After weeks of alternately tense and heated public meetings about the proposed construction of a prisoner re-entry center in Jersey City, New Jersey, the controversial plan has finally been scrapped.
The New Jersey Parole Board had pledged $4.2 million for the establishment of the Sacred Heart Community Resource Center, a place for formerly incarcerated people to find jobs, housing, and health care. But former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey, who runs the program, told the the Jersey Journal on Monday that he had re-considered the location of the new site after realizing that it did not have the support of the surrounding community. There were safety worries, and complaints that neighborhood members hadn’t been informed of the plan until it was almost a done deal. At a community meeting that night, “Why does it have to be here?” was reportedly a common refrain.
[For more of this story, written by Lauren Kirchner, go to http://www.psmag.com/health-an...er-re-entry-programs]
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