Planning for Freedom

by Matt Kelley · 2010-01-03 14:55:00 UTC
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Theodore Braden (left) is scheduled be released from a Florida prison in October, and he’s working hard to prepare himself. He writes the blog Teen In Jail, and he wrote this morning that the path to a positive life won’t be easy.

He wrote:

I know I said that when I get out, I want to go to school, but then I ask myself:  What school will accept me? Can I afford it? Can I get a job to pay for school? How will I get to and from school?

… It’s way easier to not work and sell drugs – but I can’t do it. For some reason, I feel like I’m meant for greater things.

These statements are refreshing and impressive for  their honesty and commitment. But they aren’t unique. Hundreds of thousands of other prisoners are making the same resolutions this year -- we will release 700,000 people from prison in the US in 2010 and many of them set out committed to improving their lives.

Are we helping them succeed?

There are some innovations in the system that could help a motivated prisoner like Braden, and we're starting to see systemic changes that could mean a better success rate for released prisoners in this decade than the last few. We've settled into accepting that two-thirds of released prisoners will be arrested again within three years. It doesn't have to be that way.

A great story in the Wichita Eagle this weekend looks at a federal program helping former prisoners build new lives in Kansas, and reporter Ron Sylvester finds a renewed commitment to post-release success.

Sylvester, who tweets from Wichita’s courthouse as he covers criminal trials, focuses on the Kansas Treatment Re-Entry Assistance Court, one of about two dozen federal reentry programs in cities across the country. One prosecutor who works with the Kansas reentry court sees it as something of a throwback -- and that’s a very good thing.

"We're going back to what we did 30 years ago," said Mona Furst, assistant U.S. attorney and the prosecutor on the re-entry court team.

"We used to try to rehabilitate people. Then the focus became on punishment. Now, we're trying to rehabilitate them again."

Braden and the former prisoners featured in Sylvester’s story aren’t alone, and it's critical that we do everything we can to help motivated former prisoners find success. If we release prisoners to find closed doors and minds, we’ll just keep building more prisons.

h/t The Crime Report

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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