More Communication Needed
By Albert B. Kelly
The higher up you go in the government food chain, the more distance exists between the bureaucracy and the place where people live their everyday lives. If you’re part of the state bureaucracy, you’ve got counties and municipalities as a bit of a buffer. When you’re at the municipal and county level, you often have to swallow hard and live with whatever gets handed down to you from state or federal government. One recent example involves the release of inmates from state prison in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
While some people are strictly opposed to releasing any incarcerated persons in response to the pandemic, I am not necessarily one of them. I say that because there is evidence to suggest that both individual and public health are extremely difficult to maintain in institutional settings. With Covid-19, we’re now talking about a deadly pandemic and guidance calls for social distancing- something nearly impossible to do in a prison.
While I support the idea that people have to pay their debt to society, someone sentenced to a specific number of months in prison shouldn’t have to pay with their life- which is exactly what might happen if they remain stuck in prison in the midst of a highly contagious pandemic. So the idea of a compassionate or an early release is understandable under these circumstances.
What is not so understandable is the lack of communication from the state about who exactly is being released back onto our streets. The release of inmates can go easily unnoticed and many times does. I’ve noticed because I spend my share of hours working Bridgeton’s Code Blue program for the homeless and note the number of new faces on our streets.
What would be helpful is for those departments and agencies releasing inmates to notify the jurisdictions involved with the names of those coming back onto our streets and other relevant background information. I have asked, but I get no information because of “confidentiality” which is a thin argument when residents in a given community are the ones potentially facing all the risk.
How many persons involved in the recent crime surge in regionally or statewide are among those released because of the pandemic? If even a few, is it possible that law enforcement in the affected communities might have been able to get a leg up on the bad guys had they been informed about who was released? It is hard to know but these are questions worth asking.
I am not so sure the issue is confidentiality so much as accountability. No one wants to be the target if the lines trace certain crimes back to individuals that were released early. So the whole thing happens silently with little communication or coordination as we hope for the best when some never-before-seen-faces show up on our streets. There’s got to be a better way.
I’m not one for stereotypes having often been on the receiving end myself, but you can’t blame people for being fearful that a house full of recovering addicts and alcoholics, perhaps some with a criminal record, might have a few problems along the way. You also can’t blame people for asking questions like who provides oversight, is oversight checking in once a week or is it daily. What are the house rules and what happens if they’re broken?
We all know what a bad or unscrupulous landlord looks like when it involves rentals, I can only imagine how ugly it could get with a poorly run sober living house if the operator is only interested in money and residents are unsupported. If the money runs out, do these folks end up on our streets like the recently released inmates?
When these living arrangements are approved, there’s no notice that I’m aware of to the community involved. Similar to the release of inmates, a community likely finds out about a sober living home when concerned neighbors want to know what’s going on next door. There needs to be a system in place so communities can know what’s happening since its residents have to contend with potential risks and problems in their neighborhoods.