happens far too often. If we're going to be compassionate in this, then the experts are these, and I think we need to consider that as a well-attempted factor.
Just one final operational comment. I'm not seeking to get 153 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 into this particular area. The Institute does in fact coordinate a sizable community service jobs program for TANF recipients in partnership with Arbor Education and Training. We see about 2,000 or 3,000 people a year. Six out of the eight people who staff that program are graduates of it. They were in the program and I hired them. I've been taking a look at what we're doing and others are doing in the general employment area, as well as the homeless, to guide your deliberations and how to move effectively on this. It's very difficult to get government agencies to coordinate anything from the top. Having been either involved in or known to a number of them, they don't know each other. So what you can do is to work with groups at the grass roots level, at the street level, who they themselves do the coordination that everybody is talking about now. The fact is that in the relation, as I said homeless, Welfare to Work, it's worked. 154 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 This can work too.
Reverend Shine, I noticed that you added a lot more to your testimony than what you actually turned in. If you have a copy, we'll take it. Thank you. We have Ron Cuie, William DiMascio and David Krain. After David will be Angela Crafton. Kintock will be after Angela.
My name is Betty-Ann Izenman from the Pennsylvania Prison Society. I'm filling in for Mr. DiMascio.
I'm Argo Simpkins from ABO Haven. Ron Cuie and I are together.
We're trying to end these hearings due to other meetings by at least 5:00. So please condense written testimony. You can always turn your testimony in. Your full testimony will be a matter of 155 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 record. We put it in the record. Please proceed.
Councilwoman Miller and all Members of this esteemed Body, I say good afternoon. First let me state just how pleased I am to appear before you and share my thoughts on what is perhaps the most important issue of the day, the return of people to communities after serving time in prison. My testimony will focus on solutions which I believe are essential to successful re-entry, more specifically, I wish to draw attention to the re-entry of female offenders. Why female offenders? Well, consider the facts that since 1990 the number of female defendants convicted of felonies in state courts have grown at more than two times the rate of increase of male defendants. Three out of four violent female offenders committed simple assault, with 65 percent of them having prior convictions. 3 million minor 156 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 children. Sadly, seven in women under correctional sanctions have an average of two children less than 18 years of age, decapitating families and social structures in Philadelphia communities. No, I'm not going to sit here and read statistics. However, the point must be made that by anyone's measure, we have a crisis of great magnitude due to this assault on motherhood and, of course, families. Rather, I am here representing a process which is consistent with the mission of ABO Haven, Inc. , has prepared clients for living wage employment with benefits, placement and retention. Our intensive curriculum is designed to meet the standards and expectations of the workplace environment. Upon their release, our team will provide offenders a classroom setting which mirrors the workplace. During this period, additional assessment of current skill sets and orientations will occur. 157 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 The curriculum provided will be detailed job activities, skill requirements, organizational structure, product marketed, workplace environment and policies and other aspects one should be informed about prior to considering a position with a firm or pursuing work in a given industry. A job search plan will be the output of each client. Placement activities shall consist of staff working with clients to execute against their individualized job search plan. This will involve making phone contacts, sending cover letters and resumes, seeking interviews and researching opportunities through traditional and non-traditional sources. In addition, clients shall have portfolios sent to select employers where established relationships exist. Contacts will be made with the appropriate persons and these firms should seek out and schedule opportunities for interviews. Upon successful placement, processed staff will maintain a regular schedule of 158 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 contact with employers, intended to ensure that the workplace contribution of clients is valued. Issues such as performance, accountability, team work, ability to take directions and complete assigned tasks are the type of discussions which will occur with employers. Other important topics will be attendance, productivity and potential for additional responsibility, advancement and career growth. Likewise, clients will be debriefed in their work experience, job satisfaction, workplace adjustment, opportunities for career growth and other environmental concerns of the workplace will be addressed to ensure a positive work experience. , provides a number of benefits. These benefits are summarized as follows: High quality education for inmates which prepares them to compete in the formal economy, organized network comprised of employers, government agencies, community-based organizations, along with other stakeholders focused on increased 159 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 public safety and reduced costs to taxpayers for the criminal justice system, and social dividend resulting from new jobs added to the economy and less reliance on an already strained social service delivery system.
In closing, let me state that I've been in the business of workforce development for three decades. During the past years 10 there have been thousands of young women who have come in contact with our team and realized a positive benefit from following our form of a proactive, progressive life-style. But I am under no illusion about my capacity to do the same for female offenders without support. Support is needed in the form of multi-agency team work in government, active participation in the environment of other private sectors and contributions from communities and the pre-imposed release risk management of adjudicated offenders. ABO Haven, Inc. will do its part by encouraging ex-offenders to engage in this job readiness process to further enhance the development of skills that are transferable to 160 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 the workplace. Those who have completed courses often at ABO Haven, Inc. have secured positions at firms such as Smithkline Beecham, Quest Diagnostics, Internal Revenue Services, Philadelphia College of Optometry and Comcast Cable. Earning excellent salaries at these and other firms have enabled many of our graduates to first time home buyers, thus realizing the American dream. ABO Haven, Inc. has opted to focus on a proactive-solution based approach to address a difficult issue involved with criminal justice. , is well positioned to contribute toward a more efficient, effective approach for the transition from prison to communities.
I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak and address the Council. 161 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 While I work with ABO Haven, I'm here today as an ex-offender. By the way, I'm also an ex-sales and marketing executive with a Fortune 50 corporation, a professional football player, ex, drafted by the Chicago Bears. Former college graduate. I studied at the University of Michigan for my graduate degree. My father was a deacon in my church. Deputy Managing Director under W. Wilson Goode, Senior. Deputy Manager under Governor Ed Rendell. I submit that I am uniquely qualified to speak on policy, best practices and any other issues on re-entry since I'm currently going through re-entry as we speak and as I sit here before you. I'm going to editorialize on the balance of my testimony briefly, if I may. I sat in a halfway house for months. I just 20 got out December 22nd this past year. With all due respect to well-intended persons, not one of the organizations that have testified here set foot in that halfway house to do anything. And it's a five minute walk from this building right here. Why do I mention 162 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 that? We've got to start walking the walk as well as we talk the talk. That's a fact. If we keep this continued churn of people coming forth trying to run after the couple dollars that are available, we're going to get the same old results, and that's nothing. Currently 75 percent of people who returned to the state correctional institutions in Pennsylvania are from Philadelphia. However, we only account for one-third of the inmate population, around 36, 37 percent. I come from what's called Region 1, which is probably 97, 98 percent Philadelphia. It's a five county region; Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks and Philadelphia. Seventy-five percent come from Philadelphia. That would seem to suggest that if the issue of recidivism is successfully impacted in Philadelphia, it helps the state. Therefore, we need to reach out to the state. We need to network with those decision makers at the state level for legislative initiatives. To that end, Ms. Simpkins, the 163 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 president of ABO Haven, and myself, we met on December 17th with Speaker Perzel. He is 100 percent supportive of what we put forth and has indicated his support in ways that we're comfortable that he's there. Two days or the day before, so that would have been about the 15th of December, we met with the General Counsel for Chair of the Senate Judiciary in Harrisburg, Stewart Greenleaf. Also at the meeting was general counsel for his counterpart on the democratic side of the aisle, and that man's name was Ron Bumper. Jay Costa is Senator Greenleaf's counterpart on the democratic side. Both of these gentlemen endorsed what we put forth as a plan. On a local level I have written letters of intent from State Senator Anthony Williams on this plan. I have a written letter of intent from esteemed brother and doctor, W. Wilson Goode. I have a written letter of intent from St. Joseph's University to bring the educational administration of which they are second to none on the East 164 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Coast, to bring their skills and talents to this initiative. I don't need to tell anybody here, when you have St. Joe's on your team, the issue of funding in Washington is greatly facilitated. We not only need the legislative initiative, but -- and on that note I must also say I haven't mentioned the two legislative initiatives in Washington; one, Senate Bill 2923, which is cosponsored by Senator Specter and Senator Biden. I would suggest that because it is co-sponsored by those two gentlemen who are leaders in judiciary, that there's some measure of success. There's probably a strong measure of likelihood that that bill will be successful when it comes.
