Local Program Gives Troubled Youth a Second Chance
April 20, 2010
By JEANMARIE EVELLY
JUSTICE CORPS MEMBER RENOVATING A DAYCARE CENTER OFF WEBSTER AVENUE (PHOTO BY J. EVELLY)
When Matthew Hill was released from Rikers Island in October, he had no job prospects and wasn’t sure what his next move would be. He’d been in prison for a year—for what he described as “numerous charges”—and hadn’t finished his high school degree.
“I never had a resume before,” the 19-year-old Hill said. “I never worked before, ever in my life.”
What he did know was this: he was tired of jail, and wanted to start over.
Hill found an answer in the New York City Justice Corps, a city-funded program for recently incarcerated young adults. Developed by the Mayor’s Commission for Economic Opportunity and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the program serves areas of Brooklyn and the Bronx—including some zip codes in West Farms, Tremont and Belmont—that were chosen for having high poverty and incarceration rates. The Bronx program, launched in October of 2008, is run by the Phipps Community Development Corporation.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which compiles data from the Department of Justice, more than half of people released from incarceration in the United States will be in some form of legal trouble within three years. The NYC Justice Corps program looks to break this cycle through a combination of education, job training and community service.
For the young coming out of prison, the challenges of reentry, and to finding a reliable income, can be enormous.
“This is one of the most vulnerable populations,” said Bronx Justice Corps director Dorick Scarpelli. “It’s not just that they’re young, without any work experience, but they also have criminal backgrounds.”
The Justice Corps is a six-month program made up of three parts. For the first month, Corps members enroll in training where they learn to look for jobs, write resumes and prepare for interviews. They then spend 10 to 14 weeks engaged in a community service project, followed by an internship of at least six weeks. Corps members are paid minimum wage hourly stipends for the duration of the time spent in the program—from $7.15 to $8.40 an hour.
But it’s the second sequence of the program that sets it apart from others: the community benefit service projects. Here, participants are asked to do an assessment of their own communities and look for places that need improvement. In the past, Corps members have renovated community and senior centers, repainted playgrounds and basketball courts and helped design and plant a community garden.
This month, Hill and a group of fellow participants are renovating a food pantry near the Third Avenue Hub, while another group is repairing a childcare center off Webster Avenue. Many of the projects are conceived and proposed by the Corps members themselves. Hill says he’s learning manual labor skills he’s never used before, like how to paint and to retile a floor.
The projects are a form of “restorative justice,” Scarpelli said.
“It’s a common phrase that you would hear from a Corps member: that this is the same neighborhood that I took from, and now I’m giving back to it,” he said. “These young adults can kind of see themselves in a positive relationship with their community, to kind of repair some of the broken things that they may have been a part of.”
Participants are required to complete internships following their community service projects. Many work for maintenance companies or get clerical jobs for local nonprofits and small government agencies. Community Board 6 has employed three different Justice Corps interns since the program’s inception.
“They’re doing a great job. It’s a valuable experience for everybody, all around,” said Ivine Galarza, district manager for the community board. “These kids—you have to give them a break.”
According to an evaluation released in December, 70 percent of the first two groups of Justice Corps participants during the first year, or about 80 members, completed six months of the program, a retention rate higher than they’d anticipated.
But there are some setbacks—not all Corps members make it to graduation, Scarpelli said. Some fall back into legal trouble. Other problems, like a lack of permanent housing or substance abuse issues, can throw participants off track.
Securing jobs for participants after graduation was especially challenging the first year, Scarpelli said, since the country was in the throes of a recession and work was hard to come by. As a result of the economic downturn, the program has started putting an extra emphasis on education, providing education vouchers from the Department of Labor for vocational training.
“This isn’t just a work readiness program,” Scarpelli said. “We try to focus more on the career and the long term—what type of training you need to get where you want to be, not in six months but in five years.”
As for Hill, he’s working on passing his GED and is interviewing for an internship at a medical center, a fitting position, since he hopes to one day become an EMT.
“Now I know how to approach a job, how to fill out an application,” he said. “I can take that anywhere, everywhere.”
“The program can’t change your life—only you can,” he continued. “But the program is definitely a good start.”
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[...] NYC Justice Corps members discuss their efforts to successfully transition to the world of work in the Tremont Tribune article, “Local Program Gives Troubled Youth a Second Chance,” (April 2010). Click here to read the article. [...]