Sentencing and Reintegration

Ethical Cornerstones
A commitment to restorative justice means addressing the hurt of each person whose life has been touched by crime. Retributive justice often reflects the spirit of vengeance and ignores the systemic societal dimensions associated with crime. The challenge is to incapacitate offenders in a manner that limits violence, and holds open the possibility of conversion and restoration. (ELCA Statement on the Death Penalty).

Restorative justice points to government responsibility for:
· protecting society.
· promoting wholeness of life (1 Timothy 2:1-2).
· encouraging family support (support of loved ones is an essential for wholeness of individual and society

Background
Certificates of relief from disabilities provide a valuable way for eligible people with criminal records to demonstrate rehabilitation and lift statutory bars to jobs or licenses that result from a conviction history. Public safety is promoted by the employment of individuals with criminal histories.

The Problem
· Court often tells attorneys that certificate of relief is not available. At times, courts say document was shredded and could be obtained from probation department which wrote it.
· Probation departments say only the courts can provide access to the reports.
· Attorneys and applicants are left without a way to
· review the reports even though that right is afforded by the law
· determine if reports contain any inaccuracies
· ascertain steps applicant can take to improve chances of obtaining a certificate at a later time.

What Will Help
· Ensuring that certificates of relief will be available by
· requiring applicants’ attorneys be given reports rather than just be able to inspect them at time of decision.
· allowing courts or probation departments to make reports available. Courts would continue to have redaction authority.
· Promoting reintegration by amending penal law so that
· approach to sentencing is built around fact that 95% of people in prison will enter the community at some point.
· judges consider reentry at time of sentencing
· programs in prison focus on reintegration
· S7588 (Volker)/A10832 (Aubrey) makes these sentencing/reintegration changes.

(5/2006)