DJ Nappy: "Halfway houses..."

The first thing that would pop into my head when someone said "halfway house" was those scenes in Double Jeopardy, which may or may not be an accurate depiction of what goes on in those institutions. Without going into crazy bits of detail, my boy DJ Nappy is on the tail-end of a harrowing experience that he's gone through over the last four years, and speaks candidly about the ills that he sees in today's halfway houses...

There are several problems with halfway houses that need to be addressed in order to ensure the safety and comfortability of the residents, staff and the department of corrections. In order to make these changes, some major rules need to be looked at, and the people that have the ability to fix these issues need to step up and figure out an easy way to implement new rules and regulations.

First of all, there needs to be additional procedures made for the job readiness process. I was given a 5-day course that went over the rules and regulations, but there are some major holes that need to be filled. I am fortunate enough to have a family that owns a business, and money isn't a major issue for me, but a lot of people that are incarcerated aren't as lucky as I am. They struggle with basic essentials, such as clothing and bath products. We still make $1.30 per day (paid by the department of corrections) until work starts, but that covers the cost of food, soap, clothing, cigarettes, stamps, phone calls,and everything else that we need on a daily basis. There needs to be a contract for people to work in some capacity for a reasonable amount of money before they ever have the option of finding employment for themselves. Our meals are provided by Aramark and taste terrible. We now pay to use laundry machines. Phones are no longer collect, which saves me and my family a ton of money, but imagine the guy that has been locked up for several years and now needs to pay for contact with family out of his own pocket. $45 per month will keep you in touch with your family 30 minutes a day if your call is local, but calls from Camden to Princeton cost me $0.50 for 2 minutes. There shouldn't be any reason to wonder why guys will risk getting caught with cell phones.

We also have nobody to take us to get bus passes or additional funding through the state. My bus ticket costs $76 a month, and we're only allowed to keep $50 on us at a time as per the department of corrections. If my family didn't help me out, I would be struggling to keep my job at first. Why aren't we provided a 3-zone NJ Transit ticket for our first few months of employment? How am I supposed to pay for a bus pas that costs $74 if I'm only allowed $50 on my person at any given time? We are only allowed to take out $50 per week. After bus passes and laundry, I have spent about half of my allotted money, and have about $3 per day to spend. That's an impossible amount of money to live on.

Additionally, our accountability calls cannot be made from a mobile phone. These calls are designed to ensure that we are at the location we are approved for, and need to be made at predetermined times. Imagine job searching in a town you aren't familiar with. Then you need to find a pay phone to check in with staff, and you don't have a car or any clue where a payphone can be found. It's pretty unprofessional to ask a potential employer to use their phone after an interview in my opinion. Residents should really be allowed to carry a phone with them, given they select one with GPS that staff can track them on. It would make things easier for everyone. The stress of being tossed into civilization is overwhelming enough, but running around trying to find a working payphone in an age where they are hard to find in working condition doesn't seem fair to me. If a call is missed, staff can call us. It gives less room for error and less chance to deviate.

It also needs to be policy to house residents in similar situations together. At Hope Hall, there is a room with guys that are all halfway back. People are usually moved to a separate section upstairs once they gain employment, but you may be stuck in a room with somebody that volunteers and is only out of the building for 6 hours a day. This means that after a resident has spent 12 hours out of the building (8 hours of work and 2 hours of travel each way), he has to deal with somebody with a schedule and an outlook on life that is completely different than his. I see guys all the time that work a night shift forced out of bed over a loud conversation, and people that have to get up at 6AM awake at midnight because they have to deal with those around them. I understand that serving jail credits shouldn't be paradise, but if we are giving 30% of our check to the halfway house, it makes sense that they ensure we sleep comfortably so we can be efficient at work.

It also seems a bit backwards that the A-304 (violent offenders) are trusted enough to go to work or school, yet they aren't allowed to go on unsupervised passes or furloughs home. It's a shame that these guys are allowed out of the building by themselves because halfway houses are getting a cut of all paychecks or can make more money off of an individual when they acquire a college degree or vocational certification. I can understand the use of this rule, but only in the case of unemployed individuals. If we are trusted enough to be allowed out of the building 60 hours per week to work, we should be able to go home and see our families every once in a while as long as we make accountability calls.

Repeat offenders and those who can't give up drug habits seem to be the ones that run from halfway houses. Yet these individuals are granted furloughs with no problems. I have a vehicular homicide that was the worst mistake of my life. I also have no prior convictions and am labeled a violent offender for a mistake. A felony will affect how people view me and employers hire me after my release, and the label of A-304 won't make any difference once my time is served. Arsonists aren't allowed to get status from prison that would allow them to go to the camps, therefore they all either parole home or max out their sentences from behind prison walls. Murderers are allowed to go to halfway houses. This is crazy when put in perspective, but it's completely true. It is also fact that sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rate of any type of criminal. While I personally have no compassion for these individuals, the numbers don't seem to line up with the course of action.

You must also think about the fact that the cities that have most of the halfway houses (Newark, Camden and Trenton, to my knowledge) are all the worst crime areas in the state. I am from Princeton, one of the nicest and safest places imaginable. I now walk from the transportation center in Camden through drug sets and past hookers to get back every day. There is a liquor store on just about every corner, and it's really not the safest place to be at night. In the 3 months I have been in Hope Hall, 2 guys have been robbed while searching for jobs. The only options for employment seem to be fast food places, and councilors seemed shocked that I landed a job at an architecture firm. Yet there aren't any halfway houses to my knowledge that are in safe communities with reliable jobs. Criminals are given access to the most crime-ridden cities and expected rehabilitate.

There also is a huge lack of communication. I told the staff at the assessment center that I had a promise of employment in Princeton, and I was sent an hour south to Camden, even though there is a halfway house in Trenton. It takes me 3 hours each way to get to work instead if 1, and the reasoning was that I needed additional programming. I was given 10 hours of 'choices', an informational class on drugs and their affects. I was forced to sit through it even though everybody in the class scored above 90% on the pretest, and then went into job readiness the next week. It was pointless, and did nothing except frustrate me. My intake councilor said I was as low risk as anybody he'd seen with my charge, yet Talbot Hall sent me to Hope Hall for more programming due to the 'nature of my crime'. All of this is contradictory and ridiculous. My councilors also suggested I put in for a transfer to Clinton House, where I wanted to go in the first place.

The blackout phase at Hope Hall includes scheduled class. In this class, I tested out and was forced to do crossword puzzles (30+ pages of these are required for completion of the course), and fill out a job readiness book, even though I held a job for 10 years and managed the place from age 18 to 24. I'm not the only one with college credits that was laughed at for asking the point of these useless weeks of time, and they respond with "everybody has to do it. You aren't special".

I really haven't even begun to scratch the surface of my particular situation, or the complex workings of the halfway house I'm at. Hopefully I will get to Trenton so I can be on public transportation 20 hours less per week, and I will gain additional insight on how this system works. The information provided gives a general idea of how things operate, and it's already a handful. I doubt anything can be done about thing while I'm still locked up, but perhaps you can start putting things in motion to make the last step of an inmate's incarceration a little bit less frustrating.

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