Baltimore Sun

Letters to the Editor

Originally published August 1, 2005

Ex-convicts are part of the city's future

Many thanks to Dan Rodricks for reminding us that thousands of prison inmates are released each year back to Baltimore neighborhoods, and that the employment, housing and other re-entry problems many of them confront are problems they need help to solve ("A weary city can't turn to cynicism when it come to drugs and violence," July 25).

It might be tempting to write off these returning offenders - to say that they don't deserve help and that we should concentrate on preventing children from falling into the same patterns of crime, drugs and prison.

But we should not write them off, for they are here among us; they are part of our community and the parents of some of our children.

If we do not help, we doom them, their families and ourselves to more crime, more generations of fractured families and a high recidivism rate.

Directly and indirectly, we will all pay a huge price for this.

Many individuals and groups are working hard to reduce the harm, but we need to do much more.

Joanne Nathans
Baltimore

The writer is a member of the board of the Job Opportunities Task Force.