TO BE EQUAL 		                                      COLUMN 6

A Second-Chance For Ex-Offenders-and America, Too

By Hugh B. Price
President 
National Urban League

Advocates of the hard-boiled approach to crime-just "lock-'em-up" and
throw away the key-love to assert that crime is down because there are
now almost 2 million people in American jails and prisons.

But here's another prison statistic that's almost never cited:
Sometime within the next twelve months, more than 500,000 people now
in prison will be released to return to civil society. That's about
the same number of offenders released from incarceration every year.

Are they ready?

Is American society ready?

When they are released will these soon-to-be ex-offenders have the
right attitude? Will they be ready to try to go straight?

And if they have that attitude, will they have the "tools" to try to
carry it out? Will they have the educational credentials and the job
skills they need to get a job that pays a decent wage and offers the
chance for a respectable future?

If they don't have those credentials and skills, how likely is it
they'll return to criminal activity in order to survive?

These questions aren't asked very much these days in what passes for
the public discussion about crime and punishment.

But three well-known public figures-former New York City Mayor Edward
I.  Koch, the Reverend Al Sharpton, the activist, and Harvard Law
School professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.-have posed those questions,
and looked at the alarming answers.

It'll be no surprise to anyone that for the overwhelming majority of
the coming year's ex-offenders, as for those already out, the future
is bleak.  Saddled with what former Mayor Koch calls "a pariah
status," they have virtually no chance of gaining a foothold on the
ladder of legality and upward mobility.

As Prof. Ogletree says, "They don't have jobs, they don't have job
training, they don't have drug counseling. They will go right back to
the same type of vices that put them in jail the first time. It's in
all of our best interests to come up with a program that helps people
who are coming back to the community have opportunities" to become
productive members of society.

What Ogletree, Koch and Sharpton have recently proposed to federal
officials and congressional and state legislators is a "Second Chance"
program.

Its purpose is to enable those convicted of no more than two
non-violent, non-sexual felonies to forge a pathway back to personal
respectability and respectable society.

Under the rules of the program, offenders could apply to have a judge
seal their criminal records-after they remain conviction-free for five
years and during that time earn a high-school degree or attain
job-training skills and if necessary, complete treatment for alcohol
or drug abuse.

The judge could then seal ex-offenders' records to all but criminal
justice agencies.

In other words, the offender's past involvement wouldn't be available
to other agencies or prospective employers, and an individual with a
sealed record would be legally entitled to answer "no" if asked about
prior involvement with the criminal justice system.

The "Second Chance" program is an idea worthy of support.  It
establishes the appropriate rigorous conditions for ex-offenders to
prove they're serious about finding legal ways to support themselves
and their families.

We've seen plenty of evidence in this boom economy that those at the
bottom of society, including young black men with long experience of
being unemployed, will rush to take jobs that offer something close to
a livable wage.

Further, the Second Chance proposal has the appropriate safeguards to
the larger society.

Remember, the individual's records remain available to law enforcement
agencies; and it doesn't take much imagination to foresee that any
beneficiary of a "second chance" who then engages in criminal activity
would be dealt with very harshly.

Most of all, the Second Chance program provides a way out of the
alarming problem of the incarceration of huge numbers of people for
non-violent crimes American society is digging for itself.

Those people aren't going to be in prison forever, despite the
"get-tough-on-crime" rhetoric. The cost of building new prisons is
already showing what a financial drain it is going to be on states to
ignore ways to help ex-offenders become productive citizens.

Many of these non-violent offenders are African Americans and Hispanic
Americans convicted of possessing minor amounts of drugs: Federal
estimates indicate that blacks constitute 14 percent of illegal drug
users, but 55 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those
sentenced for drug possession.

So, this problem has a racial facet that makes solving it even more
urgent.

The sense of urgency about the problem of ex-offenders returning from
incarceration must be felt by all of America.

The Reverend Sharpton urges that "we must give the collective
community a second chance to go beyond rhetoric and open wounds and
help people who have become permanent pariahs."  That's common sense
talking.

6 TBE 2/7/2000 TO BE EQUAL 120 Wall Street, NY, NY 10005