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