$2.3M Flows In For ​“2nd Chance” Projects

New Haven aims to cut recidivism by ex-cons by 50 percent by 2020 with the help of a ​“Fresh” infusion of federal cash.

That’s the goal of a $1 million grant by the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) to the city government’s ​“Fresh Start Reentry Initiative,” which aims to help prisoners reenter society and become productive citizens instead of returning to crime. An estimated 25 prisoners a week return to New Haven. Many return to crime.

That’s one of six DOJ ​“Second Chance Act” grants Connecticut has received to advance the city’s and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s ​“Second Chance Society” initiative to keep non-offenders out of jail, which the legislature passed earlier this year.

Malloy joined U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and New Haven Mayor Toni Harp in New Haven City Hall Wednesday morning to announce the grants. A crowd of local social-service providers — many of whom have signed onto the city’s prison reentry quest — filled the atrium for the hour-long press conference.

Malloy noted that the state began actively pursuing alternatives to locking up non-violent people for long prison sentences in 2011, with the decriminalization of marijuana.

“We cannot continually punish non-violent offenders the rest of their lives,” he said.

He also noted that violent crime has dropped steadily amid reform efforts, including a 9.7 percent decrease this past year. The state’s incarcerated population grew from under 3,000 in 1980 to close to 20,000 in 2008, and has since declined to 16,150, according to the governor’s top criminal-justice aide, Michael Lawlor.

“We’re being smart about crime,” Malloy declared. ​“And it’s working.”

The biggest of the six new grants goes to Project Fresh Start, which is run by Clifton Graves under the supervision of city Community Services Administrator Martha Okafor (pictured). (Click here to read more about the effort.)

The $1 million grant will back one of Fresh Start’s central goals: to start working with inmates up to 12 months before they leave prison. Okafor said 40 different community agencies have signed up to help in that effort. Each prisoner will be linked up to a single mentor from one of three agencies Three of them — Easter Seals Goodwill, Community Action Agency, and Project MORE — to develop a plan for dealing with life outside the walls, whether that means getting substance abuse counseling, job training, job-search help, housing, or some combination of the above.

One way to measure whether the grant produces results: Whether it meets a stated goal of a 50 percent reduction in recidivism in five years.

That’s also the statewide goal for another of the six grants, to the Department of Correction (DOC), which will use $99,060 to develop, along with the University of New Haven’s forensic sciences school, a strategic plan to cut recidivism in the four largest cities.

The four other grants include:

• $258,113 to Yale researcher Emily Wang (click here to read about her work) to ​“explore the interrelatedness of correctional systems and community health care.”

• $366,881 to Families in Crisis, Inc., to work with children of incarcerated parents.

• $420,000 to Family ReEntry Inc. to ​“ensure that the transition young fathers make from secure confinement facilities back to their families and communities is successful.”

• $190,000 to the state Office of Policy and Management for a plan focusing on juveniles under community supervision.

U.S. Sen. Blumenthal noted that a bipartisan consensus has been reached nationally — even in Congress (!) — to empty prisons by finding alternative sentencing and help for nonviolent offenders. (The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, and by some accounts the world, period.) But Blumenthal said the federal Second Chance Act, under which the new grants were given, is in danger of not being renewed because of opposition by ​“right-wing Republicans.”

“The ​‘justice’ part of ​‘criminal justice,’” Blumenthal said, ​“means preventing crime,” in part by enabling ex-cons to become ​“good dads” and ​“part of our community.”