Ex-Cons Help Ex-Cons Ease Into Life On Outside, Alexandra Marks, Christian Science Monitor
In Harlem, New York, a new group is embracing the out-of-fashion notion of criminal rehabilitation. Exodus Transitional Community helps ex-offenders acclimate to life off the streets. Staffed by people who have 'been there,' the two-year-old program helps criminals with everything from drug treatment to bus fare. The founder and executive director, Julio Medina, calls the workers 'wounded healers' because almost all of them are intimately familiar with the 'trauma of getting out.' In the next year, Alexandra Marks reports for the Christian Science Monitor, more than 600,000 ex-offenders will be released, which is more than three times the number in 1980. Programs like the Exodus Transitional Community give the high number of ex-cons the support that the cutbacks in parole officers have taken away from them.
--Sara V. Buckwitz
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