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Alternatives to Incarceration Work—We Just Have To Invest in Them
In Part 2, Alexis explores how a program is not only personally transformative for its participants, but it has the potential to fuel revolutionary change in how the U.S. addresses recidivism and reentry.
“We’re going to get people into careers they want—and stay with them until they can stand on their own,” Evie Litwok said of the Art of Tailoring in an interview with QNS. “What we’re doing is transformative.”
However, the program is not only personally transformative for its participants; it also has the potential to drive revolutionary change in how the U.S. addresses recidivism and reentry.
Along with personal impacts, the Art of Tailoring has large-scale economic benefits. While putting a student through the two-year program costs $12,500, detaining someone in Rikers Island costs $556,539 a year per person as of 2021—amounting to $1,525 a day. The same holds true for similar initiatives across the state; reentry and alternative-to-incarceration (ATI) programs save New York's correctional facilities more than $100 million a year. A 2016 study found an economic benefit of $3.46 to $5.54 for every dollar invested in such community-based programs.
Despite its benefits, Litwok is the first to admit that the Art of Tailoring cannot meet all the needs of its participants single-handedly. “For about $6,000 a year, for a total of two years, I can put somebody into business,” she said. “But that does not include stipends, and providing dinner, you know, providing a meal, or providing a metro card. This is the cost of teaching.”
System-impacted individuals often lack access to basic necessities such as food, shelter, and transportation—the very factors that frequently drive recidivism—and the Art of Tailoring can’t yet provide such assistance. “There are far more people who are in shelters that can be helped and should be helped with a support program. When you give out a grant to teach the Art of Tailoring, you also have to provide stipends to cover their expenses, including transportation and food. You can’t think straight if you’re hungry, and almost every person coming to that class is hungry,” Litwok said. “They have to miss a class if they’re working, they have to miss a class if they don’t have a metro card, they have to miss a class if they’re hungry and have to go somewhere to pick up food for themselves. So, without creating a safety net, you’re basically assuring the more privileged kids, who can get loans, are successful, and kids who have no money can’t be successful.”
While emphasizing the importance of vocational training, such as the Art of Tailoring, Litwok stresses that it can’t solve the problem alone. “If you can’t get the basic support of, in my opinion, stipends, food, and transportation covered, you can’t succeed.”
Like-minded organizations in NYC are striving to provide a wider array of necessities for the formerly incarcerated, such as The Fortune Society, a Queens-based nonprofit taking a holistic approach to reentry services and alternatives to incarceration. Similar to the Art of Tailoring, the Fortune Society’s Employment Services program offers specialized job training in areas such as culinary arts, sustainable construction and building maintenance, and transportation, as well as opportunities for short-term transitional work to gain employment experience. However, they also provide a range of services to address needs that such training may not cover, including transitional and long-term housing options, daily meals and nutrition education, connections to health services, and access to mental health and substance use treatment, among others. They proudly served 13,377 individuals in 2024, including nearly 600 participants enrolled in their employment training services and over 1,000 individuals to whom they provided housing, helping them rebuild successful lives after incarceration.
“We have demonstrated proof of concept in New York City that ATI and reentry services not only help people get out and stay out of jail and prison but also move on with their lives and support their families and communities,” Stanley Richards, President and CEO of the Fortune Society and formerly incarcerated individual himself, said in response to a 2024 report by the New York State Alternatives to Incarceration and Reentry Coalition.
More broadly, the benefits of such ATI programs are increasingly being recognized. New York State Senator Julia Salazar, Chair of the Committee on Crime Victims, Crime and Correction, is an advocate for prison reform and is currently fighting for the rights of incarcerated individuals. “If New York State has a duty to keep ALL its residents safe, we must end our reliance on incarceration as the solution to our social problems,” Salazar said in reaction to the same New York report. “On release, formerly incarcerated people are positioned at great socioeconomic disadvantage without supports in place to address their unique needs. We can end mass incarceration and keep our communities safe if we invest in proven programs and compassionate care.”
The Art of Tailoring’s students have already started to see success only a few months into the program, sporting their latest designs in their own fashion show at the Youth Pride Fest at Pier 76 on June 7th—one of the many events Witness is participating in this Pride Month to celebrate and garner support for the LGBTQ+ system-impacted community. Litwok and the organization were also honored at the SunnyPride celebration in Queens on June 13th for their anti-recidivism work, a testament to Witness’s dedication to its mission.
“On the one hand, you’re giving them something they can do, and if they can earn a living, they’ll never be in your system. It won’t reduce recidivism, it will eliminate recidivism,” Litwok said of system-impacted individuals. “On the other hand, if you send a kid to Rikers for some minor thing or any reason, you’re going to damage them for life. So, which option do you like?”
SUGGESTION: Reducing Recidivism, One System-Impacted Entrepreneur at a Time
a long hallway with a bunch of lockers in it Photo by Matthew Ansley on Unsplash
Alexis Tamm is a senior at Georgetown University. An avid writer and aspiring journalist, she is passionate about solutions-focused reporting and driving change through storytelling.
Alexis was a cohort member in Common Ground USA's Journalism program, where Hugo Balta served as an instructor. Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network.
