According to Mayor Jim Kenney, who began his second term as mayor on Jan. 6, his stated goals this term include reducing gun violence and continuing the city’s efforts to cut the jail population in half. As attorneys and advocates providing reentry supports to youth and former “Juvenile Lifers” in Philadelphia, city leaders can hold true to these commitments by investing in formerly incarcerated people as they return to our community from jail and prison.

City leaders have lamented the lack of action on reentry. Judge Benjamin Lerner, former deputy managing director for criminal justice reform who retired from the bench at the end of 2019, reflected on this during a recent KYW Newsradio interview, “Reentry … is really important in reducing recidivism and restoring people to being productive members of the community. And while we had internally a fantastic person doing reentry work, we were paying a lot more lip service to it as an administration than we were actually moving forward on it. I was kind of banging my head against a wall in that area also.”

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