By Angela Carter, Register Staff
acarter@nhregister.com

NEW HAVEN — The New Haven Re-entry Roundtable Tuesday set employment and housing needs of ex-offenders as top priorities for 2011, just as new data shows the U.S. economy loses $57 billion to $65 billion per year while ex-offenders struggle to find work.

“It isn’t just that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, we have created a situation over the last 30 years where about one in eight men is an ex-offender,” said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

Schmitt also is co-author of a report CEPR released this week, “Ex-offenders and the Labor Market.”

The report warns that unless the criminal justice system is reformed, the proportion of ex-offenders in the working age population will continue to rise and exacerbate the unemployment rate and losses in economic output.

“Since high levels of incarceration are not the result of high levels of crime (and since the research consensus also suggests incarceration has a relatively small effect on lowering crime), changes in sentencing today can greatly reduce the size of the ex-offender population in the future,” the report says.

CEPR researchers found that the rise in the nation’s ex-offender population reflects policy changes in the criminal justice system, not changes in underlying criminal activity. For example, service providers in Connecticut say nonviolent offenders are more often re-imprisoned for violation of parole, rather than for commiting a new crime.

The Roundtable meets monthly and is a coalition of organizations and government agencies that provide services to men, women and juveniles as they are released from prison or jail.

During its Tuesday meeting at Church on the Rock, New Haven Prison Re-entry Initiative Coordinator Amy Meek said the Roundtable’s Employment and Housing committees will be revived and the group started recruiting for members and co-chairpersons.

“The need is not going away,” said Karl Lewis, deputy warden at New Haven Correctional Center on Whalley Avenue. The center is holding a Pre-Release Resource Fair at 9 a.m. Tuesday that will connect offenders with service providers.

A resource fair will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. today at the Fair Haven Police Substation, 295 Blatchley Ave. It is open to ex-offenders, their families and the public. It is sponsored by New Haven Parole and Community Services, the city’s Prison Re-entry Initiative and the Police Department. Continued...

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Cheri Quickmire, executive director of Connecticut Common Cause, said a documentary titled “Gerrymandering” will be shown at 4 p.m. today at Yale Law School, 127 Wall St. and filmmaker Jeff Reichert will be available for questions.

Quickmire said Common Cause is advocating for legislation that would require inmates to be counted for the Census and redistricting in their home cities and towns, rather than the current mandate they be counted in the municipality where the prison facility is located.

A separate report released this week by the Connecticut Regional Institute for the 21st Century, a statewide network of business, nonprofit and government leaders, recommends re-entry programs be funded and sustained but also calls for measurement systems that would determine cost effectiveness of programs.

The CRI report, “Assessment of Connecticut’s Correction, Parole and Probation Systems,” says understated population counts result in reduced tax dollars to the communities that serve as home to the offenders and the state should “examine and address issues related to prison-based gerrymandering.”

Call Angela Carter at 203-789-5752.

Prison Report Ppt

Ex Offenders 2010 11Labor Market

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