The Job, The Car, The Girl

Today's article in NYT, "Seeking Employment For Ex-Cons In Newark" points out how misguided some help can be. The article states, "Some 2,300 men and women pour into the city from prison each year, and 65 percent are rearrested within five years. One in six adult residents of the city has a criminal record." Doesn't sound like Newark is such an attractive place to live - who could blame them for looking for a solution?

The misguided help is based on faulty reasoning - throughout the article is an implicit belief that unemployment causes crime, yet the article provides examples of employed individuals who end up committing crime. Duh. It's not "the job, the car, the girl." It's the result of addiction which is not the result of the addicting substance. It's the result of "stinkin' thinkin'."

Interestingly, the article's reporter is alert to this fact, although the local government and various help agencies seem miserably unaware of it. The reporter describes a person who has repeatedly failed in jobs, only to get one more difficult (by distance) work opportunity. He comments, “I know it’s going to be tough. But I can’t be thinking about myself anymore.” Here's someone who's closer to a solution. Thinking about ourselves, our plans and our designs does not improve outcomes when our thinking stinks.

Later on, the director of a program with a stunningly high success rate of 90% shares the key to its success. It takes at least a year, Rich Liebler, of nearby Hillside, N.J. said, to “deprogram” the felons. Most have never owned an alarm clock — months can pass before they show up for class on time — and few can name a family member with a regular job. “We treat them as if they were in a cult,” he said. “We have to reverse the thought process they’ve grown up into.”
Rich Liebler's program works on getting out of the stinkin' thinkin' and then moving to the other aspects. This is a time-consuming process, but is soundly based on true causes and the success rate reveals its power.