A “Second Chance” for Redemption or Life on The Installment Plan? Can Job Training negate the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions?
In 2000 Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree, Rev. Al Sharpton, and the Late NYC Mayor Ed Koch famously announced a “second chance program” for non-violent, drug-offenders. Hugh Price then of the National Urban League, the NAACP’s Kweisi Mfume, and many other prominent civil rights and criminal justice advocacy programs, touted the initiative as a sane response to the “lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key” approach that had driven criminal justice policy with varying degrees of severity in this country; virtually since the inception of the United States prison system in 1796 on “the Hudson River’s east bank on Manhattan Island’s western shoreline, in Greenwich Village, a mile and a half north of City Hall.” Little has been said or done by Sharpton or Ogletree in the 16 years since to address the collateral consequences of criminal history records . Requests to Sharpton's Washington [National Action Network] office has not responded to requests for an interview. The “second chan...