The Clinton administration wants Congress to provide $145 million to community-based programs nationwide that help ex-convicts readjust to life on the outside, Attorney General Janet Reno said recently.
If approved by Congress, groups could obtain funding to help former inmates find jobs, housing, drug treatment, emotional counseling and other critical services in their home neighborhoods, Reno said.
“Sooner or later, these people are coming back to the community,” Reno said, while visiting Druid Heights, a Baltimore neighborhood where nearly 17 percent of the city's ex-convicts live. “Our plan is to make these people accountable, but also to give them the skills they need to be accountable.”
Reno's announcement, made while meeting with Maryland state and civic leaders, reflects a broader effort by the Clinton administration to shift resources away from prison building toward community-based crime reduction measures.
“It's absolutely critical for us to give inmates the chance to learn life skills and work skills” when they come home, she said. “I don't want to wait. I want to make sure we figure out everything we can do to solve these problems.”
In Washington, President Clinton said a reduction in crime across the country has been accompanied by an increase in the number of former convicts returning to their home communities. The federal initiative will “promote responsibility and help keep ex-offenders on track and crime- and drug-free,” the president said in a statement.
The new funding, if approved, would come from the departments of Justice, Labor and Health and Human Services.
Deputy Labor Secretary Ed Montgomery said the request for money comes at a time when the nation's booming economy has produced more jobs than there are workers to fill them.
He stressed that many of the nation's convicts are young men who have never held regular jobs, something he said is key to remaining out of trouble after prison.
“Employers are demanding skilled workers right now,” he said. “This gives us a chance to help these kids step up the ladder into the economic mainstream.”