Post-prison programming helps returning citizens find meaning
By Ollie Gratzinger, Griffin Sendek, Alaina Werkmeister and Nunu Withrow-Davis
The Allegheny County Jail sits in close proximity to Duquesne University’s campus, stark against the city skyline. Its sharp curves cut into the sunset, and when darkness falls, it blends in with the surrounding night.
The goings on of life on the inside are as mysterious to many as its shadowed facade; few have any personal reasons to know about the criminal justice system, or the folks impacted by it. Inmates, whether they’re in the Allegheny County Jail just off The Bluff or in one of 24 prisons tucked away in different parts of the state, are often lumped into the broad category of “bad people,” dismissed as threats or a collective lost cause.
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But it isn’t that simple. A wide range of programs have been developed over the past few decades, aiming to help ease returning citizens back into mainstream society. These programs address numerous aspects of life, from addiction treatment to cultivating empathy. But the biggest challenge in reducing recidivism? Changing the way returning citizens think about the world — and themselves.
Norberto “Rob” Rosa was 16 when he was labeled a career criminal. He was 18 when he was told he’d never be rehabilitated. But today, he’s the Associate Vice President of Operations for New Leash on Life USA, an organization that pairs inmates with dogs from overpopulated shelters.
The inmates, he says, learn how to train and care for the dogs, thus building empathy, gaining confidence and increasing future employability.
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“No animal or human should be forever judged for their worst moment,” Rosa said.
The dogs would have otherwise been put to sleep at high-capacity shelters, but in pairing them with inmates, New Leash on Life gives the canines another shot, and the inmates a sense of responsibility and unconditional love.
Because of the “human-animal bond” that forms, Rosa said, one “could physically see the transformation in an individual who might have experienced trauma in their lives.”
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Prisons tend to focus on punishing an individual for a crime rather than working with them toward rehabilitation. Rosa said that this mindset is part of the problem, not the solution.
“People who make bad decisions are thrown away,” Rosa said. “In prison, it’s not easy to trust or find reasons for inmates to better themselves.”
Photo by Ollie GRatzinger
The Allegheny County Jail’s population is on the rise, according to a 2016 report by the University of Pittsburgh Institute of Politics.
New Leash on Life aims to “assist people experiencing incarceration, reintegrate them into community with a different mindset and empathy,” Rosa said. Pairing inmates with dogs is only the beginning.
According to the organization’s website, New Leash on Life provides “weekly sessions with professional trainers, animal behaviorists and veterinary technicians; job readiness and life skill courses to improve successful reentry and employability for inmates upon parole; internship opportunities for paroled inmates for additional training and education in the animal care field and post-parole support with worksite transition services”
“By rescuing each other,” the website continues. “Both human and canine graduates of the New Leash program can look ahead to a bright and successful future.”
New Leash on Life is one of many programs that strive to help returning citizens make the often-difficult transition from incarceration to mainstream society. Another, Lydia’s Place, aims to “help incarcerated and recently released women in Allegheny County become more stable, productive members of society; help children and their caregivers cope with the traumatic separation from a parent; strengthen relationships between incarcerated mothers and their children as well as promote policy changes that better address the needs of incarcerated women and the children of prisoners,” according to Ngina Thompson, manager at Lydia’s Place, and Nate King at the Renewal Program. Both are part of Renewal, Inc., an organization that helps those involved in the criminal justice system successfully transition back into social and community life.
Lydia’s Place and the Renewal Program cover a wide range of services, from employment to treatment for addiction and mental healthcare.
“On the third floor, we have the outpatient drug and alcohol clinic, and then the fourth floor is Lydia’s, which touches on housing, family and mentoring, and our fifth floor offers cognitive and behavioral services,” Thompson said. “Then finally, the sixth floor focuses on the workforce development, which is what Nate helps out with.”
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The organization reports a high rate of success in helping returning citizens find work and get back on their feet.
