Events

CEJ Forum April 5, 2008 Position statement of Elizabeth Cure, Candidate for Judge of Monroe Circuit Court 8:

The purpose and goals of a correctional system should be to take people who have committed crimes and rehabilitate them whenever possible so that they can go on to live productive lives. Some have to be separated from the community for safety reasons, but whenever possible, our goal should be to lead all members of our community back into the fold.
In ten years, I would expect the jail population to be no more than 100 given the right programs.
To reduce jail overcrowding and the number of repeat offenders, I propose a mentoring model. Truancy mentoring has been taking place in states such as: Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Minnesota where the results have been phenomenal. The older mentors have experienced a 75% reduction in recidivism and when they do reoffend it is for less serious offenses.

Because we are a small community, we could have a list by the end of next week from the teachers and counselors in our schools of the kids at risk. We are a unique community because of IU, which already has a mentoring program among IU students. Many students have had truancy issues in their lives and would be happy to mentor community kids as well as each other - I have talked to a few at any rate and they were quite open to the idea. This would help reduce the jail population by incarcerating fewer people.

Mentoring is the basis of recovery programs. There is nothing more powerful than one person, who has had a problem and has overcome it, helping someone with that same problem. Another form of collaboration, Probationer mentoring, would help with the other end of the jail-overcrowding problem. By pairing newly released men and women with successful probationers, we can go a long way toward reducing the chances of returning to jail. Self esteem, stressed family situations, hanging out with the same old people that encourage trouble, and substance abuse itself are all dealt with in recovery programs. Although anonymous at the public level, these groups are organized at what they call the district level to have outreach activities with the public as well as jails and institutions specifically. We need to have meetings on a daily basis in the jails. And we need to develop mentoring programs that mimic what these programs are doing on a community-wide basis.

Both public and private grants are available for collaborative efforts among the criminal justice system, the juvenile justice system, mental-health agencies, and substance-abuse programs. I would add to this list the schools and religious community as well. Poverty and substance abuse issues dovetail to create most of the roadblocks to re-entry. When we work together as a community to help find viable solutions which include offering our hand to those who are struggling through this process, we all do better. This has worked elsewhere; it should work here too.

Thank you.