Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey spoke Friday about the plight of convicts re-jailed for second offenses, arguing that Massachusetts should require released inmates to participate in state-sponsored reentry programs for job, housing and drug counseling aimed to assimilate criminals into society.
Last year, Healey proposed a bill that would make participation in the programs mandatory.
Healey, a former criminologist and researcher for the U.S. Department of Justice, argued in favor of the bill in the opening remarks for a three-day conference titled “Re-Thinking Re-Entry: Confronting Perpetual Punishment” sponsored by the Criminal Justice Institute and Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.
“We’re about to embark on a very big debate on reentry in Massachusetts,” Healey said, adding that 40 percent of the state’s most dangerous inmates are released without supervision. “We have a lot of people who leave without supervision and are not appropriate to go back on their own,” she said.
Healey added that the state’s reentry system does not do enough to prevent released convicts from winding up in jail a second time. Although the state has created nine voluntary reentry centers, which include job and housing counseling, Healey said released prisoners “haven’t been coming.”
“I imagine people don’t really want to voluntarily visit the probation officers,” she said during a question and answer session following the discussion.
Makis Antzoulatos, a corrections specialist at the Friends of the Shattuck Shelter, argued during the session that mandatory counseling would increase rates of re-incarceration by making probation violations more likely.
Antzoulatos added that, during his tenure, he has seen many criminals re-jailed because they violated their parole. Healey countered that it is the responsibility of the courts to enforce probation laws fairly.
A 1997 Massachusetts Department of Corrections study that tracked released inmates found that 41 percent had been re-incarcerated within three years. Of those, 19 percent were jailed for technical violation of their parole.
The study was cited in a March 2005 report by the Urban Institute Justice Policy Center titled “Prisoner reentry in Massachusetts.”
Healey’s address was followed by a discussion between six panelists, including three former inmates. Dorsey Nunn, the program director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, challenged the concept of reentry, saying that while ex-convicts can learn to live among other people, they never really reintegrate into society.
“I’m an African-American by race and formerly incarcerated by culture,” Nunn said.
Nunn, like other panelists, emphasized that ex-convicts seeking employment are often turned down by employers reluctant to hire criminals. Nunn said he said he successfully lobbied in California to remove a criminal conviction check-box from job applications.
He added that his effort in California demonstrated the potential for ex-convicts to lobby for their rights.
“What you got was a group of formally incarcerated people engaging in democracy,” Nunn said.
Charles Ogletree Jr, a Harvard Law professor and moderator of the discussion, also called attention to the untapped political potential of ex-convicts.
“There are so many formally incarcerated people in the U.S., it is possible to organize a new civil rights movement,” he said.