It was my first full-time job after college, working at a reentry nonprofit in Newark helping people rebuild their lives after prison. I was thrilled to have the chance to help people stuck in the dysfunctional criminal legal system I had spent years studying.

We worked with a range of clients; some had been on probation for a few months, others had been behind bars for more than 30 years. Our staff worked tirelessly to help our clients change their lives through things like employment help, legal assistance and psychological support.

And sometimes it worked. One of the first clients I worked with, Eric, was in his 40s when he left prison in 2022. Within a few weeks, we helped him get a state ID and enroll in our free forklift course. Soon, he had a full-time job near his childhood home in Newark. He was earning a comfortable living and felt better than he ever had.

But for many other clients, our help wasn’t enough. They tried, but some couldn’t make it and landed back in prison.

After a few months on the job, it began to sink in. Our best efforts were just not enough for many of the people who came through our doors. Gaps in resources and counterproductive laws made it extremely challenging to bounce back after serving time.

Prison and poverty

For starters, most of our clients lived in desperate poverty before they went to prison and had even worse financial prospects upon their release. The New Jersey Department of Corrections’ official guide for families of prisoners even states that “It is an inmate’s responsibility to have enough funding to return home upon release,” an absurd expectation given the known link between poverty and incarceration. Even with the help we provided, many of our clients remained homeless, without a possession to their names. Without some financial stability, the steps of the reentry process are exceedingly difficult.

We also saw misguided laws create further hurdles for our clients. For example, those without children who had been arrested for drug distribution were barred by law from receiving cash assistance, even though financial security is exactly what would keep them from selling drugs again. Despite our best efforts at helping them find employment, many clients were still rejected based on their convictions. New Jersey’s “Ban the Box” law prevents employers from asking an applicant’s criminal history on job applications, but they can still conduct background checks after the initial interview and reject people based on past convictions. I saw this process play out countless times and leave people even further discouraged after having their hopes raised at the beginning of the process.

Even more importantly, what I saw in the lives of our clients is that while we did our best to offer them “a second chance,” most had never been given a first chance.

Most had grown up in extreme poverty, many in single-parent homes. A history of childhood trauma was the norm, not the exception. Many had been victims of violent crime themselves and never received victim services. And most had a staggeringly low reading level, some unable to read or fill out a basic form about their work history. I worked with more clients than I could count who couldn’t speak, read, or write in English, despite having attended school in New Jersey through their childhoods.

And the statistics back this up. Around 70% of children in Newark, where most of our clients had grown up, live in low-income homes, and roughly 63% live in single-parent homes. Fewer than 1 in 5 Newark third-graders can read at grade level. The Department of Education has found that Newark Public Schools are failing to meet the educational needs of students with disabilities and students learning English as a second language. Without a decent early education, further education and stable employment become much harder to obtain.

Failure to rehabilitate

The majority of our clients had been incarcerated on drug charges, most without access to quality drug treatment early on. Many others were in prison for crimes of poverty, such as driving without a license or trespassing for sleeping wherever they could while facing homelessness. It ultimately seemed clear to me that most of our clients should have never been in prison in the first place and wouldn’t have been if the unjust circumstances of their lives hadn’t pushed them into hopelessness. Yes, they had all broken the law. And many who survive poverty and traumatic childhoods do not. But locking people behind bars and separating them from their families for nonviolent crimes of desperation is not justice. It is vengeance. And it not only fails to rehabilitate people, it brands them as criminals who are then allowed to be legally discriminated against. It leaves them resigned to a life outside of the formal economy, making all of us less safe.

We have tried to incarcerate our way out of social issues like addiction and homelessness, and it doesn’t work. It tears families apart and causes irreparable harm in the process by further traumatizing and isolating those who are already struggling.

If we actually want to keep people out of prison and reduce crime, we need to drastically alter policy, not just offer limited services to people who have already hit rock bottom. We need a robust safety net that doesn’t allow people to slip through the cracks and go without their basic needs being met. We need quality public education as a right for all, not just for those who are lucky enough to be born in the right district. We need drug treatment, mental health counseling and alternatives to incarceration for people experiencing addiction. Most of all, we need to realize that when people break the law after living a life of lack and desperation in one of the richest countries in the world, we have failed them first.