"Perhaps, if we adequately invested in our children and in education, kids who now grow up to be criminals could become productive workers and taxpayers... Today, the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country and, year after year, we grossly underfunded childcare, Head Start and the overall needs of our children.

-US Senator Bernie Sanders, responding to a report that 1 in every 99 Americans, including 1 in every 9 African-American men between the ages of 20 and 34, is currently in jail.

Monica Yant-Kinney wrote a column this weekend on Ronald Cuie, the head of Philadelphia's new deputy mayor in charge of the Office for the Reentry of Ex-Offenders.

She notes the tasks of the office:

Created by Mayor John F. Street, the Mayor's Office for Reentry has served nearly 3,000 former inmates since 2005, teaching them everything from how to pay bills to why not to lie on job applications.

Many of the clients have been out and foundering for years. Cuie wants prisons to allow his caseworkers to start training inmates for work before they are released.

The reentry office commits to mentoring ex-offenders for 18 months. That, plus a new $10,000 tax credit businesses can receive for hiring former inmates, may sway wary employers to take a chance on an unproven workforce.

Without question, it is a hugely important role, and I really give the Mayor credit for getting that. I spent some time interning in the field of employment law, and the role criminal records play in denying people jobs is immense. Trying to get the business community on board, as Nutter as done with talks in front of the Chamber of Commerce and others, is very smart.

Jennifer wrote about this topic not long ago though, and I think it is important to return to something she mentioned when talking about Cuie:

As it was, he spent only three years in prison for his conviction ("robbery, aggravated assault, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment and criminal conspiracy"). Presumably when he got out, he had at least some of the safety net that a once-high-ranking city official is likely to have.

This all makes him pretty atypical of the people coming out of prison and back to Philly neighborhoods. He's clearly spent time and energy since his release devoted to helping make systemic changes in the prison and re-entry systems. Hopefully he will serve as a literal bridge to those in power who think they are detached from the problems of those in prison, those getting out, and their families. And hopefully he has come to understand the huge structural obstacles people who aren't deputy mayors face when they have to restructure a life after incarceration.

In other words, the office is not giving people second chances if they never had a legitimate first chance, at least as most of us would understand it.

The reality is that many people growing up in our City and Country have had very little chance at all. That is not something the Mayor by himself can change (Clinton, Obama: Please beat McCain.). But it is to note that even with some mentoring and a potential 10k tax credit, the large majority of people coming out of prison are likely under-educated, to say the least. And they are still entering a market that lacks good paying jobs, whether you have a record or not.

All of this is not to denigrate what the Mayor is doing or how important a well-functioning office for re-entry is. It is to note just how large a hole that we have dug ourselves into as a City and Country. It is going to take an amazing effort on both the national and local level to even think about climbing out of it. The 10k tax-credit is incredibly important, but, it is no magic bullet.