By Ed Stannard
New Haven Register
NEW HAVEN — Connecticut has received more than $2.3 million in federal money for a wide variety of programs aimed at reducing the overflowing prison population by cutting crime, ending recidivism and creating jobs.
Gov. Dannel Malloy announced the grants, which are part of $53 million awarded nationally from the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the Second Chance Act, at a City Hall press conference Wednesday. The city will receive $1 million of the grants for its Fresh Start Re-entry Initiative, which focuses on prisoners up to 12 months before their release to ensure they have jobs when they exit prison. The Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences at the University of New Haven is a partner in the initiative.
The grants comprise “additional steps and efforts to make our communities safer, further reduce our state’s already dropping crime rate and ensure that nonviolent offenders be productive members of our society so that they can contribute to our economy instead of becoming career criminals,” Malloy said.
“These federal grants closely align with our Second Chance Society initiatives to reduce crime, reduce recidivism and to end the school-to-prison pipeline, which surely does exist,” he said. “We cannot permanently punish nonviolent offenders for the rest of their lives, swelling our prisons, creating lifetime criminals out of people who simply made a mistake.”
He said that total arrests are down 8 percent in the state and incarcerations are down 5.7 percent from last year. According to the governor’s office, FBI statistics in September showed Connecticut had the fourth-largest drop in violent crime of any state at 9.7 percent, after a 10.1 percent drop in 2013.
Mayor Toni Harp, in introducing Malloy, said, “In 2015 we know a great many adult offenders in Connecticut are nonviolent and less prone to criminal behavior when they’re removed from certain stimuli, when they’re not using alcohol or other drugs, and when an expectation of accountability is placed upon them.
“We know these people can be brought back into their communities with greatly reduced risk if they have access to effective programs and treatment. We know they can be contributing, productive members of their communities with continuing education programs, job training, and other assistance,” Harp said. “These issues are particularly poignant in New Haven and Connecticut’s other cities because there’s a higher concentration of poverty here, because economic disparities are more pronounced here, and because, admittedly, a greater number of local residents are incarcerated.”
The United States imprisons the most citizens of any country in the world, with 2.2 million men and women behind bars, according to the World Prison Brief. The nation also has the highest rate of incarceration, with 716 of every 100,000 residents imprisoned, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a rate that has skyrocketed since the 1970s.
“Connecticut is esteemed and respected because we’re at the forefront of the Second Chance movement in this country,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “There’s a magic four-letter word here: jobs. These programs are about jobs,” he said. “Giving people jobs so they can be better dads ... that’s what a guy coming out of prison needs.”
“What we’re observing here is really a sea change,” said Dean MarioGaboury of UNH’s college of criminal justice, who pointed out that the university is included in three of the grants announced.
“You can reduce recidivism by 50 percent,” he said. “University of New Haven is so proud to be working with these stakeholders arm in arm ... so we can clear the path to criminal justice reform,” Gaboury said.
City Community Services Administrator Martha Okafor used the image of a person being thrown into the rushing river of a punitive justice system.
“What can we do with sentencing options so they don’t get thrown down this river, this stream?” she asked. “We have to move back” and catch offenders farther up the river, she said.
She said the city is working with the Community Action Agency, Easter Seals Goodwill Industries and Project MORE to help newly released prisoners enter the job market and society.
Copyright 2015 the New Haven Register