Anthony Wright: Second Chances Make Washington Safer

For too long, we have treated public safety as if it begins and ends with arrest, prosecution and incarceration. It does not. Public safety is determined by what happens next.

Every year, thousands of people return to communities across Washington after incarceration. Most want the same things everyone wants: a job, a safe place to live, access to health care and the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

Instead, many return home to barriers that make success far less likely. A criminal record often blocks access to housing. Employers reject applications. Treatment for substance use and mental health needs is inconsistent or unavailable. People leave prison owing fines, fees and court debt they have little chance of paying.

Then, when people struggle, we act surprised. Recidivism is not inevitable. It is often the predictable outcome of policies that continue punishing people long after they have served their time.

Washington cannot incarcerate its way to safer communities. Research consistently shows that stable housing, employment, treatment and community support reduce the likelihood that someone will return to the justice system. Diversion programs do the same by connecting people to services before they become further entangled in courts and jails. These approaches are not soft on crime. They are among the most effective public safety strategies we have. Yet they are too often treated as optional.

That is backwards. When people leave incarceration without a place to live, their risk of returning to jail or prison rises dramatically. When someone cannot find work because of a decades-old conviction, they are more likely to remain trapped in poverty and instability. When people with untreated behavioral health needs cannot access care, we push them deeper into crisis and then spend far more responding to the consequences.

These failures do not just harm individuals. They harm families, neighborhoods and taxpayers. The burden of mass incarceration also falls disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color. People who are Black, Native and Latino are significantly more likely to be arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated, often because of long-standing inequities in policing, education, housing and access to treatment. Poverty also plays a major role. People with the fewest resources are often the least able to navigate court fines, secure stable housing, access treatment or recover from even a short period of incarceration.

Mass incarceration does not just punish individuals. It destabilizes entire families and neighborhoods, deepens racial and economic inequities and limits opportunity across generations.

There is also a significant economic cost.

Washington employers continue to struggle to fill jobs. At the same time, thousands of capable people are locked out of the workforce because of a conviction history. That makes no sense. When people can work, they contribute. They pay taxes, support their families and strengthen local economies. When we shut them out, the costs show up somewhere else: more homelessness, greater reliance on public systems, higher incarceration rates and lost economic productivity.

The same is true for diversion. Far too many people enter the justice system because of untreated addiction, mental illness or poverty. Jails are not treatment centers. Courtrooms are not housing programs. Yet we continue to use them as substitutes for both.

Community-based diversion programs cost far less than incarceration and produce better outcomes. They reduce future justice-system involvement while helping people address the underlying issues that brought them into contact with the system in the first place.

Washington has made progress, but progress is not enough. If we are serious about public safety, we must stop treating second chances as charity and start treating them as policy. That means expanding access to housing for people returning from incarceration. It means protecting and strengthening second chance hiring policies. It means investing in treatment, diversion and reentry services at the scale this crisis demands. Most of all, it means recognizing a simple truth: People who have served their time should have a fair chance to build a different future.

Second chances are not separate from public safety. They are how we achieve it.

As CEO of Pioneer Human Services in Seattle, Tony Wright leads one of the nation’s largest nonprofit social-enterprise’s that empowers justice-involved individuals to overcome adversity and reach their full potential.

As seen in the Spokesman Review.