Incidentally, ABO Haven has been asked to contribute vis-a-vis feedback and testify at the Senate hearings on this bill. I've been working under Argo's direction with Senator Specter's general counsel in Washington to that degree. House Bill 4676, hearings were held 165 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 this past winter. No one from Philadelphia was there at all talking about our presence in the national agenda, the national dialog. This is the book from the National Conference on Offender Re-Entry in Cleveland, Ohio that was held September 19th to the 22nd. Philadelphia by and large was MIA. ABO Haven was represented, but by and large you could count on one hand organizations from the Commonwealth -- let alone Philadelphia -- from the Commonwealth that was at this conference. The point is, we've been missing in action in a lot of these things. Legislative initiatives notwithstanding is an important one, but there's other things that we've been missing in action on. We do need an administrative body. However, I worked in government. I worked in the belly of the beast, if you will, and I would strongly urge reservations against another level of bureaucracy to manage any re-entry initiative. Philadelphia prisons have an absolute role in that, but their core competency is care, custody and control of 166 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 inmates. It's not social work. It is not job development. It is none of those things. However, they do have some staff who are excellent and can provide the access and make sure that those things that are decided need to go inside the walls and are done. I'll give you an example. Harriet Spencer, she is the executive director of External Affairs, Research and Development at the Philadelphia Prison System. We have worked very, very well with her. She came up through the ranks. She understands the prison system inside and out. D. Highly qualified for any position in the Philadelphia Prison System that deals with re-entry. I certainly hope that this Body will look at people like Harriet Spencer in terms of -- and obviously the Commissioner -- look at her in terms of talking to her about some of these issues. We certainly are working with her and we are going in concert with her to a local funder to seek support, and we've been given a verbal commitment on that support. 167 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 We do need an administrative body. I would suggest that it not be another layer of bureaucracy. I would suggest that it be an independent 5013C set up. Part of my testimony does propose such a body. Part of my testimony also proposes an appropriate delivery vehicle, and that is vis-a-vis e-learning. We need to use technology to take education and re-entry material and process these into the prison environment. You can only run so many do-good organizations up into the prison. Logistically, you cannot take too many people up. However, you can transmit important valuable processes and educational curricula into the prison in mass and realize an economy of scale. Where is it being done? Let's try Texas, California, Florida, you know, major large states, New York, where there this is being done funded through the Department of Education. These things are being provided support. Cross agency coordination also is critical on this. 168 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 The Washington State Accountability Act is an absolute model that needs to be looked at, which really, I think, represents best practices in terms of cross over agency coordination and re-entry, which should obviously begin within the prison environment. The last two points I want to make, that we need have to some organization with a proven track record. We need to have some measurable outcomes. Folks get dollars. They need to be held to standards. This is a business. Let's don't make any mistake about it.
This is a business and it needs business disciplines at the core of it in order to make sure those who perform stay. Those who do not perform, see you later. Bye. Lastly, involvement of youthful offenders. I heard the point made that offenders do need to be involved in projects, and they do. Quite frankly, guys like me at 51 years old and older, you know, we need to get the young bucks. They communicate with each other in a way that we cannot. They have credibility within each other that we do not. 169 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 I'm saying to you, I have been blessed with great opportunities from the time I was young. It took me a long time to get silly and go to prison, do a bunch of dumb stuff and go to prison. However, I can say to you that my travels have taken me across this country, across the waters internationally, to the halls of Congress and corporate America. Never have I run into the degree of talent and just absolute wonderful, intellectual individuals as I ran into during my period of incarceration. Then we have grass roots organizations represented by one sister here in the audience, Sister Karen Ali. Her husband is working on 33, 34 years, Brother Omar Ali. He had a re-entry program back in 1978 before it was called re-entry. She has an organization, Boxing Association of America that needs to be supported. Can do wonderful work. She has been watching this thing for three decades. So organizations like the Boxing Association of America need to be talked to. People who are still incarcerated 170 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 and willing to give, like Brother Omar Askil Ali (ph)need to be communicated with on these issues of re-entry. In other words, we cannot just sit up here on the outside and start talking about what's going on on the inside without including the people on the inside in that dialog. So with that, Madam Chair, I do want to close my testimony. I want to say to you that this organization and this individual and these individuals, we are available to get results. This ain't social work. This ain't rocket science, but it takes people who know what they're do doing and who can produce, and we're prepared to do that. Thank you.
That point has been made several times this afternoon about making sure that people that have been on the inside are included in program planning and decision making. 171 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816
Councilwoman, I might also add that the organizations within your district, Fight for Lifers, Reconstruction, Inc., they're within your district, and we had talked. They met with you before. I know you know what I'm talking about. They're doing a wonderful job. We need to look at more of these grass roots organizations that are not helped traditionally in the funding streams and give them a shot. They need an opportunity, Councilwoman. They've been working without the big money and without the huge staff, but they've been getting the job done without that.