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“This month we have the Power Work Award, put on by Goodwill for the past 23 years, that recognizes nearby employers who do a good job of giving people a second chance in the workforce,” King said. “This year, we nominated two places that ended up winning, one being Tambellini’s Restaurant and a roofing company we work with called Tri Boro Development. We have an individual who had worked for the roofing facility for two years, and he went there with no experience at all, nothing in the construction industry or roofing, and is now one of the top guys working there. Tambellini’s has also hired over 50 people there in the past two years, producing several success stories.”
For many returning citizens, finding work is one of many uphill battles they must face upon release. In working, they are contributing to society in a positive way. Renewal, Inc. also offers an affiliate program, Get Paid, which offers people employment at a temporary agency. After 6 months, the employer can decide whether or not they’ll hire the employee full-time.
The organization also works with the Downtown Pittsburgh Partnership, which provides a pressure-washer and job opportunities for returning citizens in cleaning up city streets.
“We have had three individuals that we select from Renewal Re-entrance, and they are then selected to work for this organization, cleaning nearly every sidewalk in the Downtown area and the South Side with a pressure-washer that we purchase, and that program has gone pretty well,” King said.
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Not only has Renewal Inc. noticed more community support for recently released inmates, but one of their specific programs, “Partner for Work,” takes the extra step to help returning citizens, as well.
“There’s been some pretty big growth here, in Pittsburgh especially. We have a program called Partner for Work, and we have definitely noticed a bigger focus on reentry in general,” King said. “Partner for Work is one of those providers that gets a lot of state money, and they do a good job of circulating that money to different employers and organizations for funding reentry services.”
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While many programs have long lists of success stories, Dr. Ed Mulvey, professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, one challenge that may hinder program success in jails is its duration.
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“There’s a large set of programs just within the jail that try to teach people skills so they can adjust when they leave,” Mulvey said. “Part of the problem is that many of the people in the jail are there for a short time. In order for a program to help a lot of people, you have to get enough of it.”
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The challenge, Mulvey said, is not offering help to inmates or returning citizens, but rather engaging them over time.
“There’s nothing that compels you to be in a rehabilitation program if you’re going to go to jail for sixty days. You get two months out of your life that are dead time. There are a number of programs that have good records of helping people to think differently and act differently when they get out, but the problem is one of engagement,” Mulvey said. “How do we get people involved? How do we connect with people? In particular, people with mental health disorders; how do we convince them that we’re going to be with them when they leave and we’re going to help them adjust to the community? That’s a much more pressing problem than the magic of the program.”
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Mulvey specializes in mental health concerns among those within the criminal justice program. Statistics from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections show that of the 48,438 inmates in Pennsylvania prisons as of 2017, 31.8% are on the Mental Health Roster. While Mulvey’s studies have focused on the Allegheny County Jail — which differs from the state prison system — the fact remains that the majority of incarcerated individuals are not mentally ill.
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“The estimated rates of serious mental illness, serious depression, serious schizophrenia or serious bipolar disorder are somewhere around 12 percent. 12 to 20 percent in the local facilities, in jails,” Mulvey said. “That is much higher than you would see in the general population; about 5 times higher. A lot of that has to do with the fact that some of the risk factors for developing mental illness are the same as risk factors for being involved in crime.”
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Even though many programs provide treatment to those with mental health disorders, who face a unique set of challenges upon release, and rates of mental illness are higher among the incarcerated population, it is a misconception that mental illness is a predictor of future criminal activity,
“The risk factors for involvement in crime are pretty much the same for people with mental disorders as they are for people without mental disorders. It’s about the same, and the predictive validity of having a mental disorder and being involved in crime is very low,” Mulvey explained. “In other words, having a mental disorder is a lousy predictor of whether you’re going to be a criminal or not. Most of the people with mental disorders aren’t criminals and most of the criminals aren’t people with mental disorders. There’s a disproportionate overlap, but most of that overlap is probably attributable to shared risk factors throughout life.”
