Name: Newark's take on crime
Uploaded: 2014-04-09
Duration: 5 min 44 s
Description: By partnering with think tanks and law firms, Newark Mayor Cory Booker creates programs to keep convicted felons from returning to a life of crime after they are released.

[ MUSIC ] Big priority for you as Mayor, in fact, you've said your number one priority was crime. You said this, we will live or drive by public safety. Yes. And you've made a lot of progress. Violent crime has come down considerably. I understand March was the first murder- free month in 44 years in Newark. On the other hand, I've also understood that total homicides are a little up this year. Compared to last year, yes. Compared to last year, which was down from previous years. Yes. I realize. okay. You've had four years of this. What has worked, and what has not? Well I, I, look, the, the management is actually, you, you know, pretty much the same, [ LAUGH ] whatever you're taking on. And if you walked into our police department, whether you're a criminologist or not, you could've immediately seen problems. Our police departments look like scenes from a sitcom like Barney Miller in many ways, because, guys were working on typewriters, buildings were old and decaying, there was, we weren't affording these great police officers the pride of place you know, places stenching with urine and other problems. And so we had to immediately confront a lot of these things, we had non- sensical things like you know, detectives and gang task forces by co -, union agreements were working Monday through Friday nine to five. Well, you know, gangs don't work Monday through Friday nine to five, at least not in our city, maybe here in New York or mid- town, maybe they do but, but but so, you know, we have to confront a lot of immediate issues. But then you, is told about leadership, and that's what were looking for in our school system, we found a great police director who had experience here in New York system that came in, in, and implement a lot of strategies that were very effective. We had to create strategic public- private partnerships, where a city that really leveraged private support in a dramatic way ,. Whether it's in a posting camera. It's the most lucrative tip lines in the country. To really create even more change. So, from, and then community engagement. Whether it's our clergy, or in other ways. So, we were able to pull a lot of alliances together. Then we look beyond the police department. There's a massive problem in America. With, taking human potential, warehousing in prisons. And when people come out of prison. That's one of our biggest sources of criminals. Because they get out. And they come back. 65 % go right back. [ CROSSTALK ] And then the go back. To prison, right. So we have thousands of guys coming, men and women coming home every year from prison. And they find themselves more [ UNKNOWN ]. I've come to realize. Especially in the job as mayor that. Most of us human being are far more rational economic actors than we care to think about. And if you understand sort of the economic incentives of life. You can often empower people to succeed or to take on behaviors in many ways that are, are more community beneficial. So if you're a guy that comes out of prison, imagine if you and I. Came out of prison, we have thousands and thousands of dollars of child support arrears that have come up, an angry mother of our child who's, who's needs, urgently needs help and support. You have parking tickets that are now held for your driver's license suspended so you can't even drive legally, you've got thousands of dollars on your drivers license. You can't even get your identification, it's so hard to get to go to the DMV. You have immediate needs of food. Most human beings need food on a regular basis. I don't understand why. [ LAUGH ]. You have all you have these challenges with housing. Now, get a job. I would say, try to apply for a job. A job with all those other, all those sort of other strikes against you. You yourself might not have attained a high levels of education, you now can have a criminal conviction. In this economy employers have choices. So that means you're gonna probably make a rational, economic choice that I need to get back into the narcotics trade quickly. So I can feed myself, I can feed my family and so forth. Well and so you've done something that strikes me as quite innovative, which is started the off, the office of re- entry, is that what it's called? Yes, we've, we've started you know we're gonna experiment and be entrepreneurial in lots of areas and that's one thing that government often is not. So if not a place where you see entrepreneurialism. And what we decided to do is pull together a lot of private actors, nonprofit actors, and say, let's come up with a lot of ideas. So we started the Office of Re- Entry in Newark in partnership with a right- leaning organization. These left- right coalitions are very important to me. So the Manhattan Institute became a very main important partner of ours. We created, the first in the nation, pro bono legal service project. For ex- offenders fueled by private law firms and now when I get out of prison if I have a warrant out for my arrest expungement opportunities, trouble getting drivers license, I can get a group of lawyers to work with me. We created the first fatherhood center in New Jersey, where guys coming out of prison who are dads, we actually organized sort of a, a fraternity. We actually call it Delta Alpha, Delta Sigma, DADS to support our men in, in, in reducing their recidivism but really connecting to their families. Because the children, most likely to go to prison in America are children of incarcerated adults. And we've now created programs whether it's office of reentry which has about a 10 % recidivism rate, compared to the 65 % state and national average. We, our fatherhood program has about a 3 % recidivism rate. So we've created all these pockets of excellence now that are really working and we're trying to show, that, that this should be a policy shift in America to doing what more to empower people when they come home. It'll actually drive down overall costs of government and create more economic energy in, in cities and states and nations because suddenly you're unleashing the economic potential of, of large populations of Americans.

By partnering with think tanks and law firms, Newark Mayor Cory Booker creates programs to keep convicted felons from returning to a life of crime after they are released.