My name is Betty-Ann Izenman. I'm the program director for the Pennsylvania Prison Society. Thank you for the opportunity to present our testimony today. I'm going to summarize Mr. DiMascio's statement, our executive director, which you should have. 172 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Briefly, we have been involved in the issue of re-entry for all of our 218-year history, and obviously it was a little bit different 218 years ago. People were being released from prison, needed to find a place to stay, perhaps some warm food. Over the generations, however, we've changed what we've done until we did start providing case management, job placement, job readiness workshops and all of the other kinds of re-entry support services that you have heard about all day this afternoon. Last year, we served roughly 900 clients in our workshops. We've helped in self directed job searches, as well as providing case management and job placement. We do have two particularly funded programs, one from the Department of Public Welfare and one from the Philadelphia prisons, the Jobs Program that you've heard a little bit about. We receive thousands of phone calls. We can't possibly handle all of them. What I want to turn to specifically are some of the very practical problems that 173 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 we would like to see this Council and the community in general grapple with when it comes to the issue of re-entry. The biggest problem, perhaps, that ex-offenders face immediately is where they will live. You've heard it mentioned in many different testimony in many different ways. Some people have supportive family members, but a large number do not. They have nowhere to live. They very often end up at shelters. That's wonderful as a small step and a first place to lay your head. But if you have no place to go, or if you have nowhere to take a shower during the day, how can you go for an interview? How can you start phoning to look for jobs? The question of housing is probably the most important issue facing ex-offenders right now. We urge the Council to work with the Blueprint to End Homelessness, to create safe, affordable housing for those who are struggling to join us. For example, we know that that is a consortium. We know that the questions of housing are being looked at. However, we also 174 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 know there is right now, there's obviously no 3 ability of an ex-offender to go into federally funded housing. As you heard, the City of Philadelphia as well has adopted that, but what is the City supposed to do? If the City refuses to follow those guidelines, then that funding is gone. So we recognize that this is a really thorny problem. It's one that will take a lot of people's input. We submit that it's probably the hardest problem that the Council should face with regard to re-entry. Then there are a number of other things. There are a number of other barriers that we would ask the Council to take a look at. For instance, we commend the Philadelphia Prison System for having created the Jobs Program, of which we are a re-entry partner. We have helped a number of men and women get ready to work and we've helped a number of them find jobs. But we noticed that most of those people coming out of the Philadelphia Prison System do not have any form of identification. It's amazing because you can't even begin to look for a job unless you 175 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 have something proving who you are. Yet they've been fingerprinted. They've been recorded. They're in the correctional system. They're in the police records or the records of the Philadelphia Prison System. Many states currently use prison identification cards as the basis for a state identification, the state form of a non-driver identification. Pennsylvania does not. This is a legislative fix.
We know it is not one the Council can necessarily do, but we urge the Council to look into what has to be done in order to make that possible, that somebody has been identified from the Philadelphia Prison System can then get a form of identification which will help him or her get a job and be able to start that process of re-entering society. Let me leave with one thought that echoes what Mr. Cuie just mentioned. We do not believe that this is a government problem. It affects all of us in the community. We do not believe that it can be answered by government. We don't believe necessarily that 176 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 the government cannot or should not be responsible for the fix. There have been a lot of agencies -- the Pennsylvania Prison Society is just one. As Mr. Cuie mentioned, there have been a lot of agencies, a lot of organizations, a lot of small, grass roots organizations and larger community organizations working hard on the issue of re-entry for a number of years. Individuals, whether in non-profit organizations such as ours, in faith-based organizations, in small neighborhood groups, all have to work together with government on this issue. It's not something that we think should be headquartered in the government with the other agencies involved. By agencies, again, I second what a lot of people have said. We're talking about those people who have been there, done that, come out of incarceration and been able to tell us what's worked and what hasn't worked. We urge policy makers at all levels, especially here in the City, to collaborate with us, with agencies and non-profit 177 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 organizations like us to help with the complex process of re-entry and employment. The City Council, the Mayor's Office, the Philadelphia Prison System all are important players in the re-entry effort. The people coming out of our prison are members of our community and they are probably the most important members who should be involved in this effort. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. David Krain.
Thank you. I would first like to thank Council for inviting me here and I would like to thank the rest of the people for staying around. From my time I've been a counselor at the Youth Study Center, I've noticed that over time that there's been more youth who stay there for longer and longer amounts of time. The expected stay is about a week. But a lot of youths stay there about six, 10 months for the year. They're supposed to have an 178 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 education, which as we've seen for the past three hours, that they desperately need. With the teachers and the principal that they have there, the youth take no tests, receive no 6 grades. They're just placed by the units. They're not placed by their needs. I find that scary to think that when they get released, they won't have a leg to stand on, no matter what work they actually do when they're in school. When they're holding them, they have no time served, so in theory, they're a captive audience. Why not teach them? I hope that we can work to find a way that the youth can receive credit, learn some kind of trade so they don't become the adult offenders that we've spoken about all day. I'd like to thank you for your time. I tried to keep it as brief as possible.
We're glad to 179 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 see you here. I remember your letters. Thank you. Angela Crafton and Lori Pompa. Kintock is next. Dr. Rick McKinney is after Kintock. Then Michael Gaskins.
Good afternoon. My name is Lori Pompa, and I'm in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. I've been teaching corrections at Temple since 1922 (sic) and have been going in and out of jails and prisons for the past years. 14 Specifically I want to tell you 15 about a program that I run at Temple, and it's 16 really the effect of this program that has 17 bearings on these hearings today. 18 In the fall of 1997, I began 19 teaching a course in the Philadelphia jails 20 called the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program. I've been teaching it every year since that time. I'm in my 19th semester now. I also, by the way, teach it at Graterford Prison. This semester for the first time there are five classes of Inside Out of the model that's 180 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 running in the Philadelphia Prison System with instructors from Temple, Chestnut Hill College and the University of Pennsylvania. Let me kind of explain what Inside Out is. It involves a group of about 7 college students and 15 individuals who are 8 incarcerated having class together once a week 9 throughout the semester. Through the exchange 10 that happens in the classroom on the inside we 11 explore issues of crime and justice in great 12 depth. It is, of course, within the context 13 of the prison, and that contact serves as an 14 important part of the learning process. You 15 can just imagine the impact of this experience on the outside students. Besides everything else, it certainly transforms their way understanding society and the issues that many folks in society face. But what's most important for these hearings has to do with the impact on the inside students, the men and women who are taking the course with the Temple students who, in that context, are classmates with an equal voice doing the same work, who are being 181 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 challenged in some very important ways. The inside students generally have not taken a college course before. In fact, a good number have never finished high school. One of the amazing things to observe is the interest, commitment and energy that the inside students bring to the work they do. We consistently see that with higher expectations people achieve that much more. Of the nearly 400 inside students who have been involved so far in the Inside Out course, I can't tell you the number of men and women who has said things like, gee, I never knew I was so smart. Or, I didn't know I had anything to offer. Or, you know, I think I want to go back to school again and make something of my life. These are powerful sentiments from people who society has virtually written off as problems or liabilities or collectively a menace to society. This response has not been a complete surprise to me since over the 20 years I've been going behind the walls I have 182 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 too often met men and women who are intelligent, creative, articulate, but tragically, profoundly lacking in either self-esteem or opportunities or both. It is such a powerful statement, that given this chance to be seen as an asset to the community with something to give and a drive to succeed, that so many of the inside students rise to the occasion. It says everything for the power of education and the transformative possibilities of believing in people, especially when they're struggling to believe in themselves. When we talk about re-entry it seems to me that we need to be talking about individuals' short term and long-term plans. It is vital that once people leave incarceration they have a plan and the resources to take care of their immediate needs. The more resources and creativity that can be put towards providing that support, the better. However, if we're talking about individuals' transformation in the long-term, 183 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES.
