Letter from the Director
Hello Friends of Fair Shake ~
It is summer in the Midwest and everything is growing like crazy, including Fair Shake!
In addition to all the work we have been doing on the website, we placed ads in The Nation and The Progressive magazines which have been generating letters from inmates, family and friends of inmates, and reentry and corrections professionals. Through the ads, and links on other reentry websites, our membership is growing and as well as the number of visits to our site and the pages people view when they visit.
Speaking of links on other sites, I am very excited to report that Fair Shake is now recognized and listed on the National Reentry Resource Center website as an online resource center that helps connect people who have been incarcerated and their families with employers, property managers, and other community resources.
In other national reentry news, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was among many who testified last year before the U.S. Sentencing Commission and Congress to create new guidelines for crack cocaine sentencing. The new guidelines were approved in August of 2010 and on June 30th they were retroactively applied inmates serving crack cocaine sentences.
From the NAACP website: " On June 30, 2011, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to apply the new guidelines for a federal conviction of crack cocaine possession as established by the Fair Sentencing Act retroactively to those men and women currently incarcerated." The new sentencing guidelines "reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine convictions from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1."
"By applying the guidelines retroactively, the Sentencing Commission will be reducing the sentences of over than 12,000 prisoners nationwide, more than 10,000, or 85% of whom are African American. Another 8.5% of those who would see their sentences reduced are Hispanic, and 5.5% are Caucasian."
Most authorities estimate that more than 60% of those who use crack cocaine are white. Yet in 2006, 82% of those convicted and sentenced under federal crack cocaine laws were African American. When you add in Hispanics, the percentage climbs to above 96%.
Also in June, Attorney General Holder participated in a reentry Roundtable Discussion: Back on the Job Market: Workforce Development and Employment Strategies for the Formerly Incarcerated with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Equal Employment Opportunity chair Jacqueline Barrien. They invited successful innovative reentry organizations to introduce and discuss their work. We were pleased to hear that Fair Shake offers several tools that the groups' mentioned were needed to support reentry.
Secretary Solis shared difficult statistics such as: 1 in 99 people in the U.S. is behind bars (the highest imprisonment rate in our history); 2/3rds of state prisoners are rearrested within three years; and that for the past 20 years prison spending has grown faster than any other state budget item. Click on this link to view or listen to the entire discussion.
Closer to Fair Shake's home, the Wisconsin State Journal reported in July that nearly half of Dane County Wisconsin 's black men between 24 and 29 are in prison, jail or under some form of state supervision, even though African Americans make up less than eight percent of Madison , the county seat. . By comparison, about three percent of white men in that same age group are under some type of state correctional control. Read the full story here.
Statistics like those above give us an idea of how much work needs to be done. Fair Shake is excited to participate in exploring and creating a way to turn the statistics around.
Reentry is in the news and Fair Shakeshares these important stories on our News page.
 Many of our friends and supporters have asked us to create and e-news to keep them abreast of changes at Fair Shake. If you'd like to receive our brief e-news, please sign up here.
Thank you for supporting reentry!
Together we will build a stronger community.
 Sue Kastensen
Fair Shake Director
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New at Fair Shake!
Welcome Center |
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One of the challenges of having an enormous site is our first-time visitors can get overwhelmed and intimidated by so much content. In response, we developed a Welcome Center to guide anyone who is not familiar with our site, our tools, or even with computers in general.
Tour the Website: We created a slide show to explore each of our main pages so anyone can quickly familiarize themselves with what we offer and where to find it.
New to Computers: Former Felons who have been incarcerated for 10 years or more know how much the world has changed and how we all now rely on computers to communicate. We created a tutorial to introduce the tools, terms, benefits and hazards involved in using a computer.
The other seven areas of the Welcome Center outline general themes on our website. Preparing for Work brings together our employment-related tools and Learn About Reentry organizes a few important facts and shows visitors where they can find more.
There are more pages to describe but the idea of the Welcome Center is simple: it helps first-time Fair Shake visitors to quickly understand the website and know where to find the tools and information they are looking for. Please visit our Welcome Center!
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 Model Programs
Fortune Society
New York City
The Fortune Society is a nonprofit social service and advocacy organization, founded in 1967, whose mission is to support successful reentry from prison and promote alternatives to incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities. It serves approximately 3,000 men and women annually via three primary New York City-area locations.
