‘Second Chance Act’ Wins Broad Praise, Call for Funding
April 25, 2008
News Feature
By Bob Curley
There have been few instances where addiction recovery and drug-reform groups have united in praise for federal drug policy, but President Bush earned kudos earlier this month for signing into law the Second Chance Act, which provides for addiction treatment and other services for offenders reentering the community.
The measure, sponsored by Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill) and Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) in the House and Sens. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) in the Senate, easily passed both houses of Congress and was signed by Bush on April 9.
Davis noted that the U.S. jails more citizens than any other nation on Earth, and releases 650,000 offenders from state and federal prisons annually. “These men and women deserve a second chance. Their families, spouses and children, deserve a second chance and their communities deserve a second chance,” said Davis. “A second chance means an opportunity to turn a life around. A chance to break the grip of a drug habit. A chance to support a family, to pay taxes, to be self-sufficient.”
All told, the measure includes $362 million in budget authorizations, including $55 million in grants to state and local governments for programs to ease the transition for adult and youth offenders upon their release from prison (the money can be spent on addiction and mental-health treatment, job training, education, housing, and other services). Additionally, the Act authorizes a number of other programs aimed at offenders, including treatment programs as an alternative to incarceration and expansion of drug treatment programs inside prison walls.
“We believe that even those who have struggled with a dark past can find brighter days ahead,” said Bush in signing the measure into law. “One way we act on that belief is by helping former prisoners who’ve paid for their crimes — we help them build new lives as productive members of our society.”
Fred Davie, president of Public/Private Ventures, a national organization devoted to improving social policies that recently completed a 17-site, $30-million prisoner reentry demonstration project, called the Second Chance Act “a promising first step in addressing our prison crisis and saving our cities.” Malakkar Vohryzek, an administrative associate at the Drug Policy Alliance, recently wrote in a column on AlterNet that the signing of the Second Chance Act brought “an ounce of sanity to our drug laws.”
Vohryzek, while fiercely critical of drug Prohibition and the Bush administration’s broader drug policy, described the Act as a “second chance for our nation’s failed drug policies because it acknowledges that people with problematic relationships with drugs need treatment and other kinds of assistance, not jails and prison records.
“By signing this act, the President and Congress sent a message that these people need help and should be afforded another opportunity to be productive members of society,” he wrote.
Alexa Eggleston, director of public policy for the National Council of Community Behavioral Healthcare, called the Act “a landmark piece of legislation that will begin to invest in sensible reentry systems for people coming out of prison and jail and offer the services necessary to end the cycle of recidivism that traps so many.”
Davie and others noted the challenges that lawmakers face in supporting this type of legislation — including the risk of being labeled “soft on crime” — but the Second Chance Act won significant bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.
Still, advocates are calling on supporters to contact their representatives in Congress to ensure that the programs under the Act are fully funded. “Even though the Second Chance Act is law, no resources will be available until Congress votes to allocate funding for the Act’s programs,” Faces and Voices of Recovery noted in a recent action alert.
