Thank you so much for having me here and I want to bring you greetings from Assistant Attorney General Schofield. I am very pleased to be here. I noticed right away something very familiar. At this training the courses say you are looking to help community organizations “plan, develop and implement community strategies and produce sustainability plans to help them strengthen their current efforts and ensure long-term viability.”

Wait—that's what we say.

CCDO and CADCA have been working together for a long time. CCDO and CADCA's partnership is not only one of respect but of necessity. We need each other. We work on the same things. We look for the same results. We try our hardest to get people to understand it takes a whole community to get rid of crime and drugs. It's not CDO and ADCA. Without the community our work is incomplete. The entire community must be involved if we are to tackle the most pressing issues successfully.

Reentry

CCDO 's new emphasis on reentry, therefore, is hardly surprising. We know most offenders, including the most violent offenders, will eventually return to their communities. You may be familiar with the study from OJP's Bureau of Justice Statistics that found that more than two-thirds of all released offenders are rearrested within three years. So, of the 650,000 people who are released from prison annually, over 400,000 are likely to be rearrested. In addition to the obvious threat to public safety, this cycle of crime and imprisonment drains scarce community resources from other essential services.

At CCDO, we are doing more and more to help the ex-offender population. In an inter-agency agreement with the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) we have resolved to:

Reduce ex-offender recidivism and crime with a focus on Weed and Seed communities, and promote successful reentry into society by connecting mayoral and DOJ reentry initiatives with linkages to volunteer support and grassroots and faith-based and community initiatives.

and

Build capacity for President Bush's reentry and mentoring initiatives in Weed and Seed and other communities using AmeriCorps*VISTA member support to establish volunteer hubs, in collaboration with other federal partners, state service commissions, and correction institutions.

The CCDO /CNCS partnership is an important collaboration which supports the reintegration of former offenders using existing control capabilities of law enforcement and the support resources available in the faith and community-based organizations. VISTAs can help make those linkages and networks work through the leveraging of resources and the building of local collaboratives.

The supervision and support of returning offenders is a primary focus for our Weed and Seed communities. Corrections, law enforcement, and social service systems should focus in a coordinated manner, through the Weed and Seed strategy, on this easily defined high-risk population.

Since 2002, the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative, or SVORI, has focused on those offenders considered the greatest potential risk to their communities. Under SVORI, OJP has awarded more than $120 million in grants to help support states and communities as they developed and implemented their own reentry strategies. Although the strategies were designed by states and communities to meet their own specific needs, they all share a three-pronged approach that covers every stage of the reentry process.

While offenders are still incarcerated, reentry partners assess their needs, their skills, and the risk they pose to public safety, and develop formal reentry plans.

As soon as these offenders are released, they are closely supervised, often with the requirement that they report to a judge or corrections officer, and receive treatment and training.

A network of public and private agencies provides long-term support as the offenders reintegrate.

The SVORI reentry plans also include planning and participation by faith-based and community organizations, neighborhood residents, and local police, and close consultation with state and local government officials, corrections staff, probation and parole officers, treatment providers, and others to make sure that all reentry efforts are comprehensive and coordinated.

CCDO wants sites to work with SVORI grantees and realize the importance of incorporating all of the SVORI components into their programs.

Weed and Seed sites across the country are making tremendous progress in reentry. They are addressing it in county jails and state prisons, they are providing life skills education, and they are working on non-violent conflict resolution and mentoring. They are partnering with organizations that can provide reading, writing and math instruction, as well as job skills in construction and computer technology. They are offering substance abuse counseling and mental health assessments. All of these things need to be considered. A reentry program ought to be designed in an inclusive manner—just the way Weed and Seed and CADCA programming are designed—because when ex-offenders comes back into our communities they need help in many different ways. We know this, but we must act upon it.

Best Practices

The first phase of a two-phase, multi-year evaluation of the SVORI programs is complete and it shows that these programs have been successful in bridging the gaps in existing state and local efforts. They are providing much-needed transition services, such as counseling, mentoring, and job training, and they are closely coordinating pre-release and post-release services.

The next phase of the evaluation is a four-year impact study that will measure program outcomes. It will tell us what impact SVORI programs have had on recidivism, and whether they are cost-effective in helping ex-offenders reenter their communities. More information from the SVORI evaluation is available on the Web at www.svori-evaluation.org.

And that brings me to the issue of best practices. SVORI worked because of careful planning, integration of ideas, and reliable methods. The “good” that was gained by SVORI will not simply end up in a report to be filed away and never read. It is already being used to inform the President's Prisoner Reentry Initiative, or PRI, which is a federal partnership that is intended to help non-violent ex-offenders find and keep employment, obtain transitional housing, and receive mentoring.

In the same vein, CCDO wants to share best practices—what works in the field—and encourage people to emulate the good and ignore the questionable. Programs that are successful should be copied and imitated. There is no shame in being told your program looks just like someone else's. There is shame in wasting resources as you try and reinvent the wheel with unproven methods. Work with what works.

Competitive Process

The newest thing at CCDO is the changes we are implementing for FY2007. The sites will be called Weed and Seed Communities and our FY 2007 competitive initiative replace the current Official Recognition, or “OR,” process. An important difference between this initiative and the former OR process is that it is a competitive process that does not require a recognition phase prior to eligibility for funding.

We changed our guidelines for this coming year to emphasize planning and development. We have just passed the deadline for potential applicants to file a Notice of Intent with our office so that we could see how many people are interested in becoming a Weed and Seed site. The answer is A LOT. I believe people have responded to our rigorous requirements because they know they will be better off in the long run.

We talk strategy, not pie-in-the-sky grants, because throwing money at a problem does not work. We all agree that communities need a strategy, cooperation, concepts, and synergy. Money runs out, but a strategy endures. Of course we make grants, but money without a plan is almost like having nothing at all.

Weed and Seed funding is not meant to provide for all of a site's public safety and community development-related needs. Sites must work with prospective coalition partners to improve collaboration and leverage other available federal, state, and local resources.

Like CADCA, we give people the tools they need to address the problems in their communities. In our new FY 2007 guidelines one of the things we emphasize is a promotion of tools and strategies that better enable communities to make a compelling case for redeploying existing resources to address their problems more effectively.

Sites must work hard in the pre-development phase. They have to conduct a problems/needs assessment of the area and select the resources that should be mobilized to address focus area problems. In planning they not only have to identify goals, objectives, and implementation activities, but really prepare for the future and how they will measure the level of their success. They must develop performance measures, an implementation schedule, begin program implementation and ultimately execute an assessment of their work.

In our list of that we use to analyze whether a community is competitive for Weed and Seed Community designation, some of the main things we look for are:

A demonstration of collaborative existing efforts and ability to leverage resources

A high-quality management plan and structure

A comprehensive assessment of community conditions

Evidence of a plan -- from the outset -- to sustain the effort

Appropriate partners who have engaged all sectors of the community

I think CADCA understands why we're looking for all of those things. CADCA connects multiple sectors of the community. We ask our sites to do the same. We both want our communities to identify new partners that they can work together with on strategic opportunities.

We must—and we will—continue to work for the safety and well-being of thousands of communities across the country. Our success comes from strong partnerships like the one we have with CADCA. Thank you to CADCA for being our partner. Our mission is difficult, but we are stronger together.

Thank You.