Re-Entry: One who made it talks about life after prison
Jamie Castanaro's past haunted her every time she applied for a job.
"It follows me everywhere I go," Ms. Castanaro, a convicted felon who spent nearly two years in state and county prison, said at Wednesday's University of Scranton symposium focusing on the difficulties inmates have reintegrating with society. "But at the same time, it's the truth."
The 45-year-old Spring Brook Twp. native shared her struggles with drug use and her redemption over past misdeeds in a lecture hall filled with local police and prison officials, students and representatives of nonprofit organizations that help prisoners make the difficult transition out of the criminal justice system.
At the symposium, Ms. Castanaro served as an example of a person who was able to turn her life around and become employed amid the challenge of overcoming her criminal record that lists felony trespass and forgery convictions.
Presented by the recently established Lackawanna County Re-Entry Commission, the symposium also included remarks from the dean of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University.
The commission formed, in part, to try to find ways to break the cycle of recidivism in the county prison.
The prison has a 54 percent recidivism rate. More than half of the inmates will return to the prison within three years after being released.
As the council's keynote speaker, Todd R. Clear, Ph.D., of Rutgers, spoke at length debunking the prevailing notion that putting more people behind bars results in less crime.
While the U.S. has become the world's top incarcerator with 1.6 million inmates in 2012 compared to 200,000 inmates in 1972, the crime rate has changed negligibly across the country, Dr. Clear said.
"We locked enough people up that we should have an 'uncrime' rate," Dr. Clear said. "And it's obviously not true."
He also addressed the importance of strong programs for inmates re-entering society like drug and alcohol treatment, educational programs, and others. This could help reduce the county's recidivism rate, Dr. Clear said.
For Ms. Castanaro, an assortment of treatment programs while in prison and after she was released helped her overcome her addiction, she said.
"My daughter has a mother for the first time," she said.
Contact the writer: smcconnell@ timesshamrock.com @smcconnellTT on Twitter