Criminal Justice
Getting a Fresh Start
It has a fancy title, impressive architectural features and was once a Catholic girls’ school. But the building known as “the Castle,” which sits on the corner of 140th Street and Riverside Drive in New York, New York is now a welcome refuge for dozens of men and women who were formerly imprisoned. It is owned and operated by
The Fortune Society, a pre-eminent direct services and advocacy organization, helping formerly incarcerated individuals reenter and readjust to society for four decades.
A $220,000 grant from the Public Welfare Foundation has helped The Fortune Society advocate even more broadly and effectively on behalf of those who are trying to reclaim their lives across the country – often reinventing themselves along the way.
That is certainly true of Darren Davis, who dropped out of Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, NY when he was 16 to sell drugs. The third oldest of 10 children, he had an often tense relationship with his mother, did not see his biological father and says he was physically abused by his stepfather.
He was seduced by the relatively easy money he could make on the streets, pulling in as much as $5,000 a week with the two other guys in his crew. For about six months, his weekly cut was close to $1,100.
But one unfamiliar customer turned out to be an informant. Darren was arrested for possession and distribution of crack cocaine and marijuana. That first offense got him a year in Rikers Island, New York City’s main jail complex.
Darren did not learn from his initial experience with the criminal justice system and, over the next several years, he continued his involvement with drugs and was in and out of New York correctional facilities.
After his last release, in October 2009, Darren told himself, “Okay, I’m going to leave the drugs alone.” He says that his resolve was nearly undermined when a girlfriend and then his family kicked him out. In desperation, he went to find a childhood friend, Daniel, and was told by Daniel’s grandmother that he had died in May – killed by a rival crew while selling crack.
“That took a toll on me,” Darren admits. “I miss him and I think about him a lot.”
He spent two weeks alternating between sleeping on subways and staying at a homeless shelter before he heard about the Castle, formally known as The Fortune Academy, and met one of The Fortune Society’s counselors. Darren has been a resident at the Castle since December, 2009 and, while he is in touch with his family – even resuming a relationship with his biological father – he tries not to go back to his old neighborhood to see his former associates.
“The guys out there are doing the same old things,” he says. “They are still selling drugs and beating people up. I don’t knock other people for what they do, but I’m not into that anymore. I’m not trying to get back in jail and I’m not trying to get on drugs again…I want to stay away from that.”
Exploring better ways to help people like Darren remain crime-free is an important focus of the Foundation’s Criminal Justice Program. The United States incarcerates more people than any other industrialized nation – in 2010, more than 2.3 million people were held in federal and state prisons and in county and city jails, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Locking up so many people does not deter others from committing crimes, does not offer sufficient help to those who need treatment for substance abuse or mental illness and generally does not provide a helpful transition to a crime-free life. In fact, in many states, half of all individuals released from state prison are re-incarcerated within three years.
Reducing the number of people who are locked up, reducing the length of time that they remain behind bars and addressing the disproportionate number of racial minorities who are incarcerated are key goals for the Foundation.
“The troubling consequences of this incarceration binge are measured in the heavy financial cost on state and local budgets, where corrections spending crowds out education and other vital services,” notes Philip J. Cook, ITT/Sanford Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics and Sociology at Duke University. “In addition are the human costs resulting from depriving so many citizens of their freedom and opportunity to work or take care of their families or improve their education and skills. The unprecedented rate of incarceration is still more troubling because of its differential impact across society, and particularly the vast disparities in race, education and income.”
Severe budget shortfalls are causing some public officials to reorder priorities, including scrapping or at least postponing plans to build expensive correctional facilities and finding less costly alternatives than incarceration to deal with offenses such as technical violations of parole.
Whether or not those promising trends are sustained, the Fortune Society and other criminal justice reform advocates are still helping people who leave prison from going back in.
Darren Davis, for one, is trying to become a better role model for his three-year-old son by following the example of two new friends he has met at the Castle, Joshua and Mario, who are both working and going to school.
“My number one priority is to get my GED and get into college,” Darren says. “I want to study liberal arts.”