by Jamil Ragland CTNewsJunkie
HARTFORD, CT – Local and state elected officials, advocates, and the formerly incarcerated gathered Friday at the Hartford Reentry Welcome Center to call on the Connecticut General Assembly and the Lamont administration to provide long-term funding for reentry welcome centers around the state.
Reentry centers help the formerly incarcerated to transition back into their communities once their sentences have concluded. Since opening in 2018, the centers have served more than 5,000 formerly incarcerated people. The centers have been funded recently by philanthropic donations and short-term funding from COVID-era programs, such as the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). But ARPA funding is ending soon, and the centers are seeking $3 million annually to continue their work.
“The Reentry Welcome Centers here in Connecticut provide services to any person who is justice impacted,” said Beth Hines, Executive Director of Community Partners in Action which operates the Hartford and Waterbury reentry welcome centers. “The centers are designed to have people transported directly from correctional institutions to the center at the end of their sentences, where staff welcome them home, identify their most pressing needs including food, clothing, hygiene, shelter, and transportation, and immediately attempt to address these needs.”
Hines added, “And so I often say to myself, ‘What if not the center?’ Where would these people go?”
Additionally, the centers provide access to housing and employment assistance, connections to primary care, substance abuse treatment, and mental healthcare providers
Mack Young recently returned home after 30 years in prison and praised the center for helping him get on his feet.
“I came home to a halfway house,” Young said. “I didn’t know what avenue to take or what pathway to go down, until I was told to come [to the Hartford Reentry Welcome Center]. The people that work here are outstanding. When they say they’re going to do something, they do it. When they tell you to do something, if you’re smart, you’ll listen. They know what you need and what you don’t need. And what we do need is more funding for this type of organization because there’s a lot of us who want to come home.”
He added, “Without these centers, we’d be lost. And that’s the truth.”
Young also spoke about the center’s incredible results reducing recidivism.
“71 of us came home. Only one went back,” he said.
Jermaine Little described the challenges he faced after he was released from prison and how the Waterbury Reentry Welcome Center helped him.
“I was homeless. I couldn’t get any kind of rental assistance because I’m an ex-felon. I don’t have any credit, so I couldn’t do much. [The Reentry Welcome Center] got me an apartment, and they’re paying for my commercial driver’s license, so next month y’all might see me on the highway,” he said to laughs and cheers from the gathering.
Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam and Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, both stressed the need for bipartisan support of the centers.
“Shouldn’t we give [the formerly incarcerated] every resource that they need to succeed in our society?” Arulampalam said. “That’s why we’re standing here, a Democrat and a Republican, together on this issue to say that this makes sense for our community. This makes sense for our society.”
Hwang said it’s an empowerment issue.
“It takes a village and it takes a state to do what we have to do in order to lift people up. For me, it’s important for people to understand that this is an empowerment issue, and this is a humane issue,” Hwang said. “Good people can make mistakes, and for those who have paid their price to society, it is important for society to provide an opportunity for them to lead a second life and to avoid slipping back into recidivism.”
The call for permanent funding for the centers comes after the state published the State of Reentry 2024, a report that describes the challenges people face as they navigate the process of reentry. The formerly incarcerated face significant barriers when trying to establish new lives in their communities. Many of them deal with substance abuse and mental health issues, as well as a lack of formal education and established work history.
Without the kind of support that reentry welcome centers can provide, these issues can contribute to the high rates of recidivism seen across the United States. According to the report, “an estimated 67% of prisoners will be rearrested within three years of release. That percentage continues to grow as the years increase; within five years of release, the re-arrest estimate increases to 76.6%.”
Little summed up the theme of the day: “I would hope whoever’s listening, who has some pull, will continue to fund this organization, to help people like me, and continue to help me too. Because it ain’t over.”