Reducing Recidivism

think of a time

when you had your most embarrassing

moment ever

your biggest mistake your greatest

regret

now i don’t know if this time was

publicized for the world to know

but allow me to share mine with you now

several years ago i was a single mom

living well beyond her means in the

middle of a recession

already a recipe for disaster

i was trying to build a business while

in graduate school

and also managing the day-to-day

activities for a very active teenage son

and the bills were piling up high they

were piling up fast

and i was a little nervous

and i knew that i needed to get a job so

i did

went out got that full-time job but

i didn’t get it fast enough and it

wasn’t bringing in

enough and i got really nervous

so i shared my situation with someone

who i considered to be my friend

a few days later this friend calls me

back and says

you know i have a opportunity for you

she said i could share my name

on a insurance claim that didn’t belong

to me

immediately i told her no no way i

wanted no parts of that

but as the days were on and

the eviction notices came in and the car

repossession notices

showed up fear and desperation

also flooded in

i called her back and i said

add my name now a few years later

that bad decision came back to haunt me

and i was forced to answer for my

crime so i pled guilty

to a felony for insurance fraud

i was sentenced to probation and

restitution

and every time i have to say that out

loud

it literally takes the wind right out of

me

i still live with that shame you see i

learned very quickly that although you

may pay your debt back to society

your slate is just not clean

i lost a job that i loved and if

it became very difficult to find a job

in my field

it even became difficult to find a place

to live

so i joined a program for restored

citizens

now restored citizens that’s a title

given to individuals who have been

incarcerated and they’ve returned back

to the community

changing their narrative and either in

the process

of or have successfully changed their

life for the better

now we’re moving away from that title

and we’re moving to

a title called justice involved

individuals

see i think that one’s a little more

inclusive

that means these are individuals who

have faced

the criminal justice system at some

point for some reason as a defendant

and in this program we talked about the

traumas that lead people to

making bad decisions they also helped

with

employment and i heard the stories of

other people

stories that sounded a lot like mine and

some that sounded a lot worse

and even though i had not been

incarcerated

here we all were in the same boat

today i want to talk to you about

recidivism

see now that’s the term that i bet a lot

of you aren’t familiar with

and that’s mainly because we just don’t

talk about it like we should

see recidivism is the tendency

of someone who has committed a crime in

the past

to reoffend

and recidivism is not just the problem

of the person with the criminal

background

it’s all of our problem you see

when crime happens in your neighborhood

it diminishes the value of your property

it also impacts how safe you feel

in your neighborhoods and if we can

reduce recidivism rates we

lessen the burden on the incarceration

system

taxpayers the community and families as

a whole

there are a lot of reasons why people

offend or reoffend

we’ll talk about that in a second but i

want to tell you

about one of my clients that i’ve had

the pleasure working with recently

and his name is jt

now at the age of 19

jt was a father and a drug dealer

and because of that career choice

he ended up getting arrested and

sentenced

to 15 years in prison

15 years in prison

now when he was released 15 years later

at the age of 34 jt would be the first

one to tell you

that he still had this mindset of a 19

year old

in the streets so he returned back to

doing what he had always done

so he was rearrested and sentenced to a

second term

now this next time though that he was in

prison

he learned of the death of his daughter

she died of an overdose of heroin

and jt felt that this was his karma

because he once sold heroin

so he decided in that moment that he was

going to change his life

and he got involved in every program and

got every certification that he could

and once he was released he continued

along in that path

and got involved in more programs he

knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur

because

he knew how to be an entrepreneur right

but this time he was going to do it the

right way

and he got a certification

got a cdl certification he wanted to

become a trucker

he did it but unfortunately he

was not able to get hired by any of the

big trucking companies

no one would hire him because of his

background

and that became very discouraging for

him

but he stayed steadfast and eventually

a small trucking company did hire jt

and now his life has changed forever

see there are a lot of reasons why

people reoffend

now some of it is due to

bad decision making poor coping skills

they just don’t understand the

long-term effects that bad decisions can

have

but there’s also a linkage between

poor education and incarceration

right now across this country 80 percent

of

all males incarcerated do not have a

high school diploma

but those that have a higher education

or have acquired some sort of

trade they are less likely to reoffend

but then there’s the problem of not

being able to get financial aid

depending upon the type of convictions

you may have

and of course poverty unemployment

underemployment all of those things are

factors that

that tend to be at the top of the list

as well

but see i believe that if someone has

truly

changed their mindset and they’ve done

the hard work

and they’ve paid their debt back to

society they should get a second chance

because if they don’t they will feel

that they have no other options

but to reoffend

now you may be thinking well

i don’t own a business so how can i help

the truth is we all can be

advocates look if you do own a business

i implore you to hire a justice involved

individual

when you can if you have a job

go to your hr department ask them what

is the policy

pertaining to hiring someone with a

criminal background

and if they tell you that they just

can’t challenge them

ask them why and then share with them

the benefits of doing so

look if you have a place where you can

allow someone to lay their head

temporarily

while they get on their feet do that

look we all can do something

now when we started this conversation i

asked you all

what was your greatest mistake ever

what if you were reduced

to that one moment in time

if that were to happen your skills your

talents your gifts your dreams would not

be

realized if you were minimalized

to that moment only

and defined by that bad decision would

that be fair

look we all deserve a second chance

our community deserves one as well thank

you