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Risk factors for incarceration have been debated for as long as crime has existed. Mulvey believes a large part of it comes from social perspectives on crime and criminals.
“There’s a lot of different theories of crime and I think there’s no singular, unitary theory about what makes people do ‘crime.’ Crime is something we decide is crime,” he said. “There are people doing time for distribution of over a pound of marijuana right now and there are other people in other places outside of Pennsylvania making money for distribution of more than a pound of marijuana. There’s a social boundary that we draw about what is crime, which is one factor.”
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Programs that address this social boundary, as well as help inmates and returning citizens change the way they think about society, tend to be the most successful.
“There are structured ways to teach people to stop and think and say, ‘Why do I think that person is insulting me? Are they really insulting me? Is the best solution to punch them in the face? What will happen if I punch them in the face?’” Mulvey explained. “There are ways to get people to have alternative scripts in their head other than, ‘Well, the guy is in my face, so I might as well deck him.’ There are different ways to stop and think through situations that help people. They have a pretty good track record with involvement in these types of programs, helping people to kind of slow down their thinking and be less impulsive and singular minded in the way they respond to social situations.”
For Raymond Miles, changing and challenging the way he thought about the world made all the difference in keeping him from reoffending, even if the odds weren’t in his favor.
“When I was 12, I went to jail for two years. From that point on, my life was just like, Mayhem, you know what I mean?” Miles said. “All the way until, shit, what, 2008? That was when I got out, and even when I got out, I still caught additional charges and didn’t get out of correctional supervision until 2012. So from 1992 to 2012, it’s like a million in-and-out-of-jail stories.”
Miles said that many programs and organizations helped him stay on the straight and narrow. Among them, he named the Mon Valley Initiative, Pittsburgh Mercy, CCAC and Carlow University.
“They pushed me forward to the next level,” he said.
He cited a slew of negative reinforcements as “stressors” that pushed him toward criminal behavior.
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“What led to the downhill spiral? …. When I was 12 [teachers] told me, ‘Yo, Ray, you can’t read, you’re never gonna be s***,’” he said. “Imagine being 12 and teachers in these schools inside these institutions saying, ‘You can’t read, you can’t write, you’re never going to be nothing.’ All of those negative reinforcements led to me being released and thinking like, ‘Yo, what the f***? I’m never gonna be nothing.”
Miles said that it was mainly the relationships he’d formed at the programs he’d attended that helped him eventually stay out of trouble.
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Photo courtesy of ray miles
“I attended this Breaking Free Group [at Pittsburgh Mercy]. It’s a cognitive behavioral therapy group, and I was attending that group while I was on house arrest,” Miles explained. One woman, a councillor, was named Jean Coyne.
Miles said that Coyne is still a part of his life. His perspective was rigid at the time, and she helped to change the way he looked at the world, as well as himself.
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“She would challenge my beliefs, because I had some really strong opinions at that point in my life,” Miles said. “And she just kept countering everything and just forcing me to change my mind and do some thinking. She didn’t even have to stay in touch with me, but ... when I would get overwhelmed and I wanted to go back to sell drugs, I would stop and talk to her and she would still challenge that and combat that way of thinking.”
According to PublicSource, the news organization which did a 2018 profile on Miles’ extended stay in solitary confinement, Miles is now “a contract employee for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, working in the Allegheny County Jail Service Coordination Unit. He helps people leaving jail find jobs, housing and stability. In May 2018, he founded Realistic ReEntry, an organization that facilitates mentorships for men and women returning to society after time in prison or jail.”
Reducing recidivism rates is no easy task. It requires not only involvement on the systemic level, but involvement with and belief in the individual. The programs with the most success combine these factors and put the person first.
As social perspectives on crime have shifted a bit from an emphasis on punishment to rehabilitation, more programs are helping returning citizens find a future, rather than letting their pasts hold them down.
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