TESTIMONY OF THE FORTUNE SOCIETY THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Thank you Chair Rivera and members of the Committee on Criminal Justice for the opportunity to provide testimony. My name is Andre Ward and I am the Associate Vice President of The Fortune Society’s David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy.

The Fortune Society is a 55-year-old organization that supports successful reentry from incarceration and promotes alternatives to incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities. We do this by believing in the power of people to change; building lives through service programs shaped by the experiences of our participants; and changing minds through education and advocacy to promote the creation of a fair, humane, and truly rehabilitative justice system. In FY 2023, we served over 11,400 people across our programs and in our continuum of housing models, including nearly 2700 people held in our city jails. As one of a group of long-time providers, until June 30 of this year, every day, we collectively engaged with nearly 1700 people across 200 housing units in seven jail facilities in group sessions, hard skill training, and other supports and activities. But as you know, those contracts were cancelled.

The overwhelming number of people in our city jails are Black and brown. When we, as a City, fail to invest in the kinds of programs that help them secure employment and supportive services after their release, we are collectively contributing to the widely-reported, growing gap in unemployment rates between Black and white New Yorkers.1 It is challenging enough to find a job when you have a conviction and have been incarcerated. In addition, the majority of our staff are people of color. Many of us come from the same communities as the people that we serve. When our contracts are cancelled and our staff face job loss, the very stark racial disparity in employment rates are inevitably exacerbated.

At Fortune, we are proud to say that we hire our mission. Approximately half of our staff have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system – including me. And like me, many of my colleagues – including our newly named incoming President and CEO, Stanley Richards – were held on Rikers Island. We know what works to help people not just survive, but thrive, when they leave jail and prison. We know this based on our decades of professional experience providing direct service, we know this based on the important work of our research center, and we know this as individuals who have achieved great success despite the trauma of being incarcerated, and despite the ongoing collateral consequences of having convictions.

What works, first and foremost, is providing people with safe, stable, affordable housing, and ensuring they are on pathways to financial stability and wellness. Having a home is critical to all of our abilities to find and maintain employment, pursue education, and be connected to family. For people who need additional supports and services, as one reentry expert describes it, housing is the “necessary base of operations.” This is why Fortune has been trying, for the past twenty years, to build as many of these necessary bases of operation as possible – but we cannot build our way out of this collective need alone, nor can our fellow supportive housing providers. The City must invest in the Justice Involved Supportive Housing (JISH) program by creating more units and enhancing funding levels to meet the high needs of this population. In addition, the City should expand eligibility criteria for housing funded under NYC 15/15 so that people who have been incarcerated for more than 90 days are no longer excluded.

Once people have that necessary base of operations in stable housing, to truly thrive, people need two other critical pathways: one, to financial stability, and two, to physical and mental wellness. Fortune Society offers both of these pathways through our robust array of community-based programs. In our community-based programs, people can move towards financial stability through our Benefits Access department and our education and employment services. Therefore, we strongly support passage of the bill before you today, Int. 1203-2023, which would require the Department of Correction to issue discharge letters verifying time spent in jail. This document would prove critical to so many people coming home including but not limited to those who need SSI and for those who suffer identify theft while detained, which is all too common. We are grateful to the Council Member Riley and the Public Advocate for sponsoring this important bill.

People leaving jail can access a pathway to wellness through our substance use treatment services, as well as our Better Living Center Article 31 mental health clinic. Nearly 50% of the people in our city jails have been identified as struggling with mental illness4 and 20% of people in our city jails have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. The City must invest more in current JISH providers – Fortune, Urban Pathways and CAMBA – and to create more JISH units to enhance our ability to provide the kind of robust services a great number of people need when they leave our jails.

We also know that connecting with people before they are released from jail makes a difference in their likelihood of engaging with us and connecting to these pathways upon release, when they are at their most vulnerable. Our data shows that people who engage with us while in our jails are five times more likely to enroll in some form of services with Fortune after being released than are people who did not work with us while in jail. Another analysis showed that approximately 400 of the people enrolled in our community-based transitional services within the past 12 months were previously engaged with us in the jails, within the 60 days immediately prior to enrollment. That is just looking at the people who came to us within those 60 days, through one particular program – hundreds more come to us every year, who first worked with us in the jails, during other timeframes, including upon release from prison. But as of June 30, that warm hand-off from our jail-based programs to our community-based programs was disrupted by the termination of our contracts. We urge the City Council to push for restoration of the funding for these programs which offered people not just skills but also outlets to avoid conflict, hope, and a clear sightline to a future upon release.

Relatedly, while we did not hold a contract in the recently terminated Next STEPS credible messenger mentoring program, we stand with our sister providers in decrying that decision for the same reason: the City is failing some of our most vulnerable fellow New Yorkers in an attempt to balance the budget, and the City is attempting to balance the budget on the backs of non-profits, and the people we serve.

We understand that the City faces tough financial choices. But we also know that as a City, we must take the long view about how to best enhance our collective safety and well-being, and we must always guard against exacerbating existing racial and socioeconomic inequities. Now is not the time to turn our back on programs and services, and a workforce, that have been shown to make a tremendous impact on the lives of people held in our city jails, who have been impacted by gun violence, and who come from some of our most under-resourced communities. Investing in what works is the fiscally sound and morally right thing to do, in the name of economic justice, racial equity, and humanity.