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ATTORNEY GENERAL STATEMENT ON REENTRY COURTS

"For seven years now, we have seen crime rates drop across the country. Our communities are safer, but we cannot become complacent. If we continue our efforts, I think we can have a substantial impact on violence and make it permanent.

"There are now 1.3 million state and federal offenders in our nation's prisons. As many as 500,000 individuals leave prison annually -- and return to their communities throughout the nation. What can we do to protect our communities so that returning offenders do not commit further crimes and return to prison through a revolving door?

"We want to work with state and federal prison officials, the courts and communities, to improve supervision of this high-risk population. We want to develop a seamless system of offender accountability, supervision, and support that begins during incarceration and continues as the offender leaves prison and reenters the community.

"Too often, offenders leave prison and return to the community without supervision, without jobs, without housing. They quickly fall back into their old patterns of drug usage, gang activities, and other crimes.

"Over the past year, the Office of Justice Programs has been working to develop several different approaches to help communities address these reentry issues. Our goal is to minimize public safety risks that occur when offenders come back to communities ill prepared to cope.

"One promising approach, developed by NIJ Director Jeremy Travis who is here with me today, is the concept of a reentry court.

"A reentry court is a court that would oversee an offender's return to the community after release from prison. The court would use its authority to apply graduated sanctions and positive reinforcement, as drug courts do. You have heard me refer before to the carrot and stick approach--work with us, stay clean, stay out of trouble, get a job, and we will help you in those efforts. But, if you come back testing positive for drugs, if you commit further crimes, if you violate the conditions of your release, you're going to face a more serious punishment, every step of the way. The reentry court would promote positive behavior by the returning offender and marshal resources to support the offender's successful reintegration into society. The court would further use its powers of punishment to make sure the individual stays on the right track.

"Judges -- working closely with others -- would approve a plan for reintegrating the offender into the community. The court would then monitor and enforce the plan. The partners of the court would include institutional and community corrections officials, law enforcement, local businesses, the clergy and the churches they serve, support services, victim advocates, and neighborhood organizations.

"This week, the Office of Justice Programs is sending out invitations to state and local jurisdictions to submit their proposals for pilot reentry courts in their communities. To help promote this concept, we will work with a small number of jurisdictions to provide technical assistance, support information sharing, and help them identify funding options. I think, working through this effort, making sure that this court has a caseload that it can manage, that it has the resources to support and supervise these offenders, we can make a distinct difference in the recidivism rate in this country and make our communities safer."

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