Fortune works to create a world where all who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated can become positive, contributing members of society. They do this through a holistic, one-stop model of service provision that includes: Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI), drop-in services, employment services, education, family services, health services, housing services, substance abuse treatment, transitional services such as the Rikers Island Discharge Enhancement (R.I.D.E.) program, recreation, and lifetime aftercare.
The Fortune Society currently boasts over 190 full and part-time employees, the vast majority of whom are formerly incarcerated and/or have histories of substance abuse or homelessness. Over 80% are persons of color. Fortune actively recruits staff with this life experience because we believe strongly in the concept of peer support. Our clients feel comfortable sharing their experiences with people they can relate to and emulate.
The Fortune Family is a large and diverse community that includes staff members, clients, volunteers and interns, advocates, donors, direct service providers and other non-profit organizations, the families of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated persons, and the wide variety of individuals and organizations – including students, higher learning institutions, faith-based organizations, theaters, civic organizations, trade schools, businesses/employers, concerned citizens, and artists of all types – with whom we collaborate in order to best serve the needs of Fortune clients.
To learn more visit fortunesociety.org
 Model Programs
Delancey Street
Founded in San Francisco
Delancey Street is the country's leading residential self-help organization for former substance abusers, ex-convicts, homeless and others who have hit bottom. Started in 1971 with 4 people in a San Francisco apartment, Delancey Street has served many thousands of residents, in 5 locations throughout the United States. Residents at Delancey Street range from teenagers to senior citizens, and include men and women and all races and ethnicities. The average resident has been a hard-core drug and alcohol abuser, has been in prison, is unskilled, functionally illiterate, and has a personal history of violence and generations of poverty.
Featured employment programs include: custom furniture, ironworks, painting, art and ceramics, landscaping, moving services, restaurant, private dining, catering, cafe, book store, art gallery, printing, and unlimited group van service for handicapped, elderly and disabled residents.
This replicable program is available in 6 locations across the country.
Learn more about this program here: www.delanceystreetfoundation.org
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 Use any of our new links to support Fair Shake if you order from Amazon |
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Easing Overcrowded Prisons
The United States currently incarcerates more than 1 in 99 citizens, or over 2 million people. We continue to have the highest incarceration rate in the world and also in our history. Some states are reforming policy, easing overcrowding, and fixing budgets in the process.
California
Published by Reuters
"The Supreme Court ordered California to release over thirty thousand inmates or take other steps to ease overcrowding in its prisons to prevent needless suffering and death."
"Justice Anthony Kennedy cited suicidal inmates being held for prolonged periods in telephone booth-sized cages, backlogs of up to 700 prisoners waiting to see a doctor for care and as many as 54 inmates sharing a single toilet."
"California's 33 adult prisons were designed to hold about 80,000 inmates and now have about 145,000. The dramatic rise in California's prison population was fueled by tough sentencing laws adopted during the 1990s."
"Kennedy, a moderate conservative who was joined by the court's four liberals, said the reductions can be carried out without jeopardizing public safety."
To read more ofthe Reuters article here.
Pennsylvania
A unique bill, championed by Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf (R.), addressed Pennsylvania's swelling prison population. As published by the Pennsylvania Prison Watch website, "The legislation would let someone who violates parole on a technical point or minor infraction be placed in a community-based or other alternative corrections facility rather than being sent back to state prison. Another provision would let the state parole board release certain inmates to complete their prerelease programs outside prison."
Read more in this article.
Texas
Republican Texas state Rep. Jerry Madden has become one of country's leaders in corrections reform. When picked to head the Committee on Corrections, Madden had the job of figuring out what to do with an oncoming herd of prisoners. One option was to build eight new prisons within five years. The cost of this would come out to $1.6 billion. Big even for Texas.
As published by Boston University's WBUR radio station: "At the Texas State House, Madden focused on diverting low-level drug abusers and mentally ill convicts into intensive, community-based treatment programs. He aimed at building halfway houses and treatment centers instead of prisons. And he pushed for increased supervision of inmates upon release."
"With both parties in favor, Madden's bill won approval. Texas built no new prisons. It saved money. The crime rate dropped. And so too did the number of inmates committing crimes when they got out."
Follow this link for more information.
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