Good morning.  Jeremy Travis and the Urban Institute have been
drawing the attention of professionals and the general public to the issues
surrounding reentry for a number of years.  The excellent reentry roundtable
series will continue in New York City next month and feature participants
from areas affecting reentry and transition, as well as persons who have
successfully made their own transition.  The recent report from the Pew
Charitable Trust seems to have captured the interest of the general public.
The statistics the report presents are astonishing.  More than one in every
one hundred adults is now confined in an American jail or prison.  The
incidence of incarceration is disproportionately levied across minority and
male communities with one in thirty men between the ages of 20 and 34 in
jail or prison, and one in nine men of color between those same ages is
incarcerated.  As Jeremy Travis points out, almost all of these people will
return to society.   Many of them will return to neighborhoods already
strapped to provide basic social services to residents who have not been
incarcerated.  The task of facilitating reentry to ensure humane and hopeful
solutions for persons, neighborhoods, and country is daunting.  The task can
only be addressed in its whole.  Preparation for reentry must begin when a
person first enters a prison and continue through release and well beyond -
engaging police, the courts, the correctional system, correctional
education, community agencies, families, community educational systems, and
the business community.  Persons released from incarceration can use skills
learned in prison to revitalize their communities.  Returning persons can be
a resource if there is the will to equip them to be so.    

 

  _____  

From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov]
On Behalf Of David J. Rosen
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 8:59 AM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: [SpecialTopics 848] Corrections to Community Education

 

Colleagues,

 

This week our special topic is Transition from Corrections Education to
Community Education. I would like to welcome our guests Dr. Carolyn Buser,
Steve Schwalb,  John Gordon and Dr. Stephen J. Steurer. You will find
background information on them below as well as some readings they have
suggested.

 

I will be posting some questions, but I hope you will also post your
questions. To begin, I would like to refer to some recent remarks by Jeremy
Travis, the President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to a
gathering of U.S. mayors in New York City on February 28th, 2008. I would
also like to invite our guests to react to these remarks and to add other
information that provides the background for this transition issue, that
helps us to understand why education, and transition from corrections
education to community education is such an important issue.

 

"...over the past generation we have quadrupled the per capita rate of 

incarceration in this country.  Every year since 1972 - in times of war and
times of peace; 

in good economic times, in bad economic times; when crime was going up and
crime was 

going down - we have put more people in prison.  We also tend to forget
that, with the 

exception of those few who die in prison, they will all come back.   

 

This year, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximately
700,000 

individuals will leave our nation's prisons, well over four times the number
who made a 

similar journey thirty years ago.  Ninety percent of them are men; a
majority are men of 

color; in every state, they typically go back to a small number of urban
neighborhoods, 

neighborhoods that are struggling with poor schools, weak labor markets,
substandard 

housing, and inadequate health care.  As a nation, we have in essence asked
these hard- 

pressed communities to take on the enormous additional responsibility of
reintegrating 

record numbers of their family members who have been sent off to prison and
return 

home, typically with significant service needs, often without supportive
social networks."  

( http://tinyurl.com/2glxlj )

 

Background on Discussion Guests

 

Carolyn (Cay) Buser

Cay Buser joined the United States Department of Education in May of 2006 as
an adult education program specialist with duties as the Adult Education and
Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) liaison with correctional education.  Dr. Buser
works with the Western States to assist them in the administration of adult
education grants.  She also is the national resource for coordination with
correctional education programs and adult education grants.

 

Prior to her federal appointment, Dr. Buser was director of correctional
education for the Maryland State Department of Education.  Her
responsibilities entailed management of the education and library programs
in Maryland's adult and juvenile correctional systems.  She provided direct
support to Maryland's Educational Coordinating Council for Correctional
Institutions, the "school board" for correctional education headed by the
State Superintendent of Schools with the State Secretary of Public Safety
and Correctional Services as a member.

 

Dr. Buser has been an active member of the Correctional Education
Association serving as a regional director and is currently on the editorial
board of the Journal of Correctional Education.  Her academic background
includes a master's degree in special education and a doctorate in
educational policy and administration.  Dr. Buser taught English in public
middle and high schools in the Midwest, and in community colleges in
Maryland.  She taught for seven years in Maryland's correctional education
program and served as a principal in three correctional settings before her
appointment as director of the State program.

