Native Justice Center’s re-entry program helps ex-inmates fight long odds, By Michelle Theriault Boots, November 29, 2012, Anchorage Daily News: “For inmates getting out of prison in Alaska, the odds are abysmal. Two-thirds will go back into Department of Corrections custody within three years, a 2007 study by the Alaska Judicial Council found. In the same period, 44 percent of them will be jailed for a new crime, the highest rate in the nation, according to data from a 2011 Pew Center for the States report. That steep climb out of prison prompted the Alaska Native Justice Center to create a re-entry program to help people who have spent years and sometimes decades incarcerated start new lives while bearing the stigma of their pasts…”
Tag: Prisons
Prison Overcrowding – California
California unlikely to meet prison crowding reduction requirement, By Paige St. John, August 12, 2012, Los Angeles Times: “California’s progress in relieving its teeming prisons has slowed so much that it probably won’t comply with a court-ordered population reduction, and judges have raised the prospect of letting some inmates out early. Three federal jurists have given the state until Friday to come up with a schedule for identifying prisoners ‘unlikely to reoffend or who might otherwise be candidates for early release’ and to detail other ways to hasten the emptying of double-bunked cells. In the interim, the judges have ordered California to ‘take all steps necessary’ to meet their existing deadline for population cuts…”
Prisoner Re-Entry Program – Michigan
Audit: Michigan’s prisoner re-entry initiative harms public safety, fails to track ex-convicts, By Mike Martindale, February 8, 2012, Detroit News: “A much heralded Michigan prisoner release program is only moderately effective, not sufficiently monitored and lacks proper record-keeping, according to a state audit released Tuesday. The audit is the second in less than a year criticizing the Michigan Prisoner Re-entry Initiative, which the Department of Corrections has held up as a successful model of how to safely blend ex-convicts back into society. Corrections officials claim the initiative – which has received more than $175 million since 2007, including $52 million last year – has cut recidivism by giving ex-convicts aid for housing, transportation, employment, health care and education. The 32-page audit focuses on shortcomings and provides support to critics who say the department has put budget issues before public safety…”