'Make sure everybody succeeds': Cooper signs prison reentry order alongside NFL hall of famer

People leaving North Carolina prisons will find more support at the state and local levels, following a new executive order issued Monday by Gov. Roy Cooper.

Cooper, a Democrat, noted the support among Republicans and Democrats alike for criminal justice reform in the past few years, at the state legislature as well as in Washington, D.C. — where one of former Republican President Donald Trump’s bipartisan accomplishments was the 2018 First Step Act, which also re-authorized another criminal justice reform law called the Second Chance Act.

Those two laws made thousands of nonviolent drug offenders eligible for early release from prisons across the country and authorized $100 million in spending on reentry programs. Some of that money is now being used for the programs Cooper approved Monday. The governor said the new effort focuses on helping people find work, or get job and career training, soon after their release and re-entry back into mainstream society. It also commits North Carolina to meeting a series of goals on making sure people are more educated, and less likely to be homeless, when they leave prison.

“Our communities are much safer and much stronger when we come together to make sure everybody succeeds,” Cooper said. “We want to make sure that people have real opportunities when they leave prison, so they won't go back to the same things that got them sent there."

NC legislature approves raft of criminal justice reforms

Joe Gibbs, the former head coach of the Washington Redskins — now Washington Commanders — who won three Super Bowl championships with the team, and later had success as a NASCAR team owner, was among those on hand Monday to celebrate Cooper’s new executive order. A North Carolina native, Gibbs more recently founded the Christian group Game Plan For Life.

“We serve a God of second chances,” Gibbs said Monday, explaining his emphasis on prison ministry.

In addition to other ministry work, the group educates prison inmates in Nash County — where Cooper grew up — in a theological seminary program. Gibbs said they study the Bible and even learn Hebrew and Greek, just as someone studying to be a pastor outside prison walls might also do. And he’s heard from people in the program, as well as from corrections officers, about the massive changes it has brought to some participants, he said.

“It's amazing what some of the guys in our field ministry program have done,” Gibbs said. “And the way they have improved their life.”

Simulation shows struggles people face when rejoining society after incarceration

One of the speakers Monday was formerly incarcerated himself. Greg Singleton is now the dean of Programs, Workforce & Continuing Education at Central Carolina Community College, which has campuses in Chatham, Harnett and Lee counties.

Singleton spoke about how his criminal history took away his right to vote and his relationships with family members, and how it made it harder for him to get a job, rent an apartment and otherwise exist in modern society. He tried for years to keep his status a secret, he said, but now wears it proudly as a sign of what he’s overcome — as he works to help others walk a similar path.

“Second chances have got to be God’s work,” Singleton said. “Because it raises people up, like the phoenix from its ashes.”

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