It was my intention to be part of this to gain knowledge and "listen in".  However, this message prompts my comment.  In community education there needs to be the education that goes beyond the academic/work skills.  Maybe this is part of the community education.  I am talking about the "soft skills".  Are the "soft skills" being taught?  Such things as attitude, attendance, punctuality, honesty, dependability, teamwork, listening skills........  From personal experience:  a family member in the last three years decided to give three different people a chance.  They had knowledge, skills and were fairly intelligent.  The last one's employment ended a couple of weeks ago.  One could not keep personal problems at home.  Another's attendance was poor.  Another helped himself to some expensive tools.  You get the picture.  Yes, these people can be a good resource if they have the right skills.  Employers don't mind training the employees if they have these.

________________________________
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Buser, Carolyn
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 9:50 AM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: [SpecialTopics 850] Re: Corrections to Community Education

            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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