WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- When President George W. Bush spoke in his annual State of the Union speech last week of how inmates leave prisons and often have nowhere to go, Julio Medina listened closely.
"We know from long experience that if (released) inmates can't find work, or a home, or help, they are much more likely to commit more crimes and return to prison," Bush said toward the end of his nearly hour-long address to Congress.
"So tonight, I propose a four-year, $300 million Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative to expand job training and placement services, to provide transitional housing, and to help newly released prisoners get mentoring, including from faith-based groups."
To be sure, Medina, who attended the speech, understands this issue more than academically. Convicted of drug dealing, he spent 12 years in a New York state prison before being released in 1996, among the many inmates that year given a second chance.
After leaving prison, where he earned a bachelor's and a master's degree, Medina formed the Exodus Transitional Community, which helps former inmates successfully return to society without committing further crimes. Since 1999, he and others have helped more than 1,200 former inmates find work, homes and help, and the vast majority has not returned to prison.
Which is likely why the president invited him to the State of the Union speech.
"I was floored," Medina told UPI in a telephone interview from Exodus' base in East Harlem, New York, explaining his reaction to the president's plan. "For him to set the tone like that--I haven't heard a position like that in I don't know how long."
"This isn't politics. This is people. And he's talking about people I love."
Many have complained that cutting funding to help former inmates leads to higher rates of recidivism and crime, particularly in inner cities. Such cuts had been made during the 1990s, irking those who believe crime prevention begins in the classroom.
The program, included in the president's 2005 budget, would combine the efforts of the Labor, Housing and Urban Development and Justice departments, and would expand on a pilot program at the Labor Department called the Ready4Work Project.
The Labor Department's $22.5 million plan was created to assist local coalitions and community and business leaders in offering support to ex-inmates across the country.
"One of the key challenges to successful transitions for people with criminal records, we learned, was the lack of access to employment," Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao told Bush and others at a White House meeting in June 2003, when the Ready4Work Project was announced.
Now, the White House intends to expand on this plan by harnessing the strengths of the various faith-based and community organizations tapped in the Ready4Work pilot -- one of which is the Exodus Transitional Community.
The three-agency effort will be led by the Labor Department, which will focus on job placement and mentoring for newly released inmates and those who have been free for a while, according to a Labor Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Labor Department will be the agency through which grant money will flow, the official said, adding that the Ready4Work Project will be the theoretical basis of the president's new plan.
Another organization to be involved in Bush's plan is the City of Memphis Second Chance Program, a city service established three years ago by Memphis Mayor Willie E. Herenton.
"I'm overwhelmingly pleased with the president's announcement that the White House will focus on what we in Memphis believe is a very serious problem in society," Herenton told UPI.
Herenton said he established Second Chance after hearing complaints from a former inmate who had since become a minister. "I cannot work," Herenton said the man told him at a local church event.
"I saw the pain and anguish in this young man," Herenton said.
The White House cited Second Chance as one of the programs that had participated in the Ready4Work Project, having served more than "1,500 ex-offenders over the past three years with only four returning to prison," according to a White House statement.
Herenton said he looks forward to receiving additional support.
"This recent initiative...will enhance tremendously what is in place through the Department of Labor."
While unable to comment on the specifics of the plan, which won't be available until the president's budget is released Feb. 2, the American Correctional Association, which offers broad support and advocacy for all correctional matters, seemed to offer its nod.
"ACA has long been an advocate" of efforts "easing and improving the transition" of former inmates back into society, said Joe Weedon, director of government affairs for the association.
Reiterating Bush's estimate of how many inmates would be released from prisons in the next year, Medina said it is unacceptable that 600,000 inmates will be "going right back to those communities" in which they initially committed crimes. "And there's nothing in place."
Entering its fifth year of service in East Harlem, Medina's Exodus Transitional Community is playing its role in what many agree is a turning point in the way the local and federal government addresses recidivism and related issues.
"This is something that needs to be done," Medina said. "This should not be happening in a country with the resources to deal with this stuff."
