For decades, whenever local leaders talked about crime prevention, a hardworking few would call for “re-entry” programs that help ex-offenders find a life in society again. They’d cite the jarring statistics that most crimes are committed by former inmates who couldn’t get job assistance or substance-abuse services.
Yet their voices were consistently washed out by the call for more harsh prison sentences and tougher police enforcement.
However, in 2013, the long-time, grassroots re-entry initative Project COPE caught the attention of Danny Ludeman, former CEO and president of Wells Fargo Advisors. Since then, Ludeman has been able to convince the region’s top political, business and academic leaders to pool together their resources– including almost $9 million – to establish a nonprofit geared towards reducing prison recidivism and crime.
On April 29 at the Missouri History Museum, Ludeman and his partners announced the opening of the Concordance Academy of Leadership and the Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice. It’s the first-ever public, private and academic partnership focused on lowering incarceration rates in the country, he said.
Ludeman became the CEO and president of the Concordance Academy on May 1.
“When people address the big problems like poverty and racial difference, sometimes people in the business sector quickly go to a solution and think it’s all about creating jobs or educational opportunities,” Ludeman told The St. Louis American. “It does involve those things, but it’s much deeper.”
Within five years of being released from prison, about 78 percent of men and 68 percent of women are rearrested at least once. Addressing this problem must be done holistically, Ludeman said. Ludeman’s team is taking Project COPE’s 30-year-old network of volunteers and church partners, and it’s adding new practices that are effective at reducing recidivism, he said.
Project COPE will now become the academy and offer services, including education and job-readiness, employment, substance abuse and mental health treatment and housing.
Kate Mansfield, who has served as executive director of Project COPE since fall 2013, said they have aided hundreds of people on limited resources. “To take the legacy of this organization and the tremendous thousands of hours of staff and volunteers forward, it’s a solid foundation to build on,” she said.
The Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice will be operated and staffed by the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University, and Assistant Professor Carrie Pettus-Davis will serve as executive director. It will focus on accelerating the “feedback loop” of research, practice and policy engagement, Pettus-Davis said.
In re-entry work, nonprofits have mainly based their programs on “people’s best ideas and best intentions,” Pettus-Davis said. “We’ve had very little evidence and research to see what was working for whom and how.”
Her research team will track participants in the program for three years and incorporate what they learn into their provision of services. Ludeman said very few nonprofits use evidence-based practices or monitor their outcomes. He feels this will be important for donors.
“People give money because their hearts have been touched,” he said. “But there is a lot more resistance because a lot of institutions cannot show that they are making a difference.”
Concordance’s board is stacked with 24 regional heavy hitters – including World Wide Technology founder and chairman David Steward, Regional Business Council executive director Kathy Osborn, Centene chairman and president Michael Neidorff, Ferguson Commission co-chair Rich McClure, former leader of the United Way of Greater St. Louis Gary Dollar, and Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis president and CEO Michael McMillan.
Ludeman and Pettus-Davis also have strong support from regional political leaders, police chiefs and local universities. More than 50 houses of worship have signed up to contribute volunteers.
So far, Ludeman has raised $8.5 million for the academy and the institute, just $500,000 shy of his goal. The business community gave more than $4.5 million, with most large companies contributing both financially and with board representation. The state, city and St. Louis and St. Charles counties contributed more than $3 million, and five civic organizations gave about $1 million.
Ludeman’s team will select the academy’s first class of 60 inmates in December, six months before their release. Ludeman estimates it will cost $15,000 to fund each program participant, which is cheaper than the $22,500 annual cost to house an inmate in Missouri.
When Ludeman retired from Wells Fargo Advisors in fall 2013, he said publicly that he wanted his next venture to be about helping people. He was flooded with letters and invitations, but the letter from journalist Candace O’Connor, then Project COPE’s board chair, stood out.
This was how he first became aware of the hardships that former inmates face and how it affects families and children, he said. More than 14,000 children with an incarcerated parent enter the foster care system each year. Children with incarcerated parents are six to nine times more likely to become incarcerated themselves.
Ludeman knows the stigma surrounding people’s perceptions of those who come out of prison, and he aims to change that.
“It’s there, it’s real,” he said. “We are going to put services in place that can finally correct this problem.”