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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