- Target:
- City Council Committee on Aging
- Region:
- United States of America
- Website:
- legistar.council.nyc.gov
We are a cohort of Generation Citizen operating out of Brooklyn Technical High School. Generation Citizen is a way for us to impact change in our community through a cooperation with local government. Our issue we decided upon was mass incarceration and we settled on revising and reviving Int. Np. 1616-2017- A local law in relation to establishing a temporary task force on post-incarceration reentry for older adults. One aspect of mass incarceration is the cyclical nature in which people who serve prison sentences continue to reenter the system. We believe that helping older released inmates could help by showing younger people that prison doesn't have to be a cycle. This would also help create more role models in the community, and work against a culture of older released inmates preferring prison to a society that has given up on them entirely.
We are the Generation Citizens of Brooklyn Technical High School. We would like to revive and pass the bill on establishing a temporary task force on post-incarceration reentry for older adults. When people spend a lot of time in prison and are then released back into society, there are not enough adequate resources available to provide them a good transition back into society. We believe this lack of resources leads toward the reincarceration of these elderly. We believe this bill will not only help with the reintroduction of many recently released elderly inmates back into society, but it will help break part of the cycle that plays into mass incarceration.
We believe that the bill needs to be changed to properly impact change, and have brainstormed some effective changes.
Changes to the bill
We feel that simply creating a task force, having them write a report, and then being disbanded is not enough. We believe it would be more effective to have the task force use the research they’ve gathered and implement programs and directives to help the recently released inmates. These programs could include: help with entry level job searches for inmates, health care, workshops on community programming, housing/shelter initiatives, trainings to teach basic skills and education, available social workers for mental and emotional care.
The task force should meet monthly to discuss both research and a plan of action/development of the programs mentioned above.
The task force should serve a term of 24 months
A new report should be made for the mayor every 12 months detailing what’s been done and a tentative plan for the next 12 months.
Task Force Construction- 8 members
A member of the committee on Aging
A member of the committee on Justice
Member of the Mayor’s Office of Management
Member of the Department of Corrections
A community outreach member
A staffer focused on nonprofit work toward the goal of helping recently released inmates.
Someone academically educated in the treatment of incarcerated individuals
A formerly incarcerated individual.
You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it
The Generation Citizen Brooklyn Technical High School Period 3 Fall 2017 petition to City Council Committee on Aging was written by Christian Barnes and is in the category Local Government at GoPetition.