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Outreach - Counting the Costs/Second Chance Campaign Public Hearings

The Institute, together with a diverse group of partners, has developed and launched the Second Chance Campaign of New Jersey, a multi-year, statewide advocacy effort designed to bring grass-roots pressure to bear on reentry issues. The Second Chance campaign constitutes a significant and growing "outside game" to complement the consultative role the Institute has played.

Established in 2007 with about a dozen members, the campaign now has more than 30 signatories statewide, including Legal Services of New Jersey, ACLU-NJ, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, NAACP, New Jersey Black Issues Convention, Volunteers of America, New Jersey Association on Correction, Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, and the Hispanic Directors Association. The Second Chance Campaign has established itself statewide as a credible and influential source for reentry policy reform expertise and advocacy in the eyes of policymakers, community leaders, service providers, funders, and formerly incarcerated individuals and their families.

The New Jersey Democratic Assembly Majority Leader, Bonnie Watson Coleman, invited NJISJ and the Second Chance Campaign of New Jersey to co-chair a series of regional public hearings on reentry, incarceration, and sentencing that her office convened from November 2008 through March 2009. The hearings, dubbed "Counting the Costs," helped to catalyze a movement of people throughout New Jersey calling for critical legislative changes. The Institute and the Campaign were prominently represented in this process. The Institute not only framed the issues as co-chair of the hearings, but the majority of working group organizations were Second Chance Steering Committee Members.

The hearings were a groundbreaking effort to hear from experts and residents on how the state can overhaul programs to prevent recidivism and save taxpayer money. "Former prisoners and their families lack a voice in our system despite dire need for rehabilitation services for the more than 18,000 people who are released from prison each year; we want to get a full appreciation of the issues by talking to people in the system, the ex-offenders, the people who deliver the services, the families," said Watson Coleman. "When looking at the social and economic cost to our state, there should be a tremendous will to reform the system, particularly as New Jersey spends up to $40,000 per inmate – two times more than what we spend on educating our children. Yet, nearly none of this money has found its way into rehabilitation programs to support a better future for ex-prisoners and their families. From a fiscal and a social perspective, it makes more sense to focus on keeping people out of jail." The hearings are building this necessary "will" – a broad-based, statewide consensus in support of more effective policies.

Informed by the hearings, the New Jersey Democratic Assembly Majority Leader, Bonnie Watson Coleman, is planning to sponsor a package of bills related to reentry issues. The Institute and the Second Chance Campaign have the opportunity to shape the legislative package to reflect the priorities and knowledge of best practices we have developed in the area of prisoner reentry.

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