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As of Friday, the Safer Foundation will have 79 days to save its adult transition center, Crossroads.

Crossroads is a residential program that prepares prison inmates for job placement.

It is operated under a contract with the Illinois Department of Corrections and allows inmates to have a monitored space to begin the re-entry process.

Through programs in this center, inmates receive jobs. Jerry Butler, the foundation’s vice president of community relations, said inmates are serving the remainder of their prison sentence in the community.”

Crossroads is almost exclusively funded by the state.

The Safer Foundation operates Crossroads and jointly operates North Lawndale Adult Transitional Center with the Illinois Department of Corrections. The North Lawndale Adult Transitional Center will remain open. Crossroads is set to close along with six other adult transition centers, one of which is also in Chicago.

The Safer Foundation is a 40-year-old organization that has helped pioneer the creation of re-entry programs.

They strictly cater to those with felonies, offering their clients the job training they need to land a job and a space back into their communities. “Safer has believed for as long as it’s been in existence now that a sure-fire way of reducing recidivism is to have people employed making a living wage, Butler said.

As of July 1, programs like Crossroads will no longer receive state money. Legislators are cutting Crossroads with intentions of redeploying the $7 million elsewhere.

However, Jon Kaplan, director of marketing and communications at the Safer Foundation says that legislators’ decision may help Illinois in the short term, but will hurt in the long-term.

Cutting programs such as Crossroads would not only “mean that we couldn’t help those 750 men a year, but we will have to lay off 75 employees,” Kaplan said. “They are no longer paying their taxes and making their contributions to the state and, in addition, then the state has to in a years time pay out $1 million in unemployment for those 75 employees,” Kaplan said.

If an average of 750 men per year in Crossroads complete the program and return to their families and communities, they could have “an economic imåpact in a year’s time of $2.4 million,” Kaplan said.

With 326 clients right now, Crossroads is the largest adult transition center in Illinois and is model center for other adult transition centers around the country.

Next Tuesday and Wednesday, Safer representatives are scheduled to speak to legislators on the appropriations committees in both houses.

Kaplan said that he understands legislators must make cuts, but after already eliminating two of their programs, enough is enough.

“We feel we’ve done our part,” Kaplan said.

The elimination of these programs could have a huge impact on Illinois.

Kaplan said that 51 percent of inmates who get out of prison in Illinois go back, while only 30 percent of inmates who go through Crossroads go back to prison. Inmates who go back to prison cost the state of Illinois $40,000. That is twice as much as it would cost Illinois to pay for an inmate to be in Crossroads.

The Safer Foundation will continue to fight to keep Crossroads open and continue to provide job placement services to their clients. “We have to keep knocking on doors, we have to keep trying to break down the barriers,” Butler said.

• External Links
  • > Anyone interested in making efforts to save Crossroads, click this link to sign an online petition that will be sent to Illinois legislators.