040816 which frankly is a much deeper and much more lasting concept of rehabilitation, we need to be creating opportunities for people while they're on the inside through education and other kinds of programs, to be experiencing themselves differently and thinking about their lives in the long-term. If we each think about our own lives for a moment, you can probably come up with that one person or that one situation that provided us with a new sense of ourselves. A moment of inspiration that moved us in an entirely new direction. A turning point that changed the course of our lives forever. We all have the same needs and we all deserve to be afforded the same opportunities, regardless of race, class, gender or whether or not we've gotten involved in the criminal justice system. My recommendation to you today is this: As we consider all of the specific needs of men and women leaving prison, let's remember how vital it is to also have programs and opportunities while people are still 184 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 incarcerated that challenge people to think through the big picture of their lives and inspire them to think about themselves differently. We have seen this transformation, the transformative impact that this experience can have. And in a moment you'll see what I mean. I'd like to end by offering these thoughts. Someone once said -- and I think this is a very powerful statement -- building more prisons to stop crime is like building more graveyards to stop disease. We all know that as a society we are using incarceration far beyond what makes rational sense. For more than years we've been focused on being 17 tough on crime. What strikes me is that we're 18 not being tough on crime. We're being tough 19 on people who commit crime. But that to be 20 really tough on crime means making the tough decisions, the social, the economic, the political decisions that will create a society where it is easier for people to be good. It seems that we have a ways to go on that. My hope is that these hearings will be a start. 185 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 I want to also mention that I brought with me testimony from two men who are incarcerated at Graterford; one who has been in and out of prison several times, and he talks about his experience in his testimony, and one who is doing life at prison and is working with other life-sentenced men there to create a program dealing with re-entry. I want to thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts today. I'd like to introduce Angela Crafton, who took part in the Inside Out Program some years ago as an inside student.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Six years ago my life began. I'd been strung out on the streets of Philadelphia for close to 10 years. I had been in the Philadelphia Prison System twice. I was homeless, emaciated and wearing dog tags that my father gave me to wear for when my body was found. For me there was no hope. Then I got arrested for the last time. I went to the OPTIONS unit at PICC. 186 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 I was there with women who went through the same situations. The tools offered to me were priceless; meetings, groups, support, social workers who helped us work through real problems that offenders deal with on a daily basis. Help that wasn't readily available on other units. I became a part of the Temple Inside Out Prison Exchange Program. I was in the first women's class. There were inside 12 students and 15 outside students. I was part 13 of a challenging college class with real 14 students. We collaboratively designed a model 15 facility for women. This was a pivotal moment for me while working with these women that I realized I could change my life. I now knew from this experience that I could set goals, goals that could be achieved. I was a FIR client, court stipulated to go to Interim House, Incorporated, a program for women. I spent six months in the residential and one year in outpatient. I went on to a 15-month transitional housing program. I walked off three years of 187 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 probation while rebuilding the foundation of my life. My first two visits with the Philadelphia Prison System did not give me any resources for when I was released. Being a creature of habit, I had no choice but to return to the familiar, the only life I ever knew. I am aware of how fortunate I am to have been sentenced to a re-entry program and given the opportunity to realize all the choices that I really did have to really change my life and fulfill dreams that weren't even given a second thought on the streets. Men and women have a lot to face upon release from prison, and it takes time to make a personal transition from prison to the real world. First of all, goals need to be set, programs and opportunities that provide the support must be in place. I speak from personal experience. These people need to do one thing at a time, not get too overwhelmed, have support and opportunity to do the next right thing, everything from getting a new 188 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 identification to being reintroduced to children, getting a GED, finding permanent housing are all examples of what a newly released man or woman faces. There are 8,000 men and women incarcerated in the Philadelphia Prison System. It's scary for me to think how many will be released with nowhere to go but back to the streets. How long will it take for them to return, to take a trip on the revolving door of the prison system? How many will die on their journey, or even more scary, how many others will perish in their path? I always hear about the cost of housing an inmate and what are the options to having fewer returns to prison after release. Yet there are more and more correctional facilities built each year. We need re-entry programs. We need to give our newly released men and women some hope, direction and resources to ensure fewer relapses to their previous state. I am now a junior at Temple University, a worker among workers at a job 189 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 I've had for five years, and I recently began a journey with the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia, working with at-risk youth, a dream that could have never been realized if I had returned to my previous existence. Thank you.
We want to thank you for coming and congratulating you on all your success. Good luck. Continued good luck. Thank you. We have Kintock and Community Education Centers. Dr. Rick McKinney and Michael Gaskins.
On behalf of the Kintock Group, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to present testimony. My name is Deborah Oree. I'm the corporate director of the Employment Resource Center and Services for residents in our facilities. The Kintock Group is a non-profit organization community corrections provider that serves more than 1,400 clients daily. The company currently contracts with the 190 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Department of Corrections, the Bureau of Prisons in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The company opened its first community corrections program in 1987 and has quickly grown to service many providers. The Kintock's mission is to create an environment and programs that are structured and stabilized so that when individuals come from institutions, they have a transitional period to help them re-enter into the community. From what I've heard, the testimony I've heard today and last week, as I was here, that's a crucial issue, and we all know that it is. To have an inmate come from institutions straight to the streets is ludicrous at best. So we want to make sure that these individuals have a transitional station where they can stop, get re-entry services and provide access to community organizations that will help them when they leave our facilities. I want to address four issues: Public safety, community involvement, 191 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 education and training, and release preparation. Public safety is a major issue for us. We take it very seriously. Although community corrections is not a jail, we take it very seriously and put measures into place to help that process so that the public feels safe and that the individuals know and can care about their accountability and level of behavior. The other thing is program services, which is crucial as well. Life skill services to provide our residents with the opportunity to be exposed to various organizations in the community. The one thing that has been echoed here is that we need a clearing house of sorts for all communities and organizations to come together to provide those services under one roof. And if nothing else is taken away from here, I think that is the basis of what we want to say today. We provide substance abuse treatment in our facilities so that the client can 192 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 understand his behavior and change it if he wants to and if it's necessary. That includes men and women. Release preparation so that when they leave us they don't come back to us, but they go on to a community where they're stabilized. We talk about housing. They come out and they don't know where they're going to live. They don't know their family. Transitional services will allow them to establish a home plan, to get back into the community with their families. We talked about parenting and the skills that they need to re-enter with their families. It's crucial. We have parenting classes where at the end of a six-week program, with the Father Initiative Program, organizations such as CAPE, the family can come in with the children, with a significant other, so that that process is smooth before they leave our facility and it's not a shock to the family and the inmate when they leave us. 193 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 I've been hearing about measurable outcomes. We need to know what's working and what's not, and I think that has long been lost in our efforts to serve the offender population. We absolutely need to know that once a resident is out in the community, how long is he keeping a job. Is he staying drug free. There needs to be things in place to measure that and track that and monitor that upon release. If we can do anything, I think that's one thing that we absolutely want to do. Thank you very much.
