|
The Manhattan Institute has long been committed to finding
ways of drawing the disadvantaged into the social and economic mainstream,
through the time-honored American combination of free markets and
personal initiative. And we’ve long been committed to helping
cities improve their quality of life. These commitments come together
in our new project with the City of Newark, New Jersey, where we
are helping to design and implement a strategy for a model prisoner-reentry
program.
Nationwide, nearly 700,000 prisoners are released annually. If
historic trends hold, nearly two-thirds will be re-incarcerated
within three years. In Newark, some 1,400 parolees return each year
to a city already suffering from a high crime rate. The reform administration
of Mayor Cory Booker has signaled its intention to help ex-offenders
in much the way that welfare reform—a major Manhattan Institute
priority of the 1990s—helped welfare mothers: through “rapid
attachment to work”. In other words, jobs.
Spearheading MI’s effort in Newark is Richard Greenwald, a
Manhattan Institute senior fellow on loan to the administration
of Mayor Booker. Greenwald, the longtime head of Philadelphia’s
Transitional Work Corporation, has a long and successful track record
with the ex-offender population. He is focusing on improving Newark’s
ability to help formerly incarcerated individuals rejoin society
by finding employment shortly after release, retaining employment,
and developing relationships with their children and families. To
foster these aims in Newark, he has helped bring to Newark one of
the nation’s most successful private job-placement agencies
for low-income populations, America Works. In addition, he’s
created a network of the leading national experts on prisoner reentry
to help Newark both develop a successful re-entry program—and
to measure its results.
The key concept guiding MI’s effort in Newark is “rapid
attachment to work,” the understanding that ex-offenders transition
back into society more easily, and are less likely to offend again,
if they are presented with a job opportunity as soon after release
as possible. We seek to make the concept of “prison-to-work”
as instantly recognizable as “welfare-to-work.”
OP-ED:
Media Inquiries/Press: William
G. Zeiser, Press Officer, 212.599.7000, wzeiser@manhattan-institute.org
|
