President Obama came to Newark to discuss ways of successfully returning ex-prisoners to society. Watch video
NEWARK -- President Obama, who has embraced the cause of overhauling the nation's criminal justice system, used New Jersey's largest city as the backdrop Monday to call attention to programs designed to successfully return ex-prisoners to society.
Obama, making his third trip to the Garden State in a year, visited a Newark facility that provides services to 2,400 people each year, including drug treatment and help with housing and jobs. He held a roundtable discussion at Rutgers-Newark's Center for Law and Justice before speaking at the campus.
"There are people across the board -- folks who work inside the criminal justice system, folks who are affected by the criminal justice system, who are saying, "There's got to be a better way,'" Obama told a crowd of 226 at the university.
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The president announced several steps along those lines, including naming Newark one of five new municipalities that will work with local colleges and employers to offer job training and placement for former prisoners.
He announced programs to help juveniles seal criminal records and to improve the chances of former prisoners to get government jobs, and grants to provide education and other help for ex-convicts returning to society.
"We need to make sure Americans who paid their debt to society can earn a second chance," Obama said. "We have seen people who are doing just that."
While Obama was announcing his initiatives in Newark. Gov. Chris Christie was highlighting his own efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system in Camden, which the president visited in May to discuss its progress in improving relations between police and the communities they are sworn to protect. Obama's trip came after several deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police.
Unlike during Obama's December visit to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Christie was not at the airport to welcome the president.
Obama's first step on his N.J. trip was Integrity House, a non-profit rehabilitation organization that works with drug-and alcohol-addicted criminals. Accompanied by Robin Shorter, director of the Women's Outpatient Programs and director of the Women's Halfway House, he met with three of the residents.
He then discussed criminal justice issues at Rutgers-Newark around a horseshoe-shaped table with some former prisoners and others involved in helping them return to society.
Rutgers-Newark's School of Criminal Justice hosts the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons program, which provides courses for prisoners and then helps them continue their education once released. The program works with the state Department of Corrections and State Parole Board.
In Newark, they are doing "extraordinary work," Obama said, singling out by name some of the people he met on his visit, both those who are trying to become productive members of society and those who are helping them do it.
Accompanying the president on his trip was Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who has made criminal justice a signature issue since being elected to the Senate. Booker, a former Newark mayor, helped broker a deal with Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and other senators of both parties on a compromise bill that reduces some mandatory sentences and provides certain federal inmates with job training, drug treatment and a chance to be released from prison early.
Obama endorsed that legislation. "This is an area where we have really seen some strong bipartisan work," he said.
Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.