Thank you. My name is Manny Arroyo. I work with Community Education Centers, and specifically Coleman Hall here in Philadelphia. That's a 300-bed male adult halfway house that's on the contract with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Although we're under the contract with the DOC, overwhelmingly our clientele is made up of parolees that are under jurisdiction of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole. My company operates 194 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 rehabilitative services for adults and juveniles throughout the nation. Coleman Hall was opened in the fall of 2001. We provide a variety of services ranging from secure residential treatment, to work release, to day reporting, to electronic monitoring or GPS based on the needs of the referring agency and the resident population. We provide services to state and county agencies, seeking to provide cost effective treatment services to reduce recidivism rates and to impact on growing prison populations. All of CEC's programs emphasize rehabilitation and security and focus on changing addictive and criminal behaviors. In 1998, my company, along with the New Jersey Department of Corrections, opened the first assessment center in that state to provide a step-down process to determine a specific need and risk needs of residents and then place them in the halfway house designed to meet the specific needs of the individuals. The process has reduced cost by more adequately ensuring that needs were addressed 195 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 by programs and skilled staff to deliver the necessary services. In 2002 CEC, with the support of the New Jersey Governor's Office and the New Jersey Department of Corrections, enlisted Drexel University here in Philadelphia to conduct a performance-based study. That study produced outcome date regarding the efficacy of CEC programs in New Jersey. They took a random sampling of New Jersey offenders that were in community education programs and compared them with a random sampling on a national basis in a study that was done by BJS in 2002. They found positive results obtained when high risk offenders receive treatment during the reintegration process. When compared with residents from New Jersey who were included in the study, the CEC residents were found to have had a significantly lower recidivism rate as reflected in fewer arrests. The results of that study can be found in a periodical called Corrections Compendium in the July/August 2004 edition. It's Volume 29, Number 4. 196 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Coleman Hall and Community Education Centers is committed to changing the lives of our residence through proven educational and treatment services that are backed by these types of studies and the results that come from them. Programming is carried out by a professionally trained team which works in harmony with the resident, referring agencies, the community and available service providers. Commitment to addressing the needs of the offender family and the community is our standard. Coleman Hall is specifically located at 3950 D Street in the Juniata section of Philadelphia. We have a 300-bed, handicap accessible program which provides assessment, educational and residential services to adult males referred, as I indicated, by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections or the Pennsylvania Parole Board. While most placements are parolees transiting from state correctional facilities to approved home plans via placement with us, we also provide services for Pennsylvania Department of 197 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Corrections' inmates who are still actively serving sentences and also for parole violators who are actually halfway back. These are people who were in the community, violated a condition of parole and instead of being re-incarcerated are placed with us and with programs such as Kintock to provide transitional services.
The program's structure is based on a cognitive behavioral model designed to address reintegration issues with an emphasis on community stabilization, employment, relapse prevention and preparation for transition to supervised community living. Basically in that cognitive behavior model, we're trying to get the men to look at how they think and how they make decisions. And I believe that Kintock joins us in that approach to providing services to people. All of our clinical staff have a minimum of a bachelor's degree. All of our department heads or unit managers hold master's degrees. Many of our staff are certified as addictions counselors. Presently 198 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 we have four master's level interns from Temple University who augment the programming offered by the staff. Within the 300 beds we have 30 beds that are set aside for a mental health unit. A lot of the problems that were voiced by people who spoke before me today, we find that to. We find that there are scarcity of appropriate housing for mentally ill residents, that the transition is a lot more problematic for them because of their particular illness and the problems that they present. In the spring of last year, we had the distinction and the pleasure to have opened a small, 102-bed facility within Coleman Hall that's designed for parole violators. These are men who, prior to the opening of this facility, would have been re-incarcerated into the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. There were people within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and Parole who I believe were wise enough to 199 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 recognize that many of the men and women who are re-incarcerated do not necessarily need to be placed behind a fence or a wall. This unit is a secure unit, but moreover and more importantly, what it offers is assessment and education. m. m. curriculum that the fellows follow during the 90 days that they are with us. We develop a treatment plan that is then forwarded to the supervising parole agent who is going to receive them upon completion of the program. That forms the backbone of the supervision for that particular resident while he's on parole. Two of the things that we analyze while he's with us for the 90 days are his drug and alcohol needs and also his risk needs. I think that that's important for us to look at providing adequate services based on the needs of offenders. One of the things that we do not agree with is a one size fits all kind of approach to providing services to offenders. 200 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Offenders are as different as everybody in this room here. They present different issues, strengths, deficiencies and needs. If we're going to be successful in getting them home successfully and keeping them from re-offending and recidivating, then we have to treat them as individuals and develop plans that go to the needs and the issues that they present. That program is called Penn Cap, and that's the Pennsylvania Alternative to Prison Program. I'm glad to say that the program, although it's not being utilized to its capacity, it is being utilized by the supervising parole agents on the street. It's too soon to tell what the results are going to be, but so far things are promising. Along with a myriad of programs that we provide in-house, we have a family services component. All of us agree that in order to provide services to the offender, you cannot do it in a vacuum. You need to include the community, and certainly part of the community is the nucleus or the family unit. 201 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 One of the things that we try to do is encourage family to come in almost upon the resident's entry into the program. In fact, we have a perk that we've set up in-house for those who take advantage of the program. We have a structured program for the family and for the residents.
