What Percentage of Convicts Commit Crimes Again

I spent my first dark as an inmate at the Cook Canton Jail dreaming virtually the day I'd become out.

I had no idea that four years later, I'd render every day as a full-time employee of the very place that locked me upwards.

My story broadly follows a pattern that is mutual for victims of prostitution. Domestic violence led me to the streets, which led me to drugs, which led me to prostitution, which, thankfully, then led me to jail. I never expected that jail would be my saving grace. Now I promise to make information technology the aforementioned for more than victims like me.

The type of treatment and care given to prostituted women and victims of sex trafficking at the Cook County Department of Corrections is dissimilar than at many other jails. Cook County Sheriff Tom Sprint focuses on rehabilitation services rather than penalization, providing women with the tools they need to go out and stay out of prison.

This is rare. American correctional facilities are known for high recidivism rates. Nationally, 76 pct of all inmates terminate upwardly back in jail within five years. Other adult countries take much lower numbers — Nordic countries have recidivism rates between 20 and 30 percent.

Only in the nation's drug courts — criminal sentencing that typically includes mandatory addiction handling — inquiry shows that backsliding drops significantly. Amidst the nation'south 2,700 drug courts, Cook County is considered in the 10 model programs for prisoners. The jail has seen an 81 percent drop in felony convictions three years post-obit prisoner release for those who take gone through their drug court program.

I believe this comes downwards to how we approach prison time for the incarcerated. We need to treat prisoners every bit individuals who need counseling, resources, and preparation for the outside earth — non bad people who deserve penalty. If more jails and prisons ran like Cook Canton'south, especially for victims of prostitution, I believe we could bring these numbers downwards.

If information technology could happen to me, it could happen to anyone.

I went from six figures and a beautiful dwelling house to abased buildings and alleys

As a child, I was always expected to excel. I graduated from Loyola University in 1985 with a degree in finance and have always been an overachiever. I then worked for a large corporation, in charge of a staff of 25 people. It seemed like I had a very stable life.

However, like many victims of sexual exploitation, I had underlying mental health issues that I had never dealt with or spoken about. I was molested as a child, which acquired me to accept very low self-esteem. I felt like my brain had been wired incorrect considering of a perverted man who had sexualized my torso at such a immature historic period. Something ever felt missing to me in a sense.

I had a "looking for love in all the wrong places" problem, and had a affair for the intelligent bad boy blazon. My husband at the time fit that bill perfectly. No matter how much I tried to maintain the corporate lifestyle, if someone in your life is involved in violence, it will affect you eventually too. He beat his first wife, and as much equally I told myself, "Oh, he'll never do that to me," of grade he eventually did.

And then I ran. I ran from the domestic abuse. I ran from him and my five children. And so the cycle began — domestic abuse led me to drug use, which led me to prostitution to support my drug problem. Prostitution was a manner for me to support my growing addiction to crevice cocaine. Beingness trafficked was inevitable.

I went from a six-figure bacon and a cute home with ii cars in the driveway to living in abandoned buildings and alleys.

During the ii years I was missing, I was raped, sodomized, browbeaten, and kidnapped. The abuse I suffered was horrific, and I felt my humanity drain away from me equally buyers, known as "johns," would but beat abroad at me for their own pleasure.

I continued my drug abuse to endeavor to escape, and my pimp would give me more than crack to brand sure I wouldn't return to my family. On Mother'southward Twenty-four hour period as a gift he would give me extra crevice because I would grieve then much for my children that I left.

I was lost. I was one of those people that you pass past every day and try not to find. The lifestyle takes everything from you and completely transforms you into a different person.

During those two years I tried to fume enough fissure to bust my middle, but God did non let me die. He had another plan for me.

Jail saved my life, and once I got there I never left

My life was saved when angels in handcuffs came for me in 2004. When I was arrested, I thought I would exist treated like a criminal. I was not expecting the love and compassion that I received inside the Cook Canton Jail.

I was arrested for violation of probation for my drug charge, and in lieu of iii to seven years in prison house, I was sentenced to 120 days in Women's Justice Services (Jail-Based Treatment), which was the first of a total 18-calendar month sentence through the Women's Rehabilitative Culling Probation (WRAP) Drug Court. This is a typical length of sentence given to women convicted of nonviolent drug-related crimes.

The Women'due south Justice Programme provided trauma-informed mental health treatment and substance abuse recovery. The types of services offered include individual and group therapy, crisis intervention and psychological cess, medication referrals, anger management, literacy services, job training, and job placement, amidst others.

