WEDNESDAY NEWS LINKS:

Breaking the Cycle of Recidivism: SER Jobs for Progress Opens Training Center for Ex-Offenders

Posted byHoumanitarian

(Pat Hernandez, KUHF Public Radio)
Some 60,000 people are released from state and federal prison each year. The obstacles to successful reentry begin with the challenge of finding a job. Officials here in Houston helped launch a job training program for local ex-offenders.

The U.S. Dept of Labor awarded SER Jobs for Progress, a 1.2 million dollar grant to provide supports services and technical training to some 400 ex-offenders. They will learn the welding trade.

Houston was the only city in the area to recieve the DOL’s Reintegration of Ex -Offenders grant. Houston congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee helped steer funding at a federal level.

“The frame was set by the Congress willing to first, sign on to legislation that I helped draft, the Second Chance Act, which lays the ground work for stopping recidivism in prisoners on the national level, and then the Department of Labor now under that legislation, can operate training programs that relate to incarcerated persons.”

She says the program focuses on how families of offenders are affected, as they look for jobs and become contributing members of society.

“It is well known and documented that the children of incarcerated persons are more likely to go to prison than other children. When you intervene by giving that adult a lifeline and a job, it stops the idea of children believing there’s no other pathway, but to go to prison.”

Recruitment will be done through SER’s existing partnerships with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Harris County Sheriff’s Department and other agencies, to mentor and prepare ex-offenders with entry into the labor market.
(More of this story available at KUHF Public Radio)

OTHER LOCAL HEADLINES:

STATE, NATION & WORLD: