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David Nathanson

As someone who has been involved in trying to help people returning from prison, I can say that this article is accurate and well done.

Simple things can destroy a life even for the most motivated, most reformed person.

If you leave prison without ID, you can't get a bank account. No bank account, no housing, even if you could pay. And probably no job.

We've got to stop punishing people forever. Helping people reintegrate makes us safer and more productive.

bostonglobe.com/2025/02/11/met

People who’ve been in prison for a long time come out to “a whole new world,” said Sean Ellis, cofounder of the Exoneree Network at the New England Innocence Project. Ellis was freed in 2015 after serving nearly 22 years in prison when his murder conviction was overturned because of police misconduct. And the prison mindset was hard to shake. “You have to ask for a roll of toilet paper,” he said. “You spend decades having to ask for things and not necessarily be able to take control of your own being. ... That adversely affects you.” William Allen served 28 years on first-degree murder charges for participating in a robbery in Brockton in which a man was killed by someone else. Following a campaign to have his life sentence commuted following a change in the law, he was released from prison in 2022. But at first, he said, “I was lost.”
The reentry class he took in prison was “garbage,” he said. Several men he served time with ended up living in their cars or in the woods. Another resorted to selling drugs. “I see why people keep coming back,” said Allen, 51, “because they make it so hard for guys to navigate through life.” The fight to have Allen’s sentence commuted led to the formation of Second Chance Justice at the Massachusetts Communities Action Network to reform the state’s reentry system. Massachusetts prides itself as a progressive state committed to equity and social justice, said William Dickerson, MCAN’s co-executive director, but when it comes to incarceration, the state has long had a punitive “law and order” approach. “Our whole mentality has to change,” he said.
A major shift took place after state legislators passed landmark criminal justice reform measures in 2018, and reentry was the largest area of investment. Along with funding housing and residential services, reforms included delaying probation and parole fees, reducing wait times to seal criminal records, and increasing rehabilitative programming and post-release supervision. But the state’s annual investment in reentry services peaked in fiscal year 2023 at $32.8 million, according to MassINC, and has been shrinking since, with $26.6 million designated for reentry in the governor’s 2026 budget proposal — even as the number of people being released from jails and prisons rose slightly. These funds are “super volatile, said Ben Forman, director of the MassINC Policy Center. “When things get tight, these are the people that are normally overlooked,” he said. In late January, the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security held a reentry simulation at the State House — following two similar exercises in Worcester in October — to familiarize legislators with the challenges of returning from prison. Participants were assigned the identity of a fictitious recently incarcerated person and given duties to carry out at stations around the room such as securing an ID, visiting a probation officer, or getting a urinalysis, all while using public transportation in a limited amount of time.
“We really have a very frustrating — and I would argue, broken — system,” state Senator Jamie Eldridge said beforehand. In 2022, the state increased its one-on-one support for those leaving prison, including hiring ex-offenders or their family members to become credible messengers to help residents a few months before their release. There are currently five credible messengers working with 25 to 45 people apiece to assist with everything from negotiating difficult family relationships to coordinating appointments once they’re released. Ultimately, though, outside help can only go so far. Ruben Pina achieved a lot in prison, including finishing high school and getting certified as an automotive technician, but he credits self-motivation, not the system, for his rehabilitation. “I knew I had to come home a better man than I went in,” he said. Pina, 41, who was incarcerated for more than 11 years for assault with intent to murder, was matched with a credible messenger before his release in October. Their interactions were mostly conversations, though, he said, with little concrete guidance about navigating the outside world. Still, he managed to get on a good path. After moving in with his step-father, Pina found work as a delivery driver in south of Boston and enrolled in a commercial drivers’ license course. The biggest challenge now, he said, is figuring out how to fit into his children’s lives again.
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