Transportation, Employment and Re-Entry

I'm back home from a symposium in San Antonio with lots of thoughts running through my head (even more than usual) about jail overcrowding problems and solutions that will likely play out on the blog in the coming days and weeks.

First off, thanks to Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson for inviting me and many kudos everyone involved in putting on such a useful colloquium - it was really an impressive, educational event, and a lot topics and solutions were discussed that rarely receive such particular attention. (If you attended, say hello in the comments and let me know what was the most interesting thing you learned there.)

While I'll have more to say about the event in the morning, I wanted to record some thoughts that particularly struck me on the subject of transportation. Nobody at the event had a good solution, but folks from several different counties identified the same problem.

On the panel about "re-entry" and in response to a question I asked as a followup, there arose an interesting discussion of how transportation was a particular barrier to re-entry for people leaving prison. Transportation for those just out of prison may be a bigger barrier to re-entry, even, than getting a job in the first place, one panelist said. The re-entry coordinator for Tarrant County said that because it's more difficult for people with criminal records to find a good job, their entry-level positions often turn out to be on the night shift after the buses stopped running. I'd never thought of that, but I'll bet it's disproportionately true among offenders at the macro-level.

Tyler District Judge Cynthia Kent mentioned that their incarceration alternative program helped people with suspended drivers licenses get refurbished bicycles to get to and from work. I thought that was a neat idea, but what's possible in Tyler wouldn't always work in a bigger city. You can't ride a bike on Interstate 35 or MoPac.

Bexar Commissioner Tommy Adkisson suggested a deal could be struck with the local transit agency to get free bus fare; Bexar County negotiated such a deal for its own employees to reduce car trips downtown, he said. But again, that doesn't help when the buses stop running.

One thought that occurred to me on the drive home: In Austin, our transit service CapMetro already has special vehicles that can be called to the home of the disabled for pre-arranged personal service, so it's possible some system could be established to do the same thing for people on probation or parole who had jobs that ran past the bus schedules - certainly it's something worth thinking about. (It might be expensive but it's still cheaper than jailing them because they lose their job and sell drugs to buy groceries.)

Darla Gay of the Travis County District Atttorney's office said that the Austin Re-Entry Roundtable had considered (but not implemented) an idea to ask churches, many of which already have active prison ministries, to use church buses to help give rides to offenders. That's a creative idea for a public-private partnership, but it'd sure be tough to coordinate, particularly if it only used volunteer drivers. This seems like a government function that might benefit from private partnerships, but should not be relegated to them.

There was another interesting moment (to me, anyway) when discussing employment of ex-offenders; Gay asked the audience how many of them made hiring decisions in their organization, and quite a few raised their hands. Then she asked them how many of them ever hired formerly incarcerated people at their agencies, and nearly every hand went down. The implication, clearly, was that if government wants people leaving prison to get jobs and become productive citizens, perhaps it needs to put its money where its mouth is and hire more ex-offenders for government jobs.

Gay added that although "violent" offenders are the ones people are most loathe to hire, from a public safety perspective they're the ones who, once they're out of prison, it's perhaps most important to ensure they can get a job and support themselves. That's a damn good point.

Gay advocated the idea of "banning the box," or removing the checkbox from employment applications (on a voluntary basis, not by statute) that ask whether the applicant has previously been incarcerated. The chair of UTSA's Criminal Justice Department piped in to add that Florida had passed a law (this is his say so - I want to look into it further but know nothing about it), that disallowed employers asking about past incarceration, but mandated disclosure by the employee on the 31st day of employment. The idea is to have the employer take into account the employees skills, qualifications and job performance BEFORE taking into account the criminal record. That's not quite banning the box, just delaying it, but I'll be interested to learn more how it works and what have been the results.

More soon, but I really enjoyed the event and meeting lots of new people. Thanks to everybody who made the trip a pleasure.