Spotlight Announcement

9/20/2005: U.S. Congressmen Speak at Policy Forum on Prisoner Reentry

A bipartisan panel of Congressional leaders outlined their vision and plans for innovative reentry legislation in a policy forum on Thursday, February 10th in Washington, DC. Coordinated by the Urban Institute (host of the event) and the Council of State Governments (CSG), the forum featured key sponsors of the Second Chance Act, including Senator Sam Brownback, Representative Rob Portman, and Representative Danny Davis.

Senator Brownback, who will sponsor a reintroduction of the Second Chance Act in the Senate later this year, stated that while 97 percent of prison and jail inmates are eventually released to the community, nearly two-thirds are re-arrested within three years. "These rates are simply unacceptable-and they represent our failure to realize that preparing prisoners for reentry is a major public safety issue," Brownback noted. He also commented that developing programs to facilitate safe and successful reentry "is good public policy. It's the right thing to do."

Representative Portman announced that he and Representative Davis planned to reintroduce the Second Chance Act in the House within the next few days. Both Congressmen acknowledged the importance of local innovation and the necessity of federal support for local reentry initiatives. "The real solutions to this problem are in your innovations at the state and local level," Portman told the forum. "The federal government can and should provide leadership to stimulate that locally-based action." Similarly, Davis stated that "there is the will to do a better job helping people safely and successfully re-enter, but not the way. Knowing that state budgets have been stretched to the limit, we hope that the grants to state and local entities authorized by the Second Chance Act provide that way."

New York State Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry presented first at the forum and offered a state-level perspective on reentry. Aubry, co-chair of the Reentry Policy Council (RPC), applauded the Congressmen's bipartisan leadership, noting that "state legislatures are trying to find ways to curb the growth of spending on corrections, while increasing public safety. We need Congress's help to begin to make inroads in unacceptably high recidivism rates across the country."

The forum was moderated by RPC member Reginald A. Wilkinson, Director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections and former president of both the American Correctional Association and the Association of State Correctional Administrators. Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, introduced the forum.

Portman and Davis first introduced the Second Chance Act (H.R. 4676) in 2004. H.R. 4676 featured the following key elements:

• demonstration grants to state and local governments for the development, implementation and expansion of reentry programs;
• a National Offender Reentry Resource Center to collect and disseminate best practices and provide training and support around reentry;
• an inter-agency federal taskforce to identify reentry resources, develop inter-agency reentry initiatives and a reentry research agenda, and report recommendations to congress;
• expansion of existing programs that serve and support the reentry community;
• grants to state and local governments to utilize established assessment tools in evaluating parole violations and revocations; and,
• grants to community-based organizations for the mentoring of adult offenders or provision of transitional services.

Companion bills introduced last session in the Senate sponsored by Brownback (S. 2789) and Senator Joseph Biden (S.2923) differed in some aspects from the House bill. Brownback and Biden co-sponsored each other's bills.

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