Governor’s Council Plans Next Steps to Help Individuals With Criminal Convictions

In a move that reflects the state’s growing attention to incarceration rates and individuals returning to their communities with criminal convictions, the newly formed Council on Community Re-Entry and Reintegration will continue to help drive the conversation surrounding their 12 initial recommendations, which were recently adopted by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the council’s chairperson said.

The 28-member council formed by the governor in July 2014 will meet about three times a year, said Rossana Rosado, the council’s chairwoman. 

New York state releases more than 25,000 people from prison every year, according to last September’s release in which Cuomo announced his implementation of the council’s recommendations via executive action. The measures are intended to improve their prospects. 

“Part of having a fair and equitable criminal justice system is what do you do, what do you offer people when they come home from prison because most everybody comes home,” said council member George McDonald, the founder and president of The Doe Fund, which provides transitional housing and job training for the homeless, including those recently released from prison. “There’s been mass incarceration in America. We know that people are coming home, and they’re going to be coming home at a greater rate than ever before in the future,” he said, calling the so-called war on drugs “a stupid policy that’s ruined millions of lives.”

The council also includes Alphonso David, counsel to the governor; representatives of a number of law enforcement agencies such as the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and the Westchester and Manhattan district attorneys’ offices; academics from Cardozo and New York University law schools and John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Prisoner Reentry Institute; and nonprofit leaders from The Fortune Society, The Osborne Association, the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, the Center for Community Alternatives and the Center for Employment Opportunities.

“These people are not just coming together to write a report and go away,” Rosado said. “We’re really committed to working together on a number of issues to bring to light the plight of these people we serve.” 

With the re-entry emerging as a prominent issue on the national level, the members of the council want to be “not just part of the conversation, but to lead this new conversation, ” Rosado added.

The council’s recommendations that Cuomo approved for implementation focus on issues related to employment – especially in state agencies and in some of the licensed professions – while providing greater access to state-funded housing, state-issued identification and Medicaid. 

“I’m impressed by the thoroughness of the package,” said Stefan LoBuglio, who runs the Council of State Governments Justice Center’s National Reentry Resource Center. 

On employment, the recommendations will require state agencies to adopt “fair chance hiring” in which a conviction will not need to be disclosed “until and unless the agency has interviewed the candidate and is interested in hiring him or her.” (In June, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a similar Fair Chance Act, which allows employers to ask about criminal history only after a conditional offer of employment has been made.) 

Such measures will affect not just the people who have done time, but also those who have been convicted and were given probation or sent directly to rehab, notes council member Marsha Weissman, the founder and recently retired executive director of the Center for Community Alternatives. “It may not work out, but someone has a much better chance” at securing a job if they can be interviewed before disclosing a conviction, Weissman said. “It’s not just a piece of paper, it’s a human being,” she added. 

In an effort to reduce the number of individuals with convictions who are prohibited from working in licensed occupations such as barbers, paramedics, and real estate brokers, the recommendations specify a “presumption” towards granting a license, unless further scrutiny of an individual’s criminal record weighs against it. McDonald cited  “the barbershop where you couldn't get a license as a barber if you were a convicted felon,"  as an example of an occupation where criminal history may be irrelevant. A second provision says several state agencies such as the Departments of Health, State and Environmental Conservation will amend their regulations for licenses in 10 categories for which the council determined those regulations “created stricter barriers for people with convictions than required by statute.” 

To help overcome negative preconceptions about individuals re-entering their communities, the job-hunting app company Apploi is donating technology that will allow people with criminal convictions to market themselves to potential employers via video kiosks, Cuomo’s announcement said. The technology is already in use in seven state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision sites, McDonald added.

Going forward, the council will promote a range of educational opportunities to improve chances of employment, the announcement said. 

The reforms will also allow prisoners to keep more of the money sent to them by family and friends to spend in commissary or save for release. Any money sent by outside sources (as opposed to the money earned in prison jobs) will go first toward paying restitution. Half of what remains will go toward paying off any fines and fees and the other half will “stay in their own pocket,” said Marta Nelson, the council’s executive director.

When a person re-entering the community seeks to live in state-funded public housing, including federal Section 8 rental assistance administered by state agencies, the recommendations say “new guidance will forbid discrimination based on a conviction alone and require operators to make an individualized assessment of applicants based on factors such as the seriousness of the offense, the time since the offense, the age of the applicant at the time of the crime, and evidence of an applicant’s rehabilitation.” The plan also mandates an “individualized assessment” when there is a history of domestic violence against someone other than the current partner or spouse. “A prior administrative policy made it unintentionally difficult for some people to live with partners with whom there was no history of abuse,” the announcement said. 

“Many people come home to families who can help them, but a significant number of people were not being allowed back into public housing,” Rosado said. 

The recommendations also say the Department of Mental Health will create new supportive housing units for seriously mentally ill individuals returning to New York City from state prison. Additionally, homeless formerly incarcerated individuals will now be included among those who can be served by supportive housing services for people with special needs. 

The other recommendations will increase the number of people who are enrolled in Medicaid and have state-issued IDs by the time they’re released from prison, while streamlining the process for obtaining documents such as certificates of good conduct.

Weissman hopes attention will turn to policies regarding the disclosure of felony convictions on college applications. The State University of New York system asks about such convictions on its applications, but state universities in California and Texas do not, Weissman noted. 

“On the employment front, New York is doing very groundbreaking things,” Weissman said. “In higher education, we have to catch up, but that’s not too bad so long as we get there.”

McDonald said the council has already started tackling “the next round” of recommendations with a meeting in November. “We’ve only just begun.”