The family receives information about Coleman Hall and about the services that we provide. We're also trying to unify the men with their children. So while we're talking with the adults and we're going over different issues, the men are interacting with their children. We're looking to expand that program. In addition to the family services program, we also have a fatherhood initiative program that we began a while ago, and that's helping with the social reintegration process too. We also have what we call an alumni association. We have men and women who come to the program on a regular basis, meet with our residents. They kind of share their stories and they kind of tell them about the 202 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 things that they can expect on the street, good and bad. They talk with them one on one and kind of in a way that they can understand in terms of the pitfalls that they can possibly find in a community, but also the myriad of services and people that are welcoming them back into the community. So the alumni association is one of the backbones of our program because, again, we have success stories that come through Coleman Hall come back periodically, meet with the men, share their stories and kind of encourage them that there are people that are there to help them with the battle in terms of successful reintegration. Along with Kintock we do a lot of things. We provide many, many, many hours of community services. At our program we average over 3,000 hours of community service to the community, and I would imagine that Kintock's numbers certainly rival that. That's a very important program, because one of the things that we try to do with our men is we try to get them to acknowledge what they have done to 203 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 the community. I think that if we're going to help them make themselves whole, part of that is an approach to get them to understand, recognize and take ownership for the damage that they have done to themselves and to the community. One of the things that we make available to them is a community service program where they can give back to the community. What we do is, we have a phase program. I believe Kintock may have a phase program too. For the first two phases of the four phase program we provide the community service outlet for them. As they mature and move through the program and we're preparing them for their ultimate release, we ask them to secure and identify their own community service. Because, one, we want them to come up with a community service that they truly believe in because they may not believe in the one we have given them when they first came to us. Hopefully they will pick a community service program that may actually be in their 204 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 own neighborhood, in their own community. So in terms of transitional issues, they would then be participants in something that they buy into, something that they can see the value of and hopefully that would continue on longer from an altruistic perspective. Our program, just like Kintock, is accredited by the American Correctional Association, which is a nationally recognized group of people who have set standards for the operations of correctional facilities. I'm proud to say that in September of 2003 we received certification by ACA. We passed 100 percent of the mandatory standards and 100 percent of the non-mandatory standards. I believe that Kintock also has that same distinction. There are many things that we do with community corrections, Madam Chairwoman, and I know that I could go on and on with them, but I'll try to make it brief. One of the things that we try to do, though, believe it or not -- and a lot of people don't like to hear this -- is we do not 205 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 try to rehabilitate folks a lot. What we try to do is habilitate people. I have men who have never done laundry in their lives.
I have men who feel that it is their entitlement for other people to have to do things for them. We force them to do those things. We teach men how to make beds uniformly. I was impressed years ago when I went to Kintock. They tell the guys how to put the shoes under their beds. We emulate that same type of approach. We're trying to get men to stand up on their own two feet, certainly with the help of the community, but to become productive individuals whose esteem is increased because they can do for themselves. By and large a lot of people that we have do have self esteem problems, and that's one of the things that we try to bolster with people. When I worked at Graterford Prison we had a citizens class there that I used to address. I used to tell guys in anticipation and preparation of coming home, I said, you have to think about taking your place in 206 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 society. You need to think about that now while you're still here in Graterford Prison. You need to try to think about the pitfalls and the barriers that are going to be out there. You need to understand that they are going to be out there. No one of us can really move those obstacles except you. The resident has to prepare himself for obstacles just like all of us do and arm himself or herself to do the things that are important. If I can give some recommendations in terms of re-entry, it would be, as Jeff Beard, the Commissioner of Corrections in Pennsylvania says, re-entry has to begin the first day of incarceration. That's not easy when you're talking about a man or a woman who's looking at a 10 to 20-year sentence. One of the last things that those people want to talk about is, I'm not going to go home for 10 years and to think about getting myself ready for 10 years from now. A lot of those men and women are really trying to buckle down and they're trying to find a niche in a correctional facility. To ask them to prepare 207 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 for coming home, sometimes it's not easy. The truth of the matter is that we see people every day -- and I'd like to think that Kintock would bear me out -- people who come home with no identification, no birth certificate, no social security card, no 8 picture ID. So one of the things that we do for the first three weeks or so is nothing more than put together documentation that's necessary for a successful transition into society. Those are things that I think can be done long before they come home. Certainly if people are looking and doing those kinds of things before they come home, then I think that they will acutely start to think about the path to coming home and to increasing their success. I can go on but I'm going to stop right now by telling you that by and large most of our men work. In the report that we submitted to you, Madam Chairwoman, you'll see that our men earned over half a million in gross wages last year and they paid appropriate taxes on that. They paid 20 208 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 percent back to the general treasury of state government last year. These are statistics that we can all be proud of. I think that if we can circle the wagons, if you will, and unify our efforts out here -- as I indicated before, there are a lot of great, great agencies out here. We need some coordination of services. Thank you for your time and thank you for your courage.
Dr. Rick McKinney, REST Philly Project, and I have with me our executive director, Reverend Carol Jordan. I'm going to make this very brief. You've got a 10-page document with 15 itemized policy recommendations. I serve on the Consensus Committee for the City. I also serve on the Re-Entry Committee for the state. Our program in the last two years has won awards from both the state and from the City of Philadelphia Prison System. We operate out of the Philadelphia 209 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Prison System. In the last four years, we had over 4,000 inmates apply for our program. We were able to graduate a thousand of them, over a thousand, and we are now in the throes of working with the University of Pennsylvania to look at those thousand inmates that graduated from our program who received weeks of 9 cognitive spiritual counseling, and then many 10 of them entered our after care program once 11 they left the prison. 12 Very quickly and very shortly, I 13 just want to summarize just a couple of things. Let me give you also this report. We are the only faith-based, early release program, I believe, in the country. We partnership with Parole and Probation and with the Public Defender's Office. You don't have a copy of that second one, but you do have one of the 10 pages there. I want to make two prophecies, if I may, and I'm going to support them with just two quotes. The first prophecy is, to the 210 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 degree that this Committee is able to involve a trained and supervised faith-based community, to that degree, re-entry is going to be a success. To the contrary, to the degree that a trained, faith-based supervised community effort is left out, then whatever this Committee comes up with or whatever anybody in this City does in terms of re-entry, it is doomed to fail. The problem is much bigger than the resources that we have that's supported by what we've been constantly doing, and the money that is left to do it. The two quotes I want to make, one is from the President of the United States, and why he kicked off this whole thing of faith-based initiative. He made a statement that if we were to look at the results -- and we're talking about performance-based operations -- if we were to look to at the results of involving the faith community and compare them with what the non-faith-based community is doing, and if they equal in results, he would still push the faith-based 211 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 initiative because it's cheaper. But what science has found, is that when you combine the two, as they have in medicine -- that's why we have alternative medicine now -- that's the unification of a spiritual intervention and a medical intervention. We use it in cancer. We use it in any number of major diseases. When you combine the two, people get well quicker and they stay well longer. Make no bones about it, people who have an addiction, they're sick. People who have anti-social personality disorders, they're sick. And there's a role that the faith-based community plays that nobody else can play. The President outlined several reasons for that. First of all, faith has transformational power. Just like in medicine, the transformational power is that it imbues the immune system to fight whatever pathogen that's there. There's transformational power. The people that are transformed, they overcome obstacles that face them. 212 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Next, the volunteers. We have 900 volunteers that are trained in the City of Philadelphia, and that's why we can reach so many inmates and graduate so many inmates. Dedication, community clout and a sense of community. Now, what I gave you in my report was a documentation of the demonstration project that we've been running for the last four years. What it proves and what it's set out to demonstrate is that every excuse that anybody can make for not involving the faith community is proven to be a lie.
During the last months working 15 with the Public Defender's Office, the prison 16 system and the Public Defender's Office, we've 17 had, as a demonstration project, 22 inmates 18 released to us on early release. Those 22 inmates released to us and assigned to a faith-based sponsor with a faith mentor has saved the City of Philadelphia, just in those 18 months, those 22 people, $632,000. Our goal this year is to have 100 inmates. We've got 13 judges right now that believe in the program. 100 inmates which 213 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 will save the prison system close to $4 million. That's because the faith community, trained and supervised, has reached across and taken hands with the Public Defender's Office, Parole and Probation and with the prison system. I urge you that in all your deliberations and everything that you look at, if the faith community is left out it's not going to be enough. There's a wealth of resources and energy and good will from the members of the faith community once they are trained and properly supervised. There's a direct proportion to empty pews and full prisons. People who are in the jails and people who are in the churches all around this City -- we have a hundred churches, Catholic, Muslim and Christians that are willing to go back in there and to work, to be trained to work, that they might recover their sons and their daughters, their aunts and their uncles, and in some cases, even their grandparents. That's what I want to bring today to you. Please strongly consider. 214 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816
So how many total clients do you have? You have here? 4
Well, that's just 5 that project. Right now we have 542 enrolled 6 in our 13-week program. We'll have 1,600. 7
The mentors are for 10 those inmates who choose to get into our after 11 care program. But inside the prison we open 12 the door for anyone that wants to be healed, 13 that wants to overcome some of their problems, 14 et cetera, to get involved in 13 weeks of 15 spiritual therapy. It's cognitive spiritual 16 therapy. 17
Thank you, Dr. 18 McKinney. 19 Thank you. Thank you for staying so 20 long. I know we have Impacting Your World. 21 You can begin. 22
Greetings. My name is Michael Gaskins. I represent the Philadelphia Alive Center for Transformation, PACT for short. 215 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 Basically our program is divided into phases, three phases. The first phase, what we do is, we go into the prisons and we provide life skills, Christian-based, biblical-based life skills inside the prison system on parenting, on how to manage your money, also how to take accountability and responsibility for the things that you've done inside the prison system and also to the community on the outside. Once people are released we kind of help them with clothing, food. If they need housing, we help them in a method of connecting with other organizations on the outside. We've developed a network of more than 40 organizations, churches. Programs, training programs that we can connect our clients with. Additionally, on the outside, we have an after care component where we have classes on the outside. As a matter of fact, one that's about to start at 6 o'clock tonight. Again, on accountability, anger management, parenting, stewarding your money, 216 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 things of that nature. Once they complete that month of classes, we sent them out help. We help them with filling out their applications, how to put together resumes, things of that nature, so we can help our clients get jobs. Once they've completed that, we have a graduation process where the people who went through the program, they graduate, so it's a good time for them, their families. They can actually show people that, hey, this is something that I accomplished and I'm committed to this now. So that's the second part of the program. The third part is that we develop those who have that leadership quality, and we start that actually on the inside. What we do is try to find out what are the talents and gifts that the people have on the inside prior to them being released. An example that I use is a drug dealer. That person is a leader. That person is an entrepreneur. So what we try to do is try to look inside of some of the ideas that 217 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 they may have, maybe starting a barber shop, maybe starting a laundromat, whatever that it is, we try to help them develop those concepts. We give them spiritual gift tests on the outside to help them to think of themselves in a different nature that they've never thought of before. In many cases these people never heard the term, well, I believe in you. I love you. Little things like that. Taking them out to dinner, taking them to the movies. Little things like that. We are willing to do those things in order to help our clients succeed. And that's the third part of it, developing people who are in those leadership qualities, developing entrepreneurs. So that's our program in a nutshell. Just like Dr. McKinney mentioned the faith-based programs. It is very crucial to our program that we are connected with the prison system. We work very closely with the director of chaplaincy services there, Nick Barbetta (ph). We work very closely with him and his staff. We're connected within a few 218 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 prisons there at the Philadelphia Prison System, so we're now reaching out to a larger network of people in regards to pulling them into our program. Their recommendation, or, I guess, the request that I would make to the Committee is that we are one of those grass roots, faith-based organization out there that are trying to reach the incarcerated individuals, and we're doing it basically on faith. When I started this program, I started it with putting $20,000 of my own money into this. I am not a rich person. I live in a row home in West Oak Lane. So I have been able to find other people who are volunteers who believe in this same thing.
People who have expertise in teaching fatherhood, who can teach financial literacy, things like that, who are volunteering their time to make this thing work. What I'm requesting -- and it's been mentioned earlier -- is that faith-based programs get more funding to be able to accomplish these things and be able to reach 219 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 more people. We will be able to reach and to accomplish so much more if I would be able to bring on myself first and then more people who are volunteering as staff and be able to find a permanent location instead of a rented location that we have right now, to be able to bring people in and to have that ideal situation where we can actually really work with people one on one and really drill in these truths. As far as being able to transform your life, our model is transforming prisoners into people of purpose. We truly believe once you've been called to -- it could be a Councilperson. It could be someone that cleans up this room, the CEO of a company or the prison system chaplain. It doesn't matter. Whatever that is we try to help you find out exactly what that is. It was very fulfilling to do that and to work with people within the prison system. I really appreciate this time to present. I didn't want to take a long time knowing that it's been all day, but thank you 220 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 so much, Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, for allowing us to present this program to you. We thank you so much. God bless you.