 

Steve Schwalb

Steve Schwalb has served as President and CEO of Pioneer Human Services
since April, 2007. Prior to that, Steve had a 33-year career in the field of
corrections.  

 

After receiving his B.A. degree in Business Administration from the
University of Washington, he began his corrections career as a Personnel
Management Specialist trainee with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.  He
subsequently held various positions of additional responsibility, including
Personnel Director, Chief of Internal Affairs, Warden, Deputy Regional
Director and Assistant Director. 

 

In the latter position, Steve was responsible for nationwide oversight of
the education, vocational training, recreation, parenting, transition
preparation, citizen volunteers and industrial work programs.  Serving in
the role of Chief Operating Officer of Federal Prison Industries, Inc., he
oversaw over 100 factories that employ 21,000 inmates and 1,400 staff, and
that generated $800 million in annual sales.

 

In the mid-1980's, Steve served as Associate Superintendent and Program
Manager with the Washington State Department of Corrections, and as Director
of the King County Jail in Seattle. 

 

During his federal career, Steve was appointed by the President to the
Committee for Purchase From People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled, and
served as chairman for four of his twelve years on the committee.

 

John Gordon

John has worked at the Fortune Society since 2001, first as Director of its
Education program and more recently as an Associate President of Programs.
The Fortune Society works with people after they've come home from prison or
jail. Their Education program serves 200-300 students per year; they offer
classes in Adult Basic Education, ESOL, and computer skills. Many students
are on probation or parole; others are mandated by the courts to one of
Fortune's Alternatives to Incarceration programs; some are no longer under
any criminal justice supervision.

Before coming to the Fortune Society, John worked for 16 years as
Teacher-Director of the Open Book, a community based literacy program in
Brooklyn, NY. At the Open Book, some of his central concerns revolved around
developing student leadership and student participation in program
decision-making; publishing student writing and oral histories, and welfare
and literacy issues. He published several articles on these topics as well
as More Than a Job:  A Curriculum on Work and Society (New Readers Press).
He is an active participant in the New York City Coalition for Adult
Literacy.

The Fortune Society was founded in 1967 with two main goals: (1) to educate
the public about prisons, criminal justice issues, and the root causes of
crime and (2) to provide support for people as they come home from prison.
Fortune serves over 3,000 former prisoners a year, offering education,
career development, counseling, substance abuse treatment, housing, health
services, and alternatives to incarceration. It continues to play a strong
role in advocating for criminal justice and prison reform.

 

Stephen J. Steurer, Ph.D.

Steve is the  Executive Director of the Correctional Education Association,
a professional organization of educators who work in prisons, jails and
juvenile settings.

 

 

Our guests have suggested the following readings:

 

The Urban Institute's web site at

http://www.urban.org/justice/index.cfm

has a complete list of its publications, most of which are online. Of
particular interest may be those that highlight individual state reports in
the multi-state Returning Home project.

http://tinyurl.com/2cm7jp

These are all accessible online.

 

Taylor Stoehr's articles. There are a number on the Changing Lives Through
Literature web site:

http://cltl.umassd.edu/IssuesClassroom3.cfm

"Enforcing the Rules" is especially recommended.

 

The topic of prison location/release location will also be useful to the
discussion. There are several articles listed on the Urban Institute's
re-entry mapping pages, several from 2004.

http://tinyurl.com/2687ma

 

These two books have a lot to offer: Joan Petersilia's "When

Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry" Oxford University

Press 2003, and Jeremy Travis' "But They All Come Back: Facing the

Challenges of Prisoner Reentry" Urban Institute Press 2005.

 

Also, see http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/181413.pdf for a paper by
Jeremy Travis on this topic.

 

As mentioned earlier, here's the link to the Correctional Education, Family
Literacy and Transitions discussion that were hosted here in September 2006:

http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Corrections_Education#2._Correctional
_Ed.2C_Family_Literacy_.26_Transition--On-Line_Discussion.2C_September_2006
or, for short,

http://tinyurl.com/yrzwlk

 

David J. Rosen

Special Topics Discussion Moderator

djrosen at comcast.net

 

 

 

 

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