The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. Learn more by clicking HERE.
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From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship
Starting in 1996, Search for Common Ground, the non-governmental organization I founded and led, sponsored a series of highly confidential meetings between prominent, non-official Americans and Iranians. We were still at it 13 years later when we had amassed sufficient contacts and credibility to make a substantial difference in the relationship between the two countries. Notably, shortly after Barack Obama’s inauguration as President, we held unofficial meetings in Europe and New York between former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and Ali Akbar Salehi, then the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization. Both men had access to top-level officials. We never learned specifically what Salehi reported to Iranian policymakers, but we heard directly from Perry that, as a result of these sessions, he personally told President Obama that nuclear agreements between the two countries were possible. This was apparently a key step in moving the United States toward nuclear talks with Iran.
Even after Search became a multilayered organization with hundreds of employees, I personally stayed engaged in the details of our Iran work. I knew that management experts would advise me, as head of a relatively large organization, to delegate the operation of such a project. Regardless, direct involvement helped me avoid being crushed by administrative demands. I absolutely loved being able to shut my office door; put aside questions of finance and logistics; and game-plan how to improve US-Iran relations. Indeed, I would advise all social entrepreneurs to retain some hands-on functions.
PRINCIPLE #5: ENROLL CREDIBLE SUPPORTERS. Social entrepreneurs, by definition, operate outside the proverbial box. Thus, they are often perceived as fringe players, and they should strive to project credibility. To that end, having prominent backers, while not indispensable, can be helpful. Credibility is best established by consistently delivering high-quality work. However, social entrepreneurs can increase their odds in favor by borrowing credibility from prestigious individuals. At the same time, social entrepreneurs should be cautious about bringing in outsiders who are not aligned with their vision. Particularly perilous are individuals with strong minds and time on their hands. As the head of another nonprofit warned me about prospective board members, “Be sure to stay away from people who don’t have enough to do.”
PRINCIPLE #6: EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED. Social entrepreneurs must be prepared to deal with high levels of uncertainty. If they find it distressing not to know the outcome and cannot deal well with the unexpected, they should probably consider a different career choice.
Social entrepreneurs frequently intervene in complex situations and systems, often encountering unanticipated problems. Even when they do thorough research and ask all the questions they think are relevant, issues are likely to emerge that should have been considered but were not – because they didn’t know that they didn’t know. The only defense is to realize, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, that there are going to be “unknown unknowns.” Social entrepreneurs need to be agile enough to minimize damage when these inevitable challenges arise.
For instance, just as we at Search and our partners at Children’s Television Network (makers of Sesame Street) were about to start production in Macedonia of a children’s TV series to encourage inter-ethnic cooperation, unanticipated armed violence broke out in neighboring Kosovo. As a result, Macedonian state TV reneged on its agreement to provide us with production facilities and broadcast our series. Obviously, an unforeseen event like the war in Kosovo could have been a disaster for us, but we did not give up. We were sufficiently nimble to build a soundstage in an empty warehouse and to cobble together a network of independent TV stations. Nevertheless, things certainly would have been easier if we had had in place a Plan B. But we didn’t know that we didn’t know.
(Picture: Macedonian and Albanian boys appear in Search's TV Production)
PRINCIPLE #7: MAKE YESABLE PROPOSITIONS. As Roger Fisher and William Ury wrote in their seminal book, Getting to Yes, it is desirable to make proposals to which others say “yes” and which are both in their interest and that of the other party. The concept of a yesable proposition is so straightforward that many people dismiss it as childish. Nevertheless, when someone—whether a child or an adult—internalizes this idea, the results can be life-changing.
A prime example of how we at Search put yesable propositions into play occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—a country which had become known as the rape capital of the world. Many, if not most, Congolese soldiers acted from the mistaken belief that females were a rightful part of war plunder. Our country director, Lena Slachmuijlder, was able to convince the leadership of the Congolese military to implement a training program to change soldiers' attitudes and behaviors toward abusing women. Our methodology included sensitization training, radio and video programs, participatory theater, and instructional comic books. Whenever possible, we included soldiers’ wives in our trainings. Many wives suffered from both spousal abuse and the stigma of being married to military men, whom the general population often held in low esteem. We ultimately provided training to virtually the entire Congolese army—more than 100,000 soldiers.
When I asked Lena how she was able to get the DRC military to say “yes” to our groundbreaking initiative, she said she took advantage of the fact that outsiders had regularly condemned the Congolese Army due to its predatory behavior. Faced with a steady stream of criticism, the army usually reacted with defensiveness and denial. To her credit, Lena recognized that there were people inside the ranks who wanted things to change, and she made a decision to work with the army—not to accuse it—even if a large number of soldiers were guilty of horrible crimes. As Lena put it, “I didn’t need to denounce the soldiers – nor would it have helped.
The remaining four principles of social entrepreneurship will be described in the next and final excerpt from the book, “From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship.”
In addition to founding and heading Search for Common Ground, John Marks is a NY Times best-selling and award-winning author, who most recently started the Pro Bono Litigation Corps in partnership with Gary DiBianco under the auspices of Lawyers for Good Government.
Part 3