Good afternoon. My name is Lafayette Gooding, and I'm coming here representing the Impacting Your World Christian Center in Philadelphia with Pastor Earl Ray and Tracey Bernard. I would like to give greetings to Councilmembers here at the time. Because of the sake of time, I'm going to be very quick and expedient. We did give detailed information regarding our testimony. I'm honored today to present testimony on the issue surrounding inmate re-entry to the Philadelphia surrounding communities. As I said, for the sake of time constraints, I'm asking that each Member would please peruse the submitted documents detailing the intent of the community development corporation of Impacting Your 221 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 World Christian Center, the Family Enrichment Center and the parenting body of the Impacting Your World Christian Center. As a faith-based organization, we are aware of the significant rise in the prison population in the Philadelphia Prison System. As of October 2004, the prison population census has exceeded all levels since conception in 1684. Within the guise of true reformation and rehabilitation, it has been deemed and prudent that an inmate can terminate the vicious cycle of recidivism if that individual accepts personal responsibility and embraces the desire to change. This is where the Impacting Your World Christian Center can effectively and efficiently provide previous services. We can provide these services which can ameliorate this matter. Through a collaborative effort with existing public and private entities, Impacting Your World Christian Center has presently provided and is developing services to address the needs of, one, continual substance abuse intervention 222 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 with certified counselors through the Power Ministry. By the way, that ministry meets this evening at 6:30. Two, establishing corporate and community supports. Three, employment assessment and placement. Four, temporary housing. Five, entrepreneur training and business development. Six, money management counseling. Seven, family and marriage counseling. Eight, the replacement of negative belief systems utilizing the rational emotive spiritual therapy, REST, which Dr. McKinney so eloquently discussed earlier, which has been implemented and has its home in the Philadelphia prison. Currently we are utilizing that system. We believe in the holistic approach for successful rehabilitation. Thereby, creating people which cannot be destroyed. Circumstantial evidence has proven that successful rehabilitation efforts has increased public safety, reduced business revenue losses due to crime and alleviated 223 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 City fiscal expenditures. It is a truly a win/win situation for all. As a faith-based community organization in conjunction with the vision of Mayor John Street and his Administration, we believe our past performance reveals a viable, innovative solution because of our current involvement inside and outside the walls of the Philadelphia Prison System with prison ministry visitations and our partnership with the REST organization. We have a clear and concise understanding of the prison population within PPS. To date our staff members are extensively preparing for the anticipated influx of inmates. Presently the Power Ministry and the Impacting Your World Christian Center are facilitating the rehabilitation of several former inmates. Some have been released to our care via court stipulation or other judicial procedures. In closing, it is important that I express candor with the Councilmembers. The personal assistance I have received and my 224 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 involvement with this faith-based organization of Impacting Your World Christian Center, my life has been personally, radically changed for the better.
Although I am not a new member, I am a new member of the staff of the Power Ministry and a participant in training and application of the REST process. I was incarcerated for the first time in July 2003 in the Philadelphia Prison System. As an inmate I worked in the law library. This gave me an intimate insight in the dealings and difficulties of inmates. Although I was never sentenced and I do not have a criminal record, I know firsthand the importance of support within and outside these societies. This faith-based organization, this community group has provided mentorship, support and unselfish compassion which has enabled me to be a productive, rehabilitated member of society. The incorporation of a continual support system has enabled me not to return to jail, develop the greatest personal quality called character and integrity. Begin 225 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 the process of my family being restored. Cease the usage of alcohol and drugs, which I indulged in to establish my identity. Become a present father to my children and develop a viable business venture, and most importantly, become a God fearing man. This concludes my testimony. On behalf of the parenting body of the Impacting Your World Christian Center, I wish to thank all the Members of Council here for your time and I want to thank you so very much and have a wonderful day.
Good afternoon, soon to be evening. I want to thank you first and foremost for this opportunity to come and to talk about an issue that's very close to my heart. I think it's one of the most important issues of our day. I'm here today because I have become a benefactor of a program that was developed to address the needs of ex-offenders in a 226 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 positive, spiritual and mentoring structure. In order to reduce recidivism, because of the hopelessness that most ex-offenders feel when they're released from prison with nowhere to go, these programs are needed. My story is not much different from many of the other African-American males growing up in urban areas across this country of ours. No father figure in the home. Early gang involvement and eventual drug use and incarceration, all of which led to a life of crime. I was irresponsible as a youth and never held a real job for longer than six months. Every task that I ever started I never saw it through to completion. I used to get high just to feel good about myself. Even though I knew that there had to be a greater plan for my life, I, like most other men and women that are now incarcerated, was in a cycle of self destruction. I grew up with no 23 sense of self worth. I only felt I belonged when I was high. And because I needed to feel that sense of belonging, I began to steal to 227 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 obtain money to purchase drugs and I ended up spending time in jail. My life was like a revolving door, a revolving prison door, that is. As I would get arrested, serve time, get released, get arrested again, get released and end up going back to jail. And get out and end up having nowhere to go. So I had always had to return to the same environment where I would end up in the same vicious cycle again. I had been arrested and released 10 times until finally I committed a crime where I was sentence to two, two-and-a-half to four year sentences at Graterford. I remember thinking that I wanted to change so I could take care of my children, but I needed help. As much as I wanted to change and prayed to change, I still didn't know how to make that change. As much as a criminal justice system attempts to rehabilitate a person while incarcerated, if there are no programs available when the prisoners are released, most will end up back in the prison system. 228 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 At the time when I was released, there was a program in place called Liberty Ministries, and I qualified to be a part of this program. Liberty Ministries provided support, housing and the guidance I needed in my life to make the transition to life on the street. I am now a successful business owner. I've been in business now for approximately 10 years. I am a success because of the program that allowed me to make the transition from prison life to life on the street. I've obtained my BS degree and I am planning to pursue my graduate degree in the fall. At my business I employ over people 17 now who are ex-offenders. 18 My goal and my focus now is to give 19 back to the community that I used to take from 20 by providing a way out for other ex-offenders through a program like Liberty Ministries called Steps In the Right Direction, or SIRD. This mission will be accomplished by providing the ex-offender with housing, structured environment, education and counseling. 229 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816 We need something in place to help those whose lives have been impacted by the criminal justice system, programs that will help men and women continue to take steps in the right direction. We can help them. We must help them and we shall help them, because if we don't do it, who will? These ex-offenders are our neighbors, our family members, so it is our responsibility to help them become all that they were meant to be.
In closing I'd just like to say that the need to put structure into the lives of men and women who come home from prison is very important. As an ex-offender, I know for a fact that the majority of individuals who leave prison or who go to prison want to change. It's just that they don't have the tools. They don't have the vision, and they aren't given the opportunity to make the change. With that, I thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hunter. Thank you for coming in and being so patient and waiting so long. 230 02/15/05 - PUBLIC SAFETY - RES. 040816
My pleasure. Councilwoman Miller, I'd also like to say I just purchased a property in your district.
I know. We don't need to talk about that while we're still in the hearing. We can talk about that a little later. You can tell me the address before we leave the Chambers.
Okay. Thank you. I don't believe we have anyone else here to testify. This hearing is in recess until the call of the Chair. (Hearing recessed at 5:35 p.m.0. - - - - 231 C E R T I F I C A T I O N I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing proceedings of the Council of the City of Philadelphia of Tuesday, February 15, 2005, were reported fully and accurately by me, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. RE: COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY _________________________ Lisa C. Bradley, RPR