Reentry Program

This reentry effort in North Carolina, directed from the Governor’s office, looks like a real good effort to bring everyone to the table, and if the faith-based folks can convince everyone else that true rehabilitation of habitual criminals takes a true internal conversion—often based on a specific faith focus—then there might be some good results in the future.

If not, it will be another in the long list of such high-profile organized collaborations that fall by the wayside as attention drifts to other priorities, the danger and difficulty of working with criminals sinks in, and the core leadership of the effort implodes.

Because of this tendency, the Lampstand model is based on one transformed criminal leader and one program small enough to be adequately managed efficiently by him, and small enough in client base (70 annually) to allow the type of individual attention crucial to effective reentry work.

That being said, we wish this effort in North Carolina all the best.

An excerpt from the news release.

“Gov. Bev Perdue today named 34 members to the StreetSafe Task Force. Attorney General Roy Cooper and Department of Correction Secretary Alvin Keller will serve as co-chairs. Secretaries Linda Hayes and Lanier Cansler also will serve on the task force.

"StreetSafe will bring together faith-based organizations, non-profits, local and state government agencies, business leaders and members of the community to develop a plan to combat recidivism and reintegrate offenders safely into the community.

“By uniting the efforts of government, business and civic organizations, this task force will work to stop ex-offenders from committing new crimes,” Perdue said. “StreetSafe will give ex-offenders the support they need to successfully reenter society, which will make North Carolina safer for everyone.”

“Law enforcement officers too often see criminals they’ve arrested and convicted go right back to their old ways as soon as they get out of prison,” Cooper said. “Stopping criminals from repeating their crimes will make all of us safer.”

“With more than 28,000 offenders being released from our prisons each year, we need to do everything possible to help those people succeed and to keep them from coming back,” said Secretary Keller. “StreetSafe will be a key part of that effort.”

“In May, Governor Perdue signed Executive Order No. 12 creating the StreetSafe Task Force. The governor made the announcement at Step Up Ministries, a program that works with ex-offenders.”