Governor Corzine unveiled his anti-crime strategy this week with a three part plan. Corzine is optimistic about implementing his plans to improve how police go after gang members, prevent children from falling into the gang life in the first place and help convicts avoid falling into their old routines after leaving prison.
Corzine unveiled a pilot program to provide 1,300 ex-convicts with job coaches, life skills and housing so they won't be drawn back into a life of crime. The intensive help for inmates returning to society is the cornerstone of the governor's strategy to reduce the number of those who end up back in prison. He also wants to change laws to make it easier for ex-convicts to get jobs -- such as allowing certain drug offenses to be expunged from their records -- and to expand substance abuse programs.
While Corzine's strategy is bold and thought out it lacks the prevention that is needed. Indeed Debra Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New Jersey, agreed, saying the initiative "lacks critical components and support" and that it would be "difficult to move forward without meaningful input from community advocates and legislative leadership."
We need to think about why people actually end up in prison in the first place. Is it only gangs who are causing crime? Surely, this is a problem, but do we know why kids are joining gangs? Are police the right avenue to prevent kids from joining these gangs? Every time someone rolls out a new anti-crime policy it is more police, when really the police are part of the problem.
Kids need opportunity to succeed which starts with a good education. That is the entry policy we should be targeting. You don't start when kids are fifteen and have already been exposed to untold horrific acts in their homes, in the streets or in their schools and then say - OK, now stop. It is preposterous and anyone of us who grew up like many do in this state would shrink and shrivel at what some have to grow up in. Gangs are sometimes the only place for love and connection and it is a natural choice rather than a "thug" choice.
The social safety net has been eroded since Reagan and no new anti-crime policy that does not include health care for all, poverty reduction incentives and yes - monies for poor families, an opportunity for education that many in the upper classes here take for granted and a strategy to allow those in the less advantaged classes attend college without the unyielding debt that so many have to take on just to succeed will fail.
Lastly, Corzine's reentry policy has some interesting parts including the policy which seeks to overturn some enacted laws that bar some people who enter jail from certain professions. This needs to be bolder, however because these laws affect only one type of person and that is people of color. Blacks in the state make up 63% of the jails, while Latinos weigh in at 18% leaving us whiteys with only 10% of the prisons. Now, the 10% of the white folks who do end up in prison deserve the same amount of protections coming out of prison because many times they suffer the same discrimination upon reentry.
We need to think about first, however why so many of us end up in jail in the first place. Why does America imprison so many of its citizens (2.2 million at latest count and rising). The answer is as New Jersey can attest - drugs (New Jersey is the dubious #1 in this department). We are placing people in jail for drug related crimes for possession mostly. Why? Why is this necessary to put so many in jail because of a drug problem? Corzine mentions this in his anti-crime policy, but it is an issue that must be addressed fully. We have gotten only so far for various reasons, not the least of which is prisons are a profit magnum for many - including phone companies, health care organizations and others that have a captive audience to charge whatever they want, when they want.
This is not a political issue; it is a human issue for all of us. To address the common good we must invest in our people or 3 million inhabitants of our prisons is not far off.
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