As a former Soviet citizen and Soviet Jew, I experienced a huge
discrimination in the USSR. All Soviet citizens had passports with a
record of nationality in them. Some people had Russian nationality,
some Ukranian nationality, and some, like me, had a Jewish record on
the first page. We needed to show a passport when applying for jobs,
getting housing, or entering University. And when you had a Jewish
record it was like being a registered sex offender in the US today.

Jews were pariahs in the USSR. You should not tell anybody you were a
Jew. Some Russian people would beat you. Silently, the Soviet
government supported this. When I was a child, some neighbors knew we
were Jews, so they sent their kids to fight with me. I was beaten many
times, just because of the Jewish Scarlett Letter. The Soviet Police
were responsible for maintaining the passport system, and
putting the Scarlett Jewish ID there. This looks just like the
situation for sex offenders in many states today. When their neighbors
learn a sex offender family has moved next door, the sex offenders and
their families are hassled, possibly their houses attacked, and some
sex offenders have even been killed.

After graduating from high school I was going to Leningrad University.
A University worker asked for my passport. He made a note about
nationality, and told me there are too many
Jews here. As a result I got an F on my first test, and could not
enter University. I was an A+ student in high school. When I tried to
go to a technical college, they again noted my Jewish record.
As a result I got C’s and B’s on tests, but they allowed me in. I was
all A student in college. Jewish people were not allowed to go for
PhD, so after graduation I was going to try to work in a Military
Industry plant. When I came to Human Resources, the first thing they
asked me was, ‘Are you a Jew?’ And then they did not want to give me a
job, but finally had to give me the worst position. Each time I was
looking for job, HR asked for a passport, and looked for the Jewish
record.

This is very similar to the employment situation for sex offenders
in the USA. Human Resources will look for a sex offender record, and
then you will not be hired, or you will be kicked out if you already
have been hired. Last year I got a a low level job repairing some
hardware. I worked just one day and then was kicked out when HR got
the background investigation result.

What is the difference between my past Jewish pariah status and now my
sex offender pariah status? I am unemployed for 6 years, since 2002.

In 1996 I thought I had enough in the former USSR. I had relatives in
the US, and sent them an application for entering the US. The US
embassy invited my family for an interview in Moscow. I explained to
them all the discrimination I had experienced. I remembered that one
of the US officers interviwing me asked me if I could practice my
religion. My answer was: ¨Synagogue¨ here is a very bad, illegal word,
so what are you talking about?’

I got refugee status based on human rights´ violations in the former
USSR. My family moved to the US. But in the US I did not escape the
Scarlet Letter, I got another one! I was branded ¨sex offender.¨ There
are many articles about how this happened to me. You can find all of
them here

http://estrinyefim.newsvine.com/_news/2007/06/23/798199-internet-porn-hysteria

As you can see from this article, the situation for Jews in the USSR
was exactly the same as the situation for sex offenders in the year
2008 in the USA!

All govenments in all ages need enemies! They try to create a class of
pariahs to blame for everything, and divert people´s attention from
the real problems.

I consider my situation in the democratic USA much worse and even more
dangerous than my situation had been in the former USSR. More
dangerous, because, although I suffered discrimination, the Soviet
government never used their Criminal Justice system as an instrument
of repression against me.

Furthermore, most of the current reentry research that has attracted major funding (i.e., SVORI) will only be available to those who parole. Those who parole are a population that the research says is decreasing, while the population of those who max out or serve their entire sentence is increasing.

An argument can be made that those who max out have usually recidivated on a violation of parole, so evidence-based reentry programming for parolees may in fact reduce the number of people who do max out. Nonetheless, it is also true that those who do return on a violation of parole have in all likelihood not recidivated by committing the same crime they did in their instant offense. Thus, designing the ultimate tailor-made reentry programming that is matched to the instant offense of parolees (i.e., a serious violent crime) may be somewhat misguided.

The nature of persons’ in reentry pre-incarceration crimes need to be tested to see if it explains a significant amount of the variance in reentry success amongst this group. If the pre-incarceration crime or the instant offense is not predictive of the probability of recidivating, then matching reentry programs to these crimes is misguided, wastes money, and is an inefficient use of resources.

Furthermore, if someone returns to prison on a parole hit and maxes out, which an increasing number of individuals do, does it make good sense to disregard the transitional needs of this growing population the maxes out? The size of those returning home from institutionalization in this country requires more than a few or even several specified reentry programs matched with the instant offense of parolees.

Rather, it is my opinion we need a well-networked system of reentry agencies and an operationalized definition of a reentry program that captures the unique contribution of each service partner (i.e., employment, clothes, education, etc.). I predict the evaluation driven interactive effect that’s produced when these agencies work in concert to combat recidivism would outweigh the sum of its parts.

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Sarosh Cooper, Ph.D. (Vice President) Board of Empirically Supported Transition Practices, Nonprofit Corporation Email: scooper@njreentry.com Phone: 1-888 362-4591

Petersilia (2003), also of the same opinion, indicated prisoner reentry includes all efforts to prepare the incarcerated to transition safely into the community and live a law-abiding lifestyle.

Others have suggested prison reentry is a philosophy that begins at sentencing and involves community partnership, legal collaboration, and family involvement (R. Wilkinson, Dir. of OH Dept. of Rehab. and Corrections). However, none of the above are useful for developing an operationalized definition of reentry that can be subjected to programmatic empirical evaluation. How do we study something that means “everything?”

The research of Seiter and Kadela (2003) into the “active ingredients” or “what works” in reentry programs was somewhat ground-breaking in that they developed an operationalized definition useful for the purpose of empirical evaluation. They defined reentry programs as organizations that have outcome evaluations and focus specifically on reentry into the public, or those that begin treatment within a correctional environment with methods to ensure continuity of care post-release.

Outcome evaluations…go figure! Yes, while this is beautiful to see in a definition of a reentry program from a scientific standpoint, it unfortunately eliminates the vast majority of reentry community efforts. Most folks at the Goodwill have not taken a graduate level statistics course.

In fact, using this definition, the authors were only able to identify 28 empirical studies that fit their definition and only 19 had controls. Furthermore, of the 19, 10 were drug rehabs. Yes, when you do the math, this albeit narrow definition suggests there have only been approximately 9 published studies between 1975 and 2001 on “reentry programs.”

The way we define reentry programs are important in science and in practice. Too often reentry partners may unknowingly be comparing apples and oranges when they discuss and study reentry programming. The ultimate solution would be the adoption of conventional definitions, although this practice may limit future progress. At a minimum, writings on reentry program research, policy, and practice must include how they defined “reentry program” because it is unrealistic to assume readers can infer what you mean at this point.

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Jemour A. Maddux, Psy.D. (President) Board of Empirically Supported Transition Practices, Nonprofit Corporation Email: jmaddux@njreentry.com Phone: 1-888 362-4591