Reforms for Returnees

By DON ROLLINS

Our small and big screens are replete with tales about what happens once someone’s “debt to society” is paid. From the goofy (“Blues Brothers”), to the ominous (“Ray Donovan”), to the heartbreaking (“Shawshank Redemption”) there’s something about the prospect of a do-over that still grabs us. A lesson learned, a new start.

But in the real world, those discharged from penal facilities are at the mercy of a multitude of variables, few of which make for good entertainment: zip codes; political zeitgeists; parole protocols; budget cuts.

Same with the practical and emotional realities many returnees face. Some are met with open arms and job prospects; others are on their own, left to whatever devices they and their assigned case managers can muster.

These scenarios abound in this, the most mass-incarceration happy country in the world. Annual US incarceration rates hover at 639 per 100,000 persons, with a release rate of 600,000 per year. Consequently a nation so adept at putting people away — yet if released, so inept at setting them up for success — will continue spending enormous resources with diminishing returns.

In this relentlessly polarized, anxiety filled political moment, systemic solutions to reentry issues are a hard sell. If Republicans are connecting with midterm voters via their usual tough-on-crime narrative; Democrats seem lost in a cycle of grants, studies and recommendations with little staying power. Either way, scores of mostly poor folx, youths as well as adults, are walking back into the world with far less than what they need to survive, let alone succeed.

But all is not lost. Not every model for change has been politically weaponized or abandoned.

Introduced in 2015, North Carolina’s model for addressing reentry challenges among youths mostly mirrors that for adult returnees. Typically dense and couched in the language of department heads and experts, the juvenile initiative nonetheless takes a more wholistic approach than most. The primary aim is to develop juvenile reentry programs that lower the odds for incarceration as adults. In other words, buck the odds that 1 in 3 won’t break out of cycles begun during their adolescence.

The state’s model for adults is akin, this time intended for the 20,000 adults who leave corrections facilities each year. Here again the goal is to provide the basics: housing; employment; transportation; counseling; substance misuse treatment; education; life skills.

The outcomes to date are mixed but a clear improvement over previous attempts to serve both youth and adult returnees. Per usual here in North Carolina, state Republicans are only too happy to discount the positives, but so far unable to derail the wider reentry reforms.

North Carolina’s models cannot by themselves address the $81 billion price tag for mass incarceration in the US — a figure that doesn’t reflect an additional $100 billion after impacts to government, families, schools and courts. What they can do is extend a helping hand to those wanting to return to the world different, better.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2022

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