The plan gave me coping skills to save me from myself and realize crucial aspects of my personality. Before coming into the program, I did non take that I had a drug trouble, and it taught me how to understand my addictive personality.

Those four months I spent in jail allowed me to exist honest with myself and forgive myself kickoff. I then forgave those who had harmed me and those that I had allowed to harm me.

It was also through this plan that I met Lisa Cunningham.

Lisa, a peer coordinator employed past the Cook County Sheriff's Office, was a survivor of prostitution and a recovering addict, so she understood exactly what I was going through and I was able to fully put my trust in her.

Lisa loved me. She gave me flat irons for my hair when my hair was matted from living on the streets. She gave me lipstick when I hadn't worn makeup in years. She gave me clothing even though I was so skinny from drug utilise that almost nothing would fit me. She helped me take those babe steps to recover from the trauma I had faced. Lisa was someone I could await up to in my recovery and know that it was possible to get through this journeying.

Lisa wrote down her personal cellphone number for me, and she did not requite that number out to anyone. I held on to that piece of paper similar it was gilded. I called her the night I finished the program at xi o'clock, just needing to hear her voice, and she told me to evidence upward on Monday to the Cook County Sheriff's Role. I spent the adjacent six months on probation. In that fourth dimension, I came to the jail every day and volunteered.

Since then, I've never left. I've worked for the Sheriff'southward Office for xiii years. I started working equally a mentor for new inmates but every bit Lisa did for me, and at present I'm the senior projection director/human being trafficking coordinator for the Melt County Sheriff's Office on Public Policy. My job handles more of the policy side, such as analogous efforts to bring down pimps, traffickers, and johns.

The Sheriff's Role gave me life, purpose, and a responsibility. I at present have a responsibleness to the victims of sex activity trafficking to pay information technology forward, to give them the love that I received. It's painful to have to relive my experience every twenty-four hour period, just I am responsible to help victims and try to salve lives.

It'southward nearly impossible to get a job with a felony on your record

At that place are withal parts of the criminal justice system that need to be improved. I am lucky to work alongside the officers who put me in handcuffs, but almost employers volition non hire felons. I believe there needs to exist some sort of statute of limitations on how long a person tin have a felony on their record. Getting a job is an important way to reduce one's chances of repeating the prison wheel.

I accept lived the life that people make documentaries most (I am featured in Oprah's documentary series Prostitution: Leaving the Life); I was given the 2022 Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award for Volunteer Service from President Barack Obama; I was part of Jimmy Carter's 2022 summit to end homo trafficking past 2025; I have spoken in forepart of the United Nations. But if you run my name through the system, it will still come as felon.

It'due south for this reason I accept a petition before the governor of Illinois for executive charity. My promise is that, if granted, it will pave the way for others like me.

I desire my story to become a model for all prostituted women — that with the correct treatment and more job opportunities, we can beat the cycle of backsliding.

Switching the focus of prisons

Recidivism rates would go downwardly if people were given care in jail and the tools they demand to become a chore afterwards. Instead, well-nigh The states prisons only focus on punishment and do non have programs to assistance rehabilitate. Trends of overcrowding and increasing reports of physical and sexual corruption inside prisons may besides leave inmates with worse mental health than they entered with.

The WRAP courtroom program in Cook County has reduced recidivism rates, and 87 percent of graduates of the programme will not take another felony drug charge in the iii years after completion of the program. Their focus on mental health treatment, substance corruption recovery, jobs training, and and so much else requite prisoners the tools to survive outside the prison walls.

I dearest that every twenty-four hours, I get to tell the women prisoners I assist that if I got through it, so tin they. I believe that God saved me and then that I would accept the opportunity to salvage others. It is through the Melt County Sheriff'southward Office that I have realized my responsibility to help other victims, and information technology is this type of help that will hopefully keep them from coming back.

If information technology can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

—as told to Kelly Swanson

Marian Hatcher has been with the Melt County Sheriff's Office (CCSO) for xiii years , where she is the southward enior p roject k anager for the Part of Public Policy as well as the h uman t rafficking c oordinator. She coordinates several of CCSO's anti-trafficking efforts such as the National Johns Suppression Initiative, a nationwide try with 90 arresting agencies and more than than 200 law enforcement partners targeting the buyers of sexual practice equally the driving force of sex trafficking and prostitution.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/8/8/16112864/recidivism-rate-jail-prostitution-break-cycle

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