Monday, April 2, 2012

Arkansas - ATAT: Training for Justice Advocacy


NEWS RELEASE: Advocacy group endorses justice reform, hosts training for support groups.

“It is heartening to see the intelligent, fact-based discussion about our criminal justice system and sex-crime issues that is taking place,” Robert Kim Combs, Executive Director of Arkansas Time After Time (ATAT), an independent legislative advocacy group dedicated to making communities safer by reducing recidivism, referenced a slurry of news reports, in-depth investigations, scientific studies and criminal justice experts building momentum for pragmatism, sanity, common-sense and therapeutic intervention.

Recent research into two -- what some would call diametrically opposed – inmate transition and community reentry models is scrutinizing ideas about the 'how tos' of empowering ex-offenders to become successful, contributing, self-reliant and law-abiding members of society.

The “Good Life” Model employs strategies for 'restorative justice' with a focus on connecting ex-offenders with job-training, employment opportunities, affordable housing, education, transportation and other critical resources to help them lead successful lives in their communities and is based on the idea that in order to be effective, our justice system needs to build capabilities and strengths in people in order to reduce their risk of re-offending.

The “Containment” Model, which is much more typical in today's mainstream, relies on 'punishment' as a deterrent to future crime. Designed to protect communities by placing a strict controlling cordon of supervised compliance around each ex-offender, this model tends to leave ex-offenders to their own devices, demanding that certain performance standards (ie: housing, employment, payment of fines) be maintained as a condition of release with little or no concern for how the ex-offender will be able to satisfy these criteria, effectively mandating a life-sentence to recidivism.

 “I believe we need to combine these two models with a focus on the restoration of lives as the best means of protecting everyone in the community,” Combs elaborated, noting that the United States has the highest documented per-capita rate of incarceration in the world. “Every time someone goes back to prison, it hurts all of us. And not just in the public pocketbook. It destroys what could be productive lives and devastates families.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2010 — about 7% of adults in the U.S. resident population.  Additionally, 4,933,667 adults at year-end 2009 were on probation or on parole.  In total, 7,225,800 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2009 — about 3.1% of adults in the U.S. resident population.

According to the National Institute for Corrections in 2010, over the past 20 years, Arkansas’s population has increased by slightly more than 10 percent, but the state's prison population has increased by more than 100 percent.  More than 1-in-4 Arkansans are either in prison, on parole, probation or somehow otherwise caught-up in 'the system'.  Of these, nearly 11,000 are listed on the Arkansas Sex Offender Registry which has grave carry-over consequences to their 11,000 families and those of the nearly 750,000 registrants nationwide.

“Just his past weekend,' Combs continued, “there were substantive articles in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, referencing sources in the Boston Globe, New York Times, Bloomberg News, San Jose Mercury News and others, all addressing strong concerns and grave apprehensions about the powerfully detrimental and completely unintended effects of our current criminal justice system.”


Combs, who worked with Satori Barnes of the U.S. Probation Department and Jeff Spry of City Connections to co-coordinate the “Re-Entry Resource Fair” sponsored by the Central Arkansas Re-Entry Coalition which brought together 37 rehabilitation, housing, training, legal, employment, financial and other support-service providers with 300 people deserving of assistance, said that to forward collaborative initiatives, ATAT is hosting a special program on April 15.

“Training for the Trainers,” being held Sunday, April 15, 2012, 2pm / 4pm, at the main branch of the Little Rock Public Library, 100 N. Rock Street (1st floor, West Room), is facilitated by Mary Sue Molnar, co-founder of the fast-growing group Texas Voices For Reason & Justice.

Among the nation's leading and most outspoken advocates for the reform of sex-crime laws Molnar is a powerful advocate for hands-on activism, cohesive actions and the critical importance fostering systematic change through public education and collaborative networking.

Hosted as a public service by Arkansas Time After Time (ATAT), an independent legislative advocacy group dedicated to making communities safer by reducing recidivism, Molnar's program offers a step-by-step 'participatory' education in the how-tos of starting and networking a state-wide affiliation of support groups. For more info contact Robert Kim Combs, 501-563-2197 or visit www.ArkansasTimeAfterTime.org

Then program is open to the public free of charge, however seating is limited and advance reservations are strongly encouraged. Contact Combs, 501-563-2197 or visit www.ArkansasTimeAfterTime.org for details.

--30--

NEWS RELEASE authored and distributed copyright-free by Christine Beems, editor/publisher gozarks.com, 223 Primrose Lane, Shirley, AR 72153; 501-745-4153 as a public service. Questions about content or distribution may be emailed to gozarks@gmail.com  DISCLOSURE: The author is affiliated as a volunteer communications director with ArkansasTimeAfterTime.org  Thanks!
at
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

One To See Change Past Posts

One to See Change Blog List

"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."
~Adlia Stevenson U.S. Vice President (1893–1897) and Congressman (1879–1881)

On a Personal Note

Thanks for the opportunity to express my thoughts regarding the issue of citizens’ rights, particularly addressing certain sex offenders’ crimes that do not fit the devastating, inequitable and endless punishment given.


As you know, many young men and women lives across the nation are being destroyed by incarceration, life-time registry and restrictive laws that do more harm than good. For those individuals, there is no second chance.

Below is a personal letter to President Obama:
* * * *
“Dear President Obama,

I truly agree with your sentiments that individuals, such as ex-felons, should be able to receive a second chance at life. Since we all know that one can veer off that path of life and travel along rough, rocky terrain, sometimes running off and ending up in some ditch. We all have made our fill of mistakes and sometimes those held a costly consequence that changed life forever. So we lived through it, trying harder to make things right with family, friends and those around us, but what about those who aren’t able to make things right even if they tried…because they’re labeled as too dirty, a leper, a person who is rejected from society and home.

But what if they’re a seventeen year old and had sex with a fifteen year old, consensual at that? Or they’re a teen that had gotten so enraged after a breakup that he sent out naked pictures of his girlfriend on his cell phone or email? Or an individual urinates where someone just happens to see them?

All are wrong and a travesty but do they deserve the life of no second chance with a registry that ends all. They are labeled, no jobs, no where to live…they have been deemed a menace to society, a plague. These certain circumstances, and many other situations similar to these, I believe still deserve a second change.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

After my son’s early release and two years of prison, I thought I had handled that fact graciously knowing after serving his time he would be able to get that fresh start, that second chance. He was an exemplary inmate, GED, college courses and vocational classes. Little did I know that a second chance on the outside was the farthest from the truth? He now struggles and lives in a trailer park sharing a trailer with another and surrounded by others in the same rocking boat, one to float endlessly in shark infested waters. I see him little because of probation requirements (he couldn’t live with us because we were 800 feet near a school). My family is afraid of what would happen to them if he lived with them…vigilantism. My son has no other place to stay since others condemn him of his crime that is screamed from the highest rooftop. Sex offender, sex offender!

Not all sex offenders are pedophiles or predators but some are simply young kids that make one stupid and rash decision that eventually changes everything, and they have no idea what they’ve done until their life is never their own. Exactly, where is that second chance for those sex-offenders who are lumped together with pedophiles and predators? Now, it makes me sick to think of my son’s future and many like him that are on the registry and many with no second chance…ever. I am asking you as a mother and as another concerned citizen of the United States that these laws are looked at again and taken into serious consideration in what they are doing to the Constitution of the United States, not for sex offenders in general but the future rights of every citizen, before anymore are put into effect. They unjustly strip an offender of their rights and place them in a guillotine that can be easily set off by anyone and at anytime. Where is the second chance for ex-sex offenders in the present, pending and future laws?”
* * * *
What truly saddens me is the weakness and deterioration of what the sex offense issue is doing to our once, great nation. Across Europe, others are seeing the injustice and disregard of rights, but we ignore this problem and it makes me wonder where humanity is heading….

We have become a hysterical society in which our latest witch-hunt is a sex offender--no matter his/her crime.

Below is a email sent from a foreign advocate to a father of a sex offender:
* * * *
“The tragic story of your son's death is just so sad that it's difficult to explain how. It was very hard to read your letters. It seems almost unbelievable that this can take place in a democracy! From our point of view, there is no justice in this. Not in any way: not for you, your son, the former girl friend – or even the state.

It is an abusive legal system. It seems barbaric. And we are so very sorry that this takes place. That's why it's so important for us to try to neutralize the debate with this…, hopefully making some changes. ….. to show the every day life of the sex offenders, trying to show how they keep on being punished, even after served prison time…..But we will for sure tell the story of the injustice that your son has been exposed to.”
* * * *
I appreciate everyone's commitment and backing to protect everyone's civil rights, plainly as noted in the Constitution of the United States and is presupposed, giving ALL men are “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”