Pa. launches group to help inmates cope after prison

HARRISBURG — State officials are launching the first council to help former prison inmates navigate the challenges of finding housing, work and health care as they adjust to life outside bars.

Gov. Tom Wolf and Attorney General Josh Shapiro on Monday announced the creation of the Pennsylvania Re-entry Council, which aims to stop the trend of inmates being released, committing new crimes and heading back to prison. About two-thirds of convicts nationally end up reincarcerated at some point after being released, officials said.

Pennsylvania already has 21 community re-entry coalitions, officials said. Now, four state agencies — the Office of the Attorney General, the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the Department of Corrections and the Board of Probation and Parole — will coordinate a statewide effort to help former prisoners stay free and contribute to society.

The current system is broken, Mr. Shapiro said.

“The approach over the last few decades has simply been to lock people up,” he said. “And the truth is, we do our fair share of locking people up.”

But, he said, “We cannot arrest our way out of this crisis.”

The council plans to address five major challenges of re-entry: access to housing, education and health care (including addiction and mental health treatment); essential documents such as driver’s licenses and Social Security cards; and barriers to employment, such as discrimination against ex-prisoners. They did not outline specific steps, goals or a timetable.

The council hopes that addressing the five issues statewide yields results similar to those of local reentry programs, such as those that Melanie Snyder, executive director of the Lancaster County Re-entry Management Organization, described.

In Lancaster County in 2015-16, 93 percent of those who completed the re-entry coalition’s “intensive” program have not committed any new crimes, Ms. Snyder said.

“No single agency or program can possibly address all the needs that returning citizens have,” Ms. Snyder said. ”We must work together.”

The council met for the first of its quarterly meetings